A group of Harvard students rewrote the script of a romantic comedy musical to feature a plot about goat-herding set in dystopian London, arguing the original script contained racist tropes.
The revamped play, performed last month by the Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert and Sullivan Players, kept the original score from the musical The Mikado but included a different script to avoid featuring Japanese stereotypes and racist interpretations. Instead of telling the tale of a man’s search for love, The Milk Made instead focused on the futuristic story of an Asian boat worker seeking to herd goats in Chinese-dominated London.
The changes were primarily made to avoid the use of yellowface, when white actors don makeup and traditional clothing to portray an Asian character, a practice that is considered highly offensive in modern circles.
ACTIVISTS FILE NEW LAWSUIT CHALLENGING TEXAS ABORTION BAN
“A number of our cast and crew members also have Asian heritage and belong to these cultures and to come on to this project, and imbue their identities and imbue their cultures and experiences into this work that has drawn music from centuries ago, I think was a very enlightening experience,” Keagan Yap, the student music director, told the Harvard Crimson.
The adaptation also sought to portray Japanese culture more accurately, which the student directors said the playwrights attempted to do unsuccessfully in their original script.
The Mikado, set in Japan in the late 1800s, satirizes the British government. However, the play also features racist stereotypes of feudal Japan that the writers had used as a crutch rather than learn more about the country’s culture, Yap said.
“At the very core of all of this is just, there’s this long-standing feeling that we want to just respect what for Gilbert and Sullivan was a foreign culture,” he said.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The classic musical has mainly featured white actors since its first performances in 1885, receiving criticism and pushback in the 1990s. The Mikado gained widespread attention in 2015 when a social media campaign named #SayNoToMikado trended online in response to the New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players announcing it would perform the musical. The organization later canceled the performance and apologized.
