1776's Sara Porkalob Has Some Notes

"Are you artistically fulfilled by 1776?" "No, I'm not."

- JASON P. FRANK 

THE NEW BROADWAY revival of the musical 1776, directed by Diane Paulus and Jeffrey Page, cast women and trans and nonbinary people of various races as the Founding Fathers. It co-stars Sara Porkalob, known for her "Dragon Cycle" trilogy of musicals, as South Carolina's proslavery delegate Edward Rutledge. Porkalob spends much of the musical smiling-until she explodes with "Molasses to Rum," a song that sneers at the North's push to put an anti-slavery clause in the Declaration of Independence. When this conversation appeared in Vulture on October 14, her comments inspired a polarized response and a furious post from Page indirectly calling her "fake-woke," "rotten to the core," and "ungrateful and unwise."

Would you describe 1776's casting as color-blind?

I guess my role was colorblind. Diane saw me in Dragon Lady, loved me, and said, I’m doing this revival. What do you think?” I said I wanted to be Edward Rutledge, and she said Cool.” The casting was a color conscious puzzle. I think it was a very deliberate choice from the creative team to cast John Adams as a Black woman. But nobody sat down and said, We're gonna look at everybody's intersectional identity and think how it explicitly interacts with this character who has ten lines.” They said, We want to have a diverse cast. We definitely want enough Black folks, we want people who are non Black POC folks, we gotta have some white folks.” also think they cast the best people for the roles.

What do you think is the effect of that casting?