One part of the struggle will involve educating the theater community about the dramatic range of minorities. Some directors seem woefully ignorant of what they actually have to work with. "If acting's the problem, shows need singers and dancers, too," says Montel in an unintentional nod to the common relegation of minorities performers to minstrelsy. Hood mistakenly asserts that "African-American drama did not come about until Langston Hughes in the 1920s." "African-American drama started a long time before that,"says Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., chair of the Afro-American Studies Department. Indeed, the first published play by a black writer dates to 1859.

Groups like the Asian American Players (AAA) and Black Community Action Student Theater (CAST) also figure into the process of increasing minority representation in Harvard theater. Both troupes seek to give performance opportunities to minority actors and playwrights and to treat theatrically the concerns of their respective ethnic groups. "It frustrates me that a place as diverse as Harvard doesn't seem to see the opportunity presented to it by its diversity," says Vanessa Carr '02, who is currently revitalizing CAST with Saffold.

Krebs warns against the easy assignment of dealing with ethnic issues to groups like AAA and CAST. "If I'm a director picking a show, I have a responsibility to be flexible or make theater a venue to discuss important issues."

But Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts '00, herself a minority playwright, warns against assuming that dramatic success can only be found in the dramatic mainstream. "I'm not really sure where I stand on things like color-blind casting. It seems like it all ends up in tokenism. When it comes right down to it, the lack of minority roles isn't going to change unless minority writers and directors create them. I am not so disturbed by having to do my own thing. I don't mind working outside of institutions. How terribly backwards of me.

How terribly backwards of all of us to have fostered the idea that the only place for minorities in theater is outside of the mainstream. We are not eighteenth-century Britain but a diverse university community. In theater, it is long past time for all our colors to mix.