Urban - a code word?

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated Sun, 10 Oct 2004 15:27:12 -0400,  Jesse Sheidlower
<jester at PANIX.COM> asks:
>
>  On Sun, Oct 10, 2004 at 07:41:22AM -0400, James A. Landau wrote:
>  > Jean Schiffman, "Audition Hell" in Dramatics, VOlume 76, number 2,
October
>  > 2004, page 28
>  >
>  > <begin quote>
>  >     Also beyond the actor's control are clueless directors.  When Brian
> Yates
>  > Sharber read for one of the jackals in the touring company of _The Lion
>  > King_, he was told, "I hate to sound stereotypical, but---be more
urban,"
> follwed
>  > by "You got a little too Connecticut for me."  Says Sharber, who is
> African
>  > American, "I'm thinking,, If you hate to sound stereotypical, then
don't.
> He was
>  > trying not to sy, '[Racial slur] it up,' but that's what he meant.  The
> only
>  > way he could feel comfortable saying that to a black actor is, "Be more
>  > urban.' That's the code word that some of us have come to know."
>  > <end quote>
>
>  Jim, is "[racial slur]" your edit, or does the source actually say
>  "[racial slur]"? If the former, what's in the source?
>
Except for three minor typoes of my own, this was the exact verbatim quote
from the original.  ("Thinking" was followed ungrammatically by a comma, not a
period (I typed both); "don't" was followed by an exclamation point rather than
a period; and I misspelled "say" as "sy".)

This was an upbeat article directed to aspiring actors.  It contained a
series of anecdotes from _successful_ actors about audition disasters they have
had.  The first paragraph, for example, told about an actor whose pants ripped
while auditioning.  Sharber's anecdote was the only one to involve ethnic
comments, and note that the author specifically described the director in question
as "clueless".  I imagine the author (or the editor) decided that to include
the exact offending term would be distracting to the reader.

          - Jim Landau