‘Task’ Casting: Pushing Limits of Convention? : The director of the all-black version of Heiner Muller’s work, opening Friday at Taper, Too, wants to get past old ideas

L. Kenneth (Lee) Richardson is on a mission.

“This is my take on non-traditional casting,” the director said matter-of-factly. “I grew up thinking Marlon Brando was Asian in ‘Teahouse of the August Moon,’ that white actors playing Indians were Indians. In society, we believe white actors have the freedom to be anything they want. But if you have black skin, you have black skin. If you’re black, you can only be black. That’s all you can be.”

Richardson, 40, is hoping that his all-black version of Heiner Muller’s “The Task” (opening Friday at Taper, Too) will go a long way toward pushing the boundaries of theatrical conventions.

“You want real non-traditional casting?” he asked. “Make Macbeth black, make Lear black, make Hamlet Hispanic. Let’s not put people of color in the background, in smaller roles, and call it ‘non-traditional casting.’ ”

Set during the French Revolution, Muller’s tale (written in 1979) concerns three emissaries from the French republic who are sent to Jamaica to instigate an uprising against British rule. One of them is a black man; the other two--a peasant and an aristocrat--are played by blacks in whiteface makeup.

“What I want,” Richardson said, “is for us to sit down in the theater and suspend our imaginations, see if we can get past old ideas.”

The director believes that the casting of blacks as whites--historically unusual, although not unique--will lend itself to some interesting psychological observations. “If we look at the world as masters and slaves, who knows the master better than the slave?” he asked. And yet, if a black sensibility filters through that characterization, that’s OK too. “I think we’ll have a lot of insights,” he said. “It’s going to be very interesting for black actors--playing white characters--to say some of the things they do.”

What’s most important, he said, is that black people begin to see themselves with expanded possibilities. “I see the role of the black in this country as a victim,” said Richardson, who is a 1990-91 associate artist at the Mark Taper Forum. “As long as we’re playing the role of the victim, we become the victim--and relate to the larger world from that victim sensibility. The potentials exist outside that group: realizing who you are, that you’re not defined by everybody. But we’ve got to widen our own view. It has to come from us.”

The traditional system does little to help. Although Richardson’s 1988 staging of George C. Wolfe’s “The Colored Museum” at the Taper and Westwood Playhouse was a huge career boost, he said that, generally, a free-lance black director only works “when an August Wilson or ‘black’ play comes along--and those are few and far between.” Even then, it’s often a reinforcement of old stereotypes. The director grouses that he was recently offered a staging of “A Raisin in the Sun.”

“This is 1991,” he said. “It’s crazy that a black director is told he can only direct a black play. It’s saying I have a black point of view--and that’s not true. I will not let anyone define me. It’s pretty scary at first: breaking out of what you know into new territory. But once you cross that line, you realize, ‘This is doable.’ You’ve got to get out of that point of view of seeing yourself the way other people do. You have to be fearless. That was what ‘Colored Museum’ was all about: Don’t be defined.”

For all his passion, Richardson doesn’t come off as an angry man. Serious, yes. It’s a quality that he appears to share with this play. Upon first reading of Muller’s dense 80-minute work, the director said, “I didn’t know what the hell it was about.” Still, he hopes that audiences won’t be put off by the unconventional, fragmented storytelling. “I want to appeal to the guy on the street, the common man,” he said. “At least, I want to try to get them in. Because I don’t believe in doing theater for the elite.”

But is the piece accessible?

“Well,” Richardson hedged, “I think if we do our job, it will be. It’s like Shakespeare. After three hours of Shakespeare, you don’t get it all. But he throws out a lot of stuff, very universal ideas, and you just grab onto whatever you can. Jazz is like that: If you sit there and try to make sense of it, you’re in trouble. But if you let it wash over you--not saying, ‘What does it mean?’ but ‘What does it feel? ‘--it can be very exciting.”

Making sense of it for himself and his actors, however, has been a more difficult proposition.

“You only grow when it’s difficult,” he said. “I purposely didn’t read much about Muller because he’s from East Germany; I didn’t want to get inside his head. I’m going to figure out what it means to me, period. If it makes sense to me, maybe it’ll make sense to other people. Ultimately, what I really want is to shine a little light on the human condition. So yes, it is a task, a challenge; it’s intimidating. That’s OK. It shouldn’t be easy.”

With such a complicated, untried work, it’s understandable that the cast leans on him for answers.

“But at the same time, I need them too--just as much,” Richardson said. “It’s a very collaborative process, the kind where you need a lot of hammering and chiseling--knocking away at the piece, finding out what’s going on under the surface. One person can’t do it. It needs a bunch of people. So I get up and say, ‘OK, what’s this scene about? I don’t know. Let’s just start, just say the words and do it.’ Then you start going and see something--and then you get more confidence.”

Cast member Ron Canada worked with Richardson in an Ohio production of “Fences.”

“Lee loves the stage, but he also loves the idea of theater,” Canada said. “Lee is theater in the best sense. And since he’s an accomplished actor himself, he loves to get up there with us. The day is filled with his energy, his stories, his anecdotes. Whatever he’s thinking and feeling is right there. And he’s always asking more from you--emotionally, artistically. It’s exciting and demanding because you have to participate, take responsibility for what happens.”

Richardson, a native of New Jersey who holds an English degree and a master’s in acting from Rutgers University, made a name for himself at the Crossroads Theatre in New Brunswick, N. J. He co-founded it in 1978 and served as artistic director there for 10 years, staging more than 50 works himself. “I learned by doing,” said Richardson, whose only previous experience had been mounting a one-act in drama school. “Nobody taught me; I didn’t learn it from a book. I just did it.”

After the success of “Colored Museum” here (for which he won an NAACP Image Award and went on to stage it in New York and London), Richardson relocated to Los Angeles.

“I had gotten tired of the New York scene,” he said. “I thought I would hate Los Angeles, but I ended up falling in love with it.” In 1989, he directed Michael Henry Brown’s stereotype-busting “Generations of the Dead in the Abyss of Coney Island Madness” in the Taper’s New Works Festival. Last year, he donned his acting cap for the national touring company production of Neil Simon’s “Rumors,” playing the cop. “It was a gig I couldn’t give up,” Richardson said dryly, “a really good-paying job.”

“The Task” opens Friday and plays at 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays and 2:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays at the John Anson Ford Theatre, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood, through June 2. Tickets: $16. (213) 410-1062.