Seyi Omooba is suing Curve Theatre

Such a crazy case. She will never be employed as an actress again, as she will always be "that person"... what a bizarre situation.

So she doesn't research her roles fully, can't remember whether she was on stage during key moments, and doesn't always pay attention to what's going on when she's on stage...

Aside from her beliefs and court case, she's hardly selling herself as an actor worth hiring!

Because no Casting Director will go near her now, nor any Producer. And even if they do, will any cast members feel comfortable in embracing her or make a concerted effort to work with her? Ultimately not, theatre is fickle and dramatic. 

As I said earlier, her casting could have actually be a positive catalyst for change, but I get that its hard for people to see that.

It is not the role of a casting director to give someone a chance to change their unacceptable thinking.

If the production team has known about her views and past behaviour, she would not have been considered for the role. She may not even have been considered for any role in the production.

A production of a musical is just that. It does not exist to offer bigots a chance to reform.

The only person who can decide to change their thinking is the bigot. She has clearly demonstrated no desire or willingness to change.

If she had played the role 'straight' as she now apparently claims to have intended, then she would not have explored the piece properly to learn any of the lessons some claim might have been possible.

She may yet have the capacity for change. But she has in no way demonstrated a willingness to even consider it. She could have rethought things after she hid rather than be associated with a Pride celebration. She didn't. She could have rethought things after her involvement with the previous production of TCP. She didn't.

Is this a result of her upbringing? Almost certainly. But she is now an adult and has to take responsibility for her own actions. Her own choices. Many people grow up in a strict religious setting and decide to follow a different path once they reach adulthood. She hasn't rejected her upbringing. She has embraced it.

Until she takes the decision to reject this pernicious form of hatred, she has to live with the consequences. The only person with a responsibility to bring about this necessary personal growth is her.

Just playing devils advocate here again and also I am probably a little ignorant to the 'theatre' process so this is definitely a question and not a statement in her defence.

If she was auditioning for the role of Nettie, why would she read the whole script? It is a pretty small role that has little to do with the 'Shug' episode of the story, so would she not just prepare an audition number for that role and flicked through the script looking specifically at that part? I'm sorry but that sounds pretty reasonable to me. Surely people auditioning for roles do not always read the entire script of everything they are up for if they are constantly zipping about to different auditions. This was only an audition, not a rehearsal.

She auditioned for a small role and was offered the lead. Is there an actor on earth who would not have jumped at that chance without doing research on the whole play? I know I would've.

Did they even get to the rehearsal stage or was this all flagged before things got to that point?

I am also going to reiterate that I firmly believe that it was possible that if her only knowledge of the material was the watching the film (she said she didn't read the whole script), it is perfectly reasonable that she did not know the character was meant to be a lesbian.

I found an interesting critique of the film Vs book yesterday which further backs this up. It is only available as a PDF download, so I had to copy and paste the text.


Spielberg's film adaptation intentionally manipulates and subverts the episode on lesbian love. While it cannot be denied that Walker's sexual discourse is far from inhibited, Joan Digby adds that "Spielberg's film softens Waker's approach to sex in order to produce a mass-audience Hollywood film".

In Peacock's analysis of Spielberg's adaptation, he avoids cornmenting on the lesbian relationship but he highlights the fact that "in the case of The Color Purple adaptation important African-American cultural resources got left on the cutting room floor" (1994, 127). In my opinion, one of the most striking differences between Walker's novel and Spielberg's film is the fact that, confronted with a story of lesbian sexual desire, rich in language and full of symbols, the director chooses both to subvert and to displace the lesbian episode by cutting it to pieces.

In her highly critical article "Blues for Mr. Spielberg", Michelle Wallace confesses that she felt "alarmed" when hearing that Spielberg was working on The Color Purple, calls the director "the boy wonder of pop culture", furiously denounces that the film was "the trivialization of non-white culture and female pain", and rejects the final product as "a comic Birth of a Nation" (1990, 67). In her rage, Wallace also argues that in Spielberg's reading of Alice Walker's The Color Purple "all signs of a black feminist agenda are banished, or ridiculed beyond repair".

While Walker's lesbian story is transgressive, subversive, and full of explicit sexual connotations, Spielberg's adaptation trivialises lesbian desire, denies its visibility, and marginalizes its protagonism by providing an excessively chaste reading. In other words, Shug's and Celie's complex homoerotic story is reduced to a single ambiguous scene that avoids any explicit lesbian suggestion. On the contrary, Walker's verbal and sexual passion is replaced by the predominante of the color red-both Celie and Shug wear sophisticated red clothes-and the lighting, together with a sensual music, give an atmosphere of intimacy, warmth, and complicity.

Furthermore, Spielberg eliminates the scene of the mirror together with all the graphic sexual connotations, but there is an abundance of mirrors in the room-a long one, and two smaller ones-in which Shug's and Celie's faces are constantly being reflected. Of the love-making scene there is no trace whatsoever; the closest Spielberg gets is by directing the camera towards the bed where Shug and Celie sit, and where they exchange their childish chaste kisses.


As I said yesterday, I have seen the film many times and never got the impression that it was anything more than a dalliance with someone trying to show her love and not some revealing expose of her sexuality.

I am also completely ignorant to the audition process, but seeing that this isn't a new unknown piece, part of the audition process (as well as every other interview process) if done properly, would be to at the very least some minor research into the subject matter. I would hope someone wouldn't just watch the movie when there is a musical "revival" happening.

Either way, the excuse doesn't wash in her case because she was part of an actual concert version of the show (with pretty much the whole dialogue acted out, too) where everyone was on stage the whole time. So again, she was fully aware of how the musical adaptation was portraying that character.

Of course, we can always play devil's advocate and come up with excuses for her, just as much as it's also totally feasible that a grown man who was worried that he wasn't able to see properly would take his child and his wife on a car drive with him to check out his eye sight but really, we know he just wanted a nice day out with his family to celebrate his wives birthday and had to make up some excuse when he was caught out.

I am not making excuses for her I am just saying that I understand some of the confusion surrounding the characters sexuality based on what she knew of the material. Celie is a very complex character and the story covers her entire 60+ years of life in 2-3 hours. Her sexuality is only a small part of the story and frankly not a very important part of it in the context of the whole piece and what she goes through in her life. 

I think this case as a whole is a very complex issue that we have to deal with as a society where we on one hand are forced to accept someone's religious freedoms and their right to freedom of speech and yet then when they do express it they are persecuted for it. I mean she is not the only Christian on earth and they are all taught the same thing as are most other religions, so how do we actually deal with this beyond constantly cancelling people who are only doing what by law we tell them they are allowed to do and often fight along side them for their right to do so.

I mean once this girls life is destroyed and she never works in the theatre again, what next?

What has been solved by taking this girl down and don't we lose some of our own humanity in the process?

That would be my reading of the situation.

I agree with you in as much as there is a tension in society when rights conflict in this way. I remember the case of the Christian registrar who was fired for refusing to conduct gay weddings and then took the Council to tribunal. The argument there boiled down to the fact that nobody was saying that she couldn't hold her religious views, but the moment they interfered with her ability to do her job, and also potentially exposed her employer to accusations of discrimination against a section of society, it was untenable for her to remain in the role.

If Omooba had refused to denounce the views she expressed in the Facebook post but had demonstrated a willingness to play the role as directed, I think the case would be more nuanced. In that case, would she have been punished for a 'thought crime'? (I don't actually subscribe to that view: a post on social media is still expressing a public viewpoint and free speech comes with an acceptance that there are consequences to what you say after you have expressed yourself; and it's clear that the moment her views became known, the theatre and the production started to suffer financial and reputational harm.)

But nobody is 'taking this girl down' or 'destroying her life'. She has to accept that free speech has consequences. Most importantly, she's the one suing. She could have taken the money and walked away. I think your sympathy is a little misplaced.

That's not what I said. I did not imply it was the responsibility of a Casting Director, or a production, to influence her change. 
I wholeheartedly agree that she has to be the person in control of her direction.

But until she is out of the echo chamber that she has been raised in, that shaped her views, she will not be consciously receptive to new ways of thinking. This whole experience who only reaffirm and strengthen her views.
Just like her experiences with Little Shop, where she was alienated for having a different opinion.

Re-quoting my previous point: