I listened to this story and was so overcome with anger that this is even an issue! Here is a great play, by a great play-write, directed by a great director! Can't we celebrate that?

August may have requested a black man to direct his movie 20 years ago - but that does not mean that would have been his choice for everything after that - just as his widow so eloquently read from his one-man, autobiographical play.

Can you imagine what would happen if a white, play-write died a few years ago and a black director directed it? Not a lot. But what if a white play-write died and a bunch of white theater critics demanded that his play could only be directed by another white director? The outrage would be off the charts.

People - you need to remember that we are all people and just because someone's skin is one color, it does not mean that they are insensitive, or unable to understand, or learn to interpret and replicate culture, language, gestures, thoughts and ideas!

By the way - I'm not white or black - I am simply human!

Lincoln Center needs to hire an African American director, that seems to me to be the bottom line of this piece. Eighteen years? Really?

I think the discussion and the comments taken as a whole point to stages (no pun intended) of change, spanning what once could never be to where we hope we can arrive. Depending on one's vantage point, one can see the need for the redress of old legacies or the embracing of the success of the notion of racial neutrality.

I rather like James Harker's comments. And as one of the discussion participants noted, the mere fact of having a black president, doesn't alone signify the end of racism in America. But I rather like the hope evident in the change that it does signify.

As I see it, from a black perspective, the black-for-black-only (BFBO) model had some merit (with notable examples of success like Morehouse, or the black church) when it substituted for what blacks couldn't get at large. This model historically filled a void and it was necessary.

While the other model, white-for-white-only (WFWO), seemed to simply entrench a separation that was either intentionally racist or nonchalantly-ignorant of black value and success -- a model that was unconcerned with promoting universal values, success, talents.

Unfortunately, these models, BFBO and WFWO, are inherently flawed -- however necessary or ignorant they've been -- and subtlely they have masked deficiencies in the way society views and values itself. Today, those masks are coming off.

The black "angry" voices need to be heard...still... but with a bit less rancor. And they should listen to the clarion call for change, too..from whatever quarter it may come. Especially on the inside...where true change, trust, and value is at its best.

In 1994, I directed a community theater production of Joe Turner's Come and Gone. I am white; and the play was my first directorial effort. Though at that time I was without experience outside of acting, the only question of my suitableness to direct Joe Turner was that I was white. That concern was raised by one of the African-American performers, who during an early rehearsal said to me, as the rest of the cast looked on, "You're a white man, you can't tell us how to be black." I told Edward he was perfectly right; I wouldn't dream of telling him how to be black, or of telling another actor how to be white, or Asian, or Polish. I went on to discuss the rich metaphors in Joe Turner, the passionate exploration of human desire and suffering, innocence, loyalty, and, finally, the longing for transcendence that gave the play its vitality. Derrick Sanders’s comments on your Studio 360 broadcast echo those made by African-American directors Kenny Leon, Marion McClinton, and Charles Dutton in a print story on the subject (“Race and Issue in Wilson Play…”, NYT, 23 April 2009). Their comments strike me as careerist habits of speech and policy that debase their own praiseworthy successes. The fact is that anyone, of any race or gender, who can make a living directing for theater has been blessed with a great privilege. Looking at my journal from that difficult night in an amateur theater, when it seemed race might crush my hopes for our play, I find I had asked myself this question: What is to become of us if we cannot shed our skin?

I am a 69-year-old, American born, black man. I am aware of my history as a black man in this country, only mildly Afro-centric and do not consider myself a racist. My education includes an undergraduate degree from Morehouse College. I am probably more interested in theatre than most black men, having been introduced to theater as a member of the university players while in undergraduate and graduate school.

It seems to me that the moment you use race as a basis for most things, you are by definition a racist or on a slippery slope of becoming one. To suggest that only a black person can direct a play about the black experience is to suggest that that experience makes black people intrinsically different from others. This is exactly the belief that white racists held during slavery and the Jim Crow period that followed it.

Would you have only a Englishman or Englishwoman perform in or direct a Shakespeare play? Similarly, only Germans or Italians direct operas? Only Greeks direct the great Greek tragedies?

Great art transcends race. That, by definition, makes it accessible to every member of the human race.

You are really talking about two different subjects - 1) is it okay to cross race lines when working on a production and 2) whether African Americans are being fairly considered for production positions

Obviously we must always fight to make the human experience universal - the criteria for insisting on race pure productions would by definition exclude other than Englishmen from directing Shakespeare - or the situation where a Jewish group protested a predominately African-American JHS class from doing Fiddler on The Roof - to reach the second goal we must embrace the first one