Rafael Casal is a writer, performer and producer from the Bay Area. On this blog you'll find his music (mostly rap), his poems (mostly romantic), his web series (mostly comedy) and his instagram posts (mostly black and white).
YBCA – We’re bringing @RafaelCasal back to YBCA through a #Hewlett50 award! With this award, we are commissioning Casal to create a new performance using musical theater and hip hop to speak honestly and intimately about how outdated paradigms of masculinity unfold in our lives.
Blindspotting: Examining Social Justice Through Art
Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal, creators of the film Blindspotting, dig in to their creative storytelling process with Newsy reporter Christian Bryant.
‘Overlooked cities with big art scenes that are fighting a lot of the same battles as a New York or a Los Angeles or whatever, but are without a major industry where an art is an export, feel overlooked as an artists there. So all artists from there wanna tell stories about the Bay and we take it very seriously.’
Stance Takes: We recorded this episode live at the YBCA 100
Summit in San Francisco – an event recognizing some of the most
exciting people, organizations and movements using their platforms to
create change and move society forward. The summit asked ‘How can we
re-imagine political power? What is the role of culture in the current
political climate?’.
Rafael Casal is an American poet, actor, singer, and writer. He was a feature performer on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, and he is the co-producer, writer, and stars in the film Blindspotting along with rapper, writer and actor of Hamilton fame, Daveed Diggs. Casal reflects on the power of language and the stories we choose to tell.
rafaelcasal We try to make art, often, that tries to maintain the urgency of the conversation. So that it doesn’t become table-stakes for America. . . @blindspotting is out on bluray/DVD today!
Daveed Diggs & Rafael Casal Talk ‘Blindspotting,’ Gentrification and That Ever-Evolving Script || Ebony
EBONY’s Jaleesa Lashay sat down with Blindspotting stars Daveed Diggs
and Rafael Casal to discuss the labor of love that became the powerful
indie film, with Diggs revealing that it took a decade to pen the movie.
“We wrote this script over the course of ten years, so we really just
lived life…and then in the last couple of weeks we were extremely
panicked.”
The two actors/ screenwriters also discussed addressing gentrification
and police brutality, saying their approach changed with the times.
“Police violence really only went from, ‘Oh, this is newsworthy,’ to,
‘this is not newsworthy anymore,‘” Casal shared. “Before we had riots
and all this crazy stuff that was going on in Oakland…when Oscar Grant
was killed around the tie, we started writing this. The changes, we had
to take all that stuff out because it’s not true to life anymore.”
[…] Casal words it perfectly in his
interview, “So then when we go to these moments where all that goes away
and all we hear is Colin’s breathing, or all we hear is one very
distant thing or just the hum of the red light that’s the only thing we
hear. It gives you this incredible experience of focus, and then
complete awareness. It’s like when you’re sweating and your pores open
all the way up inside and you can feel everything. It’s just something
you can only do with really great sound design and a theater that can
bring it to life, which is just crazy that we got to do this on, on an Indie.”
[…] Despite the delay, Blindspotting still seems particularly relevant.
“We wish it was a period piece,” says Diggs. “It would have been nice to
have it be a piece about 2009, but it’s just not the world we’re living
in. Part of it has to do with our fucking insane neo-Nazi president
occupying so much of the news space. We have someone we’re forced to
look at all the time who is actively promoting so much hatred and
breaking the law with impunity, and he is the leader of our country. So
when you’re faced with that, the position that Collin is in becomes even
more dire. You’re like: ‘Well there’s no way there’s any penalties for
killing you.’” He laughs, macabrely.
While updating the script last year, it became clear to Casal what
its title should be. “When you’re driving, you have to turn your head
physically to see your blindspot,” explains Diggs. “You won’t see it by
looking in your mirrors. It really is about the work that it requires.
The film is advocating that right now we all need to be doing more work
than we are when it comes to understanding the circumstances of people
who aren’t us.” This extends to the use of the N-word, tackled head-on
by Diggs and Casal in a climactic scene. Collin and Miles’s existences
are different, explains Diggs of the interaction; the way the world is
changing affects one differently to the other.
[…] Among it all, Blindspotting is what he is “most proud of”. And for
all its dark subject matter, it ultimately concerns itself with human
relations. For all its talking points, it never falls into polemic. It
preaches not from a podium, but from the heart. It’s all about
communication.
Collecting Rafael Casal 