Casting director and producer Michael Streeter was “furious and dumbfounded” when he was told he couldn’t cast a black actor in his planned production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in Portland, Oregon. “The [Edward] Albee Estate called and said I need to fire the black actor and replace him with a white one,” he posted on Facebook. Streeter declined and decided to cancel the production entirely.

After Vulture's Mark Harris shared Streeter's post on Twitter, it started gaining traction. Performer Brian Lobel tweeted, “Edward Albee's Estate is racist. Decolonize the curriculum. Make work which is relevant, not racist. Time to find some new idols.”

While Streeter’s account might sound like a clear example of discrimination — and there’s certainly a moral argument to be made against the Albee estate’s decision — from a legal perspective, it’s more complicated than that. Producers have to get rights before they can put on a production, and many in the theater community believe that playwrights or their estates can withhold those rights to their plays for any reason they see fit. The Dramatists Guild Bill of Rights states, “You have the right to approve the cast, director, and designers … This is called ‘artistic approval.’” And yes, in some cases, that means approving or rejecting an actor based on race.

“I don't see this as being racist,” Streeter told BuzzFeed News. “I think that they are operating from some fealty to a sense of integrity, of retaining what Edward Albee would want. And I understand that.”

He said he never questioned the legality of the Albee estate’s choice. “They certainly are within their rights to do it, and they did it. … I'm disappointed that they made that choice.”

The concept of “artistic approval” doesn’t exclusively benefit white actors; it also serves to protect playwrights who have written characters to be played specifically by actors of color. In 2015, the Dramatists Guild spoke out in defense of playwrights Lloyd Suh and Katori Hall, whose work was being produced on college campuses with white actors playing roles that had been written as nonwhite. And while race is central to these examples, playwrights have railed against other “nontraditional” casting choices: In 2014, representatives for David Mamet sent a cease-and-desist letter to a production of Oleanna that cast a man in a female role. That production shut down after one performance.