Lanny Nagler

In a rare attack by a playwright on a professional production of his own work, Stephen Adly Guirgis took to Facebook on Wednesday to assail the casting of two white actors as the Puerto Rican lead characters in the Hartford regional production of his play “The ____________ With the Hat,” which was a Tony Award nominee for best play. The Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors has also complained to the theater, TheaterWorks, noting that the production had casting calls in New York City, a training ground for many Hispanic actors.

Mr. Guirgis, who had been discussing his concerns with the play’s director, Tazewell Thompson, and executives at TheaterWorks over the last two weeks, said in an interview that he decided to make his concerns public because the TheaterWorks executives “are in a position of accountability and yet refuse to take responsibility for mistakes in the casting.” The production is scheduled to end on Sunday, but Mr. Guirgis decided it was still worth speaking up because he hoped other theaters would make the effort to cast Hispanic actors, when available, in the two lead roles.

“I want the play to get done, and I’m not going to micromanage casting, and I know there are parts of the country where it’s harder to find a lot of Latino actors,” Mr. Guirgis said. “But this play was cast in New York City and in Hartford, and you can’t tell me that there weren’t qualified Latino actors to play characters who are Puerto Rican.”

Steve Campo, the executive director of TheaterWorks, said in an interview that he “felt very bad about the situation” and he offered a qualified defense of the casting decisions for the roles of Jackie and Veronica, the tempestuous couple at the center of Mr. Guirgis’s play about love, addiction, and family.

“The actors that ended up being cast were, from the perspective of the director, the two best actors for the roles,” Mr. Campo said. “Now is that debatable? Well, it’s certainly debatable in a hypothetical sense. But it’s ultimately a matter of very subjective and complex judgment calls.”

The casting descriptions for the TheaterWorks production did not specify that Jackie and Veronica are Puerto Rican characters, even though dialogue in the play makes clear that the characters are Hispanic. The roles were played on Broadway by Bobby Cannavale, whose mother is Cuban, and Elizabeth Rodriguez, who is of Puerto Rican descent. Both actors were nominated for Tony Awards for their performances.

At TheaterWorks the roles are being played by Ben Cole and Clea Alsip, who had both previously worked with the director, Mr. Thompson, in a graduate student production of “Orpheus Descending” at New York University. Mr. Campo said the decision not to specify any ethnicity for actors to play Jackie and Veronica was made by Mr. Thompson and the theater’s casting director, Pat McCorkle. TheaterWorks did cast a Puerto Rican actor (Varin Ayala) in the role of Cousin Julio; the casting call breakdown did specify that character was Puerto Rican.

“I know they deliberated hard on the casting breakdown language and on the casting decisions,” Mr. Campo said.

Mr. Thompson did not immediately reply to interview requests sent by e-mail on Wednesday. Mr. Guirgis did share an e-mail exchange he had with Mr. Thompson, in which the director initially defended the casting decisions but later wrote that his handling of the casting was “indefensible.” Mr. Thompson, who is black, noted at length that he had worked for years to cast minority actors in theater productions and that he had started a program at Arena Stage in Washington to provide training to young minority actors.

On his Facebook page, Mr. Guirgis asked friends to repost his complaint about the casting; as of mid-day Wednesday, dozens had. His post read in part:

In Hartford Connecticut, the mayor is Puerto Rican. But in TheaterWorks production of my play in Hartford – the 2 lead Puerto Rican characters are played by white actors. The play was cast in NYC & Conn, and if you look at the breakdown here, you will see that not only did they not cast Latinos, they didn’t even seek Latinos for the 2 Latino leads!!! If this disturbs you, please repost.

He then uses an expletive to describe the situation, and concludes: “Please share my headshaking anger.”

Some playwrights have raised objections to regional casting of their plays before; in 1984 Edward Albee opposed all-male productions of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Mr. Guirgis said that he usually took an interest in regional productions when the theater or the director contacts him with questions, and that he tried to attend opening nights when he was invited. He said that neither Mr. Thompson nor TheaterWorks ever reached out to him, nor was he invited to see the production, which began performances in October.

In a New York Times review last month of the TheaterWorks production, Sylviane Gold singled out the casting decisions of the two leads. “Jackie and Veronica are so specifically Manhattanites, so specifically Puerto Rican, that the play deserves actors who can look and sound Nuyorican — especially in Connecticut, where theatergoers know the difference between a Bahstonian and a Noo Yawka,” Ms. Gold wrote. “Working against ethnic typecasting and avoiding ethnic accents can certainly be legitimate artistic choices. But at TheaterWorks, Ms. Alsip and Mr. Cole do speak — a better word is struggle — with accents, and the program does credit a dialect coach. Yet the actors don’t sound even vaguely Hispanic.”

Manuel Alfaro, executive director of the Hispanic Organization of Latino Actors, said on Wednesday that he had complained to TheaterWorks last month about the casting, but was told that the selection of actors was the director’s prerogative.

“The theater’s position was also that no audience members had complained about the actors,” said Mr. Alfaro, who became involved after an audience member contacted his organization to complain about the casting. “From all I’ve learned it sounds like the director hired two actors with whom he had worked before, and as a result he essentially discriminated against well-qualified Hispanic actors across the New York region.”

Mr. Campo confirmed that audience members have not complained about the casting, but he said that Mr. Thompson did see some Hispanic actors during the casting call for the show.

An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the casting director Pat McCorkle.