Last summer, I went to see a local production of Rent here in Toronto. The characters in this rock musical include an exotic dancer, Mimi Marquez, normally played by slender women of Afrocentric heritage (such as Rosario Dawson, who plays Marquez in the film adaptation of the musical). In the performance I saw however, Mimi was played by a Caucasian, heavyset, curvy performer. Mind you, these features hardly kept her from doing justice to the role.