SHAKSPER 2006: Against All-Male Productions
From: Hardy M. Cook (editor@shaksper.net)
Date: 07/18/06
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The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0671 Tuesday, 18 July 2006
[1] From: Cary Dean Barney <barneyc@madrid.slu.edu>
Date: Friday, 14 Jul 2006 16:26:53 +0200
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0665 Against All-Male Productions
[2] From: Larry Weiss <larry@lweiss.net>
Date: Friday, 14 Jul 2006 12:55:53 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0665 Against All-Male Productions
[3] From: Paul Hebron <paulhebron@gmail.com>
Date: Friday, 14 Jul 2006 12:59:01 -0500
Subj: Against All Male Productions.....
[4] From: Gabriel Egan <mail@GabrielEgan.com>
Date: Friday, 14 Jul 2006 06:30:19 +0100
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0651 Against All-Male Productions
[5] From: Brian Willis <bwillis1975@yahoo.com>
Date: Saturday, 15 Jul 2006 06:57:22 -0700 (PDT)
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0665 Against All-Male Productions
[6] From: Charles Weinstein <proteus6847@msn.com>
Date: Saturday, 15 Jul 2006 10:53:38 -0400
Subj: Against All-Male Productions
[7] From: Peter Farey <Peter.Farey@prst17z1.demon.co.uk>
Date: Sunday, 16 Jul 2006 11:04:21 +0100
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0665 Against All-Male Productions
[8] From: Aaron Azlant <azlant@gmail.com>
Date: Sunday, 16 Jul 2006 12:48:56 -0700
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0665 Against All-Male Productions
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Cary Dean Barney <barneyc@madrid.slu.edu>
Date: Friday, 14 Jul 2006 16:26:53 +0200
Subject: 17.0665 Against All-Male Productions
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0665 Against All-Male Productions
Did anybody see the RSC Academy "Lear" a few years back with Nonso
Anonzie (then 25) as Lear? Right at the start we were confronted with a
black Lear with three white daughters. The director, Declan Donellan,
was throwing down a gauntlet: suspend disbelief or die. And the
audience bought it, thanks to the raw power of the acting. It's how the
characters behaved toward each other that made them family, not their
appearance. It's the words that make Lear old, not the actor's body.
The same principle can work in gender bending, and the audience can tell
the difference between playing it straight and camping it up.
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Larry Weiss <larry@lweiss.net>
Date: Friday, 14 Jul 2006 12:55:53 -0400
Subject: 17.0665 Against All-Male Productions
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0665 Against All-Male Productions
It seems to me that it is occasionally worthwhile to use all male
casting as a laboratory attempt to recreate original production
conditions. But such a production should also attempt as much as
possible to reproduce original staging, costumes, lighting conditions,
likely doubling, theatrical conventions and even pronunciation. The
more the production verges away from Elizabethan/Jacobean conditions,
the less all male casting is legitimate. It ceases to be an experiment
and becomes a gimmick.
Of course, it is possible for a particularly gifted (if that is the
right word) female impersonator to carry a woman's part in a modern
production. Ru-Paul, for example, would probably make a creditable Iras
or Charmian; I would not notice his maleness. But in cases where the
masculinity of the actor comes through, I tend to agree with Charles.
When I saw Mark Rylance play Cleopatra and Olivia I was as impressed as
most of the reviewers. But I found myself constantly evaluating the
performances in terms of how well Mark carried it off -- like the
elephant balancing on a ball, it was not so remarkable for its grace but
that it could be done at all.
Similar observations can be made about other idiosyncratic casting. As
I have said before, to less than universal concurrence, a fat bald
bearded man with a limp can't play Juliet. "Colorblind" casting is just
another example of the same thing. Contrast the Olivier and Patrick
Stewart Othellos: Olivier was believably made up as a black man, to the
palms of his hands; Stewart played a white black man. The former was
drama; the latter a travesty.
Political correctness or a desire to spread the work around is no excuse
for revising Shakespeare's plays into something else. If you want to
use the plays as a jumping off place for a modern reconfiguration, à la
"Ten Things I Hate About You," "O" or other recent examples, that's
fine. Shakespeare did the same thing himself. But please don't
represent it as Shakespeare's play.
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Paul Hebron <paulhebron@gmail.com>
Date: Friday, 14 Jul 2006 12:59:01 -0500
Subject: Against All Male Productions.....
Bravo to Bill Lloyd, and all the others who have responded patiently
and, dare I say it, liberally in sharing their scholarship on this
issue. A pinch of historical context is worth a pound of personal opinion.
And therefore, speaking perhaps only for myself, I now feel that I am
fully versed in the opinions of Mr. Weinstein and Mr. Small on the
matter of the casting of males in female roles within Shakespeare's plays.
I would therefore like to suggest that this thread be curtailed, that we
return to our moderator's wishes per the tone of discourse on this List,
and that we move on to matters of more substantive interest to the
general membership. Unless of course it has anything to do with Hamlet.
Just my opinion.....
-- Paul Hebron
[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Gabriel Egan <mail@GabrielEgan.com>
Date: Friday, 14 Jul 2006 06:30:19 +0100
Subject: 17.0651 Against All-Male Productions
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0651 Against All-Male Productions
William Sutton asked
>weren't the Laws [that prevented women acting] the
>Sumptuary laws?
At least, I think that's what he asked; I added the bit in square
brackets myself. If I've got the question right, then the answer is no.
The sumptuary laws (repealed in 1604) did not apply to the stage.
Henslowe's Diary provides evidence of sumptuous clothing used in
performances, which would not have been allowed if the sumptuary laws
applied to the stage.
While agreeing with William Proctor Williams that a fool should not be
answered according to his folly, Charles Weinstein happened to repeat a
myth (that a law kept women off the Renaissance stage) that oughtn't to
go unchallenged here.
Gabriel Egan
[5]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Brian Willis <bwillis1975@yahoo.com>
Date: Saturday, 15 Jul 2006 06:57:22 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: 17.0665 Against All-Male Productions
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0665 Against All-Male Productions
I think the larger issue here is not one's opinions about gender mixing
on the stage, but rather the very nature of acting itself. Before we
project our own post-Stanislavskian ideas onto a sixteenth century
mindset, we need to ask the serious questions. In Elizabethan London,
how did the public perceive and recognize acting? Did a costume and a
wig represent a female or did they indicate or signify a female? I
sincerely doubt they felt a person "became" a role. I believe that the
actor was presenting a persona to the public, despite offending our
modern sensibilities, an idea of the necessity of being deceived into
the reality of an illusion. Why couldn't the language itself present a
person as well as a setting?
The illusion of a fourth wall, the intricate blending of a person with a
role (no matter whether it goes as far as the furthest Method actor or a
more tempered version of that methodology), and the entire relationship
of those actors with the audience that we expect and witness on the
stage today are a recent phenomenon. Twentieth century in fact. What
offends sensibilities in regards to all-male "drag" productions is the
fact that the tenuous illusion of reality is shattered. Those who cannot
accept the fact that the actors playing a role may in fact have to use
their imaginations a bit to present a part that they could never truly
experience are the ones who are arguing against the stretching of the
boundaries of realism. Irving was playing Hamlet late in his career. Who
is to say that he wasn't good? Why would he need to stop playing it just
because he turned 31? He didn't because he was skilled. Olivier and
Gielgud played Lear in their twenties. Why? Because they were skilled.
Acting requires skill because in its best guises, it is indeed an art.
And like any good artist, they can portray and and evoke anything if
they have the skill.
Perhaps not all males have the skill to portray females realistically on
the stage. My point is that, before we argue Shakespeare's opinions on
this (or anything), we need to recognize that his theatre operated on a
different philosophy than ours. Remember: a boy playing Desdemona in
Oxford made an audience weep through his physical depiction of the role.
If acting takes skill and imagination, then it requires the very same
thing from its audience.
Brian Willis
[6]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Charles Weinstein <proteus6847@msn.com>
Date: Saturday, 15 Jul 2006 10:53:38 -0400
Subject: Against All-Male Productions
There are three possibilities:
(a) Shakespeare was wholly satisfied with seeing his female characters
played by males.
(b) Shakespeare was so inured to his given circumstances that he
couldn't imagine alternatives.
(c) Shakespeare was not wholly satisfied with his male-only casting
options, and would have liked to see his female characters played by
real women.
My respondents have failed to explain why (a) or (b) is more plausible
than (c). I think that Shakespeare could imagine anything. I also
think that Shakespeare, like all playwrights, wanted to see his
conceptions faithfully realized. His female characters are not boys in
dresses.
--Charles Weinstein
[7]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Peter Farey <Peter.Farey@prst17z1.demon.co.uk>
Date: Sunday, 16 Jul 2006 11:04:21 +0100
Subject: 17.0665 Against All-Male Productions
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0665 Against All-Male Productions
Bill Lloyd is of course right to remind us that the parts were designed
to be played by teenage boys.
This topic has reminded me that it is exactly fifty years since Michael
Croft founded the Youth Theatre (now the National Youth Theatre of GB)
with a cast consisting entirely of boys, mostly from the school where he
had been teaching, Alleyn's School in Dulwich, another four (of which I
was lucky enough to be one) from Dulwich College, and just a few, such
as Derek Jacobi among the "soldiers, attendants, etc.", from other boys'
schools around south-east and east London.
That production was Shakespeare's *Henry V* and had Simon Ward ("Young
Winston") as an excellent Princess Katherine, with the parts of Alice
and Nell the Hostess doubled by Brian Eatwell, who went on to a career
in production design in Hollywood. Both were entirely convincing as
women, and not the slightest bit camp in either case. In fact, in my
whole time at school, where female parts in the school plays were always
played by boys (including me), whilst some were inevitably rather better
at it than others, I cannot recall any that could possibly have been
found offensive in any way.
The title role in *Henry* was played extremely well by Richard Hampton,
which brings me to Charles Weinstein's claim that
>When Shakespeare's greatest female character spurns the thought of
>viewing "some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness," she is mocking
>the idea that she could be adequately incarnated by a male.
A couple of years earlier (in fact the same year that I was Juliet's
Nurse at Dulwich) I had seen Richard play Cleopatra, with John Stride as
Antony, in Croft's production of the play at Alleyn's School, and for me
that still remains one of the most convincing interpretations of the
role that I have seen.
Peter Farey
peter.f@rey.prestel.co.uk
http://www2.prestel.co.uk/rey/index.htm
[8]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Aaron Azlant <azlant@gmail.com>
Date: Sunday, 16 Jul 2006 12:48:56 -0700
Subject: 17.0665 Against All-Male Productions
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0665 Against All-Male Productions
Just a few points in my defense:
1. Wilfred Perrett first speculated on the Lear/Cordelia doubling in
1904; his argument was that a boy actor played both parts. However
speculative his argument is (and it is certainly speculative, as is
mine), it's one that has also now had more than a hundred years of
history and cannot be said to be the exclusive domain of contemporary
critics.
2. Who's to say that one of the teenage boys couldn't have played the
Gravedigger? In /Hamlet/, at least, it seems likely to me that there
would have been other work for Armin, who could have played both
Polonius and Osric (note, for instance, the similarity between Polonius'
agreement with Hamlet on the shape of the fictional clouds and Osric's
agreement with Hamlet on the weather).
As a side question, I'm somewhat curious where Armin would have been in
/Othello/.
3. In Berkeley, Women's Will has in fact had a great deal of commercial
success casting all-women's versions of the plays. There have also been
many successful local productions of Hamlet that have cast a variety of
different races in the lead. And while I don't believe that casting is
infinitely malleable (I agree that a 70-year- old Juliet is probably
about as credulous as a Falstaff that doesn't appear to be overweight),
I do think that many of the parts have a great deal of wiggle room with
regards to who could potentially play them. The danger lies in bending
the parts into something that damages a character's fidelity, not in
getting an actor to conform to the essence of the part.
4. Why is it that critics readily accept the idea that the same actor
might have played both Julius Caesar and Polonius (thereby giving some
extra charge to the brief exchange just before the /Mousetrap/), but
evince hostility to the idea that the same actor could have played more
than one character in the same play?
In any case, I certainly agree with Charles' assertion that Shakespeare
was probably impatient of needless aesthetic restrictions. My argument
isn't so much that he *enjoyed* those restrictions, just that he found
extremely creative and irreverent ways to subvert them.
--Aaron
_______________________________________________________________
S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List
Hardy M. Cook, editor@shaksper.net
The S H A K S P E R Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net>
DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the
opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the
editor assumes no responsibility for them.
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