CMU School of Drama


Monday, April 25, 2016

Secret lives of women who broke taboo to act in Shakespeare

Culture | The Guardian: Great Elizabethan and Georgian stage stars, such as Will Kempe, Richard Burbage and David Garrick, may not be household names today, but their reputations live on in the theatre. What, though, of the actresses who appeared in the same companies? Their names, as well as their reputations, have mostly been forgotten.

1 comment:

Sasha Schwartz said...

In the midst of all of the negative articles we read about how sexist the theater and entertainment industry still is today, it’s exciting to read an article about how far we’ve come. To imagine a playnote warning the audience of a “real woman” performing onstage, or of male theatergoers paying to watch actresses dress in the wings is just preposterous. It’s also very interesting to see how it was acceptable for males to “cross- dress” and play female roles, but that a female actress who dressed in male clothing was considered “indecent”. It’s very cool to read, as a female, about females who broke down literal physical boundaries within the theater industry that they saw as unjust and unfair. Without women doing brave things like this, we would never have the opportunities that we take for granted today. I think that women in every industry need to continue to work twice as hard in order to prove to people that we are just as valuable and talented as our male counterparts, and that we deserve the same opportunities.