www.broadwayworld.com: Earlier this week news broke that Glenda Jackson, fresh from her triumphant, Tony-winning run in Three Tall Women, will next don the crown as Shakespeare's tragic monarch King Lear. Broadway is making much ado about something and understandably so. New York stages haven't seen much gender-swapped or gender-blind casting of Shakespeare, but take a peek across the pond to find a revolution of sorts in the interpretation of the Bard's work.
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2 comments:
I think that, because of the bias that the plays carry with them, it's great that directors are casting Shakespeare plays without regard to the original genders assigned to the characters. Some of the best things about Shakespeare's plays are the depth that each character has and the challenges that each character carries for the actor who takes them on. In fact, the characters have become more like ideas than people and because of this, it is only right that anyone should be able to play them. For example, the story of Hamlet is adapted constantly because of how it represents human nature, without regard to the specific genders involved. I also think that many of the parts available to female actors are strongly tied to them being female and therefore stereotypically more fragile or weaker, and if female actors could begin to take roles like those that Shakespeare wrote for men, it would not only be helpful in terms of employment, but it would also be helpful in terms of reversing those gender stereotypes. I also think that in general the global movement is towards not forcing a person to classify themselves as male or female, and therefore by allowing characters to be cast in a gender blind system, it makes it easier for people who don’t identify as male or female to audition and get parts.
The plays were written in a time when women were not allowed to play roles or participate in the theatre and because of the social expectations of women it was generally difficult to give women actual roles in shakespearean productions even in popular culture. These productions that are changing the gender of the people playing the roles is beginning to show the cultural shift towards acceptance of differences. Theatre should be on the forefront of the shift to acceptance culturally and introducing new controversial ideas to the public in a easily accepted format because people rarely question why something is on a stage but whatever is on that stage leaves an impression on an individual. Honestly, this article highlights the belief that I have that theatre should be the forefront for contemporary issues and address the things that people are afraid of addressing. Even this step in allowing other genders to play other genders in Shakespearean productions is one small step towards a culture of acceptance rather than a culture of mistrust, judgement, and even hatred.
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