Friday, October 25, 2013
Our Own Best Judges: Young Female Characters On Stage
HowlRound: Recently, I was reviewing the show Age of Beauty, written and directed by Stuart Bousel, at San Francisco’s Exit Theatre. The show is a series of conversations — there’s no blocking, and characters remain seated at a table throughout each scene — all between young women who were close as youngsters in Tucson. Watching it, I felt myself constantly asking if the characters adhered to certain standards whose fairness I now question: Does she talk about her ex-boyfriend too much, as if he’s the only thing worth talking about? Do her rejoinders sound laugh track ready? More generally: Is she complex? Authentic?
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My favorite George Martin quote was when he was asked how he made his female characters as lifelike as his male characters. His response was "well, I think of them as people." This seems to be an issue which gets a lot attention, but not always fairly. The author says that she analyzes everything female characters are saying trying to determine if they are believable. Her assumption is that the male characters are written flawlessly. If she is sitting there only thinking about the female characters how can she know if they are being written the same way as the male characters. If the girls are not realistic, maybe the author is just a bad writer.
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