News | Culture | The Independent: Lady Macbeth may be a rare meaty female role in Shakespeare’s body of work, but even she demanded to be ‘unsexed’ so she could be more manly. Now the new female artistic director of the Globe Theatre is set to tackle the gender deficit in the Bard’s work by “reclaiming” his plays for women and targeting “50/50” performers split between men and women during her tenure.
5 comments:
There was once a bard named Will
Whose work we reference still
He wrote plays and sonnets to die for
And many a tragedy we still cry for
but the women, they are sometimes done ill.
While I'd love to keep the limerick theme going, this topic is too large to be encompassed by a rhyme scheme. Having read a fair handful of Shakespeare, and seen productions of a handful more, I can definitely see where the impetus to rectify the gender imbalance comes from. In today's world, feminism and the arts are married in a way that most casual observers can't see. With the arts so often at the forefront of progress, or at least controversy, feminist sentiment has worked its way into many a play or musical, whether it be subtle rework of the costume design, a few omitted lines, or something much more apparent, like a script rewrite and a complete casting rework, in the case of the Globe's upcoming production of Cymbeline, or Imogen, as the case may be. I'm glad to see this production come to being, and truly excited to see how this experiment plays out (no pun intended).
I recently started working on “Antony and Cleopatra”, a play that has often been regarded as having one of Shakespeare’s most well-written female characters. The production that I am working on focuses on the subject of black feminism. We have been doing text work for the past week, working on how today’s world fits into the world that Shakespeare wrote. And we have started to find out that shockingly there are some things that haven’t changed in the way that women are portrayed in today’s media compared to what Shakespeare wrote. It is interesting now to read this article and see that these issues are being raised throughout the theatrical community. One of the most important questions that is raised in this article is, “How can we get the female voices through and change the mould?” I think that this is an interesting take on Shakespeare, that the female voice is in the text itself somewhere, it just has be dug out.
Honestly, what shocked me most about this article was the fact that the Globe just got its first female Artistic Director. Talk about being stuck in the 1500’s. But I’m glad that the Globe is finally taking steps in the right direction. And I also noticed that someone had written in the comments of the article (on the website, not the PTM blog) . Someone commented “Putting feminist politics into Shakespeare's plays doesn't really get me excited, but I'm sure the London throng will love it”, which got me thinking. Why is this change for the Globe being considered ‘feminist politics’ and something that only fringe elements (AKA those crazy feminists) will enjoy. Do people really think having an equal number of men and women onstage is so revolutionary, so taboo, that it can only be considered a hipster trend? I mean really, it’s a 50/50 split. They aren’t even trying to reverse the status quo (like a show with only 16% men). Are people really so opposed to women that they can’t handle an even number of them onstage? I just think it’s really ignorant to write this off as ‘Putting feminist politics in Shakespeare’s plays’. I hope the Globe and it’s new Artistic Director reach their goal.
I read this article on Facebook a few days ago and I am so glad it made it on to the page! I can't help but think that it is sort of horrible that this is the Globe's first female artistic director, but I suppose that progress is progress. What I think the most important thing about this situation is that the Artistic Director has publicly claimed that she is going to make some changes. It is really important to let people know what changes you want to make, before you make them, and bring the issue that the Globe is fighting for public. I am sure that this issue will cause a lot of people to say things about the changing nature of theater and things about how this woman is unfit to do the job she was hired to do. However, what is important in this situation is that women and men start to be treated as EQUALS (if i could underline that 24 times I would). I look forward to seeing Globe and its new Artistic Director achieve their goals, and hope more theatrical institutions follow.
As far as adapting and experimenting with a play text, Shakespeare is a very safe choice. I think this particular "retelling" aspect of Emma Rice's introduction as artistic director is an excellent way to bring more female characters and voices to the stage. Since Shakespeare body of work is such a widely understood series of texts, their innate accessibility and universality provide a kind of common foundation and allow for the female-heavy shows to be presented as something more normalized, rather than a gender-bent show that gets classified as radicalized. Ms. Rice's choice to use what is already present in Cymbeline gives her female heavy presentation weight, and likely - to many naysayers - justification.
As such a common author and universal series of plays, Shakespeare allows this attitude toward women on stage to fit more seamlessly into everyday perceptions of theater production and performance. Hopefully, Ms. Rice is the first of many to head in this direction.
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