The Woman Problem?
Recently, The Guardian published a story by Vanessa Thorpe that revolved around a question that, in a way, affects my entire life: Did Shakespeare sell women short? Upon reading it, I had so much to say about the subject that I finally got this blog up and running.
I am a woman who has dedicated most of her adult life to the study and performance of Shakespeare’s plays. As such, I have been lucky enough to play some of the most incredible female roles ever written, including As You Like It‘s Rosalind, The Taming of the Shrew‘s Katherine, and the first tetralogy’s Queen Margaret in a brilliant conflation called Queen Margaret: Tiger’s Heart Wrapped in a Woman’s Hide. With such roles, I never once had to question whether I was playing a fully-formed character. And as a director of Shakespeare, I never once had to help one of my actresses invent some sort of internal life to make up for an underwritten role.
That’s one reason why putting Shakespeare’s plays on stage is among the greatest pleasures of my professional life.
The story opens by lamenting the plight of modern actresses:
A leading lady seeking the challenge of a truly great stage role – the equivalent of Lear or Hamlet – often has to reach back into the ancient world, perhaps for Medea or Antigone, or to go to Scandinavia for Ibsen’s Nora or Hedda Gabler.
Thorpe makes a good point. As any actress on the audition market can tell you, great female roles (or even just great monologues) seem few and far between. In a way, Shakespeare doesn’t help on that front: just try finding a handful of 1–2 minute Shakespearean monologues for female characters (we’ll ignore for now the added limitation of “appropriate age ranges”) that don’t make it onto at least one list of the most overdone monologues at auditions. Many of us have had to resort to constructing monologues from bits of dialogue, but even this tactic only eases the problem without solving it.
So it’s no wonder the Royal Shakespeare Company is expanding its catalog by adding under-performed plays by other Elizabethan and Jacobean writers. I’m all for that, really—not because it offers modern actresses more opportunities, but because they’re plays worth reviving. As for what we might call the “woman problem,” though, I think there are much simpler approaches that don’t require moving away from Shakespeare’s plays.
Casting Biases PART 1
Shakespeare never wrote a single line for a woman. His female characters were originally played by—and therefore written for—male actors, and there’s nothing we can do about that. But, you see, I don’t think the problem for women playing Shakespeare is Shakespeare’s women. I think the problem is something Thorpe only briefly touches on in her article: the modern tradition of stereotyped, gendered casting.
Women don’t need to find the “equivalent of Lear or Hamlet” to play. They could be playing Lear of Hamlet. In other words, Shakespeare’s not the one selling women short.
I’m spoiled. I come from training that embraces non-traditional casting as a way of celebrating in the 21st century what Shakespeare did in the 16th and 17th. Shakespeare cast across gender, so we do, too. Early on in my graduate training, I got to play Lord Montague in an entirely cross-gender cast of Romeo and Juliet. Our Lord Capulet gave the scariest portrayal of the upbraiding scene I’ve ever witnessed “despite” being a rather small female. Just this summer, I directed Troilus and Cressida for the Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company, with females as Ulysses and Ajax and a male as Andromache. And perhaps the best Hamlet I’ve ever seen happened to be played by a woman.
Let me be clear. These are not ironic or politically-motivated casting choices. These are not new variations on Asta Nielsen’s cross-dressing Hamlet. These are strong female actors playing Shakespeare’s male characters as male characters simply because they were right for the roles.
The reason I even need to include such a caveat is this modern propensity for casting to type. Heck, the whole reason Mark Rylance putting on a dress as Olivia or Helen Mirren stirring up storms as “Prospera” is considered revolutionary is because too few directors consider cross-gender casting an option. If it were common practice, no one would bat an eye at a male Desdemona or female Macbeth (and let me tell you, I know some actors who could ROCK those roles). Not to mention, it would be a lot easier to find several good Shakespearean audition monologues if we weren’t so regularly expected to audition to type.
“But Angie,” you might ask, “doesn’t the need for cross-gender casting just prove that Shakespeare’s women aren’t up to snuff?”
You might have a point there, but I doubt it.
The Roles Themselves
There are fewer female roles in Shakespeare, and the ones we do have are generally smaller than the male roles. But let’s not discount them due to their size. Shakespeare’s women are beautifully written complex characters who invariably make their mark on each play. They don’t have to be particularly verbose to be worthwhile (Rosalind isn’t a more interesting character to play than Katherine by virtue of speaking three times as much).
I find modern biases play a role (no pun intended) here, too. Most actors, male or female, strive to play the biggest roles. The assumption is if the role is bigger, it’s also juicier, more important. Who wants to play the mother if you could play the ingenue? A long line of proud character actors have proven this logic faulty time and again. Look at the gravedigger, who speaks fewer than 100 lines. If you’re a Shakespeare fan (as I assume you are, having read this far), I don’t have to tell you which gravedigger—a fact that attests to the impact of a small role.
Shakespeare’s women are no different. They don’t have to be main characters. Anyone who tells you Juliet’s Nurse, at under 300 lines, or Brutus’ Portia, at under 100, aren’t weighty, pivotal characters either 1) hasn’t seen/done them right or 2) is a snob.
Casting Biases Part 2
I’ve kept your attention long enough, so I’ll make this part short and sweet.
The article that got me talking about all this was about gender, but I have to point out the problem with typecasting goes far beyond actors’ reproductive organs. Race, age, weight, and a seemingly infinite number of intangibles currently factor into “looking the part.”
Don’t get me wrong. Those practices aren’t inherently bad. There’s something to be said for adhering to the textual requirements of a role. If you want to keep your Midsummer script intact, for instance, your Hermia really should be shorter than your Helena. We get excited for unconventional casting, though, because the unconventional actors bring something exciting to the play. How refreshing would it be to finally see a “fat Hamlet”? Who doesn’t want to run off to the Old Vic to see Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones in Much Ado?
It’s not just women complaining about not having enough good roles to play. Open-minded producers and directors could do something about it, though, even within the confines of Shakespeare’s canon.