Genderflipping In Shakespeare

Gender-flipping Shakespeare

Due to its history, gender fluidity is practically baked into Shakespeare. Midsummer Night s Dream lends itself to mixing the genders, and despite seeming novel, female actors playing Hamlet go back centuries. But Macbeth? Super aggressive, toxically masculine I dare do all that may become a man THAT Macbeth? Not necessarily the obvious choice for a female performer and yet, Lucy Ellinson s Macbeth at the Royal Exchange in 2019 was just that. In this article, we ll go over the history of gender blind casting in Shakespeare as well as examining the benefits and downsides of gender-flipping roles in theatre.

One of the earliest known examples of a woman playing Hamlet is Sarah Siddons in 1775. The Welsh born Siddons was rejected by critics when she made her debut at the Drury Lane Theatre in London, but found success touring what was then condescendingly called the provinces e.g. anywhere outside of London. Siddons played Hamlet at the Liverpool Theatre Royal and went on to be one of the most renowned Shakespearean actors of her time. Siddons Hamlet expanded the possibilities for actresses with Jane Powell being the first woman to play Hamlet in London in 1796 and Sarah Bartley playing Hamlet in New York in 1820. Since then history is dotted with female actors playing Hamlet, although this trend waned in recent years, with Maxine Peake s famous portrayal in 2014 being the first female Hamlet in a major production since Frances De La Tour in 1979.

A key question to ask is why is there a desire to play male roles by female actors? Shakespeare arguably has plenty of strong female roles, Lady Macbeth, Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing, Katherine in The Taming of The Shrew or even Cleopatra. The difference is that even the strong female characters end up submitting to a man or a higher power at some point. Whereas male characters very often are at the top of the power structure, Henry V for instance, submits to no-one. If the theatrical community took a strict view on this, it would mean that female actors would be shut out from many of the high-status roles in Shakespeare. The actor Jessica Regan stated on The Guilty Feminist I think the male Shakespearean speeches are very active and I think the female ones are quite passive and even when the female ones are active they re wearing men s clothes. Like Portia or Rosalind who are fabulous you know, kind of dynamic vital characters, but they tend to get to do what they do wearing men s clothes . Regan believes that there is an unexpected effect of this difference in status in the male and female characters, that transfers to the actors playing the roles. In other words, women were made to feel like they didn t deserve the space they had earned in the theatre, In an attempt to counter this problem, she began running The Big Speeches workshops, which uses among other things, male Shakespearean monologues to help participants grow in confidence and develop their presentational skills.

Pushing against the limits set by gender expectations is something that performers and artists have always done. Whoopi Goldberg made a useful point when she said an actress can only play a woman. I`m an actor, I can play anything . It s probably important to point out why there s a difference between women playing male roles and white men playing black male roles, as was the practise for centuries when it came to roles like Othello. If we assume that an actor can play anything then surely there s nothing wrong with it. However, the question is really one of representation and inclusion. Straight white males have had centuries of being the only ones to occupy positions of high status in society and in theatre, so it seems only fair to let someone else have a go. The criticism usually aimed at people in an ethnic majority playing someone from an ethnic minority is that the representation will not be authentic. Whilst it is possible that this same issue could apply to male roles such as Hamlet being performed by female actors, we have a wealth of other examples to compare it to, and any problems could be pointed out much quicker. By this point, there shouldn t be any doubt in a reasonable person s mind that women can play male roles effectively. Maxine Peake s Hamlet, Glenda Jackson s King Lear both give amazing performances in gender blind productions. But it does then present us with an interesting question for modern theatre-makers Should women play male characters as men or should they change the gender of the character?

There has always been an interesting tension in theatre when it comes to suspension of disbelief. Suspension of disbelief is the process where an audience puts aside what they know to be reality in order to enjoy the story. This can change from text to text, often based on genre. So for example, we have no problem with aliens in Star Wars, but they might seem somewhat out of place in Death of A Salesman. Theatre audiences are perhaps more experienced than most when it comes to suspension of disbelief. They are used to believing that they are in New Orleans in A Streetcar Named Desireor believing in the existence of ghosts in Hamlet or Macbeth. But if you re not careful, you can stretch an audience s suspension of disbelief so far that it will snap, there will be some element that audiences are not willing to believe and as a result, it will ruin their enjoyment of the play. Therefore, if you have an actor onstage who is clearly a woman, playing a character who is initially written as a man, why not reduce the strain on the audience s disbelief by simply changing the gender of the character to reflect that? This is called gender flipping and it s a common practise in television, where remakes or reboots of a series take characters who were played by men in earlier incarnations, and have those characters simply be female in their current version. Shows such as Elementary, Battlestar Galactica and perhaps most famously, Doctor Who have all recast male roles with female actors.

Gender flipping characters in Shakespeare can often be a matter of convenience more than anything else. In amateur dramatics, where resources in terms of talent can be limited, gender flipping minor roles is common. Gender flipping in mainstream theatre also appears to be rampant. Christopher Haydon s production of the Scottish play changed the gender of Macbeth (played frenetically by Lucy Ellinson) and along with it, changed many of the pronouns and honorifics, one of the most notable being that Duncan is a Queen rather than a King. Rather than a total gender flipped performance, it does retain a female Lady Macbeth, turning them into a same sex couple. The problems created by changing these two heavily gendered characters are sometimes solved in some very interesting ways. When Lady Macbeth questions Macbeth s bravery in act one scene seven, Macbeth retorts with I dare do all that may become a man, who dares do more is none . In this delivery, Ellinson artfully changed the meaning of this sentence, traditionally used to mean that Macbeth is the alpha male, and transforms it into meaning anything a man can do, I can do just as well, if not better . Whilst this was an ingenious acting choice, not every other creative decision was as successful. There was no room to explore why Lady Macbeth, who is so eager to kill Duncan still felt she needed to be unsexed in order to carry out this murder. This contradiction, amongst others created some nagging inconsistencies in an otherwise stunning production.

Gender flipping characters can be a way to breathe new life into a text, and there are no hard and fast rules concerning whether it is right or wrong but rather, it is dependent on the play and the role in question. Golda Rosheuvel s portrayal of a gay female Othello makes perfect sense in a play that was already focusing on prejudice but for other Shakespearean works, gender flipping may even be detrimental. Much Ado About Nothing is a play about how men, even good men mistreat the women they love in a patriarchal society. You could absolutely do a gender flipped version, but you would almost certainly lose something in the process.