{"id":16,"date":"2016-02-15T14:47:14","date_gmt":"2016-02-15T14:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/3\/?p=16"},"modified":"2023-03-19T14:31:36","modified_gmt":"2023-03-19T14:31:36","slug":"open-casting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/3\/open-casting\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Casting"},"content":{"rendered":"

A version of this essay appeared as \u201cRace Free, Gender Free, Body-Type Free, Age Free Casting\u201d
\nin TDR (1988) 33, 1: 4-12.<\/em><\/p>\n

Richard Schechner<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"1261085241\"<\/p>\n

Abstract \/ R\u00e9sum\u00e9<\/b><\/p>\n

The majority of roles in the Western classic and modern classic repertories are male roles. On European and American stages, from the 17th<\/sup> to the late 19th<\/sup> century, women played a considerable number of men\u2019s roles. With the rise of realism and the availability of photographic visual media, this practice ended for the most part (Hamlet being an exception). In this paper, I argue for \u201copen casting\u201d \u2013 and especially gender-free casting. I place this argument in the context not only of theatre but of society at large.<\/p>\n

La majorit\u00e9 <\/em>des r\u00f4les dans les r\u00e9pertoires <\/em>classiques, anciens et modernes, en Occident sont des r\u00f4les masculins. Sur les sc\u00e8nes europ\u00e9ennes et am\u00e9ricaines, du 17\u00e8me \u00e0 la fin du 19\u00e8me si\u00e8cle, les femmes ont jou\u00e9 un nombre consid\u00e9rable de r\u00f4les d’hommes. Avec l’essor du r\u00e9alisme et l’av\u00e8nement des mass-media visuels et photographiques, cette pratique a pris fin pour la plupart (Hamlet constituant une exception). Dans cet expos\u00e9, je plaide pour des distributions ouvertes (\u00ab open casting \u00bb), particuli\u00e8rement eu \u00e9gard au genre (\u00ab gender-free casting \u00bb). Et je situe cet enjeu non seulement dans le contexte th\u00e9\u00e2tral, mais dans celui de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral.<\/em><\/p>\n

The theme of this year\u2019s IATC meeting is \u201cfemininity.\u201d In the spirit of that theme, listen to what Zelda Fichandler, the founder-director of Washington, D.C.\u2019s Arena Stage and later the head of the Graduate Acting Program at NYU\u2019s Tisch School of the Arts, wrote twenty-two years ago:<\/p>\n

Suppose that there were a fine acting company made up of white actors and black actors and Hispanic actors and Asian-American actors; women and men; young actors, older, and old; deaf actors and the hearing; actors with other special characteristics. And suppose that one assigned roles freely, without prediction from history or from one’s old habits of thought. What if one took non-traditional casting as far as one could? (American Theatre<\/em>, May 1988:20)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the same year, feminist performance theorist Teresa de Lauretis wrote:<\/p>\n

Redefining the conditions of vision, as well as the modes of representing, cannot be predicated on a single, undivided identity of per\u00adformer and audience (whether as “lesbians” or “women” or “people of color” or any other single category constructed in opposition to its dominant other, “heterosexual women,” “men,” “whites,” and so forth). (Theatre Journal<\/em>, May 1988: 171)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These two women are speaking to each other, and to us. Let me explain.<\/p>\n

In terms of casting a play, what would \u201credefining the conditions of vision\u201d entail? Can we actually \u201cassign roles freely, without prediction from history or from one\u2019s old habits of thought\u201d? Ought this to be a principal job of theatre critics like yourselves \u2013 educating audiences and theatre producers alike to open casting to everyone? Meryl Streep as Willie Loman, Judie Dench as Juliet, Morgan Freeman as Blanche du Bois? Knowing that the theme of this year\u2019s IATC meeting is \u201cfemininity,\u201d let me focus on the \u201cwoman problem\u201d in theatre.<\/p>\n

The problem and the difficulties of a solution must be examined within certain demographic cultural realities. The majority of IATC critics gathered here are women, a majority of students at New York University\u2019s Drama and Performance Studies departments \u2013 and at most other schools also \u2013 are women, increasingly theatre is a profession populated by more women than men, and that the theme for this year\u2019s IATC meeting is \u201cfemininity.\u201d But despite these majorities, there are more great roles for men than for women. For every Ophelia and Gertrude there are Hamlet, Claudius, Polonius, Laertes, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, Gravediggers, the Ghost; for every Mother Courage and Kattrin, there are a Chaplain, Cook, Swiss Cheese, Eilif, Sergeant, Colonel, and General. In most other areas of political, professional, and aesthetic life, women are claiming their place, but not as much in theatre. No one raises an eyebrow about a woman prime minister, but there would still be a to-do about a woman on Broadway playing, say, Willie Loman in Arthur Miller\u2019s Death of a Salesman.<\/em> Not playing Willie \u201cas a woman,\u201d but as the male character Miller wrote.<\/p>\n

At present, in the Western repertory from the Greeks through to Elizabethan and Renaissance theatre and on to the modern classics such as Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Shaw, Brecht, Williams, Pinter, and Mamet, the preponderance of great roles \u2013 the preponderance of all roles \u2013 are male characters. This is not to deny great woman characters from Clytemnestra to Portia, Phedre, and Hedda Gabler, from Miss Julie and the Three Sisters to Mother Courage and Blanche Dubois, etc. But for every Portia there are ten Hamlets, and so on down the line. And remember that in ancient Greece and Elizabethan England, all <\/em>the roles went to boys and men. Definitely the playing field has been tilted for centuries. So is it too much to advocate strongly for truly open casting? Or maybe even companies like Japan\u2019s Takarazuka, where all roles \u2013 men and women alike \u2013 are played by women?<\/p>\n

Here I am speaking of gender. But a very strong argument can also be made, I believe, for open casting with regard to age, race, and body type. That\u2019s the kind of assigning roles freely Fichandler was writing about. If the deeply engrained conventions of casting to type were set aside what then would the criteria be for playing a character? Is it utopian to insist that training plus insight into a role is sufficient? Can critics educate spectators and producers alike to at least look at and listen to casts where the gender, race, age, and body type of the performers are, as it were, not perceived \u2013 while paying close attention to the same with regard to characters? That is, to see a white actor as a black Othello (without \u201cblacking up\u201d) or an actress, or actor, of 60 as Juliet. I remember butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno, at 71, dancing as a young woman, or rather as both young-and-old, in the onnagata tradition, in Admiring La Argentina<\/em> \u2013 for which Ohno won New York\u2019s Dance Critics Circle Award in 1977.<\/p>\n

Of course this is not going to happen, at least not at first. At first, such \u201cblind casting\u201d would be a new kind of avantgarde encoding its own social and aesthetic comment. It will be attacked from both orthodox theatre goers and critics who are attached to realism of one kind or another; and by those who insist that gender cannot simply be wished away. And what does it mean to assert that the gender, race, age, and body type of the performers would be \u201cnot perceived\u201d? With regard to gender, essentialists will claim that \u201cwomen are women, men men\u201d while constructionists will argue that gender neutrality does not exist, that every look and move is a performative. But, perhaps, in the long run, gender-blind casting will be ordinary, just as audiences care less and less who is in a symphony orchestra (once exclusively the domain of white men). Not that classical music is out of the woods: virtually no major orchestras are conducted or managed by women. And classical music is not performed by artists enacting specific roles with particular characteristics. But what I am probing is the possibility of detaching role-characteristics from actor-characteristics. I am not arguing that Juliet\u2019s gender or age, or Othello\u2019s color, or the servant Jean\u2019s class (in Miss Julie<\/em>) do not matter. Of course they matter: they are at the core of the roles. What I am arguing for is the ability of a skilled performer to play the needed class, gender, race\u2014or whatever is called for; and to do so without recourse to realistic disguises (though there is nothing wrong with disguising, especially in theatre with its varied and complex traditions of masquerading). And also, when the dictates of a particular production ask for it (depending on the actor\u2019s and\/or director\u2019s interpretation) to play against or to play with the gender, race, class, body type, etc. Lots of queer theatre already does this with regard to gender. These practices and other similar practices with regard to the other supposedly fixed character characteristics ought to go mainstream.<\/p>\n

Of course one can, and must, call for more new plays with more and better roles for women. Over the centuries many writers have answered that call, including in our own time Paula Vogel, Caryl Churchill, Suzanne Lori-Parks, Sarah Kane, Saviana Stanescu, Ntozake Shange, Jasmine Rana, Sarah Ruhl, and many others. But no matter how many worthy new plays are written, the classic Western repertory continues to be played, and rightly so; and this repertory\u2014no matter how many Antigones, Noras, Cleopatras, Ranevskayas, or Maggies there are\u2014is hugely over-balanced in favor of men\u2019s roles (not to mention white roles). This imbalance will always be with us because the repertory is just that: works that are produced again and again. The situation is better in the movies where new films cascade over older ones; there are a considerable number of remakes; and classic films are shown over and over. Not to mention that there are many times the number of screens than there are theatres for live shows; and that television and the internet are also lively platforms for the celluloid or digital moving image.<\/p>\n

The imbalance on the live stage can be redressed only by re-conceiving what performing on the stage is. There is progress in this direction when it comes to ethnicity and even up to a point with race. Who demands that only Russians act Chekhov, Norwegians Ibsen, Scots the Scottish Play, or American southerners Tennessee Williams? Slowly but steadily, some of the racism embedded in theatre casting is being overcome. On the American stage, people of color increasingly perform roles beyond Othello, the dramas of David Henry Hwang, August Wilson, and \u201cblack\u201d or \u201cHispanic\u201d or \u201cAsian\u201d this or that. Increasingly, when non-whites perform roles written with whites in mind, the roles are played color-blindly. Mercutio is \u201cplayed by a black actor\u201d or a South Asian actor rather than being a \u201cblack Mercutio\u201d or a \u201cSouth Asian Mercutio.\u201d The difference in word placement signifies a change in attitude. Slowly, race-blindness is over-taking race-consciousness. But even here, progress is slow; there is a very long way to go before audiences, actors, producers, and directors are able and willing to be color blind.<\/p>\n

Not so with gender. Gender is more resistant, sexism being so very deeply, almost \u201cnaturally,\u201d encoded in Western culture; and in many non-Western cultures too. Progressives and radical thinkers as well as sex bigots want always already to note, mark, and problemitize gender and sexual orientations. In English, in addition to the default woman, man, girl, boy there is a profusion of carefully parsed gender and sexual orientation terms: lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transsexual, queer, straight, femme, butch, top, bottom, drag queen, drag king, and so on. People\u2019s practices, choices, and pleasures are conceived as discourses translated into ongoing political-aesthetic debates. Roles on stage tend to be translated into one or the other of these.<\/p>\n

It was not always this way. \u201cBreeches\u201d or \u201ctravesty\u201d (literally, \u201cin disguise\u201d) performance is a centuries old tradition in European and American theatre. During the Restoration period in England (1660-1770)\u201dof the 375 plays […] produced in London theatres, 89 contained […] \u2018roles for actresses\u2019 \u2018in Boy\u2019s Clothes\u2019 or in \u2018Man\u2019s Clothes.\u2019 […] \u2018Almost every actress appeared at one time or another as a youth, page, a gentleman, a soldier, a shepherd, or what you will \u2014 and some became famous for their elegant appearance in breeches or pantaloons\u201d (Mullenix 2000: 20-21). In France, from the 1830 July Revolution to past mid-century, men were banished from the ballet. Stepping \u201cinto roles previously filled by men, women impersonated the sailors, hussars, and toreadors who made up the \u2018masculine\u2019 contingents of the corps de ballet, even as they displaced men as romantic leads (Garafola 1993: 96).<\/p>\n

But make no mistake about it: cross-gender performing was not progressive. Dressing in tight-fitting men\u2019s clothes showed women\u2019s bodies to men in more revealing ways than billowy many-layered women\u2019s garments did. Furthermore, most of the actresses and ballerinas (playing either women\u2019s or men\u2019s roles) had scant authority over their lives. Restoration stages and Romantic ballet theatres were often sex-markets where women were displayed the better for men to rent them. The chance to dance or act the \u201cpowerful male\u201d did not translate into power for the women performers. As theatre and dance went public and an increasingly rich and powerful mercantile class emerged, market values determined what happened. With few exceptions, theatre managers were men who profited by granting male spectators of a certain class voyeuristic and sexual access to actresses and dancers.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, for the most part the roles women played were \u201csoft,\u201d \u201cadolescent,\u201d \u201candrogynous\u201d or \u201cpost-sexual\u201d and \u201cgrotesque\u201d \u2013 Romeo, Hamlet, Lear, and Shylock rather than Claudius, Caesar, Orsino, or Macbeth. And with regard to the modern repertory, women could not claim Ibsen\u2019s Torvald, Strindberg\u2019s Jean, Brecht\u2019s Arturo Ui, or Sam Shepard\u2019s Hoss. Even today, when women play male roles they frequently feminize them or turn them into women \u2013 as with Ruth Maleczech who played Lear <\/em>in the Mabou Mines late 1980s production.<\/em> Or gender-bending becomes the subject, as in the Bloolips-Split Britches 1991 Belle Reprieve<\/em>, a parodic lesbian-gay take off on Streetcar Named Desire<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Hamlet is different. Over the centuries, at least 200 women have performed the Danish Prince \u2013 in a wildly different profusion of styles and interpretations \u2013 from Charlotte Charke and Sarah Siddons (18th<\/sup>century) through Charlotte Cushman and Sarah Bernhardt (19th<\/sup> century) on to Teresa Budzisz-Krzyzanowska (1989) and Angela Winkler (1999)[1]<\/sup><\/a>. Why Hamlet? Because he is androgynous and neurotic, his identity and sexuality are in question; he loves Horatio more than he loves Ophelia; his \u201cresolution\/<\/a> Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought; he cannot murder to avenge a murder; he is obsessed by the theatre. Manly men such as Claudius consider Hamlet a girly man, driven by feelings, indecisive, politically powerless, ironic, vacillating, poetic: a being of \u201cwords, words, words.\u201d Even Hamlet\u2019s denouement is by accident when Claudius\u2019s plan backfires. Hamlet is Western theatre\u2019s most ambiguous and ambivalent figure\u2014for these very reasons.<\/p>\n

In 19th<\/sup> century America, Cushman (1816-76)\u2014a \u201cmonumental Lady Macbeth,\u201d \u201cwhite marble suffused with fire\u201d\u2014played over 30 male roles.<\/p>\n

Cushman won her way into literary elites and progressive circles. Her admirers included Lincoln and Disraeli; Whiteman […] called her the greatest actor \u2018in any hemisphere\u2019 and a pointer to the intellectual future. […] Cushman became the visible hub of a subculture where her public transvestism \u2013 and her long exploration of \u201cmale\u201d tragic passions \u2013 became inseparable from her role as model and resource for women of talent. (Howard 2007: 55-56)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But despite Cushman\u2019s popularity and artistry critics denigrated or ignored her when she played male roles that did not conform to expectations of the androgynous boy-man, romantic hero, or vacillating Hamlet. For example, in October 1860 Cushman performed Wolsey from Henry VIII <\/em>as part of her New York program\u2014no actress had ever before played this role. Still, New York\u2019s leading theatre publication,The Albion<\/em> reviewed Cushman\u2019s other roles but didn\u2019t even mention her Wolsey.<\/p>\n

This critical silence can perhaps be explained by the actress\u2019s unorthodox choice in selecting Wolsey […]. The role of the Cardinal was thought to be out of the breeches performer\u2019s line: the character was not a youth or a romantic hero but a man\u2014authoritative and cunning\u2014and was currently being played by many of Cushman\u2019s male contemporaries. Such an undertaking could not be sanctioned by critics [..]. (Mullenix 2000: 240)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Several reasons have been put forward to explain the swift decline of breeches performances after 1870. Decisive was the rise of \u201cobjective science\u201d in culture and realism\/naturalism in literature and theatre. By the late 19th<\/sup> century audiences \u201ccould neither imagine nor tolerate displays of incongruous gender play amidst actual tables, chairs, and tea services\u201d (236). Also important were the emerging popular entertainments such as burlesque and circus that put women\u2019s bodies on display without the patina of art. Photography also opened a vast opportunity of visual sexual pleasure for men (and women, too, but for the most part pornography was, and mostly is, made for male eyes). Critics, wanting to be \u201cmodern\u201d in their thinking while also defending \u201chigh art,\u201d attacked or ignored women who over-stepped the boundaries, calling them \u201cmongrels\u201d who \u201cmocked masculinity\u201d and \u201cbelittled the drama\u201d (234). Therefore, instead of leading to a period where Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov\u2014and the other modern masters\u2014were open-casted, critics led the way in establishing a limiting \u201cgender conformist\u201d practice still in place today. Isn\u2019t it time for today\u2019s critics to work toward undoing that restrictive practice?<\/p>\n

There are some glimmers of change. In 1995 at London\u2019s National Theatre, Fiona Shaw played Richard II; both Budzisz-Krzyzanowska\u2019s and Winkler\u2019s Hamlets were anything but effeminate; in 2006, at the Piccolo Teatro di Pontedera, over the objections of the Beckett estate (who lost their case in court), JoAnne Akalaitis directed a Waiting for Godot<\/em> with Estragon and Vladimir played by women. For 20 years Anna Deavere Smith has made powerful performances in which she embodies with great conviction and verisimilitude both women and men. In Julie Taymor\u2019s film version of The Tempest<\/em>, Helen Mirren is a female Propsero. Taymor explained: \u201cI wanted to do it because there are actresses like Helen Mirren who never get to play these fantastic parts because they were not written for women\u201d (Daily Express<\/em>, 11 May 2010).[2]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Of course, the situation is complex both practically and theoretically. The correlation among sexual orientations, gender choices, and theatrical performances though at first blush obvious is, in fact, anything but. Drag kings and queens, bi- and transsexuals, lesbians, gays, and straights\u2014these do not each correlate to theatrical performances of or by \u201cmen\u201d and \u201cwomen.\u201d Also, in theatre itself, all kinds of orientations and genders operate both onstage and off. Only a stupid realism would argue that gays play gay, straights straight, bis-bi, and so on. Nor can theorists definitively assign to one gender or another dramatic characters such as Shakespeare\u2019s cross-dressers, Greek heroines, Chikamatsu\u2019sonnagatas<\/em>, the heroes of the Takarazuka Kagekidan, or the characters of Edward Albee, Samuel Beckett, and Tennessee Williams. As Simone de Beauvoir proclaimed and Judith Butler explained, \u201cOn ne na\u00eet pas femme: on le devient\u201d (One is not born a woman: one becomes it). Becoming a woman (or a man, or any gender \u201cposition\u201d), and then maintaining that position, is a performance.<\/p>\n

In codified forms such as Chinese jingju, Japanese kabuki, or Indian kathakali it is comparatively easy to play across genders, if there are no aesthetic or social objections. In fact, in these forms men often play women while the reverse is much less common. Because the behavior (on stage) of women and men is codified in detail, to have women perform men would take a revision of expectations not the development of new codes. In realism, crossing over is more difficult because the social codes of everyday life are deeply engraved in both spectators\u2019 and performers\u2019 expectations. However, increasingly in ordinary social life dress codes are being revised so that it is no longer unusual to see persons in everyday life dress across genders, though women in men\u2019s clothing (a felt \u201cupward mobility\u201d) is more common than men in women\u2019s clothes. I am not talking about drag here, but of the so-common-it-is-not-noticed blue jeans, running shoes, T-shirts, and so on. Soon enough, I think, men will take on more traditional women\u2019s garb without being perceived as being in drag; ditto for men using cosmetics. Once two way cross-dressing enters the mainstream in social life, the stage will follow suit.<\/p>\n

Or will it? I ask because a change in dress codes will not necessarily signal a change in behavior. Women in men\u2019s clothes and men in women\u2019s clothes do not lead to \u201cmanly women\u201d or \u201cwomenly men.\u201d What has to happen is an adjustment at a deep level of what it means to enact gender in relation to social status. Western cultures are more gender dimorphic than some Asian cultures where a sign of wealth and sophistication is a refinement of men\u2019s behavior in the direction of feminine grace and delicacy. On the flip side, the emergence of world-class women athletes in golf, basketball, tennis, track, swimming, and so on provides powerful models for physically strong, graceful yet aggressive looks and behavior. Definitely, globally (thanks to world sports, the internet, and visual media) gender dimorphism is on the wane. Age also tends to reduce gender dimorphism. Old persons of whatever gender tend to converge both in terms of looks and behavior.<\/p>\n

To return to the stage. Why not actively promote a broad range of \u201cimpersonations\u201d and \u201ccrossings\u201d? From the parodic to serious drag kings and queens; from enacting lesbian and gay power to \u201cjust doing the role\u201d in a variety of ways; from making gender differences visible in a conscious Verfremdungseffekt<\/em>to effacing differences in order to project a universalist \u201cwe are all humans\u201d transparency. Casting against gender and type is the stock-in-trade of parody and travesty \u2014 witness the many plays Charles Ludlam wrote, directed, and starred in or the men in tutus of the Les Ballets Trocadero de Monte Carlo or the gender play of Split Britches and WOW Cafe. Often the intention is political \u2014 as when women play males at WOW Cafe or when Chicano farm laborers play white bosses at the Teatro Campesino. Reasons for these kinds of groups are many and diverse. There are hundreds of particularist groups formed according to gender, race, social class, disability, ideology, sexual orientation, or age. Lesbian, gay, black, Chicano, deaf, disabled, old, poor, Marxist, Jewish, Native American, and so on. In these groups actors are cast within the determinants of the group, sometimes crossing one line but not others, race but not gender, gender but not age or body type. This kind of particularist performance art\/theatre serves a very important purpose. I am not arguing for curtailing this activity. What I am asking for is a wider application of cross-gender performance; for the practice to enter the mainstream; to become ordinary.<\/p>\n

It is true that gender, race, age, and body type signal specific sociopolitical meanings\u2014but it is also true that these meanings are always shifting\u2014and that art, fashion, and popular entertainment can lead the way. The categories them\u00adselves are definable only within specific contexts. That is, what constitutes a “black” or a “white” or an \u201cAsian\u201d or \u201cHispanic\u201d person\u2014you fill in the blanks\u2014is not some fixed objectively measurable entity, but evolving circumstances that have emerged over the centuries in a variety of cultures that are now more than ever interacting and affecting each other. When I am asked to specify to what group I belong I often check \u201cother.\u201d That is because categories are continuing to change. Not only race, culture, and ethnicity, but also what it means to be a “woman” or a “man,” an “old person” or a “young person,” a “fat person,” a “normal person,” or a “thin person”\u2014and so on. You cannot answer what\/who you are without referring to changing criteria responsive to also changing social circumstances. At any moment, one can perhaps offer a definition. But what do such definitions mean? No definition is an objective index; each definition reflects and also helps determine social privilege or lack thereof. Therefore, to confront spectators with casts against type is to ask audiences to wonder what such casting means\u2014and to wonder about their own place in various social hierarchies and circumstances; maybe even to inquire into their own personal situations.<\/p>\n

What would the benefits of open casting be? First, it would give actors the chance to play roles that have been off limits by virtue not of skills but because of gender, race, age, or body type. Second, it would drive a wedge between actor and character encouraging spectators and performers to critically examine interacting performance texts rather than assuming a simple-minded identification of the performer with the role. Third, it would further stress the already weakened link between theatre and realism. Fourth, performers and spectators alike would be more able to see gender, race, age, and body type not as “biological destinies” but as flexible, historically conditioned performative circumstances.<\/p>\n

Today I am asking you as critics, as people with real power, to get behind what Meyerhold said nearly 100 years ago: \u201cWomen should take over men\u2019s roles on stage as well as in real life, by acting parts written for male actors. Give me the actresses, and I\u2019ll make a Khlestakov and Hamlet of them, a Don Juan or a Chatsky!\u201d I am asking you to advocate unequivocally for women to perform in any and all kinds of roles; to help women achieve in theatre what women are achieving in business, law, politics, and medicine. If 19th<\/sup> century critics helped slaughter the open casting of their epoch, let 21st<\/sup> century critics lead a renaissance of open casting.<\/p>\n

\n

Endnotes<\/b><\/p>\n

\n<\/a>[1] For a full account of all these Hamlets, see Tony Howard, Women as Hamlet <\/em>(Cambridge University Press, 2007).
\n<\/a>[2] http:\/\/www.express.co.uk\/posts\/view\/174383\/Helen-Mirren-s-storming-new-role<\/a><\/p>\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n

FICHANDLER, Zelda (1988).”Casting for a Different Truth.” American Theatre 5, no. 2 (May): 18-23.<\/p>\n

de Lauretis, Teresa (1988). “Sexual Indifference and Lesbian Representation”, Theatre Journal 40 (no. 2):155-77.<\/p>\n

GARAFOLA, Lynn (1993). \u201cThe Travesty Dancer in Nineteenth-Century Ballet\u201d 96-106 in Crossing the Stage: Controversies on cross-dressing, <\/em>Lesley Ferris, ed. London and New York: Routledge.<\/p>\n

HOWARD, Tony (2007). Women as Hamlet. <\/em>Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.<\/p>\n

MULLENIX, Elizabeth Reitz (2000). Wearing the Breeches: Gender on the Antebellum Stage. <\/em>New York: St. Martin\u2019s Press.<\/p>\n

\n

Copyright \u00a9<\/strong> 2010 Richard Schechner
\nCritical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes critiques<\/em> e-ISSN: 2409-7411<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This work is licensed under the
\nCreative Commons Attribution International License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A version of this essay appeared as \u201cRace Free, Gender Free, Body-Type Free, Age Free Casting\u201d in TDR (1988) 33, 1: 4-12. Richard Schechner Abstract \/ R\u00e9sum\u00e9 The majority of roles in the Western classic and modern classic repertories are male<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thalia-prize","","tg-column-two"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7gg5F-g","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2016\/02\/1261085241.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":874,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/874"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}