Up the Sisterhood!
Mon, 6 Dec 1999, 03:51 pmWalter Plinge9 posts in thread
Up the Sisterhood!
Mon, 6 Dec 1999, 03:51 pmOK I have a question, one I hope will lead to intellegent discussion and not nasty fingerpointing and intellectual skullduggery.
If men are in such short supply in ameteur theatre, why don't more companies do plays for women? Indeed with the ratio of men to women you would think almost all of the plays out there would be predominantly female and yet they're not.
And before I hear the cries of "There are no plays written for women!!" how come Kim Shaw has managed to find brilliant ones for Blak Yak every year since our inception?
Riddle me that Batman!!
LEAH
If men are in such short supply in ameteur theatre, why don't more companies do plays for women? Indeed with the ratio of men to women you would think almost all of the plays out there would be predominantly female and yet they're not.
And before I hear the cries of "There are no plays written for women!!" how come Kim Shaw has managed to find brilliant ones for Blak Yak every year since our inception?
Riddle me that Batman!!
LEAH
RE: Up the Sisterhood!
Tue, 7 Dec 1999, 07:34 pmWalter Plinge
Before I make my spurious contribution in this debate, let me first put
forward my credentials in this area...
Of the roughly ten plays that I have directed over the years, I think only
one of them had a female to male ratio of less than 40%, and that was
1female ,2male.
The rest have been roughly fifty/fifty, except Clare Boothe's "The Women",
with a cast of 22 female actors onstage.
This includes "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead".
Ros&Guil a play with a roughly equal cast I hear you say in derision?
Well, it is when you have a female Guildenstern, female Player King, female
Hamlet, female Alfred, and half the rest of the players female as well.
What I'm basically going on about is...
As far as I am concerned, any good actor can make a good showing at playing
someone of the opposite gender.
So why do directors contiually turn down really good female actors for male
parts in favour of moderately acceptable male actors?
Admittedly in some plays it could not really be done (a female Stanley
Kowalski?!)
But for most plays it doesn't really matter, so why not?
To pick some obvious examples... Linda Hunt in "The Year of Living
Dangerously", Quentin Crisp in "Orlando", Jay Davidson in "The Crying
Game"...
Need I say more!
If more directors were willing to take that leap of faith beyond their own
internal sexism (both male and female) I think they would be pleasantly
surprised.
I can still remember one of my favourite personal moments in theatre, about
ten years ago, playing the Countess in "The Marriage of Figaro", and
hearing from the foyer during interval...
"God, that woman playing the countess is ugly, isn't she!"
This would certainly go some small way to alleviating the dearth of parts
for female actors, and the dearth of male actors for parts.
Even then, its no replacement for directors just getting off their butts to
find NEW and DIFFERENT plays, is it!
Paul Treasure
forward my credentials in this area...
Of the roughly ten plays that I have directed over the years, I think only
one of them had a female to male ratio of less than 40%, and that was
1female ,2male.
The rest have been roughly fifty/fifty, except Clare Boothe's "The Women",
with a cast of 22 female actors onstage.
This includes "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead".
Ros&Guil a play with a roughly equal cast I hear you say in derision?
Well, it is when you have a female Guildenstern, female Player King, female
Hamlet, female Alfred, and half the rest of the players female as well.
What I'm basically going on about is...
As far as I am concerned, any good actor can make a good showing at playing
someone of the opposite gender.
So why do directors contiually turn down really good female actors for male
parts in favour of moderately acceptable male actors?
Admittedly in some plays it could not really be done (a female Stanley
Kowalski?!)
But for most plays it doesn't really matter, so why not?
To pick some obvious examples... Linda Hunt in "The Year of Living
Dangerously", Quentin Crisp in "Orlando", Jay Davidson in "The Crying
Game"...
Need I say more!
If more directors were willing to take that leap of faith beyond their own
internal sexism (both male and female) I think they would be pleasantly
surprised.
I can still remember one of my favourite personal moments in theatre, about
ten years ago, playing the Countess in "The Marriage of Figaro", and
hearing from the foyer during interval...
"God, that woman playing the countess is ugly, isn't she!"
This would certainly go some small way to alleviating the dearth of parts
for female actors, and the dearth of male actors for parts.
Even then, its no replacement for directors just getting off their butts to
find NEW and DIFFERENT plays, is it!
Paul Treasure