Glengabby Glenda Rosey
There is a heated discussion currently taking place on the St. Louis theatre Yahoo group (requires registration) concerning a local theatre company’s future staging of Glengarry Glen Ross with an all-female cast. The point of contention is whether a play should be performed in keeping with the playwright’s original vision or whether there should be ample room for the director, cast and crew producing the show to impart their own artistic vision on the piece. It’s stirring stuff, and I apologise for those who can’t access the debate to see it for themselves.
On this particular issue, however, I’m something of a fence-sitter. I can see compelling arguments for both positions. On the one hand, the vision of the playwright is probably the most appropriate fit for the words that they themselves have crafted; on the other hand, part of what keeps older, well established plays interesting over time is the various ways in which they are performed.
It seems to me, though, that this latest gender-swapping issue raises a far more sinister and pervasive spectre than simply the issue of creative control. Gender-swapping, which generally means casting women in male roles, is in my opinion a rather lazy response to a more pressing problem; the struggle faced by women, both playwrights and actors, in theatre today. This is such a common and well-worn battle cry as to sound cliche. But given that Aphra Behn and Nell Gwyn pushed up the daisies over three hundred years ago, one might feel audacious enough to ponder why we haven’t made a little more progress. Ho hum. Instead of supporting new women playwrights, it seems the theatre community would rather trot out the same old material under the absurd impression that you can solve the eternal problem of gender inequality simply by giving male characters a vagina.
The theatre community needs to stop resorting to lazy quick fixes - like gender swapping, or putting on the umpteen hundredth incarnation of The Heidi Chronicles - and actually address the problem women face in trying to get a leg-up in this business. If things don’t change, it will be a wonder if St. Louis’ Orange Girls can make it through a fourth season before they run out of material.
[edit:
All quiet on the Eastern Front - I just came by this excellent post (via my esteemed colleague and inevitable assassin) by a pro carving out a career for herself in Chicago and NYC.]
