Gender as an Imaginary Circumstance
The Praxis of Female Actors playing
Male Characters
In LaBute’s reasons to be pretty
Richard Schechner, “Casting Without
Limits,” American Theatre, 12/10
• “No one raises an eyebrow about a woman prime
minister, but there would still be a to-do about a
woman on Broadway playing Willie Loman in
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.
• “Not playing Willie “as a woman,” but
as the male character Miller wrote”.
• No change is made to the gender of the
character, only to that of the actor traditionally
associated with the role.
Theory and Practice
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The Semiotic Stage, Austin, Elam and Searle
Dr. David Z. Saltz’s “The Reality of Doing”
The possibility of real action on stage
The framing of imaginary circumstances as
game theory.
• The framing of gender as an aspect of
imaginary circumstances.
The Semiotic Stage
• Stage action is fictional, actors only pretend to
speak or engage in speech actions. John Searle
• “The stage, the area of fictional utterance, is a
frame that disengages all speech acts.” Issacharoff
• Actors are not only pretending to be characters
but, also only pretending to speak.
• Semiosis mistakenly collapses what the actor
does, with the given circumstances under which
it is performed. “The pretense is in the context,
not in the action itself.” David Saltz
Imaginary Circumstances as the Rules
of the Game
• “By defining the conventions of performance
in this way, the actor will always have a reason
to commit any action in any play”.
• “There is no insincerity here; the nature of the
game is up front and understood by all”. Saltz
• The separation of real action from the
aesthetics of realism and mere mimetic
imitation.
Phenomenologically Speaking
“The normal man and the actor do not mistake
imaginary situations for reality, they disentangle
themselves from the living world and breath,
speak and if need be weep with the
circumstances of the imagination.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
The Benefits of Gender as an
Imaginary Circumstance
• It makes precarious the already weak link
between theatre and realism by encouraging
the actor and the audience to speculate and
imagine rather than to simply identify-or notwith the character.
• Actors get the chance to play roles previously
off limits to them, not because of their ability
but because of their sex.
And…
• “Actors and audiences alike would be more
likely to see gender not as “biological
destinies” but as flexible, historically
conditioned performative circumstances”. R.S.
More Pragmatically Speaking
• Given the preponderance of male characters
in the Western classic repertory.
• We are unable to write ourselves out of this
dilemma.
• In this author’s opinion and experience:
This situation is especially acute in the academy
where the number and the abilities of female
actors frequently exceed those of their male
counterparts.
The Praxis of Female Actors Playing
Male Characters
Suggested Practices
• Complete cast Agreement
• Frame the play’s given circumstances as rules
of a game which generate behavior, the
gender of a character is simply one of these
many circumstances.
• Minimal mimesis-by and large, don’t hide
anything and don’t emphasize anything.
• Allow the actors to find their own physicality
And
• Begin any physical action work early, as well as
any business with furniture, costumes and
props.
• Be sensitive to the “male dialogue” sometimes
it really is written differently.
• Don’t ignore the female actors playing female
characters.
Moving from a lower center of gravity
seems to help
The End