Re: All-Male Shakespeare is the Wrong Direction

I just read this article, and I couldn't help but address it. I think it raises some interesting questions, but ultimately misses a lot of the larger points.

The article responds to the recent announcement that England’s Globe Theater Company is bringing its all-male versions of Twelfth Night and Richard III to Broadway. The author's point is this is a brazen example of male exclusion of women in theater, and it's going in the opposite direction of what we should be doing.

Let me address his problems in piece:

"...In challenging that patriarchy we are asking American theater producers to risk money in order to make our art form a more equitable one, and hopefully a more vibrant one. (1) But what happens when those same artistic directors see all-male productions of plays with wonderful parts for women soar to the highest level of stage production. What happens when the excitement about seeing Rylance speak the Bard’s words overshadows the misogyny (2) of expressly excluding women from work at one of England’s leading theater companies. Which message should they listen to? The one about the need for inclusion, or the one that says, “as long as you make good work you get a pass”?" (3)

It seems to me as if the author is confounding several different problems.

(1) The problem with the way that female inclusion in the theater has been posed has exactly to do with the way that he has posed this problem. He seeks to make the art form a more "equitable" one and then hopefully a more "vibrant" one. Let me make this clear: I have no interest in making the theater a more equitable art form. It does me no good to democratize theater for the sake of democratizing theater. However, I do have an interest in making theater better, and I think women can do that. It does me a world of good to see more people tell more, better stories, and I happen to agree that bringing women, with their different set of experiences and different perspectives, into the discussion will expand and improve theater in an important way. So, let's get our priorities in order, and then we might be able to explain to that room full of old white men why it's so important.

Let's stop making this about getting people jobs because of equal opportunity and start making it about how many stories we're missing out on. That's what I care about, not who has a job.

(2) The author uses the word "misogynistic," and I have to wonder exactly what he finds misogynistic about this production. The best answer I can come up with (I'm using a definition of misogyny that essentially declares women as lesser) is that the production is, in effect, saying that men are better at theater than women are. Men can put on a better Richard III than women.
          If this is what he's saying, I don't really think that it's founded. They're not advocating that every production should be like this. They're just doing something different (the "differentness" of it...we'll explore in a bit).

(3) Now, a good argument for me would be, "they're missing a huge aspect of the play by not using female actors." That's a statement that would bother the Hell out of me. You're fucking up Shakespeare? Go home.

But he doesn't say that. Quite the opposite, he concedes the excellence of the work, from an artistic standpoint. I think this is actually pointing at something quite important. There is a patriarchy that is woven into these plays. The female parts suck. The largest female part in Richard III is Queen Elizabeth with 272. Compare that to Richard, who has 1171 lines. I think this production is actually pointing at something important, women are excluded from these plays, but it happened long before the Globe Theater stepped in.

Jill Dolan writes about male drag performance:

"Both spectator and performer conspire to construct a male-identified subject that is left out of the terms of exchange: women are non-existent in drag performance, but woman-as-myth, as a cultural, ideological object, is constructed in an agreed upon exchange between the male performer and the usually male spectator."

However, the problem is that to include women only gives the false illusion that their voice is heard on stage. Really, it makes them conspirators in their own misogyny. Shakespeare wrote the misogyny into the text when he wrote such unimportant women, and what I think this production is doing quite usefully is exposing that these stories are stories written by, of, and for men. Perhaps in a way that does not seek to address it, but maybe it is. Certainly, it has sparked this conversation.

Women need a place in the theater, but the space for feminist theater work is just not in a classical performance of a Shakespeare text. Shakespeare is a performance of the patriarchy, no matter who's wearing the dress. It happens to be quite a beautiful one, and I don't think it's point is misogyny; so, let's not burn the books quite yet, but we can't condemn admittedly good work because it doesn't offer the pittance that we, men of the theater, have been gracious enough to provide.

Charles Ludlam.

Charles Ludlam is the only other man to play Hedda Gabler, so far as I know. I want to know what he did. Quite wildly and coincidentally, Tracy (my director) knows his partner, Everett Quinton, who has himself been a force in the New York theater scene, particularly after the unfortunate death of Ludlam in the late 80's.

I wrote my JP on Ludlam, and the conclusion that I came to was that his work wasn't about gender politics. It was impossible to avoid for the reader and audience member (it is often the case of geniuses that their work is read best by a future audience), but he's dealing with things much larger, much more important than simply what concerns the queer caucus. His plays are about life and love, and he happens to be a man telling these stories, and he puts them in a vocabulary we understand. The point is that (so, for instance, he played Camille) we discover that Camille is not a play about transgender issues, but we learn (through his trans performance) that Camille is a play about everyone. That's what I hope to do with Hedda. By my doing it, I want to prove that it's a play about everyone, including me.

Because it is.

Ludlam's work will - no doubt - be a very important presence in mine. Here's his manifesto. It reads like nonsense until the fifth time through.

http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~norm/manifesto.html

The Proposal.

"The journey'll be a long one, a long one yet."

This journey began for me began two years ago when I first met the play in a modern drama class. It was a story I loved. I loved Hedda. I felt such a tremendous empathy for her. I felt like I watched a play-full of people not get her, and then I went to class the next day, and I was in a roomful of people not get her. I didn't think that I understood her, but I thought that at least I knew that I didn't, and I wanted to.

Now, the dream comes true. I get to try to get her, and I get to try to make other people get her. I get to be her. I decided to start blogging about it for a couple reasons. I love blogging, and this is a good way for me to have thoughts, keep them, and be able to look at them later. I hope this will be useful to me during the process and afterward, as I reflect upon the experience. This is supposed to be the culmination of my theatrical education. So, I want to be able to have as much of it as possible.

Here is my proposal that went to the professors of the Program in Theater at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University. (spoiler alert) It was accepted. I probably worked harder on these four pages than on any other four pages I've ever worked on. It's a nice starting place to point at in my process.

Here it is:

1. DESCRIPTION OF PROJECT and GOALS FOR YOUR LEARNING PROCESS.

I want to play the title role in a production of Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen.

Hedda Gabler is what happens when you try to put a square peg in a round hole, and that’ something I understand. Scholars -- and Ibsen himself -- have framed Hedda as something of a woman trying to be a man, to put that idea most roughly, fighting to defy her appointed lot, struggling to become something else other than what society wants her to be. However, at least in my experience, it tends to work quite the other way around. As much as I have, in my life, sought to defy the roles and bonds that bind me, I have more often, if more privately, just wanted to live within them, to be like everyone else, to be normal. I see something very similar in Hedda. I am very interested in the Hedda that would so love to be a woman, to make sense, to fit in this world, but ultimately finds that she cannot. It’s just not her. She clings to power not because she is essentially controlling, but because she lives in a world that is ultimately poised to eliminate the special, the unique, the brilliant, in favor of golden curls and the domestic industries of Brabant in the Middle Ages. This is a Hedda that would be happy if she could, but comes to understand that she cannot. It’s the world, not her. She is a fighter, crippled by her past, empowered by her incredible mind, and unleashed by her insatiable desire. Most importantly, though, Hedda is a human. This is the Hedda Gabler Tesman in which I am interested in exploring.

It is the first natural concern that I am, in fact, a man, and Hedda is, in fact, a woman, and there is little use in arguing with either of those facts. However, what I am interested in exploring is what the play believes it means to even be a woman. What is Hedda’s relationship to her own femininity (and so my relationship with mine), and how does that tension motivate her across the play? In this production, what the audience would see is not the usual image of a woman grasping at straws of masculinity, but rather a queer figure (something both androgynous and multi-sexed) approaching and performing the feminine, as best s/he can, yet never really being able to fully access it, the whole idea upon which drag performance is predicated and, for me, the origin conflict of Hedda Gabler. Situationally, this perspective uniquely unlocks a lot of the sexual tensions that permeate the play. Why is the love between Lovborg and Hedda so unspeakable? What is it about her that draws him in, and what very different quality does Thea possess to control the men in her life? While her pregnancy is an area in which I have put some of the least thought and which would be perhaps hardest for me to consider as a male actor, the pregnancy has the potential to strike some interesting resonances with my male body as a foreign presence that ought not be there. A male body has the opportunity to access all of these questions in a very unique and provocative way, while still maintaining the integrity of the play at a narratological level.

What I imagine is a full production of Hedda Gabler, in the ‘traditional’ sense. I see Hedda as the only cross-cast character, as I am not so interested in disturbing the play’s representation of gender at large as I am exploring and challenging an audience to assess specifically Hedda’s gender, how it is performed, and the directionality of its transgenderness. Hedda is special, almost superhuman in some ways, and I think that this casting is a good way to point at that. It becomes both her Teiresian foresightedness and her tragic flaw.

Of the translations I've yet read, I am most enamored with Christopher Shinn’s translation, which I have provided, because I really respond to his use of language. However, I am not married to it, by any means. It makes some pretty bold choices (check out the Lovborg/Hedda scene in act II) that might just be stupid, or brilliant; I’m not sure. This is a conversation I’d like to have with my director. Humility, piety, and my genuine love of the text compel me against the idea of developing my own adaptation, but I am very interested in learning some Norwegian to gain access to the original text (allegedly, it’s the single easiest language to learn coming from English), and I am very open to the idea of making some cuts to the script, for the purpose of contemporary sensibilities.

In terms of my costume, I’m imagining something simple, perhaps a plain dress, somewhat androgynous. I’m very interested in how hair is used in the text (Hedda speaks about Thea “flaunting” her “annoying” curls). So, my instinct would be to keep my own hair and keep it short to reinforce that distinction between the two. I am nothing of a set designer, but I imagine something of a ‘full’ set, as the realism of the play only serves to heighten the tension caused by the presence of my body.

Save once thirty years ago, this is a project that has never been attempted by any professional theater, let alone the student theaters of Princeton University. I’m interested in doing something more than just another production of something; I want to do and say something that hasn’t been done before. I’ve spent the past four years calling the Lewis Center home, and I know this is the place that could facilitate such exploration.

I am requesting a faculty director because I need someone who can execute this play, with all of its awful, difficult idiosyncrasies, can help me navigate this acting challenge, and can remain conscious of the juggling act of ideas going on as we introduce these non-literal elements. I would be happy to work with any director or member of the faculty who is interested in the project and whom you believe would be a good match. Lily Gold ‘14 has agreed to stage manage the project; she stage managed Elephant’s Graveyard and is the outgoing stage manager for Triangle and is supremely qualified. In addition, pending scheduling, Eric Falcon ‘15, lighting designer for A Steady Rain and Triangle, has expressed a strong interest in lighting design for the project.

(Names edited to protect the innocent)

In addition to myself, I have asked that MLK ‘14 and TI ‘14 play Thea Elvsted and Eilert Lovborg, respectively, and they have enthusiastically agreed. I have worked with both of them in the past, and I find them both to be incredibly intelligent and adaptable actors; these are the people I want to work with for my senior thesis. MLK as Thea provides the perfect foil to my Hedda. MLK is a natural beauty with some of the best hair on Princeton’s campus; she is just such a woman. TI is one of the most charming men I have ever met but can also be a total shitshow, and that’s what Lovborg is.

I have spent the past two years thinking (and dreaming) about this role. I have a lot of ideas, and I’m ready to test them. The more I learn about this play, the more I realize how little I know. I could spend a lifetime working on this play, but I’ll settle for at least one more year on it. For me, this is a unique opportunity to do the kind of work I read about. As Hedda says, “The journey’ll be a long one…a long one yet.” And I am ready to take it.

2. DESCRIPTION OF YOUR PREPARATION

(skip the part where I talk about how qualified I am...which I'm kinda not...but, like, I'm 20)

Some of my more tangential research has led me to some other interesting work on Hedda Gabler. Most notably, there is the Charles Ludlam production of Hedda Gabler at the American Ibsen Theater, where Ludlam played Hedda. There are very few records of this production (literally, a couple of poorly written articles). I’d be very interested to visit his records at the NYPL to see if I can dredge up anything in his records on his process and his production. I don’t know if I’d find anything, but it’s a place to start. In Professor Herrera’s History of Casting course, I did my final project on non-traditional Ibsen productions, which gave me a nice vocabulary for understanding how a production like this could theoretically.

This past summer, I worked with a company in New York that afforded me the opportunity to do some explorative scenework. I worked with two actors and a director on the Hedda, Lovborg, Elvsted scene in Act II, and what I learned from that process was that I can talk gender politics all I want; at the end of the day, I had to look at the play moment-to-moment, and it was so helpful to constantly be grounded to the text. I picked the scene that I thought I understood the most, and I continued to find new things at every rehearsal. That’s why I know that I have to do this play with my body on its feet. My work in Greece on Antigone helped me understand what it could mean to play woman, and while that is not the realistic beast that is Hedda Gabler, I learned how I might provide the necessary signs for woman, cuing the audience, without constantly burdening myself with the task of performing woman.

(skip #3 SUPPORTING MATERIALS and #4 SCHEDULING)

5. FINAL REMARKS.

Pick me. I really want this.