The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0403 Friday, 5 May 2006
From: Robert Projansky <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Friday, 5 May 2006 03:59:02 -0700
Subject: 17.0381 Seattle All-Female Hamlet
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0381 Seattle All-Female Hamlet
Steve Roth,
I want to be polite here or at least civil, but what is the point of an
all-female Hamlet? I see from your ticket service website that your
Hamlet is played as a teenage boy. Why use a woman in her twenties
rather than a teenage boy? Your director seems to think it wrong-headed
to make Hamlet older (unreliable gravedigger?), but even if that's so,
arguendo, how does a woman make a better teenage boy than a man, every
single one of which has been a teenage boy? As one who spent the usual
quota of miserable years as just such a biped, I submit that there is no
species of human that a young actress is less likely to know and
understand anything about than what it is to be a teenage male homo
sapiens. We know this immature creature's behavior is entirely informed
by its weird interior life, even though almost nothing of that interior
life ever reveals itself to the observer (and especially not to its
archenemy, the older sister).
I confess that I hate cross-gender Shakespeare casting. I think it
always damages the play. You can't do it to the late Arthur Miller, but
poor old WS is public domain, so not only do you get the rights
royalty-free, you also have carte blanche to do what you will to the
play. OK, Mark Rylance's all-male Richard II and the like can be
justified as museum theater, I suppose, but that drag Queen definitely
was part of my disappointment in that production. Yes, I know, we're not
living in the sixteenth century any more, and I should expect and accept
change in everything, but how much is too much? I say all-fe/male
Shakespeare is too much.
I believe there is zero to be gained artistically in casting women in
men's roles, unless you have to do it out of desperation. It seems your
Seattle women are playing men, which is bad enough, but at least their
roles haven't been recast as Polonia and Laertesse and Horatia and
Gertrude and her -- what, Claudia? -- all in some all-female Denmark.
Cross-gender casting needlessly ratchets up the audience's burden of
suspending disbelief. Unless you have a Tracey Ullman in every such role
-- and you don't -- cross-gendering will get in the way of the play.
It's a distraction, like onstage nudity, which ALWAYS makes the audience
think about stuff that has nothing to do with the play (unless, of
course, the onstage nudity is the point of your play). It's not just
that you are putting matter into Shakespeare that he did not intend --
he didn't intend electric lighting, either, or body mikes, or even for
every actor to have the whole script -- no, you are trying to stuff
something into his play which just does not fit and which fights against
the play he wrote.
I can understand why Ms. Chiles-Curnutte wants to play Hamlet -- who
wouldn't? -- but why have you fondly wanted to put up such a production?
To your credit, you acknowledge that you think the all-female gimmick
will sell tickets, but you say there are also "strong dramatic and
theatrical reasons" for your casting. What are they? This is a bona fide
glimmer of interest as well as a rant.
While I'm here, I want to apologize to Jim Blackie for something I
posted some time ago. He said he hadn't previously seen the comedy in
M4M and I said, now that's tragedy. That was my smartass way of trying
to say that the BBC had not done its duty to the play. I am sorry to
have offended.
Best to all,
Bob Projansky
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