The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0651 Wednesday, 12 July 2006
[1] From: Donald Bloom <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 11 Jul 2006 10:04:38 -0500
Subj: RE: SHK 17.0639 Against All-Male Productions
[2] From: William Proctor Williams <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 11 Jul 2006 11:54:06 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0639 Against All-Male Productions
[3] From: Scot Zarela <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 11 Jul 2006 12:38:38 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK17.0631 Against all-male productions
[4] From: William Sutton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 12 Jul 2006 00:05:09 -0700 (PDT)
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0639 Against All-Male Productions
[5] From: Carol Morley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 12 Jul 2006 10:05:55 +0000
Subj: RE: SHK 17.0639 Against All-Male Productions
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Donald Bloom <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 11 Jul 2006 10:04:38 -0500
Subject: 17.0639 Against All-Male Productions
Comment: RE: SHK 17.0639 Against All-Male Productions
Aaron Azlant (following a number of roughly similar comments on earlier
threads) says this on doubling: "Another example appears if you grant
that the same actor may have played both Ophelia and the First
Gravedigger in /Hamlet/ . . . when Hamlet asks the First Gravedigger
whose grave he is digging, the response-"Mine, sir"-might have worked in
many dimensions at once for an audience if the same actor had also
played the character for whom the Gravedigger was now preparing a final
resting place."
I confess that, were I that actor (male or female) I would consider
myself to have failed rather seriously if the audience were thinking,
"Say, isn't that clever. The one doing the First Gravedigger is the same
one who did Ophelia," while I spoke my lines.
It is not that the audience must BELIEVE that you're Ophelia, or a
gravedigger, or a fop, or whatever, but they must IMAGINE it (see Sam
Johnson). If they start doing literary interpretation when they're
supposed to be involved in the play, then you've screwed up somewhere.
Even if you're in a technically minimalist production, you should have
enough power as an actor to get the audience imagining that character at
that moment.
What they think later is, of course, another matter. But if you force
theoretical twists (no matter how interesting in some respects) into the
play, you run a serious risk of damaging the play as play.
Cheers,
don
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: William Proctor Williams <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 11 Jul 2006 11:54:06 -0400
Subject: 17.0639 Against All-Male Productions
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0639 Against All-Male Productions
Oh, please stop rising to the bait! It only encourages him. One
posting and 6 responses! Charles must be very pleased.
William Proctor Williams
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Scot Zarela <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 11 Jul 2006 12:38:38 -0400
Subject: Against all-male productions
Comment: Re: SHK17.0631 Against all-male productions
1. Not all camp is drag, and not all drag is camp; but a categorical
confusion between the two allows Mr Weinstein to argue against one under
guise of the other.
2. All play-acting is imitation (whatever else it may be as well); an
actor pretends to be someone he (or she ) is not. But in those
instances when a male actor plays a female character, Mr Weinstein turns
"imitation" and "pretending" into derogatory counts, and gives
preference to a supposed reality of "being".
3. Mr Weinstein writes: "Women are much better at playing women than
men are (to state the obvious)." But this is not obvious at all, unless
"being" is the same as "pretending to be".
4. Mr Weinstein frames the opposition starkly: on the one hand he
holds up "a genuine actress", on the other "a cheap imitation".
Furthermore, this cheap imitation is the _best_ that can be expected
from "the most skillful female impersonator"; while nothing is said of
the skillfulness of the genuine actress. She may have few or weak
skills: no matter. Simply the thing she is shall make her --- not
merely live, but --- bring to "vivid and truthful life" Rosalind, Viola,
Imogen and the rest, up to and including ... Cleopatra.
5. These are the terms Mr Weinberg has laid out; he hasn't said, "Other
things being equal..." or "Given two performers of about the same
ability... it's better to have men playing men, women playing women."
In Mr Weinberg's terms, other things need not be equal. If it happens
that the best available actress is only so-so, a producer should
unhesitatingly prefer her above the best available actor, even if he's
magnificent. Identity trumps craft.
[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: William Sutton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 12 Jul 2006 00:05:09 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: 17.0639 Against All-Male Productions
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0639 Against All-Male Productions
Hi All,
Whilst not knocking Shakespeare done as all-male all-female, or a bit of
both, the idea that Shakespeare knew women would be playing his female
roles: accepted or not?
Not, seems to course through the replies here. Yes I hear the argument
of how clever the doubling makes the lines. Ed Hall's direction is loads
of fun.
>I believe that there were no such laws. says Gabriel Egan.
I don't wish to speak for Charles, but weren't the Laws the Sumptuary laws?
Then what was it that stopped the Elizabethans following the example of
the Italian and Spanish stages and allowing women to play?
We are told women would attend the theatre unaccompanied to be in the
audience, so the demographic was there to be pleased. Maybe they were
the ones most affected by the following.
>useful to explore to many ways in which Shakespeare
>exploited the comic
>and tragic (and sexual, of course) potential
>generated by boys acting
>female roles.
>>Compared to a genuine actress, the
most skillful female impersonator is a cheap
imitation. Perhaps audiences 400 years ago did not
know this, but we do. <<
I raise your perhaps to a probably and conjecture they would have known
this! Women were an integral part of Elizabethan Society as mothers,
wives, mistresses' and as Professionals in the world of Printing and
bookselling.
>You know, your insistence, here and otherwise, on
>using the words "drag"
>and "camp" begin to suggest a concern that is not
>wholly an artistic one.
Charles sexual orientation is about as interesting as Shakespeare's and
uncalled for.
So really, why is it only England that likes their men to dress up in
women's clothing and strut and fret their hour (OP) upon the stage?
(Having done the sonnets as a filthy little Cressid, I know whereof I
speak).
Is it not significant that on Continental Europe during the time that
Shakespeare was composing his works, actresses were already working?
Yours,
William Sutton
[5]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Carol Morley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 12 Jul 2006 10:05:55 +0000
Subject: 17.0639 Against All-Male Productions
Comment: RE: SHK 17.0639 Against All-Male Productions
>Do you think he also chafed under the stupid convention that
>prevented him having a real Dane to play Hamlet or a real
>aboriginal to play Caliban?
>
>Peter Bridgman
Dear Peter,
Surely only an illegitimate Algerian would do?
But in all seriousness, the fundamental job-requirement in theatrical
performance of dressing up and 'playing' must be emphasised at all
costs. I am prepared to believe that Shakespeare's one extended Moorish
characterisation might not have been a complete success, despite
Burbage's best efforts, because of the difficulty of 'personating' a
North African to their satisfaction. Female characters however, continue
to flow across the stage, suggesting that the actors were doing them
convincingly enough. And the typical audience (females aside) would on
average meet a lot more women in real life than Venetians (of any
colour), and be reasonable judges of verisimilitude.
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