Role Distribution, Show Selection and Audition Pools

[lillibet]

This subject came up tonight at Steering Committee and there just wasn't time to explore it past the immediate issue at hand, but it seemed like there was more discussion to be had and perhaps more voices to be solicited, so I thought I'd go ahead and post about it. You don't have to be part of Theatre@First to have an opinion. I'm going to start with a poll, so I can get an overview, but I do encourage you to comment, because I realize this may have a lot of nuances and complexity for many people that won't be captured in my options.

[Poll #1498617]

Comments

[jim-p.livejournal.com]

The question is a bit too narrow, in my opinion. I would not be overly concerned about a *particular* single-gender play among the eclectic mix that you guys do, but if this became a regular pattern of plays that exclude one gender or the other I'd start to become concerned simply because it would reduce opportunities for the excluded gender to participate.

As for *soliciting* single-gender plays, I'm curious as to *why* you would want to do this. Would this be part of a theme of exploring gender in society, or an exercise in gender-bashing, or what? In other words, motivation would affect whether or not I could support such a solicitation.

Which raises a question: when you did "Twelve Angry Jurors", was there any consideration given to doing "Twelve Angry Men" as per the original?

[dpolicar]

I gave some consideration to it, sure, but I saw no benefit to doing so and many benefits to not doing so.

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

One reason to solicit a single-gender play might be to balance a decision to produce a single-gender play of the other gender.

[kathrynt.livejournal.com]

My differing answers aren't for any philosophical reason, but rather practical ones. There are a hell of a lot more qualified female actors available than male actors, ime.

[desireearmfeldt]

I would not support a female-heavy or exclusively-female project if I hated it for other reasons :) though I would in general support such a thing.

As I said in the car, I do have a knee-jerk reaction that single-gender plays are "excluding people," but rational analysis says that it's silly to feel that way about single-gender plays if I don't feel that way about musicals (exclude non-singers, and that's a real subgroup in our actor population), or plays that have no roles for older actors, or plays that have no roles for women between 25 and 35 (which is a large subgroup of our actors and comes up more than you might think).

And plays that have few or few good female roles, while not precisely exclusionary (any woman *could* have a chance at the available role), they're nearly as bad as exclusionary (because that chance is pretty darn small given the numbers).

[dpolicar]

Ultimately, my decisions depend on other factors across the board.

That said, I'd be far more averse to an explicitly male-only production than an explicitly female-only production, simply because there are already so many shows that approximate the former.

And I'm not generally in favor of requiring directors to cross-cast, or to not cross-cast, or really to cast in any particular way. To a first approximation, if I don't trust the director to cast the show, I probably don't trust the director to direct it either.

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

I was anticipating the argument that an x-only play would be ok, if the director were explicitly proposing to cross-cast, or could be convinced as part of the proposal process that a commitment to do so should be made. As was, for example, the case with 12AJ.

[dpolicar]

(nods) Makes sense. And sure, a proposal for a show with a mixed-gender cast achieved by cross-casting (like 12AJ) is, for demographic purposes, equivalent to a proposal for a show with a mixed-gender cast achieved by other means. But cross-casting isn't just a demographic action, to my mind; I did it for 12AJ in part because the show lends itself to that.

[desireearmfeldt]

A proposal to direct a show with 12 men is different from a proposal to direct a show with 12 characters whose genders will be largely determined by the auditioning pool.

Either is a valid artistic choice, but they're different proposals, and I'd have strong reservations about supporting the former, that I wouldn't have about the latter.

That doesn't mean I'm dictating to the director how to cast the show, exactly. It does mean I'd like some indication of which casting schema it's going to be, so I can decide how I feel about the proposal.

[dpolicar]

Precisely right. As a director, I would feel obliged to provide that information, and you have every right to vote against the proposal based on that information. (Someone else might approve the all-male version and reject the mixed-gender version, perhaps out of a strong sense that shows should always be done the way they were initially staged, or something else, who knows?)

[aphrabehn.livejournal.com]

For me, it's all about the quality of the show. I moan about a lack of decent roles for women - particularly women over 30 - but that gripe is more with playwrights focusing less on interesting female characters (and yes, this may be a controversial opinion - eh, maybe not.) Nothing is more disheartening than going through the Stage Source audition listing and realizing that at least 75% of the roles are for men and most of the females role call for 25 and under. And those are usually less interesting IMNSHO.

However, I'd rather see a well done all male cast of, say Glenn Garry Glen Ross, then a poor attempt at cross-casting it. Same for an all female show. Some stuff works with cross-casting, much doesn't.

12 Angry Jurors is a good example. It works in the original all male format, but today an audience would have more difficulty buying into it, since we all have to do jury duty. But something specifically written for one gender, like Top Girls...that would be tough to cross and I'm not sure it's a good idea.

In the end, it's about putting up a good show.

[dpolicar]

today an audience would have more difficulty buying into [an all-male 12aj]

And yet, the most recent major nationwide theatrical production of this show was done precisely this way.

[jim-p.livejournal.com]

Interestingly enough, the last time I pulled jury duty the jury WAS all-male. But there were only six of us, and deliberations never got that intense...

[aphrabehn.livejournal.com]

Let me rephrase it then - audiences would not have a hard time with cross-casting for it, as opposed to some shows where cross casting seems forced.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

For instance? 1776? :-)

(which technically has two female roles, but really.)

[fenicedautun.livejournal.com]

off topic, but i've always wanted to see/do a fully cross cast 1776 (all male roles played by female and vice versa, because you do need to keep vocal ranges consistent within the congress). But I'm perverse.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

I thought Wellesley had done an all-female one? But I suppose that's different than featuring Abigail and Martha in drag. ;-)

[dpolicar]

(nods) Absolutely.

[heliopsis.livejournal.com]

At some level, I feel like asking what all the fuss is about. If someone proposed to put on an all-female show, and it was a good play and the proposal made sense, I'd say go for it, though it would mean no parts for me. Likewise, if someone proposed an all-male show, etc., then sure; though in the case of an all-male show, I would think that the proposer had better say something in the proposal about how they plan to find enough cast members. If it were a two-person show, then fine; if it needed a cast of thousands, I'd probably reject it on the basis of feasibility. (Though I might reject the two-person show on the basis of not enough audience members...)

Is there something I'm missing? I suppose if T@F decided to become all girls all the time, I'd be peeved; but that's not likely. Heck, if you wanted to do a summer 1-acts of women doing Shakespeare, well why not? I can sit that one out.

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

At some level, I feel like asking what all the fuss is about.

I think that's fair, but it felt to me that people had more to say on the subject, so I wanted to find out. That's really all, at this point.

[infinitehotel.livejournal.com]

I lost my last comment to answering the poll, but after thinking about it, a lot of my answer comes down to what the Steering Committee believes is the purpose of T@F.

I'd definitely support a proposal for a play that only had male or female roles. If someone had a terrific idea for doing "The Vagina Monologues", "Agnes of God", or "'Night Mother", the group is doing a sufficient number of plays per year that it doesn't strike me as any more exclusionary that doing "Talley's Folly" which only had two roles. (I'd feel similarly about "Glengarry Glen Ross" or "Love! Valour! Compassion!" on the other face of the gender die.)

Where I'd find myself conflicted is if the play or project was chosen to push a particularly exclusionary gender agenda; that strikes me as a misuse of the organization which isn't set up for that purpose and runs on the efforts of volunteers who may or may not support the politics of the project. At that point, it'd depend a lot on what the director was trying to do and whether I thought they were sufficiently clueful to pull it off.

[desireearmfeldt]

What if the play is (partly) chosen to further a political agenda of "there should be more parts for women, since we have 3 female actors for every male actor in our casting pool"?

:)

[infinitehotel.livejournal.com]

That seems like as valid a way to choose a play as any. :) My only concern is how many times you do that before your gender ratio becomes self-reinforcing.

[vanguardcdk.livejournal.com]

For me, the decision to support a show depends mainly on the quality of the proposal. Would it be a good show? Is the Director/Producer really engaged in the project?

The gender of the roles is a secondary consideration, with two caveats:
1. If it is all-male I would have concerns on wether we could attract enough auditioners.
2. If T@F had been doing a lot of shows with "all or mostly gender X" shows I'd be much more likely to vote for something with stuff for gender Y. At the very least so that we don't lose some of our regulars becuase they've found other things to do.

12AJ is an interesting example as it could have been proposed as 12 Angry Men, 12 Angry Women or 12 Angry Jurors.
I would have voted for any of these, based on the proposal I saw. Although 12 angry men would have provoked issue #1 and I would have asked about it.

So yeah..those are my 2 cents. Generally don't care except in cases of practicality and/or monotony.

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

I should make an update to the post I made that was prompted by your previous discussion of race in casting, now that I've had a month of seeing plays here in Chicago. Hm.

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

If someone were to submit a proposal for a single sex play, I think I'd consider it based upon it's merits (regardless of the gender).

I'm not sure about soliciting a same-sex play, unless you wanted to do something specific, such as doing two one-acts, one having a male-only play and then follow with a female-only play.

Or if you wanted to do something completely different, how about a traditional Shakespeare play with an all-male cast for the first act (the way the plays were originally performed), for the second half switch to mixed cast, and then for the third act, an all-female cast?

For each act, you could make it easy for the audience by having each character wear the same clothes even though actor playing the character changes.

[smacaski.livejournal.com]

I thought about this while at Slutcracker (a great place to think about women on stage, by the way, at least until you're distracted by all the stripping).

If someone came with a proposal and said, "I really want to do Top Girls (or Glengarry Glen Ross), it's a great play and I have lots of ideas with how I want to interpret it. But, you know, there are only female (or male) roles, and I'd prefer not to cross-cast." And while I'm very much pro-cross-casting, I could support that specific proposal if I thought the proposee had their stuff figured out.

If someone came in and said, "I want to do a one-acts festival and solicit directors to propose one-act plays in which all the characters are the same gender." I could get behind that if the theme of the production was something like the relationships of mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, sisterhood, etc. However, in that circumstance, I believe that it be left up to the individual directors and not the Festival Producer to cross-cast or not. Even if it's unlikely that either a male actor would want to audition for a female role or that a director would want to cast a man as a woman, I still think there should be open auditions, and if a director finds a man and wants to cast him as a woman, sure.

If a proposee came in and stated "I want to do a one-acts festival in which all the actors are one gender or another," I'd oppose that whether or not the plays had characters of all one gender or not. I don't think the gender of the actors is a theme for a festival, and if it's an idea based on the demographics of our usual auditioning pool, it doesn't apply. Now, if we were at Wellesley discussing this, the demographics of that auditioning pool would dictate a different answer: no all-female Macbeth, no show.

[desireearmfeldt]

So, here's a question: how many men do there have to be in the casting pool before we're no longer in the Wellesley paradigm? (That is, I think T@F is not in it, and I'm wondering where you think the dividing line is.) What should we be doing if there's a single man in a sea of women? What if we have 5 women for every man? What if we have 3 women for every man (which is more like what we do have)?

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

Never After, which felt more skewed to me than previous audition pools because of the musical thing, was 2.2-to-1. Based on the auditions I've run with other groups, it seems to me that we actually do attract more men than most groups, although there certainly is a disparity. I would say that the biggest disparity is that men are more likely to turn down small roles.

[desireearmfeldt]

I believe we've had shows (some of the 1-acts maybe?) where it was more like 3:1, but I don't have data in front of me. Rimers was ridiculously skewed (like, 5 or 6 to 1), but Rimers was a weird subpopulation in other ways.

[desireearmfeldt]

Er, math error, I really meant "1 out of 5 or 6," which isn't the same thing as what I said. :)

[ironpoet.livejournal.com]

Just for another data point, Dracula auditions had 14 men out of 55 auditioners, which makes its ratio 1-in-4.

[gilana]

I definitely have an initial bias against the thought of doing a single-gender show, based on the idea that it does leave out a significant chunk of our regular membership either way, but I'd certainly listen to any proposal and the discussion and make my decisions based on that.

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

Art is art, if it's good art, that's even better. I think if I were a community member, I'd likely prefer that not all plays be done as single gender casts.

Other than that, I think single gender plays would be fine things.

[redheadedmuse.livejournal.com]

In general I'd support the idea of doing a women-only show, and would generally oppose the idea of doing a men-only show. I could be sold on either based on the quality of the script/idea.

Here's my thinking: sexism is a real thing in the world, and it affects both men and women, but it affects them in different ways. Women historically, and generally today, have fewer opportunities to shine onstage than their male counterparts. A women-only show would help to highlight women's talents, as well as making a space for discussion about gender issues.

A male-only show would be close enough to business as usual in modern American entertainment that it would likely go unremarked except by those of us who constantly remark on these things, and would only provoke discussion about gender and power if it very conciously worked to do so. Additionally, men get many opportunities to perform onstage and to see dynamics between male characters highlighted in plays, movies and TV.

[ironpoet.livejournal.com]

I think there's a difference between "supporting a proposal" and "giving preference to a proposal".

If two directors proposed a play for the same spot, with equal artistic merit, but one had a more even distribution of gender roles, I would probably choose that one.

On the other hand, if there's a performance slot with only one proposal, which happens to be all male or all female, then I wouldn't have any problem supporting that proposal.

[minkrose]

It really doesn't bother me either way BUT I've never been involved in trying to make a decision like that AND I generally trust you guys to think it through and have a good reason if you do a gender-limited play.

But really, I wouldn't mind.