It doesn’t need a citation to say that transgender and gender-nonconforming people have, historically, not had a great time, Unfortunately, this statement stands true in theatre as well.
Though perhaps not necessarily related to trans identities, the concept of gender performativity in theatre can be traced back nearly as far as theatre itself can. In Ancient Greece, only male actors were allowed to perform and thus sometimes played female roles, as was also the case in the English Renaissance, Japanese kabuki theatre, and Chinese opera.
Shakespeare, however, was quite notorious for calling attention to this practice for laughs, including cross-dressing characters and metatheatrical jokes in many plays, typically in comedies. Twelfth Night‘s Viola and As You Like It’s Rosalind are, on the surface, women who dress as men for some sense of personal protection or gain. In historical context, though, there is an additional layer of intended comedy, as these roles would be played by men, who dressed as women, who dressed as men. Shakespeare also occasionally played the single-layer cross-dressing of male actors to female characters for laughs, with Falstaff’s drag scene in The Merry Wives of Windsor as one example.
This wealth of gender-nonconforming characters in Shakespeare “would seem to suggest that trans identity—even avant-la-lettre—has indeed been integral to Shakespearean performance and criticism,”[1] even though these representations are not necessarily accurate to the experiences of contemporary trans people, especially in the “female-to-male” roles. “It takes little more than a pair of pants to turn Rosalind into Ganymede, Viola to Cesario or Portia to Balthazar… the magical transvestism of The Pants is instant and absolute.”[2] Additionally, “across the comedies, all parties agree that affecting the personality of a young, bravado-filled boy is the formula for passing.”[3] Just about any trans person can tell you that transition is far more work than just wearing different clothes, and the last thing one wants to do to pass is to call attention to oneself. Despite this, “the representation of gender-nonconforming behaviors and characters that is intrinsic to so many of Shakespeare’s plays means that patrons do read the ’transgender’ onto and into Shakespeare when they bring their knowledge of contemporary gender discourse to the theater.”[4]
Today’s renditions of Shakespeare’s FTM roles lose the comedy of two layers of drag and instead are more often empathetic to the trans experience. In California Shakespeare Festival’s 2017 production of As You Like It, “[the director] Chiang chose to eschew Rosalind’s ‘reveal’ at the end of the play in favor of a re-entrance with the same casual butch Ganymede costume that Orlando fell in love with.”[5] Shaina Taub’s musical adaptation of Twelfth Night is also considerate of Viola’s gender: “Taub’s songs work to unpack Viola’s gender identity as well as her path to self-discovery… she stops and contemplates who she is when she’s not wearing a dress.”[6] Similarly, this version of Viola/Cesario has a far less cisnormative “reveal” than is typical, as “Orsino (and the audience) have fallen for her in a three-piece suit… and she’s grown to love herself like this. She takes off her suit jacket but stands before Orsino as he’s come to know her—in vest, pants, and short hair.”[7] It is worth noting that both of these adaptations continue to these characters as gender-nonconforming women, rather than conceding any sense of absolute transness.
Though perhaps not necessarily related to trans identities, the concept of gender performativity in theatre can be traced back nearly as far as theatre itself can. In Ancient Greece, only male actors were allowed to perform and thus sometimes played female roles, as was also the case in the English Renaissance, Japanese kabuki theatre, and Chinese opera.
Shakespeare, however, was quite notorious for calling attention to this practice for laughs, including cross-dressing characters and metatheatrical jokes in many plays, typically in comedies. Twelfth Night‘s Viola and As You Like It’s Rosalind are, on the surface, women who dress as men for some sense of personal protection or gain. In historical context, though, there is an additional layer of intended comedy, as these roles would be played by men, who dressed as women, who dressed as men. Shakespeare also occasionally played the single-layer cross-dressing of male actors to female characters for laughs, with Falstaff’s drag scene in The Merry Wives of Windsor as one example.
This wealth of gender-nonconforming characters in Shakespeare “would seem to suggest that trans identity—even avant-la-lettre—has indeed been integral to Shakespearean performance and criticism,”[1] even though these representations are not necessarily accurate to the experiences of contemporary trans people, especially in the “female-to-male” roles. “It takes little more than a pair of pants to turn Rosalind into Ganymede, Viola to Cesario or Portia to Balthazar… the magical transvestism of The Pants is instant and absolute.”[2] Additionally, “across the comedies, all parties agree that affecting the personality of a young, bravado-filled boy is the formula for passing.”[3] Just about any trans person can tell you that transition is far more work than just wearing different clothes, and the last thing one wants to do to pass is to call attention to oneself. Despite this, “the representation of gender-nonconforming behaviors and characters that is intrinsic to so many of Shakespeare’s plays means that patrons do read the ’transgender’ onto and into Shakespeare when they bring their knowledge of contemporary gender discourse to the theater.”[4]
Today’s renditions of Shakespeare’s FTM roles lose the comedy of two layers of drag and instead are more often empathetic to the trans experience. In California Shakespeare Festival’s 2017 production of As You Like It, “[the director] Chiang chose to eschew Rosalind’s ‘reveal’ at the end of the play in favor of a re-entrance with the same casual butch Ganymede costume that Orlando fell in love with.”[5] Shaina Taub’s musical adaptation of Twelfth Night is also considerate of Viola’s gender: “Taub’s songs work to unpack Viola’s gender identity as well as her path to self-discovery… she stops and contemplates who she is when she’s not wearing a dress.”[6] Similarly, this version of Viola/Cesario has a far less cisnormative “reveal” than is typical, as “Orsino (and the audience) have fallen for her in a three-piece suit… and she’s grown to love herself like this. She takes off her suit jacket but stands before Orsino as he’s come to know her—in vest, pants, and short hair.”[7] It is worth noting that both of these adaptations continue to these characters as gender-nonconforming women, rather than conceding any sense of absolute transness.
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Taub's musical adaptation of Twelfth Night, originally performed in Central Park. [8]
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Meanwhile, Shakespeare’s MTF roles are often less empathetic to the trans experience, even today. Male characters in drag, such as Marina in Pericles, were a cheap joke to Shakespeare, and few contemporary productions do much to unpack or defuse those jokes. However, some aspects of MTF roles in Shakespeare do illuminate elements of the trans experience, such in The Merry Wives of Windsor, when Falstaff is beaten for being in drag, which “is almost too apt a representation of the threat of physical violence which attends gender transgression… The threat of physical and sexual violence persists as a trope of trans representation in modern media, sometimes in service of pathos but also as a comic bit exactly like Shakespeare’s. As a joke, the gag relies on the idea that the transfeminine character is ‘really’ a man and a benefactor of traditionally masculine strength.”[9]
One would think that we as a society have moved on from the literally-400-year-old “man-in-a-dress” jokes, but contemporary Broadway would beg to differ. As queer theatre critic Christian Lewis wrote, Tootsie and Mrs. Doubtfire are “rooted entirely in transphobic man-in-a-dress jokes,” and Mrs. Doubtfire in particular, despite having time to learn from Tootsie’s mistakes, “seems unaware that not all characters or jokes are created equal, and that man-in-a-dress jokes in particular are inherently problematic and rooted in transmisogyny.”[10]
One would think that we as a society have moved on from the literally-400-year-old “man-in-a-dress” jokes, but contemporary Broadway would beg to differ. As queer theatre critic Christian Lewis wrote, Tootsie and Mrs. Doubtfire are “rooted entirely in transphobic man-in-a-dress jokes,” and Mrs. Doubtfire in particular, despite having time to learn from Tootsie’s mistakes, “seems unaware that not all characters or jokes are created equal, and that man-in-a-dress jokes in particular are inherently problematic and rooted in transmisogyny.”[10]
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Tootsie's humor is rooted in transmisogyny.[11]
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Sagittarius Ponderosa, on the other hand, is incredibly authentic to the trans experience, avoiding these missteps in large part because the playwright is trans. The element of gender performativity in Ponderosa is immediately clear, as the protagonist, Archer, is described as “genderqueer” in the dramatis personae.[12] The first scene introduces a nebulous sense of disagreement between Archer and his family about his name, which is quickly clarified as Archer introduces himself to others outside his family with a different name to the one his family uses for him. The importance of his name, and his family’s acceptance of him, are primary themes within Sagittarius Ponderosa, which are so familiar to trans audiences.
Notes
[1] Sawyer K. Kemp, “’In That Dimension Grossly Clad:’ Transgender Rhetoric, Representation, and Shakespeare,” Shakespeare Studies 47 (2019): 121, https://web.p.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=2&sid=e59491ed-e5d9-40f7-9d3287f7f661bc49%40redis&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ% 3d%3d#AN=138977004&db=ibh.
[2] Kemp, “Dimension Grossly Clad,” 122-23.
[3] Kemp, “Dimension Grossly Clad,” 124.
[4] Sawyer K. Kemp, “Transgender Shakespeare Performance: A Holistic Dramaturgy,” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 19, no. 4 (2019): 268, doi:10.1353/jem.2019.0047.
[5] Kemp, “A Holistic Dramaturgy,” 279.
[6] Nicole Serratore, “Off Broadway Review: ‘Twelfth Night’ in Central Park,” Variety, July 31, 2018, https://variety.com/2018/legit/reviews/twelfth-night-review-central-park-1202891228/.
[7] Serratore.
[8] Sara Krulwich, Twelfth Night, Photograph, New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/31/theater/review-twelfth-night-shakespeare-in-the-park-shaina-taub.html. Accessed 3 May 2022.
[9] Kemp, “A Holistic Dramaturgy,” 275.
[10] Christian Lewis, “Gender and Sexuality on Broadway: You Oughta Know Better,” American Theatre, Theatre Communications Group, December 9, 2021, https://www.americantheatre.org/2021/12/09/gender-and-sexuality-on-broadway-you-oughta-know-better/.
[11] Matthew Murphy, Tootsie, Photograph, Playbill, https://playbill.com/article/tootsie-takes-a-final-bow-on-broadway-january-5. Accessed 3 May 2022.
[12] MJ Kaufman, “Sagittarius Ponderosa,” in The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays, ed. Azure D. Osborne-Lee et al. (London: Bloomsbury), 18.
See a complete bibliography here.
[1] Sawyer K. Kemp, “’In That Dimension Grossly Clad:’ Transgender Rhetoric, Representation, and Shakespeare,” Shakespeare Studies 47 (2019): 121, https://web.p.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=2&sid=e59491ed-e5d9-40f7-9d3287f7f661bc49%40redis&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ% 3d%3d#AN=138977004&db=ibh.
[2] Kemp, “Dimension Grossly Clad,” 122-23.
[3] Kemp, “Dimension Grossly Clad,” 124.
[4] Sawyer K. Kemp, “Transgender Shakespeare Performance: A Holistic Dramaturgy,” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 19, no. 4 (2019): 268, doi:10.1353/jem.2019.0047.
[5] Kemp, “A Holistic Dramaturgy,” 279.
[6] Nicole Serratore, “Off Broadway Review: ‘Twelfth Night’ in Central Park,” Variety, July 31, 2018, https://variety.com/2018/legit/reviews/twelfth-night-review-central-park-1202891228/.
[7] Serratore.
[8] Sara Krulwich, Twelfth Night, Photograph, New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/31/theater/review-twelfth-night-shakespeare-in-the-park-shaina-taub.html. Accessed 3 May 2022.
[9] Kemp, “A Holistic Dramaturgy,” 275.
[10] Christian Lewis, “Gender and Sexuality on Broadway: You Oughta Know Better,” American Theatre, Theatre Communications Group, December 9, 2021, https://www.americantheatre.org/2021/12/09/gender-and-sexuality-on-broadway-you-oughta-know-better/.
[11] Matthew Murphy, Tootsie, Photograph, Playbill, https://playbill.com/article/tootsie-takes-a-final-bow-on-broadway-january-5. Accessed 3 May 2022.
[12] MJ Kaufman, “Sagittarius Ponderosa,” in The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays, ed. Azure D. Osborne-Lee et al. (London: Bloomsbury), 18.
See a complete bibliography here.
Photo used under Creative Commons from Sharon Mollerus
