And away we go!

Yesterday marked the official beginning of my thesis research, interviewing none other than the truly delightful Emma Pallant AKA Jaques in The Globe's As You Like It (2011-12). We spent a lovely lunchtime discussing Madame Jaques, Two Gentlemen of Verona set in a nail bar, and how Original Practice doesn't really mean original. I have gained some very useful and intriguing insights into how easy it was to transform a male character into a female one and why it is a liberating exercise for an actress take male roles. 

Characters like Madame Jaques and actresses like Emma who take them on, are opening the doors (or hopefully, floodgates) for more people to play (they are, after all, plays!) with gender. It is a way of opening up new insights into a character, asking new questions about who they are and giving us a deeper sense of who we are, and how rich and expressive human nature can be.

Emma will be playing Lady Capulet and the Prince at The Globe's Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank production of Romeo and Juliet next year. I can't wait.

Now, to typing the transcript...

Changing Sex and Bending Gender

The following quotation by Alison Shaw just grabbed my attention. It is from a book called Changing Sex and Bending Gender (2005) which I am ploughing through as I attempt to fill out my thesis proposal (due on Friday; still not done...)

'Short-term gender reversals in ritual, carnivale and theatre may provide symbolic challenges to conventional categories, but cross-gender impersonation is often highly stereotypical, usually serving to reinforce, for the audience, local ideas of femininity or masculinity as much as they challenge them.'

When it comes to men playing women I would agree (see post below about Love's Labour's Lost) but I'm not sure the same can be said when women play men. Then, there seems to be an effort to neutralise one's physical sex, rather than stereotype someone else's. I'll be interested to see how the upcoming Julius Caesar fits in with this.