Guest Blog: Artistic Director Scott Ellis Talks Gender-Blind Casting in Shakespeare

Recently, Dominic Cavendish wrote in the Telegraph that due to gender-blind casting, "men are being elbowed aside" and actresses should "get their mitts off male actors' parts". With that kind of hyperbole being thrown around, it's clear this topic merits a proper discussion.

In the past year, we've seen a female-led King Lear at the Old Vic, Henry V at Regent's Park, Henry IV, Julius Caesar and The Tempest at King's Cross Theatre, and - the latest addition - Tamsin Greig's Malvolia at the National.

While gender-blind casting has been normal at my company, Merely Theatre, for years, the question now is whether it's becoming a new normal for 'The Industry'. Or is it just a fad?

Arguing in the 'fad' camp, Ronald Harwood in 2016 branded women playing men in Shakespeare "stupid". Michael Dobson, director of the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham, seems to agree, saying, "Casting more women to play men could make it incoherent to a mainstream audience."

To them I would say, "It's 2017."

Britain is a country in which equality between men and women, though not yet achieved, is widely accepted as the standard we should be striving for.

In Britain, we also have the finest playwright in history. Unfortunately, at the time Shakespeare was writing, all actors were male. Only 16% of the lines he wrote are spoken by female characters. As producers of Shakespeare, we have a responsibility to find a way to cast as many women as men in this heavily biased cannon.

As Merely Theatre embarks on our 2017 UK tour, and with Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night being our third and fourth 100% gender-blind productions, I've been considering why we do it, why we do it the way we do it, and what the next steps are. Even if you accept that having more women playing male roles is a positive development, how should it be done, and why?

Writing for the Guardian, Mark Lawson defines two central decisions: "whether the gender of the character changes along with that of the actor, and to what extent the text requires rewriting." This is a question all the aforementioned productions have answered differently.

Our answer to this is a company of ten actors - five women and five men. Each actor is twinned by another actor of the opposite gender, and they rehearse the same parts together. Each performance uses one actor from each pair. The result is men and women playing every role in any and all potential combinations.

Do we change the gender of the character to go with the actor? No. To what extent does it need rewriting? Not at all.

Holly Williams of The Independent questions if "this spate of cross-casting might just be a way to grab attention in an overcrowded market. A sellable gimmick rather than a genuine paradigm shift."

The biggest challenge any trend faces is sustainability. By changing the gender of certain characters, directors have often either experimented with what it changes in those characters' relationships, or they're hoping to highlight a specific theme of a play.

Maria Aberg's production of The White Devil cast Flamineo as a woman. Aberg's aim? To "analyse how a female character might have taken on that oppressive system [of misogyny] and internalised it."

The opposite view is taken by Deborah Warner, who on casting Glenda Jackson as King Lear said, "The production will not be an exploration of gender: this is simply a chance for an excellent actress to take on a titanic role."

The Donmar Warehouse produced three all-female productions of Shakespeare's plays. To 'justify' why women were playing all these roles (most of them male characters) a strong concept was used: each was a play within a play, acted out in a women's prison.

Such a high-profile production sets a precedent of how gender swap casting is done. Is it necessary for others to have such a concept to cast gender-blind? How far should you have to go to 'justify' it? And at what cost?

Shakespeare with a strong added concept can be difficult to pull off. If every time a director/producer wants to cast as many women as men, they have to create a similar justification, we may see some extremely poor productions. I believe the plays are at their best when we try use what is there to the best of our ability, instead of changing them to fit our preconceptions.

Fortunately, Merely's system allows us to hit 50/50 casting without putting a concept on the plays. I confess, having twice as many actors rehearsed in for a play than is required for the performance is unrealistic for individual productions, but there must be other methods. We must find them.

If we fail in this, the general standard of Shakespeare productions with progressive casting may well fall below par. That is no recipe for longevity. We must put the quality of the art first and foremost. That is the only way the movement will be sustained.

A casting decision to include more female actors does not need to make a Shakespeare play better, or more interesting. We are already talking about the best, most detailed and intricate plays ever written. But these decisions mustn't make them weaker either.

As Holly Williams says, "We need to get to the point where, when asking who the best person for a part is, both halves of the population are considered."

Though my company currently offers equality of representation, the most important thing should be equality of opportunity. If you were to audition an equal number of male and female actors for every role, and pick whoever is best for each part, we would not guarantee a half and half cast. But we would provide those of both genders a fairer opportunity to get the job.

This requires bravery and imagination to see beyond the obvious, and look to the character traits an actor shares with a role, free from restrictions of gender. Four hundred years ago, audiences were asked to accept men playing women. It is long past time that we asked them to accept women playing men.

Find full tour dates for Merely Theatre's current productions here

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan