My first acting role was in the 5th grade. I played Ebenezer Scrooge in our elementary school production of A Christmas Carol, donning my grandfather’s hat and shirt to play the crotchety miser through his transformation to benevolent holiday-maker. I created fake tears for the transformation scene using the hallway water fountain and rubbing my eyes. While this was a controversial casting choice in our New Jersey elementary school in 1978, my teacher, Mrs. Van Brackel, was supportive when I pointed out that there were no parts for girls in the selected play. That wasn’t entirely true. Mrs. Fezziwig had TWO lines. As Scrooge, I dominated that stage with the majority of lines. The play was probably just a bad choice, deliberately written without taking women into account. But I was ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.
How do you solve these types of issues in the theater, and by extension in the public sphere? I’ve been an avid attendee of the Tony-award winning Utah Shakespeare Festival since the early 90s. I haven’t missed a season, and all of my adult kids are similarly invested. We just got back from the 2024 season in July, and I’ll share my assessments of this year’s plays below. But first, let’s talk about what you do to address issues of diversity in the theater.
Everyone who’s been an American high school student knows that original Shakespeare productions did not include women actors. It was considered obscene to have a woman in an acting role, so “boys” whose voices were high enough and who had delicate features were cast in the roles of women. And yet, many of Shakespeare’s plays are *mostly* about women. There are male roles, obviously, and many of them are robust, containing incredible dialogue and soliloquys (I mean, Hamlet, come on), but the women are often pivotal characters on whom the plot revolves (Lady MacBeth, Juliet, Titania, Rosalind, Beatrice, the Merry Wives). Shakespeare renders them fully human, flawed, powerful, interesting, witty, and dramatically riveting. This is one reason his plays have endured the test of time–mostly.
Utah is largely considered one of the worst states in the union for women’s equality, coming in at #50 in terms of women’s pay equity in 2022 (at 70 cents on the dollar for women). The next worse state was Louisiana at 75 cents on the dollar. These issues are caused by a variety of factors, but the church’s influence on Utah culture is certainly a factor, along with promoting gender roles and placing secondary emphasis on women’s financial independence. When women’s labor in the home (childcare, domestic work) is an expected freebie, it bolsters male accessibility, opportunity and promotions,[1] and women with careers often have a harder time in the workplace when they lack this free domestic support. Policies don’t provide support to women who are considered expendable workers.
But the Utah Shakespeare Festival is usually not a place where these regressive attitudes prevail. On the contrary, the festival does a great job in general portraying and hiring a broad swath of talent including diversity of gender, race, and sexual orientation and identity. The festival also typically selects plays with diverse perspectives and roles in mind. I often feel as though the Festival represents the best the state can offer, but that it also is a teacher to Utahns, showing them a better way.
This year, though, I was surprised when they chose to perform one of Shakespeare’s most problematic plays: The Taming of the Shrew. In a session with some of the festivals women directors that I attended a few years ago, they discussed the issues associated with this play, and that there are only so many ways you can deal with how problematic it is. You can either rewrite portions, cut portions (but it would be a lot), or simply refuse to produce it. Many theaters will not perform it because it is so bad. This year’s production was probably the best performance of Shrew that I’ve seen, but it was still hugely problematic.
If you aren’t familiar with the play (which was also the basis of the modern adaptation 10 Things I Hate About You which rewrites away many of the problems), it’s a play within a play (although the “induction scene” in which a drunk man mistreats a barmaid, then is shown this play as a way to correct his behavior is frequently not used, this version did). In the play, a man has two daughters. The oldest, Katarina, is a “shrew” who is hostile toward suitors. The youngest, Bianca, is flirtatious, but also has her own interests. Suitors for the youngest encourage braggadocio Petruchio to marry Katarina so they can vie for her younger sister’s attention since the younger can’t marry until the older does. As soon as Petruchio learns that Katarina is wealthy, he’s all in because he has “come to wive it wealthily in Padua.” His sole purpose in getting married is to gain access to his bride’s money.
This specific production shows a Katarina whose behavior is so bizarre that it seems clear she is mentally ill; she is hissing at people and writhing on the floor. Petruchio ignores her behavior, pretending it is normal (he basically ignores her completely and just does what he wants), but then proceeds to kidnap her, starve her for three days, and punish her with more of the same any time she contradicts him when he is deliberately gaslighting her by saying the sun is the moon and other things designed to break her. Eventually she acquiesces and even goes so far as to lecture other women on why they should obey their lord husbands. Talk about Stockholm Syndrome! As we left the play, I overheard on old woman gush to her seatmate how wonderful and romantic the play was. My family all ranked it dead last of the seven plays this year, although it did give us something to talk about. Some of the performances were great. The director’s explanation of the play indicates that she felt that including the induction scene was sufficient to deal with the problematic elements of the play, but it definitely did not.
Here are my loose rankings of this year’s shows, with a little feminist commentary to boot:
1) Much Ado About Nothing. Hard to go wrong with this one as the script is so good. The actors were well cast and it was just delightful as always. Beatrice is witty and bright, smarter than her Benedict, but still subject to the manipulation of gossip from the other characters.
2) Silent Sky. I love these small cast productions. This one was like if you mixed Walt Whitman’s “When I heard the learned astronomer” poem with Hidden Figures. It’s about women doing astronomy computations at Harvard with really mediocre men as bosses but actually being the first to map the universe. And yet, Henry Shaw as a suitor really shines in the moments when he realizes how amazing Henrietta Leavitt is. He can’t come close to matching her intelligence or courage, but sometimes he recognizes it.
3) The Mountaintop. A two person conversation between Martin Luther King Jr and a maid who brings his room service and has her own opinions about civil rights, protests, violence and the future. She’s more aligned with Malcolm X’s vision for how to achieve civil rights, and she challenges a lot of his thinking with her fiery and irreverent personality.
4) A Winter’s Tale. I have to be honest and say that I’ve never been a fan of this play before, but this production was honestly fantastic. It also has the best set of the Shakespeare plays this year. Hermione steals her scenes, even though jealous Leontes is also very well cast. This is the first time I’ve found the statue scene not to be ridiculous.
5) The 39 Steps. This is the third time we’ve seen this play, and while it is a fun sendup of the Alfred Hitchcock movies, and always has the cast of four cracking each other up, it also feels like sometimes the actors are having even more fun than anyone. In this version, the role of the two clowns (the actors who play all the background characters) are played by a man and a woman, both of whom play characters of both genders.
6) Henry VIII. It is rarely performed and was definitely Tudor propaganda, but it centered Katherine of Aragon quite a lot, considering it was really an homage to the patron ruler, Elizabeth. Kind of like The Tudors series minus the nudity and action and a lot of the characters. While the play says it’s about Henry VIII, it’s really about the women: Katherine of Aragon, her ladies in waiting, Anne Boylen, and Elizabeth I–them and Cardinal Wolsey.
7) Taming of the Shrew. Despite some first rate performances across the board (my personal favorite was Gremio), it’s a bad play with a misogynist message that can only be made slightly better by a lot of changes. It’s always interesting to see how directors tackle the problems with the play but ultimately, things that may have been funny in 1600 are not now.
We also attended the fundraiser the actors put on every Thursday (a $10 donation gets you in), in which they put on comedic skits and perform songs. One of the actors (a British woman who played a Scottish “computer” in Silent Sky–our favorite character in that play) recited the balcony scene from Romeo & Juliet using a variety of increasingly specific accents. It was very funny! There were also two great musical numbers with male actors singing showtunes that are traditionally performed by women. A few years ago they did an all male version of “He Had It Coming” from Chicago.
The festival has also done gender-neutral casting in various productions in the past, as well as non-binary casting. These efforts are important, IMO, to give actors access to roles based on their ability, not just based on the sex the character is written to be. After all, without gender-neutral casting, isn’t it just discriminating based on sex? Acting is already pretense after all. We don’t only cast actual kings as Richard III.
There is a different perspective among some actors who feel that only a member of a marginalized group can portray that marginalized group (e.g. a disabled actor portraying a disabled person). When it comes to portrayal of races, it’s probably a good point. I haven’t seen the movie Tropic Thunder in which Robert Downey Jr plays a white actor cast as a black man, and I also haven’t seen White Chicks in which the Wayans brothers portray white women. There was also controversy over Emma Stone being cast as a biracial Asian woman in Aloha. Additionally, both Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, straight men, were cast as gay cowboys in Brokeback Mountain. In general, I tend to think that actors can portray marginalized groups they don’t belong to, but also that people who belong to marginalized groups should be cast to roles that are not part of their marginalized group. There was a fantastic actor at the Utah Shakespeare Festival whose Richard III was the best I’ve ever seen. I only realized in the second performance we saw him in that the actor is blind.
- Do you think gender-neutral casting is a benefit to audiences, actors, and culture in general?
- Do you think efforts like this broaden thinking or is it too hard to get people to change their set ways?
- What parallels do you see between gender-neutral casting and how we introduce more diversity into the workforce?
- Do you think roles should go to actors based on their identity or group, or that more roles should go to actors regardless of their identity or group?
Discuss.
[1] Utah is the only place I ever heard a male co-worker openly state, without embarrassment, that his wife forgot to iron his shirts.
Wheat & Tares 
My goodness that’s a lot of plays to see. We go down to OSF
Truncated again. Oh well. I sing a lot of covers. Judds, Joni, Willie or Bruce makes no difference if I like the song. I used to adjust lyric gender but don’t bother anymore.
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I get to the theater a couple of times of year, and have seen many plays in my days. I generally think that I would not pay good money to see a portly 60 year old man with tattoos playing Romeo with a wheel-chair bound 70 year old playing Juliet, even if both could recite their lines perfectly. Both Romeo and Juliet must convince the spectators that they’re younger than the people playing their parents, for example. I wouldn’t want to see 30-something Bob and Bill with beer bellies and two week’s facial hair cast as Romeo and Juliet.
Casting is a very difficult matter. I want Cornelius and Gertrude to look like a couple of a mature age, and I want Hamlet and his friends to look like they’re in their late teens or early adulthood, with the actor portraying Hamlet a man and Ophelia a woman. I would be OK with mixed races, but I’m not keen on mixing sexes. I am fine with putting King Lear in a modern setting, but Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia need to be women; the former two can be women of a certain age and need not be beautiful, but Cordelia should be pretty. Many roles need not be race specific, but some are gender specific. Would people pay money to see Oedipus played by Helen Mirren and Jocasta by Sylvester Stallone? without it descending into comedy and farce? The role of Tiresius could probably be changed from prophet to prophetess, but it probably shouldn’t be a woman playing the male Tiresius’ part. If we cast a woman, then the part should become a female part, with women’s clothing and pronouns.
When I go to see the Magic Flute at the opera, I already know every note, and I don’t want the music changed. I’m OK with cutting out a couple of arias for time, and I happily anticipate seeing how a new production will do certain scenes, but I don’t want to see three men in drag and singing falsetto for the Three Women. The same is true to some degree for theater. If you’re calling it Shakespeare’s Othello, not only should Othello be Black, but Desdemona almost has to be something other than Black, and Brabantio’s race should match Desdemona’s. Othello, brilliant as he is, is a Moor, and casting Timothée Chamalet as Othello would deprive the play of its racial component. Othello is wronged, in large part, because of his race, and we should not hide that.
But there are many others with other thoughts, and who is to say one is right and the other wrong? The casting director gets to make that call, I suppose, and if it is poorly done, the production may fail because of those decisions. A production may also succeed if a casting director has a talented actor, and stretches to cast the actor so that he/she can shine, and if done well, the spectators won’t be offended.
Nearly 20 years ago I saw a production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar with all the male roles performed by women and all the female roles performed by men. It was more interesting than compelling, probably because the casting created a lot of distraction. It definitely changed the way I perceived the play and the impact it left. It was also interesting to me that it was more “comfortable” to watch women playing men’s roles than to see men playing women’s roles. I do wonder if that would still be the case.
My daughter graduated from SUU in Theater and was a part of the technical crew for three years until she was able to go to Cal Arts and get a Masters Degree there in Props. She is now the Shop Director at Center Theater Group in LA at the Taper, Douglas, and Amasson Theaters. So because of her and through her I’ve been going to the Utah SF for a long time. I’ve always felt they have had a great program. I’ve also noticed in the past few year that they have worked very hard with the plays they do to make them relevant to todays issues, whether through casting or emphasis of certain parts in the play through their acting and dialog. Let me just say that Theater more than any other art form is a place where ideas are exchanged between writers, directors, actors, and the audience. It’s fluid, it’s intense, and it’s an in your face place to promote and push ideas and get immediate feedback.
As for the “Iron my shirt” comment heard in Utah. Well Utah is a great place to isolate yourself from reality. Maybe if we keep going to good theater, like at the USF, we can grow a bit as a state.
So, as someone who regularly teaches Shakespeare, I have thoughts.
The first, regarding the play’s misogyny: Of course the play is offensive to contemporary, enlightened sensibilities. It should be, on more than one level. It’s also important to note (I’m not defending the play, merely pointing this out) that in Shakespeare’s time, this would, indeed, have been a comedy; the people of his day would likely have found the play funny, for any number of reasons. Sadly, we are well aware of the ways in which any number of marginalized groups have historically been singled out for ridicule and humiliation in the name of “humor”. This still goes on of course; see the current defense of “can’t you take a joke?” when someone says something insulting about another person or group and gets called out on it. And humor, as you point out, is one thing that is especially dependent on socio-cultural contexts, which generally change a great deal across the historical continuum. On the other hand, it’s worth remembering that a lot of Shakespeare’s smartest and most complex characters are women: Cleopatra, Volumnia, Beatrice, Viola, etc. I don’t agree with those who try to make the play into some sort of oversimplified feminist treatise (though Conall Morrison, director of the RSC’s 2008 production of the play, makes an interesting case along those lines), but I do think the play may offer itself to more than one interpretation, and it is worth noting that Shakespeare seemed quite aware of the misogyny of his day and often used female characters to push back quite aggressively against it (think of Hermione and Paulina in A Winter’s Tale, e.g.), so it might be worth at least considering that he might have had more than one motive when it came to TOTS, though you’re certainly right about the undeniable misogynist undertones of the play. Much of all of this, of course, as you note, depends upon the individual production, the direction, the actor’s choices, which scenes get cut, etc.
The second, about casting/diversity, etc., I think, can get a bit tricky, I suppose, but I’m an absolute believer in diversity here. There are some famous casting decisions that now seem disastrous and offensive (Laurence Olivier as Othello, e.g.) and also some casting decisions that deliberately work (successfully or not) against assumptions about actors’ identities (see the 1997 version of Othello, featuring Patrick Stewart as Othello and BIPOC actors as all the other cast members). So things can get tricky when it comes to casting, but for me, a big part of this is simply a labor/employment issue. As many incorporated entities (whether IBM or the RSC) have embraced diversity more and more, one positive aspect has been that more people with a variety of identities have jobs. The pragmatist in me just always thinks that’s a good thing; more people with many different identities/backgrounds get the chance to have careers and to achieve their desires, and we should always celebrate that. The same when it comes to casting in movies, TV, and theater. The more opportunities we can create for people from traditionally marginalized groups, the better. So no, I don’t mind going to see a contemporary production of a play that might not have originally featured actors of certain identities, for example, but now does. I see that as progress, and I’m enough of a fan of that progress that I don’t mind if, according to a strict, historicist interpretation of the play, such casting may appear to some to be anachronistic.
Brother Sky: So glad to have your unique perspective in this discussion, and of course it’s clear that things that were not offensive to Shakespeare are now. Obviously, the anti-semitic views in Merchant of Venice, but another role that appears in many of the plays is the court fool or jester. While we tend to think of (and portray) these individuals as the wise men (or women–both casting works well for these) who can speak truth to power, the reality is that courts often had mentally slow or disabled people they kept as pets who literally slept with the castle dogs, and yes, sometimes they say things that are wise, sort of by accident. The reality is appalling by today’s standards (and not all “fools” fit this description). These individuals are more evident in artwork from the era, but Beatrice’s speech about Benedict (to the masked Benedict) hints at it as well: “Why, he is the Prince’s jester, a very dull fool; only his gift is in devising impossible slanders. None but libertines delight in him, and the commendation is not in his wit, but in his villainy, for he both pleases men and angers them, and then they laugh at him and beat him.” Beating the court fool, in addition to other mistreatment, wasn’t uncommon.
I like the trends towards diverse casting. Netflix’s adaptation of Bridgerton, which is set in Regency (I think) England, has a diverse racial cast despite upper-class England being 100% white. Same thing with the race-diverse casting in the musical Hamilton. Gender swapping certain characters also works in a lot of situations. Not every situation, but experimenting with new stuff in theater is part of the purpose of theater.
I read about a production of Hamlet in which Hamlet is a chicken. Like, a literal chicken. They put the chicken onstage and the human actors say lines as if the chicken is speaking Hamlet’s lines. That sounded really funny. (Grand Island Theater at Minnesota Fringe; I just googled it).
As far as Taming of the Shrew, perhaps the show is relevant again. We have a political party trying to roll back women’s rights. If Project 2025 is successful in restricting birth control, getting rid of no-fault divorce, and some of its other goals, then men are more free to treat women badly. The audience’s reaction is certainly interesting. You were horrified by it, but that other woman thought it was romantic. TOTS would be rather a litmus test about what people think of marriage and gender roles. Do we want to go back to a society in which the behavior in TOTS is common and considered funny? Some do.
“Do we want to go back to a society in which the behavior in TOTS is common and considered funny? Some do.” And some never left it. My guess is that this older woman in Utah fits into that description.
“Do we want to go back to a society in which the behavior in TOTS is common and considered funny? Some do.” Watching Taming of the Shrew, and laughing and enjoying it, are not the same as wanting to go back to Elizabethan customs and mores. I can watch a movie about Augustan Rome without wanting to re-live slavery on the bottom or an emperor on top. I can watch Pirates of the Caribbean without wanting a resurgence in piracy on the high seas.
I think modernization can work, sometimes. I don’t think that Huckleberry Finn would work if we re-wrote it (keeping the author and title unchanged) with zero reference to race, with Jim being simply a same-race travelling companion instead of a run-away Black slave. Would Star Wars have been successful if the story was about Lucy Skywalker reconciling with her mother, Darth Mater? Would Harry Potter have been successful if it was about Harriett? and if her nemesis was Dracessa Malfoy, a “bad girl” cheerleader from Slytherin House? Ms Rowling could have written her books differently, but would it have sold as many books? Would the movies have made as much money? I’m not ready to see a woman singing Papageno with a woman Papagena (The Magic Flute). It isn’t just boy-girl: Papageno’s baritone (although originally bass) is a great variation (relief?) from Tamino’s tenor and the many soprano parts.
I remember seeing the 1967 version of The Taming of the Shrew (Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Michael York) on TV in the 1970s, and while young I certainly saw nothing that presented itself as normative for modern family life. What made the movie good was how well Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton played their roles. I don’t think that men identified with Petruchio as a role model, nor did women identify with Katherine as a role model. What we could appreciate was some very fine acting. I think it is also important to see how women were treated, and to see what both men and women laughed at in earlier societies, so that we can learn from them areas where we can improve.
I don’t think that Jackie Gleason represented (or was supposed to represent) ideal manhood in the home: indeed, his wife usually came out better. Lucille Ball could poke fun at women’s stereotypes or tropes, and she made good money at it, and she was no misogynist. Humor often comes from context, and context is often temporal, and what was funny to some in the past isn’t funny to others now. I appreciate Fred Sanford’s TV series and I can laugh out loud, although many would be embarrassed to admit that they also find Sanford and Son to be great comedy. I’m not ready to consign The Taming of the Shrew to the flames of the burning book pile. I am open to new productions, but if they use Shakespeare’s name, then I want to see something somewhat Shakespearean.
My interest in TOTS begins and ends with Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate. It’s a good mash of theater, music and dance with Shakespeare on the side. Any Tom, Dick or Harry Will Do while you Brush Up Your Shakespeare. Our daughter did it in high school, along with other forgotten musicals like Damn Yankees. The music I grew up with in the 1960’s. My dad was a Broadway show fan, and would play his stack of musical LP’s every Sunday morning.
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thhq: NGL, I too grow up loving Kiss Me, Kate (while hating the message which is still misogynist). I loved Ann Miller so much I actually took tap dancing as an adult!
Here’s some Ann Miller for the ages. Though my favorite routine is in On The Town.
I asked our daughter’s high school director if he’d ever considered doing West Side Story. He said he didn’t have the dancers. True that.
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We saw the play Kiss Me Kate in July. I had been very much anticipating it, having seen and thoroughly enjoyed the movie when I was young. It hasn’t aged well. Misogyny veering into outright abuse. It joins the list of plays, movies, books I used to love, but now can’t watch. It’s sad in some ways, but a sign of growth at the same time.
At the festival last year, I learned that Shakespeare comedies are by far the best ticket sellers, and also, that they are in the midst of a project to play every single Shakespeare work, even the most obscure, within a certain number of years. So maybe a combo of those two reasons explains the choice to perform Taming of the Shrew?
I issue my strongest possible condemnation to the Taming of the Shrew. It has all the sensitivity of a flatiron, combined with the personality of a truck stop hot dog machine.
The Taming Of the Shrew is a marvel. One aspect that I love is that It highlights that appearances are often not what they seem. You are called KateBianca is not the meek and mild beauty she appears to be. Bianca’s tutors are not who they seem to be. And a shrew may tame the tamer. Petruchio as part of the marriage agreement leaves all his property to her, totally unusual in Elizabethan England. “And where two raging fires meet together,
They do consume the thing that feeds their fury.
Though little fire grows great with little wind,
Yet extreme gusts will blow out fire and all.
So I to her and so she yields to me,
For I am rough and woo not like a babe.”
And at the end, “We three, are married, but you two are sped.” You bought the package but I won my equal in wit, wisdom, and love…
I kind of want to know more about these truck stop hot dog machines.
We learned at our TOTS play seminar that 1) The surviving text of the play is very problematic, with a lot of questions as to how close it is to what was actually written by Shakespeare, 2) The play appears to be commenting on the marriage and romance traditions of an earlier age; in Shakespeare’s time, marriages for love were the standard while in an earlier generation, which appears to be represented and lampooned in this play, marriages were often arranged by the parents and marriage was deemed to be utilitarian more than romantic; the wife placing her hand under her husband‘s foot apparently was lifted from a French text from that earlier generation that indicated women should prostrate themselves completely so that their husband could put his foot on them, but in Shakespeare’s time this was considered absurd (I don’t know how Shakespeare could treat it any other way, given that Queen Elizabeth was alive and showing up to his plays when TOTS was staged), 3) Shakespeare likely intended the largest man in the company to play Kate, which of course would have subtracted from the illusion that it was a woman being subjugated. At one point a stage direction indicates that Kate needs to carry a horse. Perhaps the play was just an elaborate excuse to watch one man and abuse another in a comical way.
Fun fact: We learned in the actors’ seminar that the two actors who play Kate and Petruchio in this year‘s USF TOTS are a real married couple. I easily found them on Facebook and it looks like the wife is LDS or formerly LDS as she graduated from BYU. So there’s that. 🙂 She did say that her favorite moment in the plays she was acting in this season was when she as Kate gets to spit in her husband’s face and that she based her tantrums in the play on the tantrums of their three young children.
The Other Marie: That is interesting about the actors. I saw she was a BYU grad, and I wondered if they were married because I was getting a vibe. It’s not so much chemistry between the actors as it is familiarity. Her physical comedy was good, and they were both very funny, but there’s not much you can do with the speeches. I found the induction scene to add basically zero toward fixing the problems, although the director hoped it would. I guess the Petruchio actor is the new artistic director, so we will probably see a lot more of both of these actors in future seasons. The idea of casting the largest man to play Kate in Shakespeare’s day makes sense–the play just becomes physical comedy, not an exploration of marital themes really. I still find it appalling that any woman in the audience found it swoon-worthy.
I’m wondering why “Shrew” is raising hackles when a large part of the US electorate seems to be fine with treating women as chattel, without bodily autonomy, and going so far as to say that women shouldn’t vote? Harken? Submit? Obey?