Guest Post: Andrea Humez — Ruminations on the Obvious

I don’t know what the numbers are like in professional theatre (though I have the impression there’s a similar problem). But in community theatre, in my neck of the woods, women outnumber men in an audition by anywhere from 2:1 to 4:1. Most plays have at best equal numbers of roles for men and women, and many are heavily weighted in favor of male roles. Musicals are better balanced than most plays because they have choruses and the lead characters tend to come in couples; however, the modern trend is towards shows with smaller casts, i.e. fewer supporting roles and little or no chorus. Older plays — the ones with lots of characters, well-known names, and cheap and available performance rights — have the problem that they reflect the gender roles of their times, so the female roles they offer can be problematic, and the minor characters tend to be male because more roles in society (e.g. policeman, doctor, lawyer, pirate) were filled by men.

One way to mitigate the gender imbalance would be by widespread casting of female actors in male roles, but most directors don’t cross-cast much, and if they do, they only cast women in very minor male roles: e.g. you might cast women as the policemen in Arsenic and Old Lace female, but you’d be unlikely to cross-cast Jonathan or Mortimer. There are exceptions to this rule, of course, but they are infrequent. As a director, I understand why it works this way: cross-casting a part in which character gender is relevant (which is many of them, especially in older plays) is a compromise unless it’s part of an explicit artistic vision. If you keep the character’s gender male, you face the problem that a woman doesn’t usually make a very convincing man (though I had great luck with one of my cross-cast actresses in the production of The Rimers of Eldritch that I directed in November 2008; she went on to play another young man in her next show). On the other hand, changing the gender of a character often doesn’t fit well with the text (for example, in the production of King Lear that played Edmund as a woman, which worked all right until it came to the point where the sisters were arguing about who got to marry her).

I’m told that most modern playwrights write shows for smaller casts, because this is the only way to get a show produced if you’re not a big name. So, even an all-female or mostly-female modern show has perhaps 4 to 6 roles for women; not necessarily much improvement over a male-dominated show with a larger cast.

By the way, the problem is not a lack of good female roles. A substantial majority of plays have one or two great female roles. What’s lacking is numerous female roles, and also decent medium-sized female roles. Because, of course, with the pool of auditioning actresses so large compared to the number of available roles, those who are not top-notch often don’t get cast at all, or get cast as walk-ons. Meanwhile second-tier male actors often get minor-but-interesting roles and sometimes lead roles, since there are often not enough top-notch male actors to go around.

This imbalance has a reinforcing effect. Not only does a male actor rate to get more roles than a female actor of equivalent skill; not only does the male actor require less talent to get a better role; but in addition, because the male actor gets more and better roles, he gets more practice and therefore more opportunity to improve his skills (as well as his resume!).

I wish no ill no my male actor friends. But I wish something would improve the situation for female actors. I keep threatening to start directing all-female versions of plays written for mixed-gender casts, and one day I’ll get around to it, but what I really want to see is more parts written for women. Playwrights take notice: you have a giant pool of actresses hungry to perform your work, if only you’d write us some more roles!