This summer’s Shakespeare-in-the-Park tour has been, quite simply, remarkable – and one of the remarkable, much remarked upon, elements of Repercussion’s Julius Caesar is the show’s amazing all-female cast – and the comments that I’ve heard have been wonderfully encouraging both from a dramaturgical and a social perspective.
Our Artistic Director, Amanda Kellock, has noted that her all-female casting was driven, in part, by a desire to showcase local acting talent – the intense stage skills of fiercely talented women whose creative capabilities are too often given short shrift. Theatre, as well as its small- and silver-screen correlates, is a domain that suffers from an unfortunate gender disparity in the distribution of parts and lines (both historically and contemporarily), and is lagging in efforts to advance women actors through gender-blind casting. More specifically, Shakespeare, as a playwright, and Julius Caesar as a piece, may well be counted as amongst the worst offenders – the play is overwhelmingly male, with a disproportionately miniscule number of lines afforded to its scant female characters, and, worse yet, with a number of disparaging comments about the nature and capacities of women. To take this play, with all of its disappointing gender politics, and flip it onto its head, casting women in all the parts, fully demonstrates the inadequacy and fallacy of Julius Caesar’s conceptions of gender. The cast more than handily proved that the narrow codification of ability and character according to preconceived gender types is utterly untenable – one clearly need not be male to play a man’s part. Leni Parker’s Caesar was regal, absolute, and intimidatingly self-confident; Deena Aziz’s Brutus was agonisingly introspective, philosophical, and obsessively analytic; and Tamara Brown’s Lepidus was resolute, capable, and terrifyingly warlike.
These actors, along with all the other cast members, portrayed the play’s characters powerfully, faithfully, and in an impressive show of stagecraft. Most importantly however, they did so without any apology for biology – the script’s pronouns remained unchanged, and though we might have been watching an all-female cast, the performance drew the audience’s focus to the drama being acted out far more than the incidental biology of the actors. While there might have been a slight amount of cognitive dissonance when we heard complaints that Romans had grown “womanish”, it was easy to appreciate the irony of such lines, and break into a bitter-sweet grin. If we consider our suspension of disbelief as theatre-goers, we must recognise the performativity of gender in acknowledging that if we can accept the premise of any actor’s portrayal of a scripted character, there is no cause to assume that the actor’s gender need directly mirror that of the character. Just as we accept Charlton Heston as Mark Antony and Denzel Washington as Marcus Brutus, so too must we naturally accept Danette MacKay as Gaius Cassius and Miriam Cummings as Octavius.
Beyond the dramaturgical and on-stage ramifications of cross-casting Caesar, the more concrete, direct impact of this year’s tour on the audience is incredibly important. The reactions that I’ve been privy to, both directly and indirectly, have highlighted the need for a show like Repercussion’s Julius Caesar, and the positive work that the play and its audience have mutually enabled one-another to carry out. A number of critics and audience members have pointed out that, while it is fantastic that the production had an all-female cast, that aspect was not, in fact, the most compelling component of the play. The high calibre of the direction, the creative conception, and the performances refutes those that might seek to dismiss an all-female cast as a gimmick or politicising ploy – the excitement and tension produced by the cast demonstrates their talent, which, in turn, highlights the injustice of casting actors, not based on skill, but to prioritise their mirroring of a character’s given gender.
The discussions that have unfolded around Repercussion’s casting are encouraging, particularly in terms of youth engagement. Despite some concerns that Julius Caesar might be too bloody, political, or philosophical for younger audiences, I noted young theatre-goers quietly sitting through the performance, entranced. Staging a play which showcases talented women in powerful roles contributes to constructing a proper recognition of gender equality. It is important to note that those entranced children, appreciative of the production, of diverse genders, directly identified with the actors (I heard more than one, “I want to be an actor like that when I grow up!”), and accepted and respected powerful women (one child endearingly approached Caesar during intermission to ask if he could have her autograph). If one aim of staging Julius Caesar was to inspire conversations, then the plan was very well executed. I overheard one child explaining that his mother had screened a film adaptation of the play, and had then explained that the Shakespeare-in-the-Park performance would be the same story and the same characters, only with women playing all the parts. Given this preparatory work, the play and plot were already familiar, the all-female cast was not jarring, and as a consequence there was less pressure to sort out those elements, and more attention could be given to the performance itself. That Julius Caesar was presented as a sort of closed system, where the all-female cast is simply a fact of the performance (rather than a complication or twist to be prefaced and explicated), led the audience to simply accept the particularities of the artistic direction.
This is not, unfortunately, to say that all of the comments that I’ve received have been entirely positive – some have been infuriatingly patriarchal: from not seeing the point of having an all-female cast, to casual misogyny dismissing the notion of female heads of state (“An all-female Caesar? They’ll all go shopping.”). Typically, we tend to associate the arts with more liberal-mindedness – at least, I myself am guilty of equating the arts, and arts lovers, with an ouverture d’esprit. The negative and sexist reactions to something as inoffensive as staging Julius Caesar with an all-female cast have brought that presumption of liberality up short. Perhaps it has something to do with Shakespeare being very much a pet of the Old Guard, or with Julius Caesar being so heavily invested in militant masculinity… Or perhaps the resistance to Repercussion’s project can be more simply explained: gender performance is attentively scrutinized in stage performance, as bodies are literally on display, and out-dated, patriarchal thinking about acting has become entrenched, particularly with a play whose gender politics have not been challenged too directly over the course of its centuries of stagings. While the resistance to Repercussion’s all-female cast has provided various opportunities to practice calming breathing techniques, it has also proven just how necessary this sort of production truly is. Beyond those “teachable moments”, talking back to patriarchy and questioning preconceptions about power and gender, the Caesar team have provided an opportunity to engage in a reconsideration of the discourse around gender, gender performativity, and inequities within the arts.
Judging by the various comments, tweets, and posts, circulating during this summer’s Shakespeare-in-the-Park tour, a vital discussion has been sparked, and Caesar’s magnificent cast has provided yet another proof that “a woman’s might” is not to be disparaged.
Brava!