On a Gender Bender

So things continue unabated. Or rather, the flux just keeps on fluxing. Everything is so blurry and fuzzy that I feel I must update you in segments.

The show. Rehearsals for The Day Patient began in force this week. I had three days of rehearsal and, though the first two went somewhat mind-clubbingly slowly, yesterday's day rehearsal picked up quite a bit. It's interesting to work on a play when the playwright is local; I met J. Sean Callan last week and he seems like an interesting guy. He's a practicing psychiatrist from Dublin who now lives in the Chicago suburbs (which one? Let's say Lake Park Oak Forest Grove) and he writes plays based on medicine and ethical conflict. Kind of like Chekhov except his plays have something to do with medicine; ie. our play has a number of scenes in a surgical theater. The play is good, I don't think it's necessarily great, but I have plenty to do. I've got four or five scenes in Act 1 before disappearing (we talked about why I disappear yesterday, so that was good in terms of character development). Because the auditions pulled talent that was almost entirely female across the board, all of the doctors, nurses, and administrators in the hospital have been cast as women. The only male character is the husband of the Day Patient. None of us are sure how this is going to go; the director has a concept about gender-neutrality that I'm not sure I can wrap my head around. His idea (doubtless sprung simply from the fact that he has a set number of roles to cast and hardly any men turned up to read) is based on the idea that we're all just doctors/nurses/admins without any nod to gender at all. But, in thinking about it, I wonder if there can ever truly be gender-neutrality. I'd be open to people's debate on this, but I think it's a fact that you can't ignore who people are onstage. Some lines simply come out differently if they are said by a woman than if they are said by a man. And you have to acknowledge who they're being said to as well.

For instance, a woman saying to a man, "You have no idea what you're doing," would be very much one thing tonally speaking. A man saying the same thing to a woman would come out differently, and saying that it points out some kind of social flaw inherent in gender dynamics doesn't mean we can write it off as making some kind of political statement. To take a character written to be a man and change him into a woman is fine to do, if you need to, but there are certain details that have to be addressed and altered. There is a moment in The Day Patient when the patient's husband refers to the doctor doing surgery on his wife and mocks him slightly, saying he can't picture a grown man with manicured fingernails. There is a slight accusational tone of effeminacy here, and the nurse in the scene with the husband doesn't contradict the husband to say that the doctor is actually a woman (in the script, the doctor is a man). In my opinion this bit doesn't need to be changed textually (I happen to think it's more interesting for the nurse to subtextually acknowledge that the husband has assumed the doctor is a man but choose not to contradict him on it) but to have the nurse listen and not acknowledge this discrepancy leaves a hole. The nurse knows the doctor is played by a woman, and gender neutrality doesn't work in this case because gender is in the script. Granted, the scene is still in rehearsal, and this might very well become a part of the scene before we open, but it's a case that made me think a lot about gender neutrality and casting in general.

Racial neutrality is different, I think. There is no reason Hamlet can't be Asian, Gertrude Hispanic, and Ophelia Black. I think that casting would work fine if everyone is the right person for the part. Because race isn't important in Hamlet. It's about family, and jealousy, and madness, and grief, and those things cross all the lines. But to cast something like A Raisin in the Sun with anyone other than African-American actors doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Or to cast M. Butterfly without some measure of racial disparity between the leads would be a Statement. I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm saying to do it would make the casting an Issue. I think a large number of directors today are caught up in equal opportunity and political correctness, and those things can be important, but the lines they cross have to be acknowledged. And gender I think is almost a bigger line to step across than race. You could stage True West with two sisters instead of brothers, but it would be super weird. There would need to be some script alterations, or the women would need to be butcher, or the point of the production would have to be how some things that sound perfectly natural coming from a man sound hyper-aggressive or just plain bizarre coming from a woman. (To be honest I think enough people know that already and there's no need to stage a whole production to prove it).

Thoughts? I want there to be equality in the sense that great scripts be spoken by great actors, and staged by great directors, and these problems may all just resolve themselves if that becomes the case. What do you think? Is gender neutrality ever really possible?

Updates!

Sorry for not writing for over a week. It's been nutty and waaay overbooked. Yesterday I performed downtown in a collaborative performance piece on bicycles (see the whole project described on a very pretty website here). It's a four-weekend series dedicated to celebrating the summer in visually interesting outdoor space.

Quite the blast. We did three shows throughout the afternoon, starting in Logan Square and working our way downtown to finish with a show on the white marble of IBM Tower. The airshow was finishing, so sometimes our bicycles formations were happening under fighter-plane formations, which gave the day an interesting parallel quality. There were six performers on bikes (of all types, which made for interesting challenges in rehearsal) wearing blue with tape decks (think 80s pushbutton) strapped to our backs. Each tape deck was recorded with one of the half-dozen or so instruments of an electronic symphony. Each tape had four minutes of silence followed by four minutes of ambient music, followed by a cue, then our symphony started. So we all gathered at the site, pushed Play, then rode away in random directions until our tapes started playing music, then turned around and rode back to the site. We rode in formations for a while, did some tricks on bikes in sequence and formation, then dismounted and slow-danced with our bikes for a bit. Then we got caught up in our excitement and ran off, lifting each other and jumping in the air, leaving behind bikes, helmets, and tape decks still playing the last bit of the music.

Our middle audience, at the Aldi in Wicker Park at Milwaukee and Leavitt, was the best. There were a lot of people on bikes along Milwaukee who pulled over, several cars pulled in to watch, and lots of folks just putting their groceries in their cars stopped to watch and smile. One guy almost drove into the middle of our formation, but stopped and watched til the end, which was the best outcome given that he could have gotten huffy and honked or something. All in all, a lovely day.

And I've been cast in a new show with Shapeshifters Theatre Company, which is the company in residence at the Irish American Heritage Center. It's called the Day Patient, written by a doctor, about the ethical questions encountered by a staff of medical personnel when a patient comes in for a day procedure and lapses into a coma. It'll run late September through mid-October at the Center, which is a bit out of the way but easy to get to from my house (relatively). So it's good to have a new show to do.

And it's strange to be working on a medical drama when my own life, job, etc is filled with medical drama of a different sort. I'm seriously looking at my career right now and planning for the future. I'm not going to blog about the particulars yet, because way too much is still up in the air. But great changes are in the works, and I'm excited and a little scared by the possibilities.

Let's Do Stuff!

So I was thinking the other day about my father's friend George, who rarely made plans and instead would go to his favorite table at a favorite haunt, then call his friends to say where he was, then wait for them to show up. I hate talking on my cell phone anywhere, especially in public, because I have these bizarre fantasies of celebrity couples in dark glasses looking harried and walking down the street hand-in-hand whilst talking on their cell phones to whomever it is they'd rather be seen with.

And I have been known to have a fakeout conversation on the bus or train once or twice before. What I mean by this is I've had conversations with no one, holding my phone to my ear, sometimes practicing a monologue I'm working on, or conjugating irregular French verbs, or having an argument with someone I know when the right comeback just came back to me at the wrong time. It can be very satisfying. And I figure I'm somewhat entitled, given the number of drivers who talk to themselves or fight with invisible people or sing awful karaoke to themselves while on the road. Like so many CTA "patrons" -- which the fuck IS it, customers or passengers?? -- I have no car, so I bring my crazy right onto the train with me. If it's gotta get worked out, if I've gotten bad news and need to sob, if I'm happy and I know it clap my hands, it's all coming on the train with me. I'd rather watch me interact with someone fictional over a phone that's real than listen to one more Trixie wobble on her stilettos, pole-dancing to keep upright, while chirping, "Rieeeeght? Rieeeght? RIGHT! Yeah! Yeah? NO! I KNOW!" for 45 minutes while traversing the city in the middle of the night.

ANYway, my dad's friend George. He had the right idea, but in my opinion the wrong method of execution. I don't use my cell phone in public unless someone is DYING. Even if they're dead, it's usually too late to do anything, so it can wait til I get home. Where I have a limited signal, but that's another post.

What I'm going to do is mention idly the things I'm planning to do, then if my loyal, sweet-smelling readers want to come crash it with me, they have only to show up. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you can always call me (eeew) or text me, "So, when you said free wine tasting, does it cost money? What's wine?" or whatever.

Here's the first activity list. I love my friends and I love doing stuff and I love meeting up. So try me.

Today, Thursday, August 7th -- I'm planning to drop by the weekly free wine tasting (see? SEE?) at lovely local wine shop Provenance. The one in Lincoln Square. They usually have four wines, and looking at their olive and cheese selection is kind of like porn for me. (Is it weird that I originally typed 'porm?' Huh). It starts at 6pm and goes til 8. I usually get there around 7 or so, but if you want to meet there earlier or later let me know.

Friday, 8/8 -- I dunno yet. The city is my oyster.

Saturday 8/9 -- Summerdance is doing salsa and merengue. Free dance lessons from 6-7pm, then free dancing with a live band 7:30-9:30. It's great fun. From there I'm going to a farewell party for my arty friend Man who's moving to NYC. His place is a kickass loft that used to be a soda-bottle factory. All kinds of awesome.

Sunday, 8/10 -- Free during the day. Surprise me. From 6-10pm I have a rehearsal in Winnemac Park for a performance piece I'm doing 8/17 ON MY BIKE. Hooray! If I have time after that I'm going to drop by the Thunder & Lightning Theatre Co. Meet & Greet over in Andersonville at T's. It starts at 7 though, so I may be a little late. Oh, well. There's no cover, so they're making money just by skimming the drink proceeds, which is awesome.

So that's that. There's free time and booked time. One thing that's interesting about summer is that I have a lot to do on the weekends. Usually the weekdays are packed and the weekends are kind of retreaty, but the city just plans so much for me when it's warm that I don't really have to look far to find something to do.

Maybe I'll see you?