I'm facing an interesting dilemma right now in the world of theatre, and I'm very interested in getting folks' feedback on it, both from an artistic perspective and from a gender perspective.
I'm currently rehearsing with Theatre @ First for a production of
Much Ado About Nothing. I've been cast as Conrade - a small part, but an intriguing one. He is one of Don John (the villain)'s henchmen, but he doesn't actively get involved in the intrigue around which a major part of the plot centers.
From the beginning, the director said that the character is male. Not gender-neutral, not "it doesn't matter," not female. He's a male. A guy. So I took this seriously.
At this point, I like to think I've developed this character. I've had different ideas about who he is, what motivates him, what his emotional life is like, how he carries himself, what's important to him, etc., and they've evolved over time. One challenge has been the fact that I am, in fact, playing a man, and I am working hard both to emulate an appropriate physicality and to not fall into a general stereotype about what it means to "be a man." It happens that this particular man is a bit cocky, rather handsome, a bit of a brawler, generally street smart and knows how to ingratiate himself to get ahead. He can be scary if he needs to be, but prefers to make nice with people. He tries to smooth things over for his boss, who is peevish and seems to be in love with his own misery. He finds the company of Borachio, the fellow who hatches the plot and is a bit lower class, to be somewhat amusing but mostly simply tolerable. In short, he has depth, and personality. He's also a man, and I'm choosing to let that matter: I walk differently, move my hands differently, gesture differently, smile differently. I have my voice pitched relatively low, and move with a certain angularity and purposefulness. I take up more space, which for me is saying a lot.
The result is that there is a certain "male stereotype" about this character: I'm not playing a man who is geeky, or shy, or weak. I'm falling back on certain "easy" male characteristics that fall into the "macho" category. This is fine with me, and it's a hell of a lot of fun.
What I'm wrestling with right now, though, is how far to go with emulating the physical
appearance of a man.
I'm taking into consideration the fact that I will never truly pass as a man. Nobody is going to look at me and really think I'm male; my hips are nigh un-hideable, my shoulders are slender, my forearms, wrists and hands, which are showing with a T-shirt, speak volumes. So the question is: how far should I go with the drag? The director early on shot down the idea of my having facial hair; she doesn't want any of us to rely too much on makeup, costumes, or props to create our characters. But as an actor, I've always found physicality, props, and costumes to be key to my development of characters. For the costume, we're all going simple: I'll be wearing black men's tactical pants, a red t-shirt, and boots. I've already decided to go so far as to bind my breasts; I'm hoping to squish them in such a way that the emulate pecs, and anyway, I like having them out of my way for the overall feeling of how it makes me move.
But the other night I went to rehearsal in male makeup. I shadowed my chin and jawline, enhanced my cleft chin, darkened my eyebrows, broadened my nose, and highlighted the angles of my face. One woman, out of the corner of her eye, thought I was her brother. One person thought for a moment, "Who's the new dude?" A gay member of the cast suddenly found me hot. Let's just say it worked.
For some people though, it didn't. One fellow cast member said I should drop the makeup. Another speculated that my going full drag with the makeup was like asking a black actor to go in whiteface to play a "white" role, and that I should just let my acting and my character speak for itself.
I'm conflicted.
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roy_batty made the excellent point that doing male makeup at least makes it absolutely clear to the audience that this character is intended to be male, even if they have to potentially work a little harder suspending their disbelief. Without the makeup, there's some ambiguity left as to intent: is the audience meant to think that the gender of the character doesn't matter? Perhaps some will think Conrade's a butch lesbian in this performance; perhaps that he's a man, perhaps something else. This brings up the question as to how much it matters that the audience "get" Conrade is supposed to be a man.
My larger fear is that the makeup will throw some people off, distract them from the rest of my work. Indicating the character's gender is fine, but making the audience constantly think about the fact that there's a woman in drag on the stage, not so much. It would be different if I were playing one of those women in Shakespeare who poses as a man for whatever reason; this is something quite different, and nobody else in the show is really wrestling with it to this degree. There are other cross-cast actors, but some of them - like Dogberry - are actually allowing themselves to be a female version of the character, and others - like the Watch - are being somewhat male-performative, but letting themselves be kind of shapeless idiots rather than tough guys.
My thought at the moment is to downplay the makeup, but still make an attempt to masculinize my face a little bit. Thoughts from the peanut gallery?
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