A bit of a thorny-mind-twister this week. I've followed a train of thought that started off with the question : "should drag queens play dame?" took a detour through websites of acting agencies and nearly derailed itself on the philosophical musings of 18th Century Germans.
Still, preferable to the transpennine express.
ToOt ToOt! All aboard!
Non-Binary Performers and the agents that represent them...
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What an AI thinks a gender non-binary casting website would look like.
by Anne AI
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This week we’ve been dealing with an agency (not pictured above) which divides its performers according to gender. Nothing unusual in that of course. A lot of agencies list their clients as male and female: it makes their list easier to search.
... this particularly agency divides its performers as follows:
1. Male
or
2. Female and non-binary
Which is an unusual -
- and thought provoking -
- choice.
🙏 Huge apols to all the sticky-beaks out there, I’m not going to name the agency here. Not because I think they’re doing anything wrong, or have anything to hide, but merely because I’m going to delve into some controversial topics and anyway… the ideas are the important things, not the individuals.
Let's go back and read that categorisation again:
1. Male,
or
2. Female and non-binary
...
...
...
...
elipsis
I don't know about you, but to me at least it’s a grouping that immediately stands-out.
? Why are the non-binary performers grouped with the female performers?
? What is it about the "Female and non-binary" performers that makes a cohesive group?
? Does that mean all these performers are biologically female?
? Does any of this matter?
? What's going on with the crazy formatting of this paragraph ?
"❓"
Question mark indeed! I don’t know about you, but if I was biologically female and told my agent: “My subjective experience of gender means that I don’t identify as a female, despite my biological sex,” I’d be a bit teed off if they then lumped me in with the females anyway.
🚩 I MUST FLAG at this point, that I am not non-binary. I feel very binary. I feel very male. In fact, I feel so binary that I struggle to imagine what it means to say “I feel non-binary.” That being said, I’ve met countless people who struggle to imagine what I mean when I say “I feel gay,” (in fact, truth be told, I’ve felt several!) so I am definitely not about to gainsay somebody else’s lived experience based on my lack of imagination. 🚩
However, as peeving as I imagine it would be to be non-binary and lumped in with the females because of my biological sex, I cannot imagine a world in which a performer who was biologically male comes out to their agent as non-binary only for their agent to relist their profile alongside all the women. Of course I could if they were trans… but non-binary?
My best guess is, the agent has grouped their clients together by casting. If a producer is looking for a woman, they’re looking for someone who can be read as a woman by an audience.
A Producer's Perspective
From the producer’s POV, does it really matter whether that person feels like a woman, or feels non-binary? After all, the audience won’t know… unless you put it in the programme. (Should we be mentioning it in the programme? Is that something that people care about now?)
The same logic presumably belies Spotlight’s decision to list “ethnic appearance” rather than “ethnicity.” I mean… if you look like you could be Greek, why not put yourself forward for the part of “Young Greek Man”?
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Ancient Greek Drag Queens were often children.
NO JOKE: click here for article |
The cynics amongst you may well note that “it’s all very well picking Greek as an example… you couldn't very well make the same argument for a dark-skin-tone white actor claiming to be black or mixed race.”
OH, COULDN'T I?!
No, I couldn't. You’re right. A better arguer than me would try to point out that the performative portrayal of Greek nationals isn’t contextualised by the same historical racism as black-face or yellow-face, but honestly, I think if the Equity Balkan committee came out up-in-arms, the industry would quickly capitulate.
Nevertheless, in a world where the difference between your Aladdin being cancelled or sold-out is whether your publicity shots feature someone perceptibly Chinese or not, producers may find some considerable value in “appearances” rather than “identities.” I can bet you a yuan to a dollar that there have been more than a few marginal casting decisions that came down to which white actor looked most like they could be part Asian. After all, nobody wants to shout “racist” at someone only to find out it’s actually you that assumed someone’s race!
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Artwork for Aladdin 2022.
Can you tell whether the actor on the left actually is Chinese
or merely has a naturally Chinesey face? |
But what about all those parts where producers are looking specifically for a non-binary actor? There are an increasing number of them. So much so, that Spotlight issues the following exemplar phrasing to anyone staging an all trans/non-binary cast:
‘We are looking for a cast of actors who present as trans/non-binary. We want to create a piece that is ‘gender euphoric’ and actively utilises the knowledge and lived experience of trans people within the work. If you are comfortable to bring your life experience to the production, whatever trans identity you have, then we’d love to hear from you.’
Well, in that case, you’ll hardly be wanting to trawl through an agency website to try and locate their non-binary needle in a haystack of female performers.
So...
What’s the alternative?
You could always plump for:
1. Male
2. Female
3. Non-Binary
But IMHO that feels intellectually clunky...
Non-Binary identities reject the received Male/Female sword of Damacles that hangs over the head of society. Surely NB should sit outside the binary, not alongside it! By which logic, I suggest:
1. Binary
2. Non-Binary
- with the first option forwarding you to a secondary page listing all the non-NB performers as Male/Female accordingly.
💻If you’re worried your NB performers may miss out on any other opportunities, you could add in a codicil to the male and female pages along the lines of: “We also represent non-binary performers.
💻You may like to consider one of our following clients…” and hyperlink to their spotlight pins.
💻If you really wanted, you could post something reciprocal highlighting all of your male and female clients at the bottom of your Non-Binary page, but that may be over-egging the pudding.
💻Or whatever the non-binary equivalent phrase is…
...over-gameting?
💁
Whilst this is conceptually neater, I’m sure that the practically-minded amongst you are already thinking: “what, so now I’m having to click twice every time… I can’t be arsed with that!” Which I think may well be the line-of-thinking the agency tried to head off when they lumped their NBs and their Fs in together in the first place.
GOSH – it’s all got so terribly complicated, hasn’t it? And so quickly! “We didn’t have any such thing as non-binary when we were kids and now all of a sudden, barely 50 years later, things have all changed!” Too true.
It's tough, all this change, isn't it? Here's a picture of my new puppy to cheer us all up again.
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Name: Toby Cousins-Richards
Gender: Dog |
So what has all this got to do with the panto? That is, apart from the possible increase of left-clicking-finger-RSI amongst panto producers?
Well, quite a lot as it happens.
Binary Gender and Pantomime
Other than Shakespearian pastoral comedy, Great British pantomime is perhaps THE genre of theatre in which the interrogation of binary gender is most integrally linked to the conventions commonly associated with the artform.
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A gender-bending all-female (and non-binary) cast performance of
The Taming of the Shrew at The Hope Mill, Manchester
OMG... this was AWESOME! Congrats to all the humans involved! |
BIG WHOOP! Saying “gender-bending is a defining feature of British pantomime” is hardly going to be a surprise to anyone reading this blog.
From the thigh-high-leather-boot thigh slapping principal boys (whose numbers appear to be thinning each year) to the big-boobied crin-spinning pantomime dames, every good pantomime has someone pretending to have a variety of genitals of which they are, in actuality, intercrurally bereft.
🐓🐱🏀🍆👄🍑👀🌂✅🔔🍐🍼🐍
Old Mother Hubbard went to the costume cupboard
to get herself something to wear
Old costume mistress, looked down with interest
Look! Wee Willie Winkie's down there!
- traditional Lancashire nursery rhyme
thanks to The W.W. Winkie Estate © no rights reserved
As important as F2M gender swapped casting is to the pantomime, allow me, if you would, to restrict my focus in this blogpost exclusively to the role of the Dame. Ta.
💋
Pictured below is the comment thread under my last blog post in which two posters are arguing whether the dame should be played by a drag queen or not. It was indeed this debate which kicked me off onto this series of fascinating tangents.
Are you squinting as hard as I am to read this? ⚠ CAUTION: In case my PhD supervisor is reading, I've had to phrase the following thought so precisely, the meaning of it has been rendered practically unintelligible.
Any successful parsing of a performative act in which a male performer depicts any female character, must necessarily be predicated upon the acknowledgement that binary gender is the ubiquitous, culturally-dominant paradigm through which semiotics are likely to be contextualised in society at large, and by inference the plurality of audience members.
Paradigm Pah-Rad-I'm (noun.) Defn. A way of looking at the world.
For example: "In order to sound cleverer than he was, the academic used the word 'paradigm' when he could have just written 'a way of looking at the world.'"
Now, just in case he doesn't read this, let me say it again, only sloppily and in ambiguous language.
Men playing women on stage is funny because most people understand gender to be male or female.
BINARY GENDER PARADIGM = THINKING THAT GENDER IS JUST MALE/FEMALE
In a world in which male and female didn't exist, the dame would be simply a human portraying another human…
... which is fine!
I’m sure a hilarious human would have great success when performing a well-scripted role of this type.
However, be honest, that’s not what you think of when you think of dame, is it?
The joke is
it’s a man in a dress.
At least, lots of the jokes work because it’s a man in a dress; and by corollary, most of the jokes we enjoy would fall flat were it not so to be.
e.g. 1 Picking a boyfriend
This bit is funny if you’re a man in a dress picking a heterosexual man who you then make feel uncomfortable by flirting with him (particularly if it’s in front of his wife).
You know, the ones that the grannies all laugh at, that go straight over an 8 year old’s head… “I’ve got something other women haven’t got” and the like.
These conventions work because we live in a world in which the shared paradigm through which the majority of people conceptualise gender is a male/female binary.
If a pantomime dame was played by your-dad-in-a-dress then the funniest person to watch the reactions of would definitely be your mum.
Of course, you could strip out the gags that rely on this binary, and still have a dame that keeps the crowds roaring… as any one of the great (and most notably Scottish) female dames can prove.
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Scottish legend and veteran panto dame, Elaine C Smith,
delighting a school audience with 10 minutes of improvised tableaux vivantes |
BUT if you are stuck on the your-dad-in-a-dress archetype, then ignoring the culturally-ubiquitous gender-binary paradigm just to appear woke would mean cutting out so many crowd-pleasing classics, you might as well audition for King and let someone else have the funnies.
Notice my careful description of dame as your-dad-in-a-dress… not, as the more well trod description has it: dame as a-man-in-a-dress.
A man-in-a-dress describes all kinds of people: pantomime dames, drag queens, Grayson Perry, catholic priests or anyone out on a stag night north of the M62.
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Boris Johnson as Dame Hard Brexit, battling on through the ghost gag
after a slow puncture left both of his blow-up boobs deflated.
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However, not all of these men are your-dad-in-a-dress. (NB I can’t actually prove that, but if I know one thing about your dad’s agent, she’d never agree to him doing that number of costume changes!)
Out of these groups, only drag queens see significant cross-over with the part of the pantomime dame. A cross-over which (as is evidenced by the FB debate shown above) is NOT UNIVERSALLY supported!
If you love reading somewhat conceptually garbled articles that try to claim that panto dame is in fact drag, try this one from the Grauniad.
In fairness to the Grain, the similarities between drag and dame are easy to see. I bet you could easily name a dozen:
They’re both men in dresses (1), often FABULOUS dresses (2), extraordinary wigs (3) have great big fake boobs (4) and a ton of make-up (5). Both characters are performed on stage (6), both interact with the audience (7), crack jokes (8), innuendos (9) and improvise (10) as well as regurgitating classic one-liners (11). And many of the best ones have a secret hipflask waiting in the wings (12).
Given the overlap, you may well be wondering: what stops a drag queen from being your-dad-in-a-dress? Answer – your mum! And that answer is not quite as frivolous as it may first appear to be.
I know, I know. STOP BITING MY HEAD OFF!
YES: There are straight men who do drag.
and some women,
and some bisexual men,
and also non-binary humans, and…
Before you list off the rest of the LGBTQA2SNB+ alphabet at me, you have to concede, in the broadest of brushstrokes, that the drag queen is an AOGMO (archetype of gay male origin).
The conventions of drag queen performance are borne of, and therefore contextualised by a history of gay men performing to queer audiences, in queer run venues, in spite of and in juxtaposition to the pervasive heteronormativite norms of the broader culture at large.
The performance of drag is a political act that challenges the heteronormative binary of “normal vs queer” – or as the gays amongst us grew up feeling: “them vs us”.
The power of the drag queen comes from the shared identity of the LGBT+ community. When we transplant the drag queen into the heteronormative family-centred performative context of pantomime, we alienate the archetype from the power it usually wields.
The drag queen dame finds herself in the exact same position as the dame that's your-dad-in-a-dress. Denuded of any external context, both types of performer must now make their hay from the shared male/female binary paradigm of the family audience… the very same heteronormative binary drag once evolved to reject.
Performing a drag-queen-as-dame demands that the members of the audience reframe the act of the male usurpation of femininity as a mask, no longer in terms of lampoon or bouffon, but as a declarative affirmation of the performer's queer identity.
OK, society has moved on a lot, but the truth of the matter is most people who have kids to take to a panto are straight. (Trust me, my husband and I have been trying to have kids for years. Still nothing. I’ve had my legs up against the wall and everything!)
Can a straight audience enjoy drag? Of course! But when they do, something fundamentally different is happening than when the same audience watches a dame who is a-dad-in-a-dress. They watch. They spectate. They do not commune.
Not in the same way the ragtag crew of a gay bar commune with the drag queen on Friday nights. Nor in the same way their granny and grampa communed with the cock-in-a-frock playing Twanky back in the 70s.
How could they?
How can a straight family understand all of the history, community, connotations that come with the drag queen?
They can laugh. But they can’t understand.
You may counterpose: "drag has evolved far beyond its queer meaning." You may point to Drag Race and mega star celebrity drag queens like Lily Savage.
And yes – it is true.
Just as our society has grown to accept and include queer people, queer performance and archetypes have both become much more accepted and represented in the public sphere. And all of this is to be much applauded.
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| Thanks for all the laughs, Paul. We'll always love you x |
The same hard work and bravery of queer activists that gifted acceptance and visibility to the LGBT community also gave straight society drag. When drag queens do panto they’re helping to edify that connection. They’re flying the flag for queer culture and for anyone who feels marginalised or excluded. WHAT MARVELLOUS WORK! Our drag queen dames should be supported and celebrated for all this and more.
It is utterly commendable.
But it’s different to what’s going on when you’re watching your-dad-in-a-dress.
When a drag queen tells a bloke in the front row “you’re gorgeous,” the line is contextualised within a gay paradigm. When your-dad-in-a-dress says the same line, it’s contextualised within a binary-gender paradigm.
And if all of that doesn’t scream Hegel to you… you must have slept through your BA epistemology tutorials! Shame on you!
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| Equity representative promoting rural, touring and regional pantomimes |
If you can bear to stay with me for just four more teensy-tiny, incredibly dense paragraph that reframe the debate using Hegelian Dialectics, then I promise I’ll make it all worth your while.
If you can’t be arsed, you can skip this bit and then just pretend you read it should we later bump into each other at an award ceremony.
If you're skipping, skip now!
In layman’s terms, and assuredly making a hash of it all, what Hegel argued was: for any idea (or thesis), it can only be understood in the context of it’s own negation (antithesis). True understanding means bringing these two thoughts together to reveal a greater truth (synthesis). Hegel was talking about logical arguments, but the same pattern continues when we think about identities. This is because identities are necessarily defined by juxtaposition to a defined out-group.
To understand what it means to perform drag, we must understand what it means to be gay. Gay identity can only be understood in the context of a heteronormative societal mores, with the synthsesis of these counterposing identities informing a queer paradigm. Thus, when a dame is performed as a drag queen, the audience’s reading of the character is contextualised within a paradigm of queerness.
However, when a dame is performed as your-dad-in-a-dress, the audiences are prompted to understand the character through the lens of the performer's maleness in juxtaposition to the femaleness of the character. It is the synthesis of these counterposing male/female identities that informs our understanding of binary gender.
NB Non-binary identities iterate this abstraction. To understand what it means to be non-binary, we must first understand what it means for gender to be paradigmatically binary, and then synthesise these counterposing identities to understand gender as a continuum. An interesting thought exercise for the academic is to ponder how this process might further be iterated, and in so doing to second-guess what type of novel identity may well be synthesised by the generation that follows.
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Despite attending 4 weeks of puppy socialisation
Toby still doesn't have even a basic grasp of Hegelian Dialectics |
IF YOU SKIPPED, PICK BACK UP HERE!
So where do I fall on this debate?
Well, I like watching drag, because...
I also love watching a man perform dame like my-dad-in-a-dress. I loved my dad... and my mum... with their weird heteronormative marriage, that they both conceptualised through their own little male/female gender binary paradigm. It is a paradigm that we all intuitively understand, even those who may no longer live within in it.
Would I laugh if my dad put balloons up his jumper, wore lipstick and said in a high, girly voice “ooh, me knickers are right up me bumcheeks!”
❓
You bet I would! I’d laugh like a hyena. And so would you. And so would your mum. And so would your agent's mum. And so would your agents female/non-binary client’s mum.
And there’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that it’s funny because, for the majority of our society at large, the gender binary that makes it funny actually exists.
Even if we reject it ourselves.
;TLDR
1. Traditional panto requires gender binaries
2. It is OK to acknowledge that for large swathes of society, the traditional gender binary is the dominant extant paradigm (even if we reject it ourselves)
3. There are important differences between how a drag queen is read compared to traditional dad-in-a-dress dames.
4. My preference is to script, cast and direct the dame like my-dad-in-a-dress, and to get my drag fix when I go to the gay bar. Other preferences are available.
5. Every dame performer, regardless of style, deserves our support and celebration.
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| Did I mention I've got a new puppy? |
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