by LHC
It’s been a joy to see our world taking shape, to watch Sarah Anne transform from Hallie to Henri V and to serve Annette’s regal Henri IV, and especially, to witness women fighting for the crown on the battlefield! I have the thought I always do at these moments, “this must be what it’s like to be a guy.”
Women are drawn to the canon for many of the same reasons male actors are: the language, tradition, the characters’ life and death stakes. But being a female Shakespearian actor often means having a great deal to look past, such as:
- Your character nearly being raped, then being offered up by your love to the would be rapist as a gesture of friendship
- Killing yourself with an asp to the breast
- Being strangled by the man you love for dropping a handkerchief
Being a non ingénue/romantic lead type (*cough ethnic cough*) means doing a lot of these re-gendered male roles. Along the way I’ve come to embrace that opportunity, because no matter how many times I play a Theseus or Leonato I always marvel at how different the experience is: Action that moves the narrative! Side characters with their own crucial scenes! Appearing in more than one or two of those scenes! Now, these opportunities come up in women’s roles, of course, but mostly for the leads. There just aren’t many equivalents to interesting side characters like the ones I play in Henri 4, Westmoreland and Worcester. Their character arcs develop over the length of an entire play rather than one crucial scene, (or the in case of Westmoreland, both plays).
Are roles like Cleopatra, Beatrice, Rosalind and Gertrude on my Shakespearean role bucket list? Absolutely! But hey, in the meantime I’ll enjoy not having to consider a corset and actually having lines in Act five.