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Fell into the bottomless pit that is TV Tropes for a few hours, then followed a link to the list of Things I'll Never Do When Directing Shakespeare. It's been a few years since I last read it, and it doesn't appear to be updated for a while, but many of the things are still painfully accurate to productions I've seen.
My own rules, not just for Shakespeare, would be something like:
1. When cross-gender casting, the cast and I will agree on whether the actor is playing the role in drag, or whether the character's gender is being changed from that in the text to match the actor. We will then stick to this decision.
2. When making the above choice, I will consider how gender-swapping might affect the plot and character dynamics, so the audience doesn't spend the play wondering why two unattached people of the opposite sex and the same social class are so angsty about their obvious mutual attraction; or why the hero's parents have given him a non-elderly female slave if they're anxious to keep him sexually ignorant.
3. If I have decided to put the entire cast in gender-neutral costumes, I will not have a woman play a character whom the dialogue indicates is a male homosexual. It's confusing, and may lead the audience to suspect that I don't actually know what terms like "catamite" mean.
All examples taken from plays I have seen/been in.
My own rules, not just for Shakespeare, would be something like:
1. When cross-gender casting, the cast and I will agree on whether the actor is playing the role in drag, or whether the character's gender is being changed from that in the text to match the actor. We will then stick to this decision.
2. When making the above choice, I will consider how gender-swapping might affect the plot and character dynamics, so the audience doesn't spend the play wondering why two unattached people of the opposite sex and the same social class are so angsty about their obvious mutual attraction; or why the hero's parents have given him a non-elderly female slave if they're anxious to keep him sexually ignorant.
3. If I have decided to put the entire cast in gender-neutral costumes, I will not have a woman play a character whom the dialogue indicates is a male homosexual. It's confusing, and may lead the audience to suspect that I don't actually know what terms like "catamite" mean.
All examples taken from plays I have seen/been in.
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Date: 2012-10-30 11:14 pm (UTC)From:Also, Pete Postlethwaite is a badass Father Lawrence.
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Date: 2012-10-31 12:34 am (UTC)From:I did his little explaining-the-sleeping-poison-to-Juliet spiel for one of the forced acting sessions in our english class :P
In a bathrobe.