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Post by Deleted on Jul 7, 2016 17:18:24 GMT
She got free tickets thou! Every cloud...
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Post by lynette on Jul 7, 2016 19:03:13 GMT
Whaaaat! These days even saying a male anything is daft. I was in a place today where the loo choice was men or women and transgender. Confusing eh? Why not just a toilet?
But I really hope that the victim of this discrimination throws the book at the company and puts this into the public domain. How can you ask for a male or a female director when even casting for a Shakespeare lead, say Henry V, must now be open to every sex. I'm really shocked.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 7, 2016 21:06:03 GMT
It depends what the reason is, surely? If the reason is that some man at the top thinks that a woman, with her inferior female brain and tendency to hysteria, would be incapable of doing the job then the correct response is certainly to want his balls on a fork. On the other hand, the director of The Book of Life (as in my avatar) insisted on using female animation leads for all the female characters because he felt that the importance of those characters to the story required constraints on who took charge of them. Not every restriction is unjustifiable.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 7, 2016 22:17:12 GMT
even casting for a Shakespeare lead, say Henry V, must now be open to every sex. No, it's quite legal and generally acceptable to specify age, gender, race, accent, etc. in casting calls. Except when there is no justifiable reason for the specification. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 8, 2016 8:11:25 GMT
There are certainly fair circumstances where jobs (not just in theatre) could be assigned to specific genders- things like care worker jobs for example are sometimes advertised as such, or jobs with organisations like Women's Aid etc.
There could be a reason a male director was chosen/preferable if for example the play dealt with something very specifically male, like I don't know male pattern baldness (I chose a flippant one deliberatly but there are more serious examples you could run with) then as an artistic choice and as a feminist I'm fine with that. If however it's a case of 'silly little woman brain can't cope with the big job' then obviously no, not cool.
Talking of the casting calls, the Hamilton one ran foul of the internet when people who aren't used to the fact that casting calls can even tall you what dress size to be specified ethnicity.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 8, 2016 8:17:10 GMT
Windsor Fringe Festival have apologised - www.windsorfringe.co.uk/latest-news/Oddly one of the people apologising for the "unacceptable contents" of the email is the person who apparently sent it. |
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Post by Snciole on Jul 8, 2016 15:18:19 GMT
Perhaps I am being naive but I can't think of a subject where the director has to be male or female. Even a play about ejaculation or menstruation should have an open enough director who can say "I've not been through this but I can present a top production".
Imagine the rage if they had said to Miss Faguna "We suspect you are of African descent with that name and we would prefer a white director!"
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Post by Deleted on Jul 8, 2016 18:56:33 GMT
Perhaps I am being naive but I can't think of a subject where the director has to be male or female. Even a play about ejaculation or menstruation should have an open enough director who can say "I've not been through this but I can present a top production". While it's obviously ridiculous to suggest that if you haven't experienced something for yourself you can't possibly understand it, personal experience has to count for something. Many people could do the job, but if you have a number of equally good candidates in mind and one of them has first-hand experience that the others lack then why not choose that one for that reason? |
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Post by lynette on Jul 8, 2016 21:41:24 GMT
So a twin would be a better director of Twelfth Night for example, Matthew?
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Post by joem on Jul 8, 2016 22:02:40 GMT
I am thinking of writing a play about Fred West. Can anyone help me with this?
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Post by Snciole on Jul 9, 2016 13:39:31 GMT
Perhaps I am being naive but I can't think of a subject where the director has to be male or female. Even a play about ejaculation or menstruation should have an open enough director who can say "I've not been through this but I can present a top production". While it's obviously ridiculous to suggest that if you haven't experienced something for yourself you can't possibly understand it, personal experience has to count for something. Many people could do the job, but if you have a number of equally good candidates in mind and one of them has first-hand experience that the others lack then why not choose that one for that reason? If it was the case that the male director had more experience then that should have been said rather than the implication in the letter that it wasn't a judgement on her skill but a judgement on her gender and her ability to do the job as a result. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 9, 2016 15:05:15 GMT
While it's obviously ridiculous to suggest that if you haven't experienced something for yourself you can't possibly understand it, personal experience has to count for something. Many people could do the job, but if you have a number of equally good candidates in mind and one of them has first-hand experience that the others lack then why not choose that one for that reason? If it was the case that the male director had more experience then that should have been said rather than the implication in the letter that it wasn't a judgement on her skill but a judgement on her gender and her ability to do the job as a result. You haven't addressed the point I was making. What if the experience they want is the experience of being a man? I doubt anyone would have an issue if they wanted someone with actual experience of, say, front line military service, or drug addiction, or being black in a mostly white culture, or polar exploration, if such experience was relevant to the production. People would accept that someone who'd experienced something for themselves would have a better understanding of it than someone working entirely from their own interpretation of second-hand descriptions. Why does it have to be different where men are concerned? Are you saying that the experience of being a man is specifically something that all women understand as well as men do, or are you saying that bringing personal experience to a production never helps? Earlier I mentioned that The Book of Life used female animation leads for each of its female characters, as the director felt that those characters were the most critical elements of the story and had to be perfect. Would you also argue that this was wrong, and that women don't understand what it's like to be a woman any better than men do? (Of course, whether such experience is actually relevant in this particular case is another discussion entirely.) |
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Post by Snciole on Jul 9, 2016 18:00:20 GMT
Surely the writer should be the focus in those circumstances? The director should bring the piece to life through their creativity (whether trained or not). I don't know what this piece was that required a male director is but if it is decently written a woman should have been able to create something too?
Oddly I'd be less weird if they said "We need a piece from a young male about male suicide" but I (naively) don't think director should go "This happened to me, as man/woman/cat/dog so I am going to interfere with your script"
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Post by Snciole on Jul 9, 2016 18:04:43 GMT
I'd have no issue with a male directing a piece like The Trojan Women. Even if he wasn't Greek and hadn't been in a war.  I do wonder if the Fringe had, for example, used a woman last year and there was a quota for a man this year. I know I've applied for diversity bursaries where it clear, subsequently, they wanted a particular type of diversity that year. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 9, 2016 23:21:56 GMT
Theatre is so collaborative that a play written by a man about men and starring several other men won't lose any of its inherent manliness by putting a woman at the helm. What do they imagine she's going to do, direct the actors to behave in a feminine fashion? Refuse to listen when the men in the room explain how her idea doesn't tie in with the experience of being male?
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