Actor or Actress?

[HereAndThere2]

Posted: 3/27/19 at 4:33pm

Which term is preferred for a female:   "Actor" or "Actress"?

Updated On: 3/27/19 at 04:33 PM

[Plannietink08]

Posted: 3/27/19 at 6:48pm

Actor.

[dramamama611]

Posted: 3/27/19 at 7:15pm

Actor.

[JBroadway]

Posted: 3/27/19 at 7:42pm

I was thinking about this just the other day, actually. Because for years I’ve been saying we should just use “actor,” but then I caught myself a few times recently using “Actress.” After some analysis, I realized that I was using “actress” when referring to someone, like “one of the actresses in the show had incredible diction.” But then using “actor” when directing describing someone’s profession, or when talking about their skill level. For example “Bernadette Peters became an actor at a young age” or “Bernadette Peters is an incredibly skilled actor.”

I just thought that was an interesting linguistic habit I noticed, but really I think we should always be using “actor.”

[teh_pretty]

Posted: 3/27/19 at 8:51pm

Actor. You don't call a female doctor a "doctress" or a teacher a "teachress."

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 3/28/19 at 1:29am

Popular usage isn't going to change as long as every single award show distinguishes between "Best Actor" and "Best Actress". Not even Meryl Streep (whom I have heard call herself an actor) can change the world alone.

[bwaylvsong]

Posted: 3/28/19 at 9:09am

“An actress can only play a woman. I'm an actor, I can play anything.”
-Whoopi Goldberg

[yankeefan7]

Posted: 3/28/19 at 9:54am

"Popular usage isn't going to change as long as every single award show distinguishes between "Best Actor" and "Best Actress". Not even Meryl Streep (whom I have heard call herself an actor) can change the world alone."

Good point. It should be changed to "Best Female Actor" or just have one award with men and women combined.

[theatregeek6]

Posted: 3/28/19 at 10:20am

yankeefan7 said: ""Popular usage isn't going to change as long as every single award show distinguishes between "Best Actor" and "Best Actress". Not even Meryl Streep (whom I have heard call herself an actor) can change the world alone."

Good point. It should be changed to "Best Female Actor" or just have one award with men and women combined."

when does the CIS-gendered view end?

[BwayGeek2]

Posted: 3/28/19 at 11:00am

Actor!

[JudyDenmark]

Posted: 3/28/19 at 12:00pm

theatregeek6 said: "when does the CIS-gendered view end?"

Ok. The vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of the world is gendered. The animal kingdom is gendered. That's just biological reality. That doesn't meant that trans and nonbinary people don't exist and don't deserve equal love and acceptance by society, or that someone's character is any less because they don't fit a gender norm... but I think it's absurd to suggest dismantling a pretty basic element of humanity to accommodate the tiniest fraction of the human race that's nonbinary. 

We don't build buildings with padded walls and floors to accommodate people who have brittle bone disease, but that doesn't mean that they don't matter as people. If you went to another planet and were explaining humans to an alien species, you might say "humans have a head, a torso, two arms, and two legs," which is a fair and accurate basic description of our species, but that doesn't mean that people born without an arm don't matter. I'm adopted, which is a core part of my identity, but when people make the "I'm so glad your parents had sex" joke on birthdays, or talk about the irreplaceable connection between biological parents and children, I don't jump on a soapbox to scream outrage, because I recognize that the overwhelming majority of people on this planet were naturally born to their parents. It doesn't apply to me, so I move on.  

Sometimes when something's that much of a majority, it statistically matters. Cisgendered people are a vast majority - so that "view" is never going to "end." (It also sounds like you're implying that cis = anti-trans, which...???)

I have no doubt that I'll be skewered for saying this, and if the mods have to take this down I get it, but I had to say it. The fight right now should be about getting backwards bigots to accept and embrace trans and nonbinary people as fellow humans who are deserving of love - there's still so far to go on that front. And certainly representation and visibility is a big part of that. But I think it's delusional to think that the world is going to just erase gender, or that the main point of view of humanity is ever going to be anything but cis.

[JBroadway]

Posted: 3/28/19 at 12:48pm

@JudyDenmark

A few things:

The statistics of non-binary people within the world of the arts are higher than that of the rest of the world, and the numbers will only grow in the coming years.

Having no category for non-binary people IS exclusionary, and therefore IS transphobic. If Hurricane Diane were to transfer to Broadway, the lead actor would have no appropriate category to compete in (in fact that’s already true of the Off-Broadway production for the Drama Desks). If Taylor Mac were to star in a Broadway show, judy would have no category to compete in. That’s true of any non-binary or gender non-conforming actor, but I bring up those two examples just to illustrate how relatively close we are to this being a direct problem.

And even if we don’t have any non-binary people competing for years to come, Changing the categories would send a powerful message that non-binary people are welcome in the Broadway community, and that their stories matter. That message could help lead to more non-binary people getting cast, and thereby make the category change all the more necessary. It’s a cycle.

And in the grand scheme of things, changing the categories is not very difficult. It would be a relatively small inconvenience to a small number of people for a short amount of time. Not even remotely as difficult as making every yielding have padded walls. Plus, if a person is in need of physical protection from their environment, there are always protections they can wear themselves. They are not wholly dependent on other parties to keep themself safe. But in the case of the Tonys, NB people have no other means of being included (and please don’t say a Special Tony, because that raises a whole slew of bad optics).

Furthermore, there are other reasons to change the categories, namely the fact there is literally no reason why men and women (or NB people) should not compete with each other. Except to increase the number of awards given out, but hat can be accomplished in other ways.

[JudyDenmark]

Posted: 3/28/19 at 12:56pm

Those are all really solid points (esp that the theatre community has a higher percentage of non-conforming people), though I do think that combining into one gender-neutral acting category could pose a problem for women.

I made a list of every possible eligible lead/featured actor and actress for plays and musicals, and here's the breakdown: (For featured, if they had a named part with any kind of line, I included them. Caveat that obviously some categories haven't been determined yet.)

LEAD ACTOR IN A PLAY: 17 
LEAD ACTRESS IN A PLAY: 11

LEAD ACTOR IN A MUSICAL: 10
LEAD ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL: 9

FEATURED ACTOR IN A PLAY: 75
FEATURED ACTRESS IN PLAY: 28

FEATURED ACTOR IN A MUSICAL: 48
FEATURED ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL: 31

So while combining would absolutely accommodate any nonbinary nominees, you're also potentially screwing a lot of women, who are vastly outnumbered, particularly in the featured categories.  

[dramamama611]

Posted: 3/28/19 at 12:57pm

And yet when someone suggested just one leading actor category, THIS is the conversation that came forth.  Yes, no mention of NB was evident, but isn't logical that ALL leading actors would then be in one big acting category simply defined by leading or supporting?   If it wouldn't be defined by male or female - then everything applies.  You aren't suggesting that there should be a NB category, are you?  

Will it ever happen that they go to one unified award?  Unlikely - then 1/2 the number of actors would be getting awarded.  And the arts DO like to award their peeps.   The answers to these things will never be easy, nor will they be able to make everyone happy.

Just because something isn't specifically mentioned, doesn't mean it is being excluded, either.

 

[JBroadway]

Posted: 3/28/19 at 1:04pm

Here are 3 alternatives that to a male/female split, that would allow the same number of actors to be awarded:

Comedy vs. Drama
Revival vs. Original
Above the title vs. under the title

Those are the only 3 I could think of, but all you need is one, and I bet if a group intelligent people come together and actually spend time brainstorming, they could think of others

Not saying those are all brilliant ideas, but my point is there are other options out there. And they are all less arbitrary than splitting based on gender.

[dramamama611]

Posted: 3/28/19 at 1:09pm

But depending on what awards you are talking about -- they ARE split by some of those very things already -- and additionally m/f.

 

I'm not saying (and I don't think any one here IS) that including awards to be less restrictive about m/f-ness is wrong - I'm just thinking it's going to be a while before that change is seen.  There's a lot of old white men making lots of decisions.

[JudyDenmark]

Posted: 3/28/19 at 1:13pm

Dividing by comedy/drama (which would be its own neverending debate for a lot of shows, lol) doesn't change the current gender split of roles and opportunities, which consistently is uneven. There are always more roles for men. (I mean, look at those Featured breakdowns I posted above... they're not even close.) Until that changes, I don't see how combining genders into one category could be anything but bad for female nominees, just statistically speaking. 

Edit: The current split only excludes a very specific subdivision of people, which is nonbinary people playing a nonbinary role. (Trans actors should be nominated in the category with which they identify, that's a no-brainer, and I think it's fair for a nonbinary actor playing a binary role to be nominated in the category of the role, or vise versa.) So I think to accommodate this tiny, hypothetical group of people by potentially messing with the awards opportunities for the ~half of humans who are women... that just doesn't make sense to me.   

Updated On: 3/28/19 at 01:13 PM

[JBroadway]

Posted: 3/28/19 at 1:14pm

@JudyDenmark

Regarding your point about women being excluded. That may be true, but that is the responsibility of producers, casting directors, And writers to give women Good opportunities. That’s true of non-binary people also, But in this case the Tonys can’t do anything to help give women more opportunities. But in this case the Tonys can’t do anything to help give women more opportunities. The problem you’re describing is already happening in other categories, Such as directing and writing. But the answer to that problem is not to create a separate category for female directors and male directors.

[JudyDenmark]

Posted: 3/28/19 at 1:21pm

I was thinking about that, with the technical and creative categories being gender-mixed, but I think the difference is in representation. Directors, lighting designers, choreographers... if you see a show, you wouldn't know the gender of the person who designed it. But for actors, the vast majority of the time people are playing a role in their own gender, and I think acknowledging those roles is important. 

If we have one "Leading Person in a Musical" category in 2016, Hamilton likely sweeps and we never get Cynthia Erivo's win and speech for playing Celie. I mean... to me, that matters. 

[JBroadway]

Posted: 3/28/19 at 1:42pm

(Well, I would actually argue that Cynthia Erivo would have easily beat Leslie and Lin, but that’s another conversation)

I hear your point about representation, but I don’t agree that the same principal can’t apply to designers and writers. You say “you wouldn’t know” if a show was designed by a women. But you know who WOULD know? Other designers in that field, as well as the producers and directors who hire them - people who pay attention to things like that. Not to mention young women who aspire to work in those fields. I personally know a lot of women who work on the technical side of theatre, and I know for a fact that it matters to them to see women directing, writing, designing, and producing shows. It’s true that fewer people in the public are aware of the gender disparity in the behind-the-scenes categories, but this isn’t only about sending a message to the public (although that’s important too). It’s about sending a message to the industry. And people in the industry would know.

Updated On: 3/28/19 at 01:42 PM

[JudyDenmark]

Posted: 3/28/19 at 1:53pm

I mean, I 100% agree about female representation in the creative fields!! But your point feels like the opposite of what you're suggesting, which is getting rid of gender altogether in awards. From your point, it would seem like a better option to gender split in EVERY category so that more women get recognized. Though that wouldn't work just based on numbers, since there are only X shows open and only one (usually) eligible person per show, as opposed to several actors per show. Even if we had a perfectly even split of male & female lighting designers working on Broadway, there wouldn't be enough eligible people to justify two separate categories. But with actors, there ARE enough to fill categories, which is great.

Ultimately, I don't want nonbinary people to feel deliberately excluded, but I feel that doing away with Actor/Actress categories ends up affecting more people. Nonbinary actors playing nonbinary roles are a total of... one right now? Right? And I can't imagine that we'll see that every season, or even every five or ten seasons. Actresses (or female actors, per the point of this thread!) would NON-hypothetically suffer for it.

[JBroadway]

Posted: 3/28/19 at 4:35pm

@Judy

I apologize for being unclear - I can see why it seemed like I was flip-flopping, because it is a complex issue with many facets. And I myself am having a bit of trouble keeping track of my larger argument, haha!

The point of my last post was simply to argue that there is no reason to distinguish between gendered acting categories and gendered production categories. The presence of women in acting categories is just as important as the presence of women in production categories.

I admit that was a bit of a deviation from my earlier point, but I don’t think it was a contradiction. Because while I acknowledge that there is a gender balance issue in production categories, I still think that they made the right decision by not splitting them by gender. Because why should a female director’s work not be seen as comparable to a male director’s work? Making them separate might carry the implication that, artistically speaking, they are not the same, even though they are the same. And that’s also what I think about acting. Female actors, and non-binary actors are participating in exactly the same craft as male actors, so it seems wrong to me that they should be separated based on gender.

But I think you make a compelling point about the potential negative side-effects for women being more noticeable, more widespread, and more immediate. I’ve been operating on the artistic principal of men acting being the same as women acting, but you’re right that we can’t just look at the artistic principals, we also have to look at the societal context. But when you add non-binary people into the mix, I think it really just becomes a lose-lose situation. So I really can see your point, and I agree with it on some level.

I guess I just feel like, if the categories are changed, and female actors then lose representation at the Tonys, those problems still have the potential to be addressed by producers, Directors, and writers - the people in charge of providing Tony-worthy roles to women. And at least they’re still in the game. They still have Ave a chance. They’re still in the conversation. But if they don’t change the categories, then NB people are shut out entirely. There’s no other potential for the problem to be addressed by anyone. They just get kicked to the curb and ignored (not necessary from Broadway, but from the Tonys, which are a powerful force on Broadway).

I agree that it’s a lose-lose situation. and it’s a really hard moral conundrum: do you deny a very large group SOME of their opportunities for recognition, or do you deny a very small group ALL of their opportunities for recognition? For me, I think the former is the lesser of the two evils, because as I said, there are more avenues by which the problem can be helped.

[JudyDenmark]

Posted: 3/28/19 at 5:16pm

JBroadway said: "But if they don’t change the categories, then NB people are shut out entirely."

I think this is accurate by name, but not in practice. Like, I can't imagine a Tony committee saying, "well, we're not going to consider nominating this person at all because they don't fit exactly into a category." And I think in most cases, a nonbinary actor is still most likely playing a gendered or mostly-gendered role, so you'd consider them in that category. The reverse would be true as well. Like, Peppermint is an example of someone who was playing a nonbinary role in Head Over Heels, but to the best of my knowledge identifies as female IRL. So if she were to to be nominated, she'd be nominated in the Best Featured Actress category. (I didn't see HOH, so by all means someone please correct me if I'm wrong.)

In short, I think it's a really, really rare case where a truly nonbinary person is playing a truly nonbinary role. If that IS the case... I don't know, I guess I'd suggest petitioning one category or the other - whichever is the closer fit. That's certainly not ideal, and as a cis person it's not my place to tell a non-cis person how to feel, but this sort of goes back to my original argument where if you know you're in a TINY TINY minority of the human race (truly nonbinary playing a truly nonbinary role), I don't think it's appropriate to destroy the whole system in outrage, just so your TINY fraction of the population can feel more comfortable. Certainly a reasonable nonbinary person can look around and acknowledge that the world at large is gendered, whether cis or trans. A deaf person doesn't demand that the rest of the world communicate in sign language. A little person doesn't demand that we starting building buildings to accommodate their stature. That's just not how majorities work. You make reasonable accommodations, but otherwise create a system that is going to positively affect the most people. 

Either way, I'm so thrilled that we've been able to have an intelligent, balanced conversation about this! I don't think there's any easy answer. I commented on this thread originally to respond to the comment that said "When does this cis-gendered view end," which I just think is a weirdly naive thing to say. The world will always be vast-majority cisgendered, that's just biology. 

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 3/29/19 at 12:46am

yankeefan7 said: ""Popular usage isn't going to change as long as every single award show distinguishes between "Best Actor" and "Best Actress". Not even Meryl Streep (whom I have heard call herself an actor) can change the world alone."

Good point. It should be changed to "Best Female Actor" or just have one award with men and women combined."

I thought of the one-category solution and then realized there would be years no women would be nominated at all! 

ETA: Oops! When I posted, I hadn't ventured far enough into the thread to know this had been discussed at length.

Well, I'll take some of the heat off Judy, though thus far she hardly needs my help: I seriously doubt anybody is really "non-binary" except as a temporary, leftist fad. Sure, I think there's a spectrum from people whose gender is heavily determined by traditional gender roles to people for whom those gender roles have much less meaning. But NO meaning? Not on this planet.

Furthermore, whoever decided to call traditional roles "cis" killed the movement right there; that term is never going to be accepted by the majority of males, at least, including myself. But then--and though lots of, even most, people are functionally bisexual--I seriously doubt many people actually have no preference whatsoever.

If I ruled the world, I'd let actors compete in whichever gender category they preferred and, if they insisted they had no preference, I'd assign them according to biology (original or created via surgery). If that were too offensive, they could decline the nomination.

For the record, yeah, I'm an old, white male who identifies as such (particularly the "old" part). Also a gay one, and one who was for years mistaken for female on anonymous message boards. Never bothered me a bit; nor did it define me.

Updated On: 3/29/19 at 12:46 AM

[AC126748]

Posted: 3/29/19 at 8:22am

Gender-neutral "actor" is my default. As others have pointed out, we don't gender other professional terms. That said, if someone self-describes as an "actress," that's her choice.