Gender bending?

[Dennis J Craig]

Posted: 4/25/18 at 8:12pm

So my daughter and I are having a "discussion" about the term "Gender Bending" as relates to roles in a show. She says that if a role is recast opposite sex it's "bent". I say that's a gender change or reversal... is a man is playing a woman, to me that the "bend': like John Travolta as Edna in Hairspray. But a reversal or a flip, in the lack of another term, is re-imagining the part as the other sex, e.g. the Leading Player was Ben Vereen and then became a woman in the re-imagining. Do either of us have a valid point?

[Elfuhbuh]

Posted: 4/25/18 at 8:42pm

Whenever I've seen the term "genderbend," it's usually in the context of someone writing a story or drawing art of a previously-established character, just as the opposite sex from what they're originally portrayed as. For example, a lot of Les Mis fans like drawing art of the Barricade Boys as young women instead of the young men they are in the original story. I imagine it's the same idea in theatre, where an actress portraying a traditionally male role ends up turning the character into a female one or vice versa, but I could be wrong.

Updated On: 4/25/18 at 08:42 PM

[Charley Kringas Inc]

Posted: 4/25/18 at 9:49pm

Well, there's a few things that can happen when a person of a gender that's different than the one of a role plays it, and it depends on how they play it and what the genders are. A woman can play a male role as a "pants role", where they simply blend into the masculine role (these can also be the roles as written, particularly in opera where a woman's voice might be required). A woman can play a male role as a female, in which case you have, indeed, gender-bent the role (compare a woman singing Sweeney Todd, and a woman singing Sweeney Todd as a woman). I feel like these two things are different from drag, which is what you're talking about in terms of Edna where someone of one gender is playing as another gender and amplifying it, but again that's just putting vague words to a hazy sliding scale.

And, of course, due to general cultural outlines, a man playing a woman tends to be more jokey and caricatured, sometimes punching down, than a woman playing a man (a woman dressing like a man hasn't been scandalous for decades, but a man dressing like a woman can get the tar beat out of him - he's "lowering" himself). I think it's easier for a woman to play a serious pants role than a man to play a serious, uh, skirt (?) role, which is a curious phenomenon.

Anyways, I think you're having a debate because these kinds of things don't have hard outlines and are barely defined to begin with - I've never, for example, heard someone refer to someone playing a character as the opposite gender a a "re-imagining". If if the actor is meant to slip silently into the opposite gender, that's one thing, if the actor is meant to play the role as their own gender, that's another thing, and if they play up the elements of the opposite gender, that's a third thing. It would be nice to have nailed-down terminology for all three so maybe you two are onto something.

[TheGingerBreadMan]

Posted: 4/25/18 at 10:28pm

I’m with your daughter on this one. A gender bend is a role that was played by one sex, and later played by another sex - like Nathan Lane and Whoopi Goldberg both playing Pseudolous in Forum. A case such as Edna is simply drag.

[QueenAlice]

Posted: 4/25/18 at 11:18pm

I think the Leading Player in PIPPIN is “gender non specific”- both men and women have played the role (and long before the last revival.)

Same goes with the Emcee in CABARET who has been played by both sexes.