Butch Ladies Play Analysis

While many will agree that Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is critically acclaimed to be one of the most entertaining and well-liked pieces that he has written, there tends to be a discrepancy over how the characters in the play are portrayed when it comes to the importance of gender roles. After reading James C Bulman’s article over the Globe’s more recent performance of Twelfth Night and Shakespeare’s original written version, I realized that there are many ways that this famous piece has been portrayed and each has its own pros and cons.

Costumes during theatre were to be realistic. Permits were issued to allow actors to dress in necessary clothing if their character was of a different social class. Females were not permitted to act in the theatre at the time. Because of this, men were also dressed to play female characters in the theatre. Costumes played an important part in theatre.

Gary Ridgeway, A.K.A, the Green River Killer, was one of the most notorious serial killers in U.S history. Over the course of two years in the 1980s nearly 50 lives were taken in the Seattle and Tacoma areas of Washington. This case was given this name because of the location of all of the bodies. Most of the bodies were dumped either in or around the Green River located in Washington. Upon discovery of these bodies, the king county sheriff department formed a task force to attempt to solve these murders. One of the interesting things the task force did was interview Ted Bundy to gain insight as to what the killer may be planning next. In 1982 and again in 2001, Gary Ridgeway, was arrested on charges that related to prostitution. This brought

Film adaptations are supposed to capture the essence of a book they are based on; however this is not the case with Real Women Have Curves. The play, written by Josefina Lopez emphasizes the collective struggle and how women are there to support each other. The film adaptation, only co-written by Josefina Lopez displays an individualistic and almost selfish point of view, while emphasizing the individual struggle. The play and the movie are quite distinct, not only do they communicate different messages, but the characters' shift in personality, therefore drastically changing the entire storyline.

Femininity is a concept whose attributes are contingent on the culture it is in—what one culture may consider typically feminine traits could largely vary from what another culture views as being feminine. While theater can sometimes subvert theses ideals and present women who function in ways that are not typically feminine, theater can often present idealistic representations of women who exemplify that culture’s ideals of femininity. Take, for example, the female characters in both Guan Hanqing’s Snow in Midsummer and Hroswit’s Martyrdom of the Holy Virgins. While both texts come from largely different cultural contexts—Snow in Midsummer was written in thirteenth century China for a general population whereas Martyrdom of the Holy Virgins was written in tenth century Germany as a closet drama—both texts have female protagonists whose rebellions exemplify feminine ideals of the respective cultures.

Nevertheless, a woman dressing up as man is nothing out of the ordinary. It was very common in comedic plays for women to be playing a man’s role and this was used to demonstrate the difference in hierarchy between men and women.

Single Asian Female by Michelle law was a thought provoking and challenging play presented by La Boite Theatre Company. Single Asian Female is the story of newly single Asian women and her two daughter’s lives as they all fight their own issues, run a Chinese shop, get their dream careers and most importantly be a family. This breathtaking piece explores issues and the behind the door lives of international people living in Australia. This play is brought to life through the Alex Lee’s, Hsiao-Ling Tang’s and Courtney Stewart’s realistic characterisation and vocal tones of the three main characters, Zoe, Pearl and Mei. Lighting, musical undertone and the tensions of drama helped turn this play into a heart-warming

The theatrical work being discussed in this critique is the 2016 revival of the broadway musical She Loves Me. This production was directed by Scott Ellis and produced by the Roundabout Theatre Company. The first revival performance of She Loves Me took the stage on February 19th, 2016 with the final performance being on July 10th, 2016. This romantic comedy is describing the story of two pen pals who fall in love through countless letters , addressing each other as “ Dear Friend “. Set in 1930s Hungary , mainly taking place in and outside of Mr.Maraczek’s Parfumerie . Amalia Balash and Georg Nowack, work in the shop together, strongly disliking each other, but coincidentally are the two letter correspondents. When the “Dear Friends” are finally supposed to meet at the Cafe Impériale, Georg realising that his pen-pal is

The actors were expected to perform their own stunts. They had to have a good memory to learn and memorize their lines in a short time period. William Shakespeare acted in some of the productions of the plays. Males had to act out the female parts of the plays because females were not allowed to perform in theaters at this time. Although, all of the actors worked hard, the males who dressed up as females got paid the least; this proves they had a lot of dedication to their work. The actors help make the plays at the theater a huge success and very profitable to The Theater.

While I have lofty goals for my retirement years, preferably traveling the world with my beautiful now-fiance, I am very aware that my aging process may be disrupted by one of any number of mental illnesses that my family is prone to. Specifically, I may have the bipolar disorder that has plagued my grandfather. So far, our timeline of mental illness matches up. I have ADHD, and his experience with attention deficit hyperactive disorder kept doctors from noticing that he had symptoms of bipolar disorder until a break-down he experienced in his sixties.

In William Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, gender roles are explored, culminating in two distinct scenes of cross-dressing. The men of Elizabethan society enjoy a prominent status based solely on gender, to which women are clearly outsiders. This is particularly evident in Jessica’s newfound freedom when dressed as a pageboy in Act 2 and Portia’s and Nerissa’s immediate elevation in social standing when they take on male personas in Act 4. Through these two instances of cross-dressing, Shakespeare presents class not in terms of socioeconomic status but in the benefits of being male. Although the three women all partake in cross-dressing as a means of undermining patriarchal constraint, the consequences vary as there are several

Shakespeare's use of cross dressing and deceitfulness extends beyond the actual writings in the plays and goes onto the stage. Women were not allowed to perform on stage in Shakespeare's time. ."..all the great women's roles in Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, from Juliet and Lady Macbeth to the duchess of Malfi, were written to be

The place of women within the theatre is well known, that being that they had no place within the stage.  Women's parts were played by young men in

In Shakespeare's plays Twelfth Night and As You Like It both of the lead female characters dress as men. Both plays are comedies and the change in gender is used as a joke, but I think it goes much deeper. A woman can become a man, but only if it is not permanent. The affect of the change cannot be too great because she must change back to female once everything is settled. They are strong female characters, but must become men to protect themselves and ultimately solve the problem of the play. In the book Desire and Anxiety: The Circulation of Sexuality in Shakespearian Drama Valerie Traub calls the characters, "the crossed-dressed heroine who elicits and enjoys

This idea is relevant because on the stage, the Restoration actress, is nothing but an ornament in the male gaze. This attitude is apparent as Thomas Shadwell links the new phenomenon of female performers with painted theatrical scenes, both innovative commodities for audience consumption: