Gender Roles In Theatre

When a person is born, they are either male or female. Before they are born, their parents are going to set goals and expectations for them. Sometimes parents will name their child after a famous celebrity hoping they will be just as great as them. Each gender will have different ways they should live their life in order to stay within their gender role. Some will meet the expectations and other will not. That does not make them look less of their gender, they will just be expected to meet them. Over the years, some gender roles have submerged and others have risen above. They will be able to show how the gender roles are supposed to be in jobs, education, and marriage and also how they can benefit from stepping out of the gender roles.

Theatre has evolved over the many years. As it has grown, it moved to include more diverse performers, crew, producers, and audiences. This is an exploration of the expansion of diverse theatre.

In many shops, there seems to be an obvious separation between boys and girls items, for example, the birthday cards, books, clothes, and toys. This is shown in a variety of ways the boy's items are mainly the color blue and the books have pictures of either action figures, superheroes or tools. Whereas the girl's items are mainly the color pink. The books show pictures of fairies, princess, and Bratz. The cards also have the theme of the color pink for girls and blue for boys. The girl's cards have a lot of sparkles and pretty pictures whereas the boy's cards are covered in camo kind of illustrations and also have action figures on the covers. The children's clothes are separated into sections where there are labels for the boy's clothes and labels for the girl's clothes. The girl's clothing is all pretty and pink, it is covered in sparkles. Whereas boys clothing has camo patterns, blue colors, and pictures of action figures.

In present day all around the world, society has certain expectations for the actions and behaviors of males and females. There are many factors in our everyday lives that contribute to the gender norms that society has set. This essay will discuss how situations in life can play a part in how people treat other people based on their gender. It is believed that males are the leaders of our world, but in present day woman can do as much as men can do. From The Journal of Marriage and Family, Hu states, “Differentiated gender roles in adulthood are rooted in one’s gender role socialization. In order to understand the persistence of gender inequalities in the domestic sphere, we need to examine the gendered patterns of children’s housework time.”(2015, P.1). Gender roles are society’s expectations of the proper behavior, attitudes, and activities of males and females that they must be taught. These roles define how females and males are viewed in society, their household, and workplace. In The Journal of Sports behavior by Hardin, he states, “Although gender role differences from biological and “Natural” exists in popular consciousness, research has long demonstrated that instead, many are long time socially constructed… Individuals understand their gender because they are given names and treated in particular ways, such as dress in pink for girls and blue for boys, that reflect social construction of gender. Bandura's social cognitive theory is key in understanding the factors in socialization”(2009, P.3). Bandura's theory of of social cognition is that behavior, environmental events, and cognitive factors are the main keys that shape attitudes and actions of an individual. Although, gender roles play a very big part in our society, specific genders are treated differently while dealing with peer influence, media influence, as well as employment.

Starting in the golden age of 1950, a Broadway musical's critical judgement depended on how well the show’s elements were formally integrated. Meaning the outlook of the plot in relation to the music, lyrics and characterization of gender roles. Gender is a fundamental element of Broadway musical theatre, constitutional to the musical’s architecture. It is essential as a building block for characters, music/lyrics, and stage settings. Broadway musical is a popular art, in which conveys social issues in the female gender from the representations of women in the 1950's to today. The Broadway musical participates in a larger conversation about gender and sexuality because it is a commercial, profit-seeking, artistic commodity, entertainment form, and cultural product. Broadway musical is a mainstream form that needs to relate to middle-class audiences’ desires and expectations, one might expect only social issues and stereotypical representations of women. The female gender stereotypes are represented in Broadway musicals portrayed by the character's roles. As time went by, the portrayal of the female characters in musicals changed because of the representation that women in today receives. Thus, these musicals explore social issues of the day, including women’s rights and changing roles in U.S. culture, sometimes directly and sometime obliquely. Therefore, the Broadway musical venerates female performers and provides substantial roles for women.

the paralyzing feminization of males make the latter more appropriate to a tragedy or a

Since the 1950s, the portrayal of families in television shows has changed and progressed with equality and representation. Gender roles have almost completely been redefined. Women now have jobs instead of only cooking and cleaning and marriage is more of a partnership. Children’s roles and expectations have become less strict. Kids would always obey and follow adults, but now the children are more self-reliant and have their own lives.

On December 11th, 2015, my group and I will be presenting our topics for World Theatre and -Ism Project on the topic of Feminist Theatre. My group consisted of Vincent Quach, Amanda Witaker, Denise Orozco, and myself. Like most group projects, we experienced both highs and lows as we collected information about our topic to present to the class. While I learned a lot during this assignment, I had a hard time getting together as a group for this project.

Shakespeare’s play, “Twelfth Night” provides a great deal of insight into gender roles, gender identities, and desire in Elizabethan, as well as modern, society. Gender roles have also changed drastically over time. Many of the expectations and standards that woman, as well as men, were held to in Shakespearean times, no longer apply today. For example, women, and to a lesser extent, men, have become generally more free to pursue any career they wish. Partly because of the removal of such arbitrary restrictions, people tend to think that society as a whole has become more progressive over time, and in many cases, this is true.

It was not uncommon for Shakespeare to think outside the gender norm of the time period, giving lives to characters, especially female characters, that would have been unfathomable to anyone else. He seems to pay special attention to the differences he contributes. The female characters within the plays arguably represent a more modern, stronger woman that what would have been socially acceptable in England at this time. Women within this era were property and an okay other to the male Christians in England's borders. While still possessing the power to destroy family honor and reputations. Which essentially seems to be why they needed to be controlled, or why men thought they needed to be controlled. They possess the power to destroy livelihoods.

Following Voicu and Strapcovas (2008) research, I employ explanatory, deductive research to study how religious beliefs affect attitudes towards women in the household. Also, I will be using empirical background data, and cross-sectional studies. During this section of my paper I will explain all the studies and researches used to determine if my hypothesis is correct.

Literature throughout history has displayed to us the evolution of the male and female gender roles in society. Women have been described as ‘the angel in the house,’ whilst men are typified as dominant and prevailing in comparison to women. The gothic genre in literature is used to personify and exaggerate these stereotypes, by using gothic motifs such as dream sequences and themes such as horror and terror. Not only does the gothic exaggerate the stereotypes, but it also allows them to be contravened, due to the transgressive nature of the genre. The psychoanalytical aspect of this genre, allows for repressed desires to be made eminent and therefore characters can transgress and in the process, cross their contemporary gender boundaries. Keats uses the gothic device of Negative capability in order to conceal the transgression of the females in his poetry, Carter revised gothic fairytales in order to display them from a feminist approach and Stoker uses gothic themes, set against the backdrop of the fluidity of Fin de siècle period, to allow characters to stray from their gender stereotypes.

David Edgar, in his book State of Play: Playwrights on Playwriting (1999) highlights the fact that in the mid 90’s there seemed to be an “over-arching theme” (edgar, 1999, p27) in contemporary British play that looked at ideas of masculinity. “Gay plays like Jonathan Harvey’s Beautiful Thing… lad’s plays like Jez Butterworths Mojo… [and] girls-in-a-boys’ gang plays like Irving Welsh’s Trainspotting… address masculinity and its discontents’ (ibid, p.27). In this essay I will look at what ideas of masculinity are, and how these discontents have been addressed in contemporary theatre (and the idea of the “decline of the dominant role of men”(edgar, 1999, p.28)) and how the crisis of masculinity(ref) has been staged. I will do this by looking

Shannon Tokheim Dr. Brandt English 330 3 Dec. 2014 Sexuality and Gender Roles in Shakespeare’s Works William Shakespeare’s works explored numerous walks of life. From comedies to tragedies and all those in between, Shakespeare set new expectations and changed the entire game of writing for his time. He was able to manipulate the stage and use his actors in ways that had never been seen before. His works escaped the limitations of the Renaissance period, surviving the test of time and soaring into the modern age.

Throughout history, man and women have distinct set of attitudes, behaviors, and self-presentation. Men are thought to be emotionally strong, courageous, self-reliance and rational while women are thought to be submissive, weak, nurturing and sensitive. In Shakespeare’s As You Like It, these roles can be easily identified. During the Renaissance period these assigned roles were the norm for society, for example, because of theater conventions of Elizabethan England, the part of Rosalind dress as a boy would have been played by a boy actor.