{"id":53929,"date":"2017-03-13T14:30:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-13T18:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/?p=53929"},"modified":"2022-10-04T16:07:36","modified_gmt":"2022-10-04T20:07:36","slug":"renaissance-women-2","status":"publish","type":"bu-article","link":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/news\/articles\/2017\/renaissance-women-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Renaissance Women"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar news-prepress-layout-metabar\">\n\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar-wrapper\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar-date\">March 13, 2017<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar-credits\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar-share js-bu-prepress-share-tools\">\n\t\t\t<span class=\"icon-twitter\"><span>Twitter<\/span><\/span>\n\t\t\t<span class=\"icon-facebook\"><span>Facebook<\/span><\/span>\n\t\t\t<span class=\"icon-action\"><\/span>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<h3>They command armies, slay enemies, and lead nations. Playing the bard\u2019s most famous men makes the actresses of Femina Shakes more confident women.<\/h3>\n<h4>By Julie Butters | Photo by Cydney Scott<\/h4>\n<p><strong>Mackenzie Devlin was trying to be ugly.<\/strong> The five-foot-seven, blue-eyed blonde had been told she\u2019s the ing\u00e9nue type, and in a typical production of <em>Henry IV, Part I<\/em>, she\u2019d play a noble lady.<\/p>\n<p>But in the 2014 CFA production, she was Falstaff\u2014a corpulent, uncouth knight with a penchant for booze and bawdy humor. Her hair was mussed. She wore a fake belly. She loved every minute of it. \u201cI allowed myself to be completely uninhibited and just as grotesque as I could possibly be.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"media picture w_300\">\n<p><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Jade\u2019 Davis (\u201916) played the impetuous warrior Hotspur in <em>Henry IV, Part I<\/em>. <span class=\"credit\">Photo by Lindy Lofton<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Devlin (\u201915) was a performer in Femina Shakes, a CFA initiative that presents one all-female Shakespeare play a year. The productions enable junior and senior performance majors to stretch themselves in roles they might rarely have the opportunity to tackle in traditional casting. Freed from stereotypical gender constraints to explore themes of power and authority in new ways, they emerge more confident\u2014and with greater ambitions for meatier roles.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t want to be this actor who\u2019s always pretty onstage,\u201d says Devlin. \u201cI want to play deeper and more troubled and layered people, and I really felt like playing Falstaff was a way in.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Giving actresses juicier parts, and a chance to explore untapped sides of themselves, was one of Christine Hamel\u2019s goals in launching Femina Shakes. In spring 2011, she says, Jim Petosa, director of CFA\u2019s <a title=\"School of Theatre\" href=\"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/theatre\/\">School of Theatre<\/a>, asked the assistant professor of voice &amp; speech and acting to direct a Shakespeare play featuring actresses who were not otherwise performing major roles that season. The project would help compensate for the overabundance of women in the program and fulfill the School\u2019s promise of guaranteed casting.<\/p>\n<div class=\"callout_left\">\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m hungry to see more female characters that are at the philosophical, intellectual, or emotional epicenter of something really big.\u201d\u2014Christine Hamel<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>An actress and self-described feminist with training in Shakespeare performance, Hamel (\u201905) took the charge a step further. Searching through Shakespeare\u2019s canon, she asked herself, \u201cWhat would help women feel like they could advocate for themselves, where they were using some of their skills, where they were dealing with issues of power and hegemony and advocacy and politics?\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Julius Caesar<\/em> was a perfect fit. The inaugural Femina Shakes production in 2011 had a homegrown feel, with the actresses \u201cowning\u201d every aspect, says Hamel. They painted the studio with graffiti written in Latin to create an \u201cincendiary\u201d Roman atmosphere in which the characters were \u201cspeaking truth to power.\u201d She and Petosa felt the project was such a positive experience for the actresses that CFA should continue to offer it. Four productions followed\u2014<em>Titus Andronicus<\/em>, <em>Henry V<\/em>, <em>Romeo and Juliet<\/em>, and <em>Henry IV, Part I<\/em>\u2014directed, respectively, by Hamel, Lillian King (\u201914), Adrienne Boris (\u201915), and guest director Meg Taintor. Hamel is considering <em>Twelfth Night<\/em> for this fall.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cVery few plays,\u201d Shakespeare or otherwise, \u201chave passed the test of having two women speaking to each other for any sustained amount of time about something other than a man,\u201d says Hamel. Playing nontraditional roles gives women the chance to explore larger themes and questions\u2014like \u201cto be or not to be.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m hungry to see more female characters that are at the philosophical, intellectual, or emotional epicenter of something really big,\u201d says Hamel. \u201cI think that is probably why women are really attracted to the role of Hamlet.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"media video\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/spiikILEy5U\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" frameborder=\"0\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe>\n<p><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Members of Femina Shakes, the School of Theatre\u2019s all-female Shakespeare troupe, discuss their 2015 production, <em>Twelfth Night<\/em>, which features live performances of pop songs from the 1990s. <span class=\"credit\">Photo by Cydney Scott, video by Devin Hahn<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h3>Henry V wore lipstick<\/h3>\n<p>Though the women of Femina Shakes take on male roles, they don\u2019t strive to become men. No fake mustaches, no embarrassing codpieces. Nor do they aim to imitate men with their physical behaviors. \u201cWe\u2019re playing characters as opposed to playing gender,\u201d says Hamel. For the sake of clarity, the actresses do decide their characters\u2019 sex\u2014playing key male roles like Romeo as men is common but not a rule\u2014and they give the audience costume-related clues, like pants and pulled-back hair. They might even redefine how gender is visually portrayed. For example, Hamel says that in <em>Henry V<\/em>, which Femina Shakes set in post\u2013World War II London, male characters were played as men whose appearance was that of sturdy Rosie the Riveters, in pants and lipstick. But however gender is portrayed, it\u2019s not the focus of the actresses\u2019 preparation.<\/p>\n<div class=\"media picture w_550\">\n<p><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Chloe Fuller (\u201913) (on ladder) as King Henry V and her fellow cast members perform Shakespeare\u2019s <em>Henry V<\/em> for Associate Professor Jack McCarthy\u2019s organizational behavior class at <a title=\"Questrom School of Business\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom\/\">Questrom School of Business<\/a>. Each Femina Shakes production typically involves an on-command performance and a lecture or talkback for another BU school on a topic relevant to its courses of study, such as Elizabethan history for the College of General Studies. <span class=\"credit\">Photo by Kalman Zabarsky <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cIn <em>Julius Caesar<\/em>,\u201d says Hamel, \u201cit is more interesting to me to have an actress take on Mark Antony as a character who happens to be a man, as opposed to figuring out how to be a man and then playing Mark Antony.\u201d Thinking more about temperament and status \u201chelps the actors to find the parts of themselves that have to deal with what it\u2019s like to have power\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009and do a lot of things that aren\u2019t about being somebody\u2019s wife or sister or daughter,\u201d says Hamel.<\/p>\n<div class=\"callout_right\">\n<p>\u201cI think at a certain point in rehearsal, [everyone stops] seeing women and starts seeing characters, which is really exciting.\u201d<br \/>\u2014Christine Hamel<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>An example: Jade\u2019 Davis (\u201916), who played the impetuous warrior Hotspur in <em>Henry IV, Part I<\/em>, and Ivy Elwell (\u201915), who played Hotspur\u2019s wife. Elwell says her onstage interaction with Davis was about a marital relationship formed by their words and goals as opposed to sexual chemistry. Hamel says, \u201cI think at a certain point in rehearsal, the ensemble and myself and whoever is in the room stop seeing women and start seeing characters, which is really exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What the audience may notice more in an all-female cast is the gender bias inherent in the play. Lines like Hotspur\u2019s \u201c[C]onstant you are, \/ But yet a woman\u201d can jar the ear even more than usual. Violence can also become more disturbing for audiences. In the scene in <em>Titus Andronicus<\/em> preceding the offstage rape and mutilation of Titus\u2019 daughter Lavinia, the actresses playing aggressors removed Lavinia\u2019s nude nylons and gagged her with them. For Eliza Rose Fichter (\u201913), who played Lavinia, the scene \u201cdidn\u2019t feel scary to do at all\u201d because of the trust she shared with her fellow actresses. But she believes that for the audience, the unfamiliar experience of \u201cwatching female bodies do this to another female body was scarier and more dangerous, I think,\u201d than watching a man\u2014the expected aggressor\u2014perform the same actions.<\/p>\n<h3>No apologies<\/h3>\n<p>Titus Andronicus is a Roman general who bakes his enemy\u2019s sons into a pie and breaks his own daughter\u2019s neck. To take on the lead of Shakespeare\u2019s dark and violent play by that name, Caroline Rose Markham (\u201913) had to reevaluate nearly everything about herself.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think there is an apology in everything that I say and do,\u201d she says. \u201cThere is always this tinge of, \u2018I am so sorry to say this so directly, but I need you to\u2026\u2019\u201d In the role of Titus, \u201cthere was none of what I associate with the female apology. I will literally stab you if you are in my way.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"media picture w_550\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"media picture w_550\">\n<p><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Femina Shakes gives CFA actresses a chance to play once-in-a-lifetime roles like Juliet (Sarah Oakes Muirhead \u201915, top left) and Brutus in <em>Julius Caesar<\/em> (Kelly Kovacs \u201913, bottom, with dagger), in the unique context of an all-female cast. <span class=\"credit\">Photos by Kalman Zabarsky and Cydney Scott <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>As Titus, Markham also became conscious of ways she conveyed gender through body language. It was challenging \u201cto find a neutral way of doing everything,\u201d from walking and sitting to drinking a bottle of water. Walking to and from rehearsal, she\u2019d practice \u201ctrying to eliminate all the gendered physical behaviors that I learned my entire life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Now, the assurance she found playing a bad-ass general in combat boots and \u201ca giant Mohawk that looked like a Roman military helmet and made me feel like I was six feet tall\u201d goes with her everywhere\u2014from studying abroad at the <a title=\"London Academy of Music &amp; Dramatic Art\" href=\"http:\/\/www.lamda.org.uk\/\">London Academy of Music &amp; Dramatic Art<\/a> (\u201cI played Hamlet and I felt ready to go. There was no, \u2018How do I be a man?\u2019 or \u2018How do I do this?\u2019\u201d), to auditioning for Boston-area productions (\u201cIt helps me walk into a room and do whatever piece I want.\u201d), to the restaurant where she trains fellow servers to walk and act with confidence.<\/p>\n<div class=\"callout_left\">\n<p>\u201cI felt much bigger, bolder. I felt so unstoppable playing Hotspur.\u201d<br \/>\u2014Jade\u2019 Davis<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Davis had a similar experience playing Hotspur. \u201cI felt much bigger, bolder. I felt so unstoppable playing Hotspur.\u201d Now, she says, \u201cI will never be timid to audition for big roles.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Women cast as women in Femina Shakes productions are empowered in other ways. Their characters may be confined to the domestic sphere or even victimized, but that doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re weak or powerless. \u201cLady Percy doesn\u2019t necessarily have physical power over Hotspur,\u201d says Elwell, but she does have power in her words\u2014in the rich language Shakespeare offers her \u201cto really assert herself\u201d in demanding answers from her husband and more of a share in his life.<\/p>\n<h3>Bigger ambitions<\/h3>\n<p>Hamel hopes the heightened ambitions Femina Shakes actresses tap into won\u2019t just influence the classical roles women are offered, but the roles created for them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you have a generation of really strong actors who are hungry for the kinds of roles they got to play when they performed as Mark Antony and Titus Andronicus and Henry the Fifth\u2014assertive and strong and really thinking globally about how to change the world, not, \u2018How do I change my husband?\u2019\u2014you might have playwrights writing roles for those actresses.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If that comes to pass, someday an actress may actually have to check her calendar when offered the chance to play one of Shakespeare\u2019s men: she may be too busy portraying extraordinary women.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>They command armies, slay enemies, and lead nations. Playing the bard\u2019s most famous men makes the actresses of Femina Shakes more confident women. By Julie Butters | Photo by Cydney Scott Mackenzie Devlin was trying to be ugly. The five-foot-seven, blue-eyed blonde had been told she\u2019s the ing\u00e9nue type, and in a typical production of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5984,"featured_media":53930,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"bu_prepress_billboard":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term_manual":""},"tags":[],"bu-publication":[192],"magazine-article-category":[],"magazine-topic":[],"news-article-category":[329],"news-topic":[],"bu_edition":[],"media_type":[256,254],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/53929"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/bu-article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5984"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53929"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/53929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93838,"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/53929\/revisions\/93838"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53929"},{"taxonomy":"bu-publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-publication?post=53929"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/magazine-article-category?post=53929"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/magazine-topic?post=53929"},{"taxonomy":"news-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-article-category?post=53929"},{"taxonomy":"news-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-topic?post=53929"},{"taxonomy":"bu_edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu_edition?post=53929"},{"taxonomy":"media_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media_type?post=53929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}