It’s exciting as a trans performer to see L Morgan Lee nominated for a Tony award (note: this post was written in June 10, 2022). I hope she wins just for being a trans performer, because cisgender people often win roles and awards just for their cisgender privilege. I know the difficulties of getting cast as a person without gender privilege.
On the same topic, but a different rung of the rainbow, I was listening to Harvey Firestein on CBC Radio’s Q today, who aptly noted “Have a heterosexual actor play a gay role and they give them an Oscar. Gay people play straight roles all the time and nobody even notices” (Rashotte, 2022). And hopefully, this statement also applies to trans people because a cheap way to get an Oscar nom is for cis folk to play trans (here’s looking at you Eddie Redmayne, Felicity Huffman, Hillary Swank, Gleen Close, Jared Leto, and so on….). But what about trans people who get to play cisgender folk? This seems to be mind-blowing from my experience. It is about time a trans actor got some recognition for playing a cisgender role, and this should be happening more often. Really when you look at the backstory of characters, who is to say that the character did not have a gender transition? Why do we assume that a cis-looking female character has always been that way? Everyone forms their own gender identity and expression throughout life, which should translate on stage to many different representations, including variants of cisness and other gender identities.
I have been groundbreaking by forcing my local theatre community to take me seriously as an actor who can play cis male roles. However, I usually get cast if there is a dearth of cis men, and sometimes get cast without anyone knowing I am trans. This results in later awkwardness and overdirecting weirdness when the crew realizes and holds my gender representation under extraordinary scrutiny that a cisgender person would never experience.
I remember being cast in a play where I was a shopkeeper with a passing reference to being a former sailor. I knew my director figured out I was trans the day he directed me “to be more erect” (yes, yes, he did…my erection was absent, it seems…), to have no telling body movements or gestures, but always to be standing at attention. I suppose any action could belie my seemingly hidden female past. Thus, I was placed in the gender straitjacket that all cishet men are daily required to wear. Actors don’t play rigid roles onstage unless they are palpably playing it straight, and then you can tell they are not straight because, hey, my lady doth protesteth too much.
This is not acting – it’s conforming to make your audience feel comfortable, but is suspending belief and watching art supposed to be a comfortable experience? Fun, stimulating, thought-provoking -yes, but comfort and familiarity does not good theatre make.
Even if you benefit from courageous casting, that doesn’t prevent the crew from harassing you. And in my experience, if you get harassed by a transphobic crew person, often, the company will blame you. Once a producer met me and asked me my deadname in front of the whole cast, outing me as trans, and then, when I refused to provide it, she researched my deadname and published it in a group cast email “by accident .”When I complained, she made such a display of cis fragility that the director told me if it came down to me or her, he had to pick me as the show was opening in a week. So, an innocent actor doing their job had it put on the line because they complained about transphobia. If this person had been racist, the awareness would have been there to fire her. As it happened, the burden was shifted to me to forgive her, and she got to remain despite her harmful transphobia. The company was all sympathy to the everyday experience of how hard it is to deal with trans people and no empathy for the dysphoria and trauma of being exposed to transphobia while minding your own business. The feeling it is right and natural to question and other trans folks is part of the gender policing and the privilege maintenance even the most well-meaning cis folk indulge in.
Cisgender people never question their right to hyper-examine the off-and-onstage gender performance of trans people. A now former friend evaluated a trans performer I was dating by systemically ticking off aspects of his appearance to me and then landing on his fingernails to pronounce them “female”, literally saying he had female fingernails and fingertips. I am pretty sure she was not checking the fingernails of other men, but perhaps she had a fetish or was a Catholic school nun in her past life.
I trust that L Morgan Lee’s fingernails pass muster; however, I am concerned that her cuticles may disqualify her from a Tony. Cuticle cuteness aside, uncute is the scrutiny that cis folk place on the gender expression/bodies of known trans people, almost as if they are desperately trying to prove that gender is not a performance and one can never escape the determinism of your birth junk.
All gender is a performance, and good actors bring this to life on stage, complete with feminine, masculine and suprabinary expressions, since all people form a mix of intersecting experiences. If casting agents had a concept of intersectionality, they would understand that a character might have had a gender transition in the past. It is just as ok to cast a trans man in a seemingly cisgender role as it is to cast a BIPOC person in Shakespeare. Audience suspension of belief should include race and gender; casting agents fail to trust their actors and audience by consistently presenting white cis het containers for character embodiment.
The fact that trans people who fail to pass as cis won’t be cast in standard human roles speaks volumes as to how our society still rigidly polices gender and dehumanizes the very human experience of difference. Really casting trans people in cisgender roles translates to casting trans people in normal roles. It is good news that being trans doesn’t mean you can only play trans people, just like being a BIPOC person doesn’t mean you can’t be cast in a period drama like Bridgerton (yes, you can even be cast in insipid period dramas, I say!). Test yourself here; imagine your favourite acting role and picture that character as having a gender transition in their past…How this changes your character conception speaks volumes about your feelings toward transgender persons. Hopefully, it’s not a big deal to you; as L Morgan Lee comments, “I think that visibility is extremely important if we expect to have our presence be normalized to mainstream society. I would like us to get to a place where it’s not a big deal when you find that someone is trans “(Daniels, 2022).
References
Daniels, K. F. (2022, June 6). ‘A strange loop’ breakout star L Morgan Lee makes Tonys history as first openly transgender actress to be nominated. New York Daily News. Retrieved June 8, 2022, from https://www.nydailynews.com/snyde/ny-l-morgan-lee-making-transgender-history-broadway-a-strange-loop-20220606-hxqrohnn55fadp6bhrnbsoex44-story.html
Rashotte, V. (2022, March 17).
From kissing Homer Simpson to experimental theatre, 10 things we learned about Harvey Fierstein | CBC Radio. CBCnews. Retrieved June 8, 2022, from https://www.cbc.ca/radio/q/from-kissing-homer-simpson-to-experimental-theatre-10-things-we-learned-about-harvey-fierstein-1.6381725