FIVE THINGS: THE BARD & GENDER

GLOBE GOING GENDER-BLIND

Michelle Terry, the artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London, England, has pledged to bring in gender-blind casting and a 50:50 ratio of men and women on stage. Terry said last month that her first season would provide “equal amounts of work for male or female” actors.

BUT NOT THE ROYAL SHAKESPEARE CO.

The Royal Shakespeare Company will not bow to pressure to follow suit, despite featuring an all-female directorial lineup for the first time in its history. Greg Doran, the RSC artistic director, unveiled a raft of productions for summer 2018 that will have only women at the helm. But he ruled out quotas for female actors on stage, pointing out that “in a way, Shakespeare was writing for a group of blokes, actually.”

‘HAPPY COINCIDENCE’

Doran calls the allfemale directorial billing a happy coincidence. “We didn’t suddenly go, ‘let’s have them all directed by women,’ ” he said. “We had reached a point where these women directors had been with us and had grown and developed and it just so happens that it’s an entirely femaledirected season.”

LOOKING FOR BALANCE

“In terms of re-gendering roles, we are looking for balance,” Doran said. “Michelle Terry has made a very bold statement about re-gendering so that it’s going to be 50:50 right across the board. I don’t want to impose that on directors. That would mean we couldn’t do an allfemale production, for example. I want to keep it much more fluid and organic.

SHAKESPEARE THE GENDER-BENDER

Terry’s predecessor at the Globe, Emma Rice, set the wheels in motion when she took over in 2016, saying: “There is no reason why the Duke of Gloucester can’t be a woman. If anybody bended gender, it was Shakespeare, so I think it just takes a change of mindset.”