Men in Women's Roles

Men in Women's Roles ¹

I. BY C. JINARAJADASA, M.A., (Cantab)

From my standpoint, the answer to the first question as to whether there is "any inherent impropriety, from the artistic point of view, in specially gifted men appearing as women," is that anything that is abnormal and utterly against the trend of Nature must be supremely inartistic. ‘Impropriety’ is largely a matter of man-made standards of right and wrong, and religious practices can be found in certain primitive religions where a masquerade of men as women takes place temporarily. But the problem is different when we discuss whether any action is artistic or inartistic.

However gifted an actor may be, he can never reflect even with his finest imagination what are the subtle reactions of a woman to any situation. As yet physiologists have not been able to find out whether there is any subtle difference in the construction of the nerves of a woman which differentiates them from those of a man; but anyone observant of the reactions of men and women notes at once that they are so strikingly different that the difference is not anything superficial, but must go deep down even into the subtler parts of brain structure. A gifted man can imitate a woman's actions, but I have myself no doubt on the main point, that he cannot think and feel exactly as does a woman, simply because he has not the woman's sensory apparatus.

This question will be asked only in India where men of artistic temperament have never had the opportunity of seeing great women as actors. Anyone who has seen Sarah Bernhardt, Elenora Duse, Ellen Terry or Maude Adams, knows without any question of doubt that it is utterly impossible for a man, however gifted, to reveal the subtleties of life that these great actresses have revealed.

As to the second question, whether taking feminine roles affects fundamentally the personality of the actor, I can only reply that so far I have heard of no such adverse changes. Of course there is this proviso, that those male actors who are particularly successful in India in women's roles may possibly belong to what Edwin Carpenter called ‘the Intermediate type.’ If an actor who takes women's roles shows certain habits and mannerisms usually associated with women, it may be due not to his acting but to something more fundamental in his organic structure.

In England in certain amateur Theatrical Societies now and then a woman's role is taken by a man. But this is done not as anything artistic, but following some tradition of the Society, as, for instance, by the Dramatic Societies of Oxford and Cambridge, where women’s roles are taken by men. But the audience that is present, enjoys the acting not for any inner artistic revelation, but for the sheer cleverness shown by the actor in playing the role of an actress. Everybody goes to be fooled, and enjoys it all the more as they are fooled by the actor playing so well the woman's role.

II. BY M. CHALAPATHI RAU, M.A., B.L.

There is nothing inherently improper even in the seven deadly sins. But what is the ‘artistic point of view’? Is it the view of our traditional stage, or of the stage in every country East and West at the present day, or of the individual artistes and art-critics? I suppose an answer to your question depends on all three. It is improper according to our traditional drama for Oedipus to come with bleeding eyes, for Othello to smother Desdemona, for Romeo and Juliet to kiss and embrace in the balcony. It is utterly archaic according to the English and the European stage for men to play the roles of women, except as a piece of pure fun as in the well-known farce ‘Charley’s Aunt.’ It is useless to try to strike a mean between personal views because it is impossible and unnecessary, especially when there seems to be no one great enough to impose his view and mould our stage according to it. A single-minded State like Russia with a point of view is able to nationalise its stage and give impetus to its dramatic art; other States are hydra-headed and many minded and it is impossible for India to develop a national point of view in the coming days. The Krishna Patrika’s point of view is that since the triumph of dramatic art lies in the creation of an illusion, it is not artistically improper for men to appear in the roles of women. But it is not a long step to the view that men may appear as mountains or mice–I mean realistically and not merely symbolically–or lions and walls as the revellers did when they staged the Interlude of ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Where, then, is the limit to this illusion within an illusion, this double strain for an actor who has to play not only the part of a particular character but that of another sex and another species? The Patrika gives credit to the actor who bears this double strain, but we must also concede some credit to the male characters who have to bear the extra strain of imposing on themselves the illusion that the lady before them is not illusory. And what about the audiences? They too deserve credit. We are thus going to the primitive stage, the Greek stage, the medieval European stage, our own street drama, and the Ober-Ammergau passion play. I am not objecting to these types; for it is all right if we have the primal imagination to get into it illusion easily and derive real satisfaction and not the pathetic satisfaction we manage to derive from imperfect productions with all kinds of compromises. It is hard to understand our anachronistic ancient-minded folk who want to stick to if archaisms and invent art theories to justify them. The more progressive, if more sophisticated view is that the presentation should assist the audience and the actors and not draw upon their imaginations too much. That is why today they are staging Twelfth Night in a park, and Max Reinhardt is producing for the O.U.D.S. A Midsummer Night's Dream in the woods of Oxford. But for the highly technical stage we require such a master showman as Coehnan and a master-artist as Gordon Craig. If it is said there is no limit to the low-brow compromises we can make in creating what is only an illusion, I can understand the logic as well as its fairness, but if a limit has to be put somewhere, I think we should put it not between man and his fellow-creatures but even at the sexes, since sex seems to be still the most primitive force which is shaping the sculpture of bodies as well as the psychology of minds, a force which is the seed of much drama and cannot yet be tamed or civilized or cast out like the devil. I am not here forgetting the force of evolution or eugenics; and, like Mr. Venkatachalam, I recognise only too well the possibility and also the desirability of human beings evolving, even consciously, into a race of hermophrodites or sexless Shavians or god-like Uranians living unmorally in utter nakedness.

Apart from the question of high aesthetics I want to raise only two questions, which may appear unimportant to others but to me are important and quite pertinent to the problem. First, the question of love-making. Love-making pure, like Tragedy proper, is almost absent on our traditional stage, and when a lover like Dushyanta sings from his covert the catalogue of his mistress’s charms, almost always contradicted by the improperly cast male-female heroine trying to blush in the foot-lights, and comes nearer, his passion seems to ooze out and he becomes a bit monkish, and in spite of all mutual attraction he merely touches her shoulder or taps her chin, or, if he is more daring, perhaps kisses her hands. It might be that our ancients did not want to be more realistic on the stage or that their love-making in real life was as pompous and ineffectual; but since I suspect the movies and talkies have affected the art of love-making and kissing in our ancient land, since there seems to be a genuine demand for more and more realism at the present day, not the realism of mere popular phraseology put into the mouths of characters but realism outre, I ask how far it is possible for a male-female heroine and a male-lover to kiss or embrace or put each other in an illusion. I am sure that this would appear improper and even immoral to most of those who, in the absence of such emotional exhibitionism, see everything proper now. I should not be accused of advocating any pruriency because nothing is further from my mind, and I am aware that this sort of cent-per-cent realism may prevent most cent-per-cent females from taking to the stage. But I hate the prudery of those, so-called cultured folk who put a ban on their artistic abilities, whose passion for stage-reform is only half-hearted and whose snobbery about morals is not deeper than their skin; and it was this prudery that turned a fairly good play like Mrs. Kshama Row's Amulet, recently staged in Bombay, from a success into a shadowy and unconvincing thing. Next, the problem of make-up. It is not too odious for me to think of the preposterous additions to the physiology of the male-female, but when I see him (or her!) come padded with an Epstein bust but without the corollary of the monumental hips, an important item of beauty in our traditions, I do not know whether to laugh or cry. I have seen these male-female actors successfully express maidenliness with face and hands, but am yet to see them as successful with their immodest, unmaidenly, and almost absent-minded legs. I saw once the unholy sight of the divine Desdemona's bust dropping down in the middle of the

smothering, and the whole tragedy turned into a comedy too deep for tears. It seems to me, therefore, that for males to persist in playing the roles of females is not only artistically improper but utterly idiotic. I would finally ask those who seem to be quite satisfied with Sthanam Narasimharao and others, who only disillusion me and are tolerable because of their singing, to imagine the difference between these artistic inversions, however able they might be, and the real women-actresses of the English and the European stages. I am not here putting forward the inadequate and cheaper parallel of the talkies, but recommend even the second-rate Salisbury Company when it comes next, or the amateur theatricals of the important-centres in India.

I cannot answer the second question so easily because first-rate artistes in our country are as rare as spakes in Iceland, and while my little experience speaks in one way the evidence elsewhere is opposite. I know the case of a man, perhaps only a third-rate artiste, who had been accustomed to play female, parts and developed the female instinct so much that he would embrace us, kiss us even, and kiss very passionatae the photographs of Rudolph Valentino and other Hollywood he-men. But for the last few years he has given up acting altogether, and I was surprised this year to see him, shorn of all feminine graces, behave like a member of the masculine sex. We, however, hear that Charles Laughton and Emil Jannings .who are the best murderers on the stage are the gentlest of men at home, that Greta Garbo who ‘vamps’ about so violently on the screen is in real life a sweet stay-at-home, that Boris Karloff who acts the weirdest and ghastliest parts is a perfect gentleman of the world. My experience may not be worth much; but for this and collateral questions about introverts and extroverts, I should like to recommend to the reader the expert evidence of Havelock Ellis.

1 Answers to the Editor's questions in the Jan.-Feb. issue of Triveni.