Yahoo News RSC to stage gender-balanced production of Troilus and Cressida
The RSC is to stage its first gender-balanced production with the Bard’s “most testosterone-fuelled” play.
Troilus and Cressida, set during the siege of Troy, will have a 50/50 split of male and female actors in a play that traditionally features just a handful of women.
The titular characters are Trojan lovers, separated when Cressida is given to the Greek camp in a prisoner exchange.
The company will not follow Shakespeare’s Globe, which has pledged a 50/50 balance across an entire season. Gregory Doran, the RSC’s artistic director, has said that is too restrictive.
Troilus and Cressida is an experiment, and one which Doran will lead himself as director of the production.
“I want to reflect the nation and its diversity, and clearly gender is going to be a part of that,” he said.
“In order to be able to champion and understand it, I wanted to do it for myself - leading from the front, as it were. It’s Shakespeare’s most testosterone-fuelled play, and let’s see what happens.”
In a play that deals with masculinity and sexuality, gender-blind casting will not be a simple process. The characters include Helen of Troy and the warriors Aeneas and Achilles.
Doran said: “What I don’t want is just to regender some of the smaller roles. I’m using this partly as a test, putting my money where my mouth is, and looking at what gender means.
“For example, Troilus and Cressida could easily be played by two women. But if you want sexuality and gender to be part of what the play is talking about - Cressida’s gender and sexuality are used as a pawn in the war game. There is a moment when she’s brought into the Greek camp and kissed by all the generals. Do you want to retain that as being specifically male to female?”
The play will open the RSC’s winter season in October, and will be broadcast live to cinemas on November 14.
Evelyn Glennie, the virtuoso percussionist, will provide a “satirical, futuristic” soundtrack of “a world resounding in battle”.
In a second piece of gender-swapping, Kathryn Hunter will play the title role in Timon of Athens. “If you ask the question, ‘What gender is Timon?’ then apparently he’s a man, but there’s no reason for him to be,” Doran said.
The season will also include a new version of Moliere’s Tartuffe from Anil Gupta and Richard Pinto, the writers television of comedy series Goodness Gracious Me and The Kumars at No 42. It will be set in Birmingham’s Pakistani Muslim community. The Rasputin-like central character, Tartuffe, is renamed Tahir Taufiq Arsuf.
A new initiative, First Time Fridays, will offer £10 tickets for any Friday show to people who have never been to the RSC before.
Doran explained: “It’s about getting people in who haven’t thought the RSC was necessarily for them. The key element is: try it, you might like it.”
The RSC is also launching a series of free monthly podcasts with The Telegraph, Much Ado About Shakespeare, beginning in March and featuring interviews, behind-the-scenes insight and expert commentary.
