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All-Girls Grease (and Desist)
I spent most of middle school and high school cutting my teeth on classic musicals like Annie, Anything Goes, and Bye Bye Birdie. The thing was, I went to an all-girls school. I was one of the students always cast as a guy, and I even got a few male leads, including that of the evil “Rooster” in Annie.
But this recent story on NPR’s Morning Edition reports that an all-female cast of Grease in Philadelphia caused an uproar with the play's licensing agent, who pulled the plug on it. The rights holders said that by changing the genders of cast members, the producers have affectively changed the script, a no-no according to the contract.
I can't imagine what all this fuss is about. It's not like the actors are black.
Posted by Kristen Sollee on 06/01/2005 | Permalink
Comments
wait, was there some civil war re-enactment thing wherein a vietnamese person(s) was denied entry? reason: no vietnamese were participants in the orig american conflict. maybe we can learn from todd solondz' "palindromes" movie (diff actors portrayed the same character, no time change - am i right, i didn't see the movie)
(hi kristen, herb - my sex & race are still the same)
Posted by: herb | Jun 1, 2005 2:19:48 PM
if you get anything from the dramatists play service and license it you are not supposed to change the gender of any of the characters or have people playing characters not of their gender...
it pisses me off, but there it is...
some playwrights are real uptight about this kind of thing. Shepard shut down an all female version of "true west" not so long ago...
Posted by: Mike Switzer | Jun 1, 2005 6:11:26 PM
Asking a playwright to agree to altering race, gender or, for that matter, age roles in their works is like asking a musical composer to agree to having the violin sections of their piece played by trumpets. These are art works we are talking about and they stand as whole with all the detail and specificity their creators intended. Let's drop the petty political correctness and remember this.
Posted by: Jim | Jun 2, 2005 1:55:05 AM
It isn't just political correctness. Part of the risk of releasing a work into the world is subjecting that work to reinterpretation. A "dictatorship-of-the-author" is not good for the evolution of art.
I'll take on faith that Mike is correct about the license terms, but that doesn't make Jim's analogy to music right. Words are different than music. The casting of a play can itself can be used to comment on society at large or the work in question. The words mean more than what the author intended. Performances should be able to examine those other meanings.
And an all-girls school should be able to perform any damn play that they want to.
Posted by: Charles Star | Jun 2, 2005 10:45:56 AM
Just to clear up a few things- the licensing agent was Samuel French, and there was nothing in the contract that stipulated that only men could play the male roles. The genders of the characters weren't being changed, they were played as men by professional female actors, without any undertones of homosexuality or political statements.
Posted by: anonymous | Jun 8, 2005 4:02:36 PM
I was actually in this production of Grease, that became Grease and Desist. I played Eugene in Grease, and I was Marvin in Grease and Desist. Samuel French (publishing company) said that we broke the contract by using females to play the males, even though our concept was that we were in an all girls high school. Anyway, nowhere in our contract did it say anything about the gender of the actors playing the roles, so we technically did not break a contract, and now it is a fight between lawyers. But we made the best out of a bad situation, by writing Grease and Desist in a day and a half, rehearsing it the next day, and putting it up on it's feet the day after that. You gotta at least give us credit for that!!
Posted by: Amanda | Jun 15, 2005 9:19:11 PM
Asking a playwright to agree to altering race, gender or, for that matter, age roles in their works is like asking a musical composer to agree to having the violin sections of their piece played by trumpets. These are art works we are talking about and they stand as whole with all the detail and specificity their creators intended.correctness Let's drop the petty political and remember this.
Posted by: 234 | Oct 10, 2005 8:53:11 AM
i think the idea of an all female cast is awesome, giving us women a chance to play the more brooding and tougher roles, as opposed to having to play feminine, girly roles. why should a female be relegated to dresses and such, when we have come a long way from the oppression of a patriarchial society. it's not a man's world anymore, we've come a long way, ladies, let's not lose the distance we've come...
Posted by: pocketdyke | Jun 28, 2008 8:45:53 PM
