Your Privilege Is Showing

Don't lift that skirt any higher, darling.

I am directing a show called Lend Me A Tenor for Scarborough Theatre Guild. Arguably one of the funnier North America farces, Tenor was, however, written about twenty-five years ago and includes black face make up (a tenor dons his costume for Otello, the Opera). Black face is not, now, considered acceptable for any reason. A friend of mine, who is particularly interested in race issues -- and was even pre-warned -- left at intermission, he found the device so offensive.

As a person who is deeply aware that the current dominant gaze in our canon of theatre plays is white, straight, and masculine, I sympathize.

But I am a whore. I do every piece to its fullest. If the show is on, the show is on. Current methods of dealing with the black face include resolving to middle eastern (light brown make up/turban). This is something I won't do as it creates the same problem, in my mind and is a cop out, feeding on media driven fears in order to 'get away' with something. Nope, I just did it.

Having said this, I felt very bad - this is a good friend. No one wants to hurt anyone's feelings.

Now, I also went whole hog with the objectification of some of the women in the show. If I'm going to piss people off; I'm going to piss people off. Think whatever you like of me. Now, these women are sexy (assumiing the gaze is masculine and straight). It was interesting to me that no mention was made of how the women were presented. It was just assumed that the women would self-objectify to satisfy the dominant gaze and that's fine. Hey, wait....

Hmmmmm. Don't lift that skirt any higher, darling. Your privilege is showing.


Jacqui Burke is a freelance director, writer, and theatrical teacher living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.  She is currently directing Lend Me A Tenor for Scarborough Theatre Guild, directing The Wild Life (a Kidsplay production), and prepping for the all female version of Taming of the Shrew for Jaybird Productions going up in the fall of this year. She is, also, serializing The Pretender, her first novel, online at http://thepretender-amarcienoelnovel.blogspot.ca/.  


Jacqui Burke
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