During this Pride Month, a local theater company is reimagining the Tennessee Williams classic “A Streetcar Named Desire” with the focal character of Blanche DuBois being played by a trans woman.
Actor Indigo Leigh is taking on the role. She says the production aims to examine a classic text from a new perspective, using a method called “conscious casting.” The trick is to honor the playwright’s original intent while diversifying the cast in a way that reflects modern society, and to view the work through that new lens.
Indigo Leigh:
I think one of the most important things to me is to sort of normalize gender conscious casting, and that it's not necessarily about "anyone can play any role," but it's that the casting should be dependent on the story you're trying to tell. And what is the message? What is the sort of core action that you're trying to achieve through the play? And in this case, it's exploring how gender and gender roles and conforming, or lack thereof, to preconceived gender notions - how that translates a classic piece of theatre. We're looking at it from a non-cisgendered non-hetero way. Yes, of course, the character in its original production was cisgender and hetero. But Tennessee Williams' writing, it's so queer coded, because he had these friends who were drag queens and trans women and these people that he knew, but he couldn't necessarily write about, because they were already so much on the fringe of society that [there was concern such as], "How can your work be read? How can your work be accepted or even published, if you're writing about this sort of fringe society?"
Nicole Darden Creston:
One might think that possibly a way to do that is write female characters that are larger than life like Blanche DuBois.
Indigo Leigh:
Exactly. I lovingly refer to a lot of Tennessee Williams' leading ladies as the "big ladies." They kind of fall along the same lines as like a Dolly Levi in "Hello, Dolly," or Mama Rose in "Gypsy" these larger than life women that I think queer people find so attractive in their...fervor. "Auntie Mame" is one of my favorite pieces of literature, and my favorite movie, period. But it's attractive, how willing they are to live life. And they're sort of over-the-top nature is very exciting to queer people who, of course, because we've been shut in a metaphorical closet for our lives, to see someone living so large and outside of themself is so inspiring for us, because we see what we wish that we were doing. And of course [with Streetcar], taking the liberties of a dramatic play where the characters maybe don't do completely respectable things. They don't act in necessarily respectable ways all the time. But there is an amount of liberation that is experienced by seeing these characters who are not just traditionally perfect, but they are flawed in ways. I mean, what's more relatable than seeing someone with flaws?
Nicole Darden Creston:
Amen to that! Do you think that people will come away with a different impression than if they had seen this show with, let's call it 'traditional' casting?
Indigo Leigh:
I think they will. And I think this production will cause them to actually listen more to the words that we're saying. So many people are so familiar with this script, and the story, and all of those sort of elements to it, that when they're hearing it from a new voice, when they're hearing it from a new interpretation, they're suddenly going to interpret the lines that they know or that they may think they know, they're going to interpret them differently. Because now painted over the top of all of this is this sort of, I say this in a loving way, a sort of strange creature. Like, "Who is this strange, beautiful creature saying these lines that we know?" And it makes you listen more. Because, what meaning does it take on? And I think certain people would try and poke holes in it - "Oh, Blanche could never be played by a trans woman, Blanche isn't trans" and yada, yada, yada, all that stuff that frankly, I don't care much about - it's not my job to worry about their opinions. But they will sort of listen more intently to try and find that what she's saying doesn't match her. But as the play continues, you see, no, Blanche is a fully three-dimensional person who is going through these things that many trans people and many queer people experience - of being the outsider, maybe being forced away from their homes, rejection by family, a struggle to find acceptance. And I think in the case of a lot of trans people, the struggle to find acceptance in a romantic way sometimes, and how our exclusion has led us to hunt for that protection and that sort of sacred intimacy.
Nicole Darden Creston:
Is there a special framework for doing this piece in this place at this time?
Indigo Leigh:
Obviously, we see what's facing Florida right now and these anti-drag bills and all of these [new laws]. I mean, in July, I cannot use a public bathroom without potential for being charged with trespassing which is absurd. I'm not trying to do anything that I don't need to in there, goodness gracious. But there's a sort of imminent importance to this, you know...you wait too long, and perhaps we wouldn't be allowed to do something like this. And because we have these restrictions about "what is drag," and of course, these laws, when you read them, the way that it's targeted is sexually explicit performance, not specifically drag. But because it is all being lumped one into the same thing, people aren't paying attention to what's actually being said. And so it's causing fear, and it's causing retaliation. I mean, I personally have seen people be outwardly aggressive and threatening towards me as a trans person and towards other trans people, and drag queens and queer people, because they feel empowered to, and as a trans woman, amidst all of this flourish of "drag is illegal," which again, that's not what it's saying. It's saying sexually explicit material cannot be shown to children, which of course, never flew in the first place. But because it is sort of being left up to the interpreter, rather than actually being followed through of what these laws are actually saying, as a trans woman, my being is being questioned. And who's to say, who's a drag queen? And who's to say, who's a trans woman? And who's to say who or what anyone is. Like I said, there is a sort of urgency of, we have to share this now, because what happens when we can't share it anymore? And when places and people don't produce works, when they don't produce a production of "Kinky Boots," because they think they're gonna get shut down?
Nicole Darden Creston:
Going back to Streetcar, you are not changing any of the words or any of the overt intentions of the play, is that correct?
Indigo Leigh:
That is absolutely correct. Nothing changes except for the perspective. And that's why it's so interesting, the idea of gender conscious casting in this era, where we're looking back on theater and art that has been created in the past. I mean, the first quote-unquote 'Broadway musical' was "Showboat" in 1927, we are coming across the first 100 years of American Broadway. And as we look back, and we see that that history is almost exclusively hetero, cisgendered, and white. So how do we begin to look back on those pieces? And how do we begin to remount those pieces in a way that is more inclusive to the world as it actually is, not just the world that it was "before"? Because surprise, surprise, black people, trans people, queer people have always existed. And so we're beginning this journey of gender conscious and color conscious casting, where we're thinking about how the person affects the story, and telling a story that is still honoring the playwright's intent, which is always the challenge. I mean, there hasn't been much conversation about that. That's why people find it so difficult. I think we're beginning to see a new light coming to conversations about gender. And what a unique time for us to be seeing the world in this new light and examining it for more than a cis-hetero white perspective.
