Cross-gender acting

Mary Pickford as Cedric Errol in a lobby card for the 1921 film Little Lord Fauntleroy

In this sketch by Marguerite Martyn, the College Club of St. Louis was in rehearsal for “The Amazons,” a play by Arthur Wing Pinero, in which all the parts were played by women, April 1910.

Cross-gender acting refers to actors or actresses portraying a character of the opposite gender. It is distinct from roles where transgender characters or characters who cross-dress are played.

In the ancient Greek theatre men played females, as they did in English Renaissance theatre and continue to do in Japanese kabuki theatre (see onnagata). In Chinese opera specialized male actors who play female roles (dàn) are referred to as nándàn (男旦); the practice arose during the Qing dynasty due to imperial prohibitions against women performing on stage, considered detrimental to public morality.^[1][2]

A breeches role refers to a male character (usually a youth or young man) traditionally played by a woman in theatre or in opera. The term travesti refers to both actresses playing men and actors playing women in the theatre.

In animations it is not unusual for female actors to voice young male characters. One example is Nancy Cartwright voicing Bart Simpson in The Simpsons. An example of a man voicing a female character is Bob Peterson as Roz in Monsters, Inc..

When the casting director of a production decides to employ cross-gender acting, selecting the actors in this way is sometimes also called "cross-gender casting" or simply "cross-casting".

In film and television

Theatre, operas, plays, ballets and pantomime

Katarina Karnéus as Serse in a 2009 production of Serse at the Royal Swedish Opera.

Sarah Bernhardt as Prince Hamlet in June 1899.

A travesti is a theatrical term referring to the portrayal of a character in an opera, play, or ballet by a performer of the opposite sex. In 1904, Nina Boucicault originated the theatrical tradition of cross-gender casting for Peter Pan, continued thereafter by Maude Adams, Marilyn Miller, Eva Le Gallienne, Sandy Duncan, and Cathy Rigby, among others.^[7] In 1954 Mary Martin portrayed the title character in the musical Peter Pan.

More specifically, an operatic role in which an actress appears in male clothing is called a "breeches role", "pants role" or "trouser role" and roles once performed by a male soprano castrato are more recently sometimes performed by a female mezzo-soprano or contralto.

In pantomime, a principal boy role is the young male protagonist of the play, traditionally played by a young actress in boy's clothes. A pantomime dame is a portrayal of female characters by male actors in drag.

See also

• Cross-dressing in film and television
• Cross-dressing in literature
• Köçek
• List of transgender-related topics
• Transgender in film and television

References