Burning the (Monologue) Book: Disobeying the Rules of Gender Bias in Beginning Acting Classes

Feminist writings have already shown us the many problems in women's representation in Western theatre. Works like Jill Dolan's The Feminist Spectator as Critic were instrumental in opening our eyes to the explicit and the not-so-explicit manifestations of gender bias in the field. In making clear how women are framed in performance, such writings have given us possibilities for an active questioning of gender roles on the stage. My project here is different: to question how Western theatre's gender bias is extended and perpetuated by higher education institutions. While we have been able to elaborate on directorial choices that resist the grain, we risk overlooking the smallest of the sites where mainstream ideology is reproduced, the one-hundred level theatre class. I am particularly interested in pedagogical alternatives to teaching beginning acting classes because these courses bring to the student a combination of both theoretical and practical information. Furthermore, I am intrigued by how acting courses can affect students who are not interested in pursuing a career in theatre.

My perspective is shaped not only by my feminism but also by my theatre training in Brazil, where a radically different pedagogical model is in place. In my experience, the most problematic aspect of beginning acting training in the United States relates to what might be called "the culture of the monologue book"--that is, the excessive role monologues and monologue books play in many of these classes. I have found that by encouraging students to use monologue books we, as teachers, perpetuate problems in women's representation both on the stage and in society at large, while fostering an individualistic, competitive model for theatre that works against larger goals of collaboration and ensemble building.

Consciously or not, many theatre departments offer a two-pronged endorsement of sexist values. The first takes place in college-level dramatic literature survey courses, which draw heavily from the patriarchal canon to introduce students to theatre. The other finds its way into beginning acting classes when their content is largely based on the fundamentals of American realism, whose ideological position is closely related to that of its European parent: "realism is prescriptive in that it reifies the dominant culture's inscription of traditional power relations between genders and classes" (Dolan 84). In the same way, American realism erases women as agents of their own histories as it supports the white, middle-class, male American agenda. The widespread adoption of American realism in the beginning acting classroom presents immediate problems for the female student. On the one hand, this genre's female characters are frequently disempowered and in relationship to a male figure; on the other, the emphasis on character psychology inhibits critical thinking to privilege emotion, frequently leading to the feminization of the student actor.

Against this backdrop, enter the monologue book. By focusing on character rather than on story, the culture of monologue books does not encourage students to look for aesthetic choices; preoccupied solely with her character, the young actor cannot see possible readings against the text's grain. I have also found that monologue books are especially guilty of making students believe that good acting equals public validation since, by reproducing the audition frame, they prioritize ends over means. And finally, they endorse the idea that an actor should choose a character close to her own personality, potentially contributing to a young actor's confusion between her own self-image and her image of a character--a juxtaposition that can be detrimental to the student's artistic and personal development. Monologue books reveal the vices of mainstream ideology most clearly asthey mirror the broader picture of what is offered and expected from female actors. While these anthologies are not the reason why the canon is sexist, they synthesize many of theatre's dominant values.

The problem with monologue books is not restricted to the...