Challenging gender norms, from Shakespeare to Gaga

From the Washington Blade

Hey, Lady Gaga! You’re hotter than 110 degrees in the shade and appearing, dressed as a man in the September issue of Vogue Hommes Japan. Your fans, especially in the LGBT community, love your playfulness and outrageousness. But, when I saw the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Free for All production of “Twelfth Night,” which runs through Sept. 5 at Sidney Harmon Hall in Washington D.C., it dawned on me. You didn’t invent gender bending. Long before you, even pre-Madonna, performers, writers and playwrights have tweaked genders in their work, and their art has influenced queer and straight culture and been infused with a gay sensibility. Going back to William Shakespeare.

There has been much speculation about whether Shakespeare, who lived from 1564 to 1616, was queer. People during his time didn’t identify as gay as we do, and we don’t know if Shakespeare, who was married and had children, had male lovers. Yet, because many of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets are addressed to a man, it’s hard to resist believing that the playwright and poet experienced same-sex love and attraction.

Whatever his love life, Shakespeare would feel at home with the gender bending in queer and hetero culture – from hanging with drag kings to attending a matinee with the blue-haired ladies of the revival of “La Cage aux Follies” now on Broadway. Since women weren’t allowed to be actors in his era, men played both male and female parts during productions of his plays in Shakespeare’s lifetime. This made transgressing gender boundaries a necessity from the get-go for Shakespeare. The bard frequently pushed the envelope even further by having his female characters (from Portia in “The Merchant of Venice” to Rosalind in “As You Like It”) disguise themselves as men.

“Twelfth Night’s” delight emerges from its elements of disguise and mistaken identity. I won’t go into all of the plot complications except to say that Viola, the protagonist of the play, ends up in Illyria off the coast of the Adriatic Sea after a shipwreck. Viola is grief-stricken because she thinks that her twin brother Sebastian has died. To survive, she masquerades as “Cesario” and, as this imaginary personage, becomes a page to Duke Orsino. Orsino is in love with Lady Olivia. When Olivia rejects him, Orsino gets “Cesario” to intercede for him. Olivia, who thinks that Viola’s a man, is smitten with Viola. To add to the mix, Sebastian turns up alive.

“Twelfth Night,” with its combination of wit and farce, is the Elizabethan equivalent of “I Love Lucy” meets “Sex and the City.” If you’re queer, it’s Halloween on octane.

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