Transgender in Theater / Yujing Lin

Transgender in Theater

Published on 9th September 2019

Born on the same day and month as Shakespeare, Cara Arielle Brokes, a student director in the theater department at Stephens College, hopes someday to open a theater company that performs Shakespearean plays.

The reason: Shakespeare’s flexibility with gender binaries, something that Brokes wants more audiences to see.

Brokes, who is gender nonconforming and uses the plural pronouns of they and their, is using theater to break gender binaries and bring more diverse voices to audiences.

As diversity increases within the LGBTQ population at Stephens, students and faculty are trying to increase transgender and gender-nonconforming visibility. Students and faculty also have worked hard to increase the awareness of transgender and gender non-conforming people both on and off stage.

Being Themselves

The awareness Brokes hopes to raise locally mirrors the effort on the national stage.

“When I was young, I always told my mom that God forgot my penis,” Becca Blackwell said.

Blackwell, 44, is a freelance actor, performer and playwright working in New York. Blackwell won a 2015 Doris Duke Artist Award, which recognizes creative, self-challenging artists nationwide.

Blackwell identifies as “a masculine woman” and uses the pronoun they. Blackwell had surgery to remove both breasts and started taking male hormones in 2013.

“I face a lot of obstacles in theater. I cannot make enough money to pay the bills and my identity adds to it,” Blackwell said.

Most theaters emphasize a woman’s feminine identity.

Even with the challenge, Blackwell has worked in theater for 25 years while also remaining true to their identity.

“It is my own choice because I don’t want to feel badly about myself,” Blackwell said.

Blackwell doesn’t regret coming out; because being true to yourself is the most important thing in life, according to Blackwell.

Now, Blackwell has a solo show named “They, Themself and Schmerm.” The show is a personal tale of Blackwell’s transition to being gender nonconforming. Blackwell explains that language cannot adequately describe the real world. Blackwell uses “them” as a singular pronoun when referring to the self.

At Stephens College, Brokes also broke gender binaries when coming out as gender nonconforming in August 2017, after initially identifying as bisexual.

“Some days I feel like a man, and some days I feel like a woman. Today, I feel in between. People can tell from the clothes I am wearing,” said Brokes. “[And] I feel a lot happier after coming out.”

According to a William Institute 2016 reports, about 1.4 million, or half of one percent of U.S. adults identify as transgender.

In Missouri, the report estimates there are about 25,050 transgender people. Missouri ranks the 25^th out of the 50 states in the number of trans people.

It takes courage to come out, according to Brokes, and there are more obstacles after coming out.

Being Supported

Storytelling advocate Rebecca Kling of the Washington D.C.-based National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE), said the U.S. has work to do before all genders are regarded as equal. NCTE is a non-profit organization advocating and promoting policies to help trans people.

The ability to find work is just one example of the inequalities.

According to a NCTE 2015 survey of 27,715 transgender and gender-nonconforming people, about 15 percent were unemployed, almost three times higher than the overall U.S. unemployment rate, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Of the respondents, 509 were Missourians, of which 19 percent were unemployed.

Unemployment exists among transgender actors, too.

“Theater doesn’t do enough to reach out to transgender people. They just don’t know there are trans actors out there,” Kling said.

However, once educated, the theater can also provide an accepting environment for LGBTQ people.

“In general, theater community is relatively liberal and supportive of LGBTQ issues,” Kling said. “When trans people are supported by family and schools, it is only going to get better.”

So far, at Stephens College, professors and students who know about Brokes’ identity are supportive.

The theater department is a positive, open place, Brokes said.

“The culture of theater is very accepting. People’s genders and their desires to change the genders will not inhibit me from seeing them differently,” said Rob Doyen, Brokes’ adviser at Stephens.

Doyen said that while the theater is a more supportive environment, society as a whole still puts up barriers for transgender and gender-nonconforming people.

Being Educated

Transgender and gender-nonconforming people not only need support from close friends and family, they also need general support from the society.

“If someone is familiar with something, it is not that scary. But the information out there about trans people is wrong and misleading,” Kling said. Sometimes, people can’t tell what is true and what it not.

Stephens College is also transitioning to adopt these new understandings. Stephens does not accept transgender or gender-nonconforming students, but its policy is currently under debate. The transgender students at Stephens did not come out until after they were already attending the school.

There are over 10 transgender or non-gender conforming students who have come out in the theater department alone.

Students who have come out as transgender or gender non-conforming are welcome in school, Brokes said.

We didn’t know about these things before, but now we are all learning, Doyen said.

People in Stephens are supportive to transgender and gender-nonconforming students, according to Brokes.

“People don’t understand what’s offensive. They are still trying to learn and I am willing to educate them,” Brokes said.

Being Represented

In order to become familiar with transgender and gender-nonconforming issues, more transgender and gender-nonconforming people should be represented in the theater, Blackwell said. People might want to help, but sometimes fear accepting trans actors.

“People are good, but they don’t want to take risks,” Blackwell said.

Doing theater for so many years, Blackwell knows theater is a tough business especially for transgender actors. Trans actors can face more struggles as a result of their identities.

Sometimes, a transgender or gender-nonconforming actor made a choice to do theater and put in a lot of effort but got nothing in return,” Blackwell said. “[However,] if one person will take the risk, there will be one show out there. And seeing yourself in theater and public media can help you feel valuable.”

Just like Blackwell mentioned, transgender and gender non-conforming characters are rare in theater; they are also rare on public media, including primetime TV programs.

It is hard to know if there have been any recent improvements nationally in the acceptance and inclusion for transgender and gender-nonconforming people in the society, because there is little research and data on it, Kling said.

The Columbia community continues to take steps toward increasing the representation of transgender and gender non-conforming people in the arts. At Stephens College, students and faculty also want to hear more voices from these students.

“We do need more female voices in theater; not just women, but women of color, and even LGBTQ women,” said Timuchin Aker, an assistant professor at Stephens.

Brokes said, in their company for Shakespearean plays, they will hire as many LGBTQ people as possible. And Brokes will hire people who have the same identities as the characters they play on stage.

Doyen said that to increase transgender and gender-nonconforming visibility and awareness, students and the faculty at Stephens College will continue to include more transgender and gender-nonconforming voices both on and off the stage.

Side Bar Story

The challenge for Stephens College is whether do accept someone who was born male but transition to female before applying to Stephens.

Most of the trans students at Stephens were born women but have transition to male or gender non-conforming.

According to the AP Stylebook, transgender describes people with gender identities that do not match their assigned genders or sexes while gender non-conforming describes people who do not conform to the traditional view of two genders.

The promotion of accepting transgender females has been debated in Stephens College since 2014.

Other women’s colleges across the country are facing the same challenge.

Eight women’s colleges now accept transgender women: Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mills, Mount Holyoke, Simmons, Scripps, Wellesley and Smith colleges, according to a report in “Gender and Society.”

Stephens College has been a single-sex institution for 184 years, but the college has been developing its admission policy of transgender students recently. The college does not have any policies on the topic so far.

However, there are more than 10 students in its theater department identified as transgender or gender non-conforming alone. They all came out after being admitted to the school.

A group of students presented their thoughts on the necessity of admitting transgender and gender non-conforming students in front of the college Board of Trustees in October 2017.

Stephens theater major Cara Arielle Brokes identifies as gender non-conforming said the college does not admit transgender students because it identifies as a women’s college.

“It is hard to make a decision, since it is a women’s college, but not accepting trans people is just very unfair to us,” Brokes said, noting that it is illegal to discriminate against students based on gender identities.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX) introduces new complications to the issue.

“The acceptance of trans students is okay, but how to make it with everyone’s best interest?” Rob Doyen, an actor and teacher at Stephens College, said. “It gets complicated with Title IX.”

In May 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Education declared that Title IX prohibits discrimination against transgender students.

“[However,] we don’t have specific policies protecting trans students’ rights to go to college and accept higher education,” said trans advocate Rebecca Kling of the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) .

Whereas, among the respondents from 18 years old to 24 years old who identified as transgender or gender non-conforming, 17 percent reported to have a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to a NCTE 2015 survey. That’s 7 percent more than the general U.S. population, which is common because of the small sample size, according to the survey.

However, it is still difficult for transgender women and gender-nonconforming students who were born female to get in a women’s college, unless they identify as female when applying.

The U.S. still has a long way to achieve transgender equality in their admissions to women’s colleges.

“But when trans people are supported by family and schools, they can be just as successful as everyone else,” Kling said.