Cross-gender acting

Cross-gender acting, also called cross-acting, is when an actor or actress portray opposite sex and gender. It is distinct from both transgender and cross-dressing character roles.

Cross-gender acting often interacts with complex cultural ideas about gender. It has a diverse history across many cultures, including English Renaissance theatre, French theatre, Japanese theatre, Indian theatres, and Ethiopian theatre.

In many contexts, such as English and Indian theatres, cross-gender acting is linked to the oppression of women. Many societies prohibited women from performing on stage, so boys and men took the female roles. Female impersonation often decreased in popularity as women gained this right.

Female cross-cast roles are commonly young boy characters, or, in the case of theatre companies like the Takarazuka Revue Company, male heroes.

Some cultures, like Tang and Yuan dynasty China, had traditions of cross-gender acting for both men and women concurrently.

Modern American cross-gender acting, especially in musical theatre roles where men play women, is often employed for comedic effect.

During the early development of ancient Greek theatre in the sixth century BC, both Athenian women and men performed. By the fifth century, changing Athenian cultural codes excluded women from public life, and thus the theatre. After this point, men played both male and female roles.

In Renaissance England, women were forbidden from performing on stage, so female roles in the plays of William Shakespeare and his contemporary playwrights were originally played by cross-dressing men or boys. (See also Stage Beauty.) Therefore, the original productions of the above-mentioned Shakespeare plays actually involved double-cross-dressing: male actors playing female characters disguising themselves as males. Academic research into the contemporary attitudes towards the practise have yielded a variety of interpretations. Historian Laura Levine argues that "an all-male acting troupe was the natural and unremarkable product of a culture whose conception of gender was "teleologically male".