The audience would haaaaate Cathy if you ever genderbent L5Y.
“Yeah, so, Jaime is this really hardworking positive woman who encourages her unsuccessful unambitious boyfriend to follow his dreams. She hooks him up, financially supports him, and does everything she can to make it happen, but her boyfriend becomes jealous of her success, suspicious of her attractive coworkers, and can’t stop complaining about the work he has to do in his career. But, in his defense, she DOES eventually cheat on him…after being angrily accused of cheating over and over, and having her work events sabotaged by his emotional tantrums.”
The minute you genderbend L5Y, the whole “Jamie sucks” narrative basically disappears.
That's been part of my idea for a gender bent/gender blind version for a while now. I would just make it so that there's four people in the cast. A male and female Jaime, and a male and female Cathy. This way you can switch up who plays which role on a night by night basis.
You can have the normal casting, or a gender bent version. But also a gay and lesbian version. I think there's actually some quite interesting things you can do with that, and explore and compare different kinds of relationship dynamics like that.
This. Cathy would be quite difficult to gender-bend anyway due to the amount of gendered lyrics (Summer in Ohio, Next 10 minutes, Climbing uphill, even I can do better than that immediately comes to mind) (edit: i wrote shiksa goddess cause i was stupid plz ignore me).
Oh wow it never occurred to me before that you would basically have to write an entirely new song in place of Shiksa Goddess in a gender bent production of L5Y. It really requires Jamie to be male and Cathy to be female to make any sense.
Wait what? I was agreeing with you lol. I wasn’t being sarcastic or anything. Shiksa Goddess is extremely gendered both ways. Jamie has to be a man and Cathy a woman for it to make sense. He’s breaking his mother’s heart because his kids won’t be Jewish (among other things). It wouldn’t make sense IMO if Jamie was a woman and Cathy a man because the children would be Jewish. Although obviously a very religiously Jewish mother would want her daughter to marry in the faith, as far as I know, a male Shiksa (I forgot the masculine form of that word) is not the same thing as a female Shiksa. It could maybe make sense but it doesn’t work the same honestly. And then if they were both men or both women, they would have more to worry about from religious Jewish parents than just dating outside the faith lol.
lmao no it's not you i just thought i made a stupid mistake cause i haven't listened to the musical in a while plus i don't trust my brain. I think with Shiksa Goddess a lesbian Jamie would still be breaking her mother's heart cause in addition to not dating jewish she's not even dating cis men who can naturally procreate with her - imo it can add an extra layer to the lyrics cause a lot of lesbians face pressure from their families to have children ('naturally').
Someone I did theater with in college was recently in a sapphic TLFY! I didn't get a chance to see it, but from what I saw posted it worked very well and was super good.
I saw a production that did this! I came away feeling like both characters contributed to the marriage failing, but Jamie was worse (she cheated on Cathy and blew off Cathy's birthday).
Interesting! I could be forgetting some details, but my read is that the whole problem is that Cathy *is* ambitious. She's jealous of Jamie's success precisely *because* her own ambitions are thwarted while all his wildest dreams are fulfilled. I saw a production where both Jamie and Cathy were women, and I still came away feeling like Jamie sucked (not that Cathy was completely blameless, but Jamie cheated on her and blew off her birthday).
The London production did! Brooklyn were all girls. They didn’t advertise that initially and it wasn’t in the programme, so when I went during previews there were screams when they came out.
I’m in a production of Newsies that has girl newsies! Our Spot is also nonbinary and our Crutchie is a woman!! (We got permission too to change the pronouns of Spot and Crutchie to match the actors!)
I just directed an all-girl Newsies at an all-girl Catholic school (only male was Roosevelt, a cameo from faculty). They had the time of their lives and audiences LOVED it!
Less gender blind but I've always wanted to see a production of Little Shop with a female voiced Audrey II. I think there'd be some interesting implications from her attachment to Seymour and how she goes from standing up for Audrey I to wanting to kill her once Seymour expresses a romantic interest in running off with her. Plus I just really love "Mean green mother".
I've seen two productions of LSOH in the past few years that both had women voicing Audrey II. Neither had those implications but that would be really interesting.
Sadly, Mean Green Mother is not in the stage show and likely never will be officially (though some people add it in illegally). It's a shame, because it gives the movie the climax it so rightfully deserves. The show really needs that 11 o'clock number, too.
A different show, in part, with Mean Green Mother. I prefer the "pure" and more forceful ending with the original stage version: don't feed the plants.
I saw one do it after curtain call. Can you do it legally after the show is over? (And then how long after curtain call does it take for show to be over?)
It would be up to a judge if a suit was brought.
You could pay for “concert” rights where they could stand at a microphone and perform it with no sets, costumes or choreography. If you add those elements it moves to grand rights which would need the ok from the authors. And if they won’t put it in the show they probably won’t allow that either.
My sister in law actually just did a production of Little Shop at her high school last month, and she played Audrey II! It was incredibly interesting to see a female cast in this role!
I have always wanted a completely genderbent LSOH. A female Seymour? A female dentist? A male Audrey? Yes please. That being said the last local production I saw had a Mrs. muschnik
I worked on a production of Little Shop once where onstage Audrey II morphed from a tiny puppet into a drag queen who live lip-synched to an offstage female actor/singer. It was absolutely amazing.
I've seen it and, musically speaking, I absolutely hate it.
Most women never take the whole thing up an octave, so either they try to sing at the bottom of the bass clef and it sounds like shit, or they take the parts that are too low up an an octave and there is no vocal range to the role.
Honestly, I don't like it when tenors play the role for the same reason. Most women singing guys' roles in musical theatre either sounds like small children trying to impersonate their parents when they try to sing past G3, or there is no range because they're moving octaves.
DUDE the phantoms yearning is intense or whatever for a straight man but as a lesbian woman? Average day. Nothing to see here. lesbian yearning is insane. makes for great musicals
The Emcee is such a great character because you can play him pretty much any way you want, since he's not really a person but a representation. Definitely always the most interesting part of any Cabaret production for me.
There's a male actor who I like who I would really want to see as Mrs. Lovett, so, Sweeney Todd is my answer.
By the way, do you know about the production of Wildhorn's Dracula in Japan with a female Dracula?
It wasn’t quite a Takarazuka production… It gender-swapped Dracula (casting one of the group’s big stars in the role) and the “Brides” became “Grooms,” but kept the original genders for everyone else.
Bernadette Peters has said that she wants to do Sweeney Todd. Jokingly perhaps but I believe she can do anything so yeah who’s your actor? Pair them up!
[There was a all-female album](https://open.spotify.com/album/67Jg1hcxNYLXz3uEgkX4Kn?si=Cb7TScXdS3OXIXnpNzn6rA) with a lot of big name Broadway stars. It’s pretty good
The first thing that pops into my head thinking about female Beetlejuice is how much I want to make (or at least there to be) an animated Beetlejuice movie and when I was trying to think of voice actors for Beetlejuice there was a female name that kept coming up in my mind (though I doubt they'd make the movie gender-blind either at all or before they did that with a stage production); Wendi Malick, based on her voice acting performance as Eda The Owl Lady on The Owl House (idk if she sings though but if it was voice-acting-so-her-physicality-didn't-matter her acting would kill it)
and that name change gives a little more obvious of a subtext in the religious conflict with the queerness and forbidden-fruit romance with a chick called Eve
Seconded and not just because Elder Cunningham is one of my dream roles for if I were a guy/if a girl could play that part (as close as I can say to what I look like online rule-63!me would likely at least place in a Josh Gad lookalike contest if that was ever a thing anyone had) and not just because if I were a member of a religion that did missionary work "Making Things Up Again" totally sounds like something I'd do on such a trip (run across social issues scripture doesn't say shit about (and people who use that as justification), improv up fake stories involving pop culture references the people I'd be preaching to won't get in order to say scripture does say something about it, and then proceed to have a total anxiety attack because oh noes I broke a commandment by lying despite it helping people God please don't smite me)
Sweeney Todd. A baritone Mister Lovette and and a Mezzo Soprano Sweeney sound like a great idea to me. Leave Turpin in his original gender, so we can have a bass and mezzo singing Pretty Women.
Hadestown - specifically I’d be interested in seeing a female Hades and/or Hermes, but I think the dynamics of all of the characters would be interesting to see
You know there was recently a female Hermes (Lillias White) playing in Hadestown on Broadway, correct? She’s awesome. Stephanie Mills of The Wiz fame starts on July 2nd. Current West End Hermes is female as well. It’s becoming pretty common to cast Hermes as a woman.
So wish granted.
You can watch a clip of the West End production’s version of Wait For Me (Reprise) from the BAFTAs this year. They have a Trinidadian lady as Hermes and it’s a great clip.
There's a local community theatre that just had a gender-blind cast for their run of Company, and I'm really hoping they continue that for their upcoming Beauty and the Beast and Sweeney Todd shows.
The revival of company that toured through Detroit last year was gender bent! “Bobbie” had her 3 bachelors, with “Jamie” and Paul as a same sex couple. Johnathan Bailey played Jamie in the awestruck End and killed “getting married today”.
Nice! This production had Bobby played by a girl, so based on the casting, I was expecting the gender bent version. But they still used he/him for Bobby and stuck with the name Robert. One of his girlfriends was played by a man, the other two were women. Amy and Paul were both men, but they didn't change Amy to Jamie.
Id like to see The Last Five Years - its obviously a very small cast but i think would be interesting to see different types of relationships and how that changes the interpretation and portrayal of the relationship dynamics.
Ooh yes there is so much room for fun here!
In my silly muppet casting ideas for ITW, I have pondered Bert as Jack's dad. While we never find out what happened to Jack's (other) dad, I've always assumed he got himself killed going after some foolish dream. So obviously, in this muppet casting, it would be implied that Ernie was Jack's other dad. (And just to make the biology work in these pre-IVF times, as if we even need to think about biology in a world where someone pleads "I need your shoe to have a child", we can assume that Ernie was a trans man.)
Muppets aside, I think it would be really interesting to have a female narrator/mysterious woman. There are a bunch of ways the dynamic might change, or at least how we are forced to think about the roles of fatherhood vs. motherhood - what obligations do we expect from a mother vs. a father, and how (and WHY) might we have different feelings about a father abandoning their child vs. a mother. How will that affect what we think about what happens with the Baker's Wife -- even though she obviously intends to return to her family, there is absolutely a tinge of her abandoning them. And we feel things. And she is literally killed, as if for punishment for those thoughts. What if we introduce that idea right up front? Also, how does that change how we think of the interaction between the Baker's (now-)mom and the Witch in the back-story?
ORRRRRR, we can also switch up the Baker and Wife, and have a show in which there are all these single moms. First, the Baker's mom, then the witch, then Rapunzel (at least for a time -- she birthed those babies alone in the desert), and finally the Baker's Wife, after the Baker gets crushed?
Not sure if any of that would work, but it's so much fun to think about.
Related: My wife is a middle school teacher, and the school musical this year was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Wonka was played by a female and it was apparently really really good
So much of that show is reliant on the female protagonist falling unexpectedly pregnant. That just isn’t something that would happen to a man. Or are there other characters you are interested in switching the gender of besides Jenna?
I don't think this came across too well, I wasn't taking it as a super serious answer.
Then again, at the same time I also know some trans men who would probably love to play that role. (and likewise, just to acknowledge it, some who would be super dysphoric about the idea)
1776 has so many great roles, and only two small ones for women.
On a related note, it is my lifelong dream to see a production of Evita where both Evita and Che are women. This is for two reasons. 1) So much of the criticism of Eva in the show is directly relates to her sexual behavior and I would love to see what it looks like to have a woman deliver those lines 2) My little gay heart would never get over seeing two women perform the waltz for Eva and Che.
Wasn’t there an all women/trans/enby production of 1776 quite recently? Obviously not gender *blind* as it had goals for gendered casting, but it probably fulfilled your wishes :)
American Idiot. Love the show but the characters are quite hetero-normative and heavily gendered archetypes, esp. the female characters. I think I've seen productions online where At Jimmy is played by a woman, but I think casting can go further.
Also: Sunset Boulevard. Give me closeted gay/lesbian relationships in Golden Age Hollywood and/or characters going into affairs not aligned with their sexual orientation in order to make it in the movie industry. There are so many ways this story can go if one changes one or more of the main characters' gender.
Yes! One of Joe’s friends at Paramount who shows up in the ensemble numbers is a writer called Joanna. She could swap places with Joe. I feel like the result would probably end up somewhere in the vein of The Killing of Sister George.
A lesbian Joe/Betty relationship would slap so hard! Betty having a lesbian/bisexual awakening while being engaged to a man, the irony of 'girl meets boy', also they can bond over not being taken seriously as writers by the studio cause they're female. Also we can get Norma dressing girl Joe up as a younger version of her to relive her youth through her.
I’m actually working on a production of Beauty and the Beast right now and Lumiere and The Beast are being played by girls! (They’re both doing phenomenally)
Okay this is not a gender blind casting but more like one gender swap specifically. I think Little Shop would be 10x better and way more topical and impactful if Seymour was played by a woman and Audrey a trans woman. The story would just BE SO MUCH deeper and it could really save the show from Audrey just being a plot device for Seymour
HEATHERS?!? Any gender swapped version of any of the characters is awesome, and I know this because a local theatre in my area did a production of Heathers gender blind casted and male Heather Chandler killed it fr
Rocky Horror Show*
Picture show is the Movie, just the Show is the musical. A local group did a production of it in my area, and the director kept fucking it up while talking about and annoyed the shit out of me.(Doesn't help that they knew almost nothing about Rocky Horror before directing it)
My pet peeves that don't matter aside, I've seen quite a few productions and shadow casts that do this. Personally, I think that brad, Janet and Frank need to be not bended for the show to work, Brad and Janet because they are striving to be the stereotypical hetero couple, and throughout the play their sexuality gets pulled into question as they give themselves over to pleasure, and Frank mostly because a lot of franks mystique comes from the masc presenting character wearing the lingerie.
But other than that, the open gender casting works fine for Rocky (as long as they keep Eddie and Dr Scott the same actors). My only thing is that for a show that is as based on sexuality and expression as rocky horror is, you need to be real careful about who you cast as what in order to maintain the meaning.
Yeah, I know. I see the show listed without "Picture" for stage productions. But to me, "Picture" will always be part of its name. That's where my best memories of it rest. (Likewise, I don't refer to the new Cabaret as Cabaret at the KitKat Club. Some name changes work, and some are just unnecessary - especially with a work that's so well-known in pop culture.)
I don't think anyone HAS to be bended for the show to work. I just think it would be interesting to see what kind of variations different casts would do with the show overall. And I think bending Frank could definitely work, as a woman, as a trans man or as a trans woman. Yes, Brad and Janet probably work best as they are, although I do think it's possible to play with options of them being a non-straight-but-still-vanilla-sex-life couple. I'm curious, why do you want to keep Eddie and Dr. Scott the same actors?
I feel like there is SO much potential to make A Little Night Music feel even more chaotic by switching up some of the genders of the roles. Of course, we'd have to be careful to still preserve the triad thing, since it's literally written into the fabric of the show. No love quadrangles allowed. But don't you want to know who Petro would imagine marrying before settling on the Miller's Son? And I am pretty sure I want Charlotte and Carla Magnus to be a lesbian couple. Or, well, maybe Carla is bi/pan. We'll have to see what is necessary to make all the other philandering and jealousies work.
Heathers, but rather than wanting to see a female JD like most comments here, I just wanna see Veronica as a guy. Gimme that toxic gay serial killer couple...
Cats (the original version where they are cats, not the lovely camp ballroom version).
Wicked but the Wizard and the parents stay the same gender.
Annie
Oliver
A full gender-bend cast of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Hedwig would be trans masc, johnny gnosis would be female, and Yitzhak is trans fem. The lyrics would need to be slightly changed, but it would be cool to hear.
pacific overtures with kayama as a complete girlfail loser. please lord i need it. a young girl and old woman would be so cute too. some songs wouldnt translate well like pretty lady though... maybe make the pretty guy a jpop group member and have a bunch of otaku women chasing him. yeah. sondheim shouldve let me write for him
I’d love to see a gender-flipped version of Scarlet Pimpernel. Some of the songs would take on very different connotations if sung by the opposite gender.
Cats. One of the few things I liked about the second film version of Cats besides the fact that Dame Judi Dench finally got to be in it (she was slated to play the role of Grizabella in the original casting of the musical, which went to Elaine Paige because Dench suffered an Achilles Tendon break during rehearsals very close to premiers and wouldn't be healed in time to open the show) is that she played Old Deuteronomy, who is traditionally played by a guy-Ken Page (Oogie Boogie in The Nightmare Before Christmas) originated the role on Broadway.
Hadestown! I know we already have some flexible casting with Hermes, but I would like to see it completely based on vibes and not gender for the entire show
Wouldn't gender blind pretty much always just end up as more men? I say this because very few women seem to be able to sing men's parts well but there are a pretty good amount of men singing female parts that sound good. I suppose it's some sort of physical limitation like how as a man you can sort of fake being a tenor you can't really fake being a real bass.
Id love to see a gender blind The Last Five Years
still not over caissie levy singing shiksa goddess. that woman can cheat on me any day of the week and i'd still make her dinner
Wow! Thank you for steering me to this!
The audience would haaaaate Cathy if you ever genderbent L5Y. “Yeah, so, Jaime is this really hardworking positive woman who encourages her unsuccessful unambitious boyfriend to follow his dreams. She hooks him up, financially supports him, and does everything she can to make it happen, but her boyfriend becomes jealous of her success, suspicious of her attractive coworkers, and can’t stop complaining about the work he has to do in his career. But, in his defense, she DOES eventually cheat on him…after being angrily accused of cheating over and over, and having her work events sabotaged by his emotional tantrums.” The minute you genderbend L5Y, the whole “Jamie sucks” narrative basically disappears.
Make both Jaime and Cathy women, problem solved.
That's been part of my idea for a gender bent/gender blind version for a while now. I would just make it so that there's four people in the cast. A male and female Jaime, and a male and female Cathy. This way you can switch up who plays which role on a night by night basis. You can have the normal casting, or a gender bent version. But also a gay and lesbian version. I think there's actually some quite interesting things you can do with that, and explore and compare different kinds of relationship dynamics like that.
This. Cathy would be quite difficult to gender-bend anyway due to the amount of gendered lyrics (Summer in Ohio, Next 10 minutes, Climbing uphill, even I can do better than that immediately comes to mind) (edit: i wrote shiksa goddess cause i was stupid plz ignore me).
Oh wow it never occurred to me before that you would basically have to write an entirely new song in place of Shiksa Goddess in a gender bent production of L5Y. It really requires Jamie to be male and Cathy to be female to make any sense.
lmao my brain must have stopped braining when i typed my bad🫣
Wait what? I was agreeing with you lol. I wasn’t being sarcastic or anything. Shiksa Goddess is extremely gendered both ways. Jamie has to be a man and Cathy a woman for it to make sense. He’s breaking his mother’s heart because his kids won’t be Jewish (among other things). It wouldn’t make sense IMO if Jamie was a woman and Cathy a man because the children would be Jewish. Although obviously a very religiously Jewish mother would want her daughter to marry in the faith, as far as I know, a male Shiksa (I forgot the masculine form of that word) is not the same thing as a female Shiksa. It could maybe make sense but it doesn’t work the same honestly. And then if they were both men or both women, they would have more to worry about from religious Jewish parents than just dating outside the faith lol.
lmao no it's not you i just thought i made a stupid mistake cause i haven't listened to the musical in a while plus i don't trust my brain. I think with Shiksa Goddess a lesbian Jamie would still be breaking her mother's heart cause in addition to not dating jewish she's not even dating cis men who can naturally procreate with her - imo it can add an extra layer to the lyrics cause a lot of lesbians face pressure from their families to have children ('naturally').
You’d have to put “The Next Ten Minutes” after the sixth date.
Someone I did theater with in college was recently in a sapphic TLFY! I didn't get a chance to see it, but from what I saw posted it worked very well and was super good.
I saw a production that did this! I came away feeling like both characters contributed to the marriage failing, but Jamie was worse (she cheated on Cathy and blew off Cathy's birthday).
Interesting! I could be forgetting some details, but my read is that the whole problem is that Cathy *is* ambitious. She's jealous of Jamie's success precisely *because* her own ambitions are thwarted while all his wildest dreams are fulfilled. I saw a production where both Jamie and Cathy were women, and I still came away feeling like Jamie sucked (not that Cathy was completely blameless, but Jamie cheated on her and blew off her birthday).
The name Jamie already works!!
NEWSIES. LET THOSE NEWSIES BE PLAYED BY DANCER GIRLIES!
This 100%! Female newsies existed too, although less commonly, would be really cool if the casting acknowledged that!
The London production did! Brooklyn were all girls. They didn’t advertise that initially and it wasn’t in the programme, so when I went during previews there were screams when they came out.
I saw a local production that had girls as newsies in the ensemble!
My daughter played Crutchie and had more chemistry with Jack than the actress who played Katherine!
I’m in a production of Newsies that has girl newsies! Our Spot is also nonbinary and our Crutchie is a woman!! (We got permission too to change the pronouns of Spot and Crutchie to match the actors!)
I just directed an all-girl Newsies at an all-girl Catholic school (only male was Roosevelt, a cameo from faculty). They had the time of their lives and audiences LOVED it!
YES
Gender blind Hamilton, the entire cast
Yes please!
I think Heathers would work, if the men were especially effeminate.
Agreed! Also this but the other way I would love, lesbian JD and Veronica please
Go with me on this - Veronica as a stud
a UC Berkeley student theater group did this exact thing years ago - look up “gay heathers” on Tumblr. It was amazing
Google “gay heathers”. You won’t be disappointed.
Female👏Javert 👏
🔥🔥🔥
Less gender blind but I've always wanted to see a production of Little Shop with a female voiced Audrey II. I think there'd be some interesting implications from her attachment to Seymour and how she goes from standing up for Audrey I to wanting to kill her once Seymour expresses a romantic interest in running off with her. Plus I just really love "Mean green mother".
I've seen two productions of LSOH in the past few years that both had women voicing Audrey II. Neither had those implications but that would be really interesting.
The local production I saw also had a woman Audrey II!
Sadly, Mean Green Mother is not in the stage show and likely never will be officially (though some people add it in illegally). It's a shame, because it gives the movie the climax it so rightfully deserves. The show really needs that 11 o'clock number, too.
A different show, in part, with Mean Green Mother. I prefer the "pure" and more forceful ending with the original stage version: don't feed the plants.
I saw one do it after curtain call. Can you do it legally after the show is over? (And then how long after curtain call does it take for show to be over?)
It would be up to a judge if a suit was brought. You could pay for “concert” rights where they could stand at a microphone and perform it with no sets, costumes or choreography. If you add those elements it moves to grand rights which would need the ok from the authors. And if they won’t put it in the show they probably won’t allow that either.
The West Coast production with George Salazar had Amber Reilly as Audrey II.
My sister in law actually just did a production of Little Shop at her high school last month, and she played Audrey II! It was incredibly interesting to see a female cast in this role!
Audrey II was played by a woman the most recent time I saw LSOH off-broadway! She was an understudy and did a fantastic job!!
My highschool did LSOH a few years ago and we had a soprano voicing Audrey II
I have always wanted a completely genderbent LSOH. A female Seymour? A female dentist? A male Audrey? Yes please. That being said the last local production I saw had a Mrs. muschnik
I worked on a production of Little Shop once where onstage Audrey II morphed from a tiny puppet into a drag queen who live lip-synched to an offstage female actor/singer. It was absolutely amazing.
Omg bro. We picked the same show
I've seen it and, musically speaking, I absolutely hate it. Most women never take the whole thing up an octave, so either they try to sing at the bottom of the bass clef and it sounds like shit, or they take the parts that are too low up an an octave and there is no vocal range to the role. Honestly, I don't like it when tenors play the role for the same reason. Most women singing guys' roles in musical theatre either sounds like small children trying to impersonate their parents when they try to sing past G3, or there is no range because they're moving octaves.
Let there be a lady Phantom please!!!
As long as Christine is still a woman. LESBIAN PHANTOM ALL THE WAY!!
DUDE the phantoms yearning is intense or whatever for a straight man but as a lesbian woman? Average day. Nothing to see here. lesbian yearning is insane. makes for great musicals
I’d pay big bucks to see that
Cabaret. It would definitely work.
In my opinion Emcee can be cast as either gender, and it would be really cool to see a woman play him!
Definitely! It’s not like the cabarets of Weimar Germany would have batted an eye at a female Emcee! Maybe some Dietrich energy.
The Emcee is such a great character because you can play him pretty much any way you want, since he's not really a person but a representation. Definitely always the most interesting part of any Cabaret production for me.
I think there was a production that did that some years ago!
I’ve dreamed of gender bent Les Mis since high school because I, a woman, always wanted to play Enjorlas
And me, a man, have always wanted to play Eponine. (But I have zero experience or talent...)
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Do an Lin-Manuel and write your own show 😂
I love Les Mis but every role I would want to play in it is a male role lol. The female role I would most want is Mme Thenardier.
Let's find a way to do it, I want to be Valjean XD
I as a woman would kill to play JAVERT. Let’s do it.
Me being transgender means i am a man who'll probably never get to play male roles because I'm too short and have a female voice
There's a male actor who I like who I would really want to see as Mrs. Lovett, so, Sweeney Todd is my answer. By the way, do you know about the production of Wildhorn's Dracula in Japan with a female Dracula?
Takarazuka Revue!!! They put on all-woman productions of shows! Iirc they’ve done Elisabeth and Yeston’s Phantom as well.
It wasn’t quite a Takarazuka production… It gender-swapped Dracula (casting one of the group’s big stars in the role) and the “Brides” became “Grooms,” but kept the original genders for everyone else.
Who’s the actor you want to see as Lovett?
Bernadette Peters has said that she wants to do Sweeney Todd. Jokingly perhaps but I believe she can do anything so yeah who’s your actor? Pair them up!
I saw a gender-blind Jesus Chris Superstar last year, was pretty interesting.
This was going to be my comment— I’d love to see an all-female production of JCS (which I think has been done???) or just some general gender-bending.
There’s an album, She is Risen.
[There was a all-female album](https://open.spotify.com/album/67Jg1hcxNYLXz3uEgkX4Kn?si=Cb7TScXdS3OXIXnpNzn6rA) with a lot of big name Broadway stars. It’s pretty good
The Indigo Girls had done a recording of it with other Atlanta musicians like 30 years ago. One was Jesus and one was Mary Magdalene.
Rent
I’d give everything I have just to play a female version of Roger
Omg make joanne and Maureen male!
Beetlejuice, partly because I really want to play a genderbent Beetlejuice, lol
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Lmao not on stage
The first thing that pops into my head thinking about female Beetlejuice is how much I want to make (or at least there to be) an animated Beetlejuice movie and when I was trying to think of voice actors for Beetlejuice there was a female name that kept coming up in my mind (though I doubt they'd make the movie gender-blind either at all or before they did that with a stage production); Wendi Malick, based on her voice acting performance as Eda The Owl Lady on The Owl House (idk if she sings though but if it was voice-acting-so-her-physicality-didn't-matter her acting would kill it)
Book of Mormon lol
I mean sister missionaries exist
Sister missionaries straight up sounds like pornography
*When I was in fifth grade, I had a friend- Eve Blade~ She and I were close as two friends could be...*
I was thinking exactly this
and that name change gives a little more obvious of a subtext in the religious conflict with the queerness and forbidden-fruit romance with a chick called Eve
Seconded and not just because Elder Cunningham is one of my dream roles for if I were a guy/if a girl could play that part (as close as I can say to what I look like online rule-63!me would likely at least place in a Josh Gad lookalike contest if that was ever a thing anyone had) and not just because if I were a member of a religion that did missionary work "Making Things Up Again" totally sounds like something I'd do on such a trip (run across social issues scripture doesn't say shit about (and people who use that as justification), improv up fake stories involving pop culture references the people I'd be preaching to won't get in order to say scripture does say something about it, and then proceed to have a total anxiety attack because oh noes I broke a commandment by lying despite it helping people God please don't smite me)
Sweeney Todd. A baritone Mister Lovette and and a Mezzo Soprano Sweeney sound like a great idea to me. Leave Turpin in his original gender, so we can have a bass and mezzo singing Pretty Women.
Gotta throw in that I as a lady would personally love to play a gender bent Beast in Beauty and the Beast
Heathers, Mean Girls, Hamilton, Sweeney Todd
Hadestown - specifically I’d be interested in seeing a female Hades and/or Hermes, but I think the dynamics of all of the characters would be interesting to see
You know there was recently a female Hermes (Lillias White) playing in Hadestown on Broadway, correct? She’s awesome. Stephanie Mills of The Wiz fame starts on July 2nd. Current West End Hermes is female as well. It’s becoming pretty common to cast Hermes as a woman. So wish granted.
… anyone want to donate travel, lodgings, and tickets to me? I would love to see this!!
I suspect touring Hermes will frequently be women as well. The role is pretty gender neutral, and the gender swap has become a popular casting choice.
Fair point! I just have to hope they play somewhere (sort of) near me ☺️
I saw Lillias White when I went to see it on Broadway, and she absolutely stole the show
There’s been like 3-4 female Hermes
I’m glad to hear it! I just want to see it and live in rural Wisconsin sooooo …. Proshoot? Bootleg? ☺️
You can watch a clip of the West End production’s version of Wait For Me (Reprise) from the BAFTAs this year. They have a Trinidadian lady as Hermes and it’s a great clip.
That’s incredible, thank you!!
Pretty sure the current London cast has a female Hermes
female emmett forrest & female jd. both elle woods & veronica sawyer are bisexual in my book
female emmett forrest could probably save my life, as a bi girl going into law school.
There's a local community theatre that just had a gender-blind cast for their run of Company, and I'm really hoping they continue that for their upcoming Beauty and the Beast and Sweeney Todd shows.
The revival of company that toured through Detroit last year was gender bent! “Bobbie” had her 3 bachelors, with “Jamie” and Paul as a same sex couple. Johnathan Bailey played Jamie in the awestruck End and killed “getting married today”.
Nice! This production had Bobby played by a girl, so based on the casting, I was expecting the gender bent version. But they still used he/him for Bobby and stuck with the name Robert. One of his girlfriends was played by a man, the other two were women. Amy and Paul were both men, but they didn't change Amy to Jamie.
No way Disney allows for it. Not a chance.
Sweeny Todd. I feel like it's definitely possible to do a gender swap on characters. (I want to be Mrs. Lovett but I'm male 😔)
Id like to see The Last Five Years - its obviously a very small cast but i think would be interesting to see different types of relationships and how that changes the interpretation and portrayal of the relationship dynamics.
If people are gonna keep saying Sweeney Todd I’ll just say Into The Woods
Ooh yes there is so much room for fun here! In my silly muppet casting ideas for ITW, I have pondered Bert as Jack's dad. While we never find out what happened to Jack's (other) dad, I've always assumed he got himself killed going after some foolish dream. So obviously, in this muppet casting, it would be implied that Ernie was Jack's other dad. (And just to make the biology work in these pre-IVF times, as if we even need to think about biology in a world where someone pleads "I need your shoe to have a child", we can assume that Ernie was a trans man.) Muppets aside, I think it would be really interesting to have a female narrator/mysterious woman. There are a bunch of ways the dynamic might change, or at least how we are forced to think about the roles of fatherhood vs. motherhood - what obligations do we expect from a mother vs. a father, and how (and WHY) might we have different feelings about a father abandoning their child vs. a mother. How will that affect what we think about what happens with the Baker's Wife -- even though she obviously intends to return to her family, there is absolutely a tinge of her abandoning them. And we feel things. And she is literally killed, as if for punishment for those thoughts. What if we introduce that idea right up front? Also, how does that change how we think of the interaction between the Baker's (now-)mom and the Witch in the back-story? ORRRRRR, we can also switch up the Baker and Wife, and have a show in which there are all these single moms. First, the Baker's mom, then the witch, then Rapunzel (at least for a time -- she birthed those babies alone in the desert), and finally the Baker's Wife, after the Baker gets crushed? Not sure if any of that would work, but it's so much fun to think about.
probably hamilton because I *really* wanna play king george III but the song isn’t really in my vocal range without it sounding bad
Same! I think if I was ever cast as him I would nail the acting, and try the singing as best as I can lmao
Hadestown with lesbian couples for Persephone/Hades and Eurydice/Orpheus! But also RENT and Cabaret.
As a lesbian I approve of this message
Related: My wife is a middle school teacher, and the school musical this year was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Wonka was played by a female and it was apparently really really good
Hear me out: Waitress
So much of that show is reliant on the female protagonist falling unexpectedly pregnant. That just isn’t something that would happen to a man. Or are there other characters you are interested in switching the gender of besides Jenna?
I don't think this came across too well, I wasn't taking it as a super serious answer. Then again, at the same time I also know some trans men who would probably love to play that role. (and likewise, just to acknowledge it, some who would be super dysphoric about the idea)
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, obviously.
Which would of course be renamed: Seven Brides for Seven Others. To fly under the radar as totally the same thing =P
1776 has so many great roles, and only two small ones for women. On a related note, it is my lifelong dream to see a production of Evita where both Evita and Che are women. This is for two reasons. 1) So much of the criticism of Eva in the show is directly relates to her sexual behavior and I would love to see what it looks like to have a woman deliver those lines 2) My little gay heart would never get over seeing two women perform the waltz for Eva and Che.
I was thinking the exact same thing. Female Che would be amazing and totally possible with the storyline
Wasn’t there an all women/trans/enby production of 1776 quite recently? Obviously not gender *blind* as it had goals for gendered casting, but it probably fulfilled your wishes :)
There was... But it's almost certainly going to be overshadowed by a more traditional run (or tour) in 2026. Would print money.
American Idiot. Love the show but the characters are quite hetero-normative and heavily gendered archetypes, esp. the female characters. I think I've seen productions online where At Jimmy is played by a woman, but I think casting can go further. Also: Sunset Boulevard. Give me closeted gay/lesbian relationships in Golden Age Hollywood and/or characters going into affairs not aligned with their sexual orientation in order to make it in the movie industry. There are so many ways this story can go if one changes one or more of the main characters' gender.
Yes! One of Joe’s friends at Paramount who shows up in the ensemble numbers is a writer called Joanna. She could swap places with Joe. I feel like the result would probably end up somewhere in the vein of The Killing of Sister George.
A lesbian Joe/Betty relationship would slap so hard! Betty having a lesbian/bisexual awakening while being engaged to a man, the irony of 'girl meets boy', also they can bond over not being taken seriously as writers by the studio cause they're female. Also we can get Norma dressing girl Joe up as a younger version of her to relive her youth through her.
Heathers, girl jd is my dream
I wish gender blind casting was the norm. i dont think there's a show i WOULDNT like to see done that way
Yeah pretty much. Gender sucks sometimes
I’m female and I would die to play Jekyll and Hyde.
Hear me out; Jekyll and Hyde are opposite genders?? Cause I’d be so down to play a male Hyde for a female Jekyll or the opposite way
Oooooo, the feminine and masculine personas of the human mind.
Is Lucy still female? Or is she a male? Lucas? Henrietta Jekyll has too many syllables for “I Need to Know.” So girl Jekyll still goes by Henry
I’d imagine Jekyll and Emma are opposite genders while Hyde and Lucy are the same gender. Just kinda adds another part to their dynamics imo.
I’m actually working on a production of Beauty and the Beast right now and Lumiere and The Beast are being played by girls! (They’re both doing phenomenally)
Little Shop of Horrors! My dream role since I saw it (my first musical) over a decade ago has been to be Seymour!
Okay this is not a gender blind casting but more like one gender swap specifically. I think Little Shop would be 10x better and way more topical and impactful if Seymour was played by a woman and Audrey a trans woman. The story would just BE SO MUCH deeper and it could really save the show from Audrey just being a plot device for Seymour
moulin rouge mainly because I want to be the duchess of monroth
HEATHERS?!? Any gender swapped version of any of the characters is awesome, and I know this because a local theatre in my area did a production of Heathers gender blind casted and male Heather Chandler killed it fr
Chicago, let some men kill their husbands! Let the sleazy lawyer be a lady!
Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Rocky Horror Show* Picture show is the Movie, just the Show is the musical. A local group did a production of it in my area, and the director kept fucking it up while talking about and annoyed the shit out of me.(Doesn't help that they knew almost nothing about Rocky Horror before directing it) My pet peeves that don't matter aside, I've seen quite a few productions and shadow casts that do this. Personally, I think that brad, Janet and Frank need to be not bended for the show to work, Brad and Janet because they are striving to be the stereotypical hetero couple, and throughout the play their sexuality gets pulled into question as they give themselves over to pleasure, and Frank mostly because a lot of franks mystique comes from the masc presenting character wearing the lingerie. But other than that, the open gender casting works fine for Rocky (as long as they keep Eddie and Dr Scott the same actors). My only thing is that for a show that is as based on sexuality and expression as rocky horror is, you need to be real careful about who you cast as what in order to maintain the meaning.
Yeah, I know. I see the show listed without "Picture" for stage productions. But to me, "Picture" will always be part of its name. That's where my best memories of it rest. (Likewise, I don't refer to the new Cabaret as Cabaret at the KitKat Club. Some name changes work, and some are just unnecessary - especially with a work that's so well-known in pop culture.) I don't think anyone HAS to be bended for the show to work. I just think it would be interesting to see what kind of variations different casts would do with the show overall. And I think bending Frank could definitely work, as a woman, as a trans man or as a trans woman. Yes, Brad and Janet probably work best as they are, although I do think it's possible to play with options of them being a non-straight-but-still-vanilla-sex-life couple. I'm curious, why do you want to keep Eddie and Dr. Scott the same actors?
Jesus Christ Superstar!
Not gender blind but my brain hit on gender reversed Annie, and then I heard Mr. Hannigan singing Little Boys and called the police
Camelot
Heathers. Mainly because I've always wanted to play JD as a woman lol
I feel like there is SO much potential to make A Little Night Music feel even more chaotic by switching up some of the genders of the roles. Of course, we'd have to be careful to still preserve the triad thing, since it's literally written into the fabric of the show. No love quadrangles allowed. But don't you want to know who Petro would imagine marrying before settling on the Miller's Son? And I am pretty sure I want Charlotte and Carla Magnus to be a lesbian couple. Or, well, maybe Carla is bi/pan. We'll have to see what is necessary to make all the other philandering and jealousies work.
Honestly there’s almost no shows I wouldn’t want to see gender-blind.
Heathers, but rather than wanting to see a female JD like most comments here, I just wanna see Veronica as a guy. Gimme that toxic gay serial killer couple...
Cats (the original version where they are cats, not the lovely camp ballroom version). Wicked but the Wizard and the parents stay the same gender. Annie Oliver
A full gender-bend cast of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Hedwig would be trans masc, johnny gnosis would be female, and Yitzhak is trans fem. The lyrics would need to be slightly changed, but it would be cool to hear.
heathers mostly because I think a female jd would be fasinating.
Camelot. I want it to be a queer mess.
beetlejuice and legally blonde! (mostly because i, a girl, really want to play beetlejuice and emmett)
Sweeney Todd....Female Rage Sweeney would slap.
Evil Dead with Ash played by a butch.
Assassins
Six
Since Starlight Express is back in London, I’d love to see a version with a female Greaseball.
I’ve seen one of these for Grease. It was hysterical
West side story
pacific overtures with kayama as a complete girlfail loser. please lord i need it. a young girl and old woman would be so cute too. some songs wouldnt translate well like pretty lady though... maybe make the pretty guy a jpop group member and have a bunch of otaku women chasing him. yeah. sondheim shouldve let me write for him
Jekylle & Hydie
*Frankenstein*, 100%.
Spider man: turn off the dark. It's time to bring it back, folks
It’s done all the time, but Jesus Christ Superstar!!
Les mis
I know it kind of ruins the dynamics but wicked, I would kill to play a gender bent Glinda
JCS
Next To Normal would be really neat IMO
book of mormon or dear evan hansen (definitely not because my dream roles are elder mckinley and jared………)
a chorus line
I’d love to see a gender-flipped version of Scarlet Pimpernel. Some of the songs would take on very different connotations if sung by the opposite gender.
I reaaaaaally want to see a male version of Galinda in Wicked
Cats
Fiddler on the Roof- I would love a male Fruma Sarah
I have seen it. The voice was a low sultry blues singer. Fantastic.
A Lady’s guide to Love and Murder.
Wicked would be so much fun gender blind.
I wanna see a guy play the witch in into the woods. Specifically me
Any Hallmark Christmas Special
Cats. One of the few things I liked about the second film version of Cats besides the fact that Dame Judi Dench finally got to be in it (she was slated to play the role of Grizabella in the original casting of the musical, which went to Elaine Paige because Dench suffered an Achilles Tendon break during rehearsals very close to premiers and wouldn't be healed in time to open the show) is that she played Old Deuteronomy, who is traditionally played by a guy-Ken Page (Oogie Boogie in The Nightmare Before Christmas) originated the role on Broadway.
The Producers. Keep it gay!
hadestownnnn
West side story...
Hadestown! I know we already have some flexible casting with Hermes, but I would like to see it completely based on vibes and not gender for the entire show
Newsies.
Bonnie and Clyde. I wanna play Clyde SOOOO BAD!!!!
Gender bent Hadestown needs to happen yesterday. This is a hill I will die on
I mean it already is? Except for the two romantic main leads.
I mean I’d also like to see Hades/Persephone swapped too.
Wouldn't gender blind pretty much always just end up as more men? I say this because very few women seem to be able to sing men's parts well but there are a pretty good amount of men singing female parts that sound good. I suppose it's some sort of physical limitation like how as a man you can sort of fake being a tenor you can't really fake being a real bass.