| Guy Keleny (Errors and Omissions, 8 October) made an unfortunate |
| choice of play to illustrate his argument about the need for gender-specific |
| job names: “Actors and actresses are not interchangeable. Unless you are |
| putting on a wildly experimental production, you will need an actor to play |
| Romeo and an actress for Juliet.” |
|
|
| That certainly wasn’t the case when Shakespeare wrote the play. A boy |
| who played Juliet at the start of his career might well have found himself |
| beneath the balcony a few years later. Cross-casting of gender roles has |
| never really left the stage – from pantomime to Deborah Warner’s |
| productions with Fiona Shaw – experimental, perhaps, but hardly wildly |
| so. |
|
|
| Richard Crowest |
| Ashford, Kent |
| independent.co.uk, 2013 |
