Image credit to Melissa Miller/Milwaukee Mag
I have been acting for most of my life, taking part in plays and musicals throughout middle and high school and even attending an arts high school with the specific focus of studying theater all day. However, after I came out and started to transition, I began to notice a difference in the way I was treated by fellow actors and directors, choreographers and casting directors. Mainly, I observed a sense of them not knowing what exactly to do with me, and on occasion there was actually just blatant transphobia directed at me. However, one thing was almost always true; they were never going to cast me as a woman.
My high school theater department may have been open to the idea of casting me as a trans woman, but coincidentally, there are practically no trans female characters and thus no parts. Even when we did a couple of scenes from the musical “RENT,” a cisgender, heterosexual man was cast as Angel. Even when there are parts that I, as a trans woman, would be “right” for, I wasn’t given a chance to audition. And that brings me to Hofstra University’s Drama Department.
See, anyone who knows me will know that I actually began my stint here at Hofstra as a drama major, but I ended up switching majors. While there were a lot of things that added up to me making that decision, the final push I needed came when I was having a discussion with some of the upperclassmen when I was still a freshman. Auditions were coming up, I was excited and I wanted some tips so that I would have a shot at the parts I wanted. The upperclassmen looked at me and said very plainly that I would never be cast in the roles that I was hoping for because, and I quote, “The drama department casts roles based on how we see you and, well, you are a man.”
Just like that, my dreams shattered. While of course part of me expected that to be the case, I had never assumed that it would be so blatant. In my mind, those were the kind of things said in secret once I had left the room, not to my face. The upperclassmen continued to explain that acting is tough enough when there are not always enough roles for women, and that the characters I was hoping to get weren’t even trans, so it wouldn’t make sense to cast me. At this point, I was starting to lose faith – not just in acting at Hofstra, but in acting in general.
I also began to get mad. Whenever there is a scandal surrounding the latest cis actor to be cast in a trans role, the same defenses are always brought up: “Acting is about pretending to be something you’re not!” or “If they were the best ones for the role then they should get the part!” But something I quickly realized was that trans people – especially trans women – were not given those same freedoms.
I wasn’t allowed or supposed to audition for cis female roles because I wasn’t a cis woman and it was “unfair.” My skill, or the idea that acting is for playing pretend, suddenly no longer mattered. All they cared about was the circumstances of my birth. So. when the message being received is that trans people can’t be cast in cis roles, but that cis actors should be allowed to be cast in trans roles, then all you are saying is that trans people shouldn’t be cast at all. And in the words of the great Elle Woods: “I object!”
“What’s the T” is an op-ed column by Serena Payne, a senior psychology major and trans woman.
