Is a female Scrooge really a problem?

There was a controversy at my local theatre. An innovative artistic director decided to have some (not all) performances of A Christmas Carol played by a female Scrooge. Unfortunately, I didn't find out until after the fact but one of the staff I became friendly with informed me that they received a lot of complaints. Yes, Dickens wrote Scrooge as a male but it's art, right? What's wrong with switching to a female role for a few performances to shake things up? I wrote to the artistic director and commended him for taking a chance and said I'd love the opportunity to witness a female Scrooge if they were ever willing to try again.

People think it's political correctness gone mad when traditionally male roles are filled by women. You never see the opposite happen, female roles filled by men. And if they were, they would probably be seen as sexist.

We have had this problem with the role of the Doctor in Doctor Who being a woman in the UK, and men and women pretty equally haven't liked it. Personally I am surprised that people were so annoyed about a female scrooge in a play.

I think where we are in the world right now, it feels to a lot of people like this kind of thing is being forced upon them, and this promotes a backlash. It makes people resent women because they think they are only getting the role because of their gender, when a man would be better at the role. Yes it's sexist, and I certainly wouldn't complain if a woman was playing Scrooge. But it is sexist to just change the role to a woman just because it fits the current zeitgeist, rather than it feeling like a 'natural' change. And maybe the nastiness and coldness of the role is not one people like to see in women, which is also sexist, as it's cultural gender 'norms' that are at play there. Of course you can have cold and nasty women, just like you can men, but an audience doesn't want to see that. There are prejudices on all sides here, in my opinion.

If the person casting the role genuinely thought that the best person for the role who auditioned was female then fair enough, but if they overlooked men deliberately even though a man out there who could have auditioned would have performed it better then I don't agree with that either.

Men were not denied the chance to play the role; they had both. The director had a few select performances with Scrooge played by a woman but most performances were still played by a male Scrooge. This was made clear during ticket sales so people could choose. I didn't perceive it as a director trying to make a political statement. I believe it was a creative choice. I've also seen plays where white roles are played by black actors and black roles are played by white actors. Art provides opportunities to view things in different ways...to play with convention. For me, switching the actors is no different than a painter who depicts a green sky with blue soil. Or painting facial features non-traditionally as Picasso did. I often tire of Society politicizing everything.

With regard to casting, we are not talking about hiring a secretary and saying there can only be male applicants because too many secretaries are female or that we must hire more female plumbers whether they are qualified or not because there aren't enough female plumbers. In the theater example, we are talking about artistic choices. The director can decide that this year all plays will have a female Scrooge if he wants to try it out. I doubt he would because of the complaints, but if he did he wouldn't be doing something sexist or illegal. He'd simply be making creative decisions. Aside from Scrooge, there are plenty of male roles in the same play portrayed by male actors. This is not a fair hiring issue.

People don't have to like seeing a female Scrooge just as some people don't like how Picasso painted a face with the features misaligned. But even when we don't care for a certain piece of art or artistic choice, we shouldn't be trying to constrain Art. Art is an important form of human expression which makes the world a better place. And at the foundation of all good art is creativity. By the nature of creativity, we won't always see things portrayed in the way we anticipate. Yes, I have seen male actors in female roles. Perhaps you were referring to film? I'm not sure I can think of a film example but it is done in plays sometimes.

One of the plays I saw where two black actors played the white characters and two white actors played the black characters was so powerful. None of the dialogue was changed and yet everything suddenly looked and felt different. That's why I go to the theater...to think differently about things. Sometimes I like what I find there and sometimes I don't. But I don't feel a sense of outrage when I don't appreciate certain artistic choices. If you see what I mean. I don't think the female Scrooge issue is about political correctness, I believe it's about being open-minded when we view art.