We are actors...we're the opposite of people!

Day 26

Random moment of the day. I was in my theatre history class and we were just talking about 19th century theatre. We just started talking and he mentioned a playwright/actress named Ann Womatt I believe (I'm too lazy to look up the name from my notes). And our professor stopped and couldn't decide if he should call her an actor or an actress, and then proceeded to ask my opinion; if I preferred to be called an actor or an actress. My gut response was actor, and I told him that. Then this afternoon I got to thinking more about it and why I think that way.

I guess I see it in the same way as a doctor or a teacher or even a lawyer! You don't call a female doctor a doctress or a lawyera. It almost seems a little bit demeaning to have a term for a male actor and female actor, like they are unequal or something. Like, we have Brad Pitt, who is an actor and we have Anne Hathaway who has this different term as an actress. It's like these two different caliber of classes for the same profession. I see myself as an actor because I do the same things that male actors do. I perform a role, I research a character, I say my lines onstage, and I try to dive into the depths of my soul for a part. Why do I have to be labeled something different? Then again, it could be seen just as gender. Male and female. There are specific qualifications that make you a male that females don't have; but does that same notion apply to theatre?

I say no. We do the same things. There aren't any qualifications that are different to dub you one or the other besides gender. And while more times than naught male actors play male characters and vis versa, there are instances where the roles can be switched. I'm not sure where the term actually came into being, it may have been in the distance past when female actors couldn't do the things that male actors could in plays. There were specific roles they played that had a set of rules to go with it. Today it's different. There's so much more opportunities for female actors to do whatever they want to onstage. Nothing is really off limits.

So I, Christina Jones, am an actor. The same as you Brad Pitt...or you Anne Hathaway.