Post 1: Femme Visibility and Subjectivity in Technical Theatre – A Backstory
by h
Recently, while I was sitting in on a rehearsal, a director asked me, “Why sound?”
My immediate response: “Because it is like acting, but without being looked at.”
“Good answer.” he said thoughtfully, and the matter was dropped.
At least, it had appeared to be dropped. Yet my own mind continued to mull over my response again and again wondering how I had come to this conclusion.
In the beginning, I was an actor. Acting is what drew me to the theater. I loved the attention as a child, performance being what ultimately saved me from a shy and lonely childhood. When I became an adult, however, the attention repulsed me. As a female I am taught from earliest consciousness that my value is inherently measured in the realm of the physical. Without outward beauty, or even the correct kind of beauty, I may as well give up on any sort of happiness or lifelong fulfillment. Furthermore, girls are taught that to be pretty means one cannot also be skilled or well-studied, and yet paradoxically we are driven to believe that the ideal woman (a heterosexual man’s ideal, that is) stands as “beauty and brains”. Oh, but not too much brains, of course!
So with that, girls are taught to be attractive but not allowed to revel in their own attractiveness; we must remain modest and unaware of our beauty. A woman who likes herself too much is vain, frivolous, and selfish.
“Why sound?” the director asked me. A harmless question, to be sure. And yet my own answer reverberated within my self, echoing back a voice that shouted “I am just so tired of being looked at!”
It has been my experience that women in the field of technical theatre have more often than not rather low levels of feminine visibility (with the exception of costume designers, for which I am most often mistaken for being). Granted, the physical requirements of being a stage manager, master electrician, stagehand or any sort of theater technician tends to eliminate room for such “frivolities” as one immediately associates with femme fashion such as skirts, heels, manicures, makeup and excessive jewelry to name a few.
It’s true that such looks are impractical and potentially dangerous, but that is not an excuse for the overall dismissive attitude toward femme styling amongst those in the technical professions. What correlation could wearing lipstick possibly have to someone’s ability to do their job?
Professionally, I had the unbelievable luck to land work immediately after college. It was here when I found myself trapped in this mindset. Foolishly I ate up the idea that to be taken seriously, I must dress-down, look less extravagant, and “be professional’ for the first time in my life. What does this even mean, “be professional”, and why would my appearance even matter when pursuing a career in the arts? I felt like a fake. I thought, how can I build a proper relationship with these theater companies presenting myself under false pretenses?
So I stopped being “professional”, and I let them know me. I wore glitter to tech week and stage managed a show in 5-inch heels. I was made fun of. I was resented. Who cares? I still did all my paperwork on time.
My appearance has nothing to do with my work in and of itself, but it has everything to do with how my work is perceived by others. Thus, I enjoy the duality of being *onstage and present* and yet invisible.
Why sound? Because like acting it can have profound emotional effect on the audience. A well-placed bass throb or birdsong or ambient underscore can turn perceived emotion into real emotion. Humans have the capacity to be immensely triggered by sound. Modern audiences so used to the cinematic soundscapes presented to them by movies have difficulty in the vacuum of the (seemingly) silent stage. But I don’t think that’s all there is behind that question, and I don’t think I’m wrong to assume that the subtext, whether it is intended or not, is ultimately “Why is someone like you designing sound?” and this thought hurts me for two reasons: 1. It implies that someone like me does not “fit” the idea of theater technician, and 2. It implies that sound design is not worthy of the love of someone like me, who so clearly cares about self-love and personal aesthetic (a.k.a. vanity and frivolity).
Leave technical theater to the men and the de-feminized women, it says. You can’t be competent with technology and wear cute shoes. You, girl, cannot be skilled, well-studied, and pretty…remember?
I wish I could begin to describe my love of sound design. I wish there was room in this post. But that is the reason I have created this blog; to keep a place where I can discuss my work and my approach to sound design and sound theory from my perspective, as a primarily self-taught female working in a field easily dominated by masculine viewpoints. I am not here to shame any fellow artists or complain about work! Nor do I intend to inject overtly feminist critique into all discussions made here, but it goes without saying that my approach to sound design is highly feminine and feminist because it has been experiences with “girl hate” in my profession that led me to this standpoint. Femininity is so intertwined into my work that I cannot fathom discussing being a professional sound designer without first addressing it.
Photo is me, Hannah Birch Carl. Taken by Maisie Cousins.
prettyunbearable.wordpress.com 
You are explosively awesome.
Thank you! Femme stage manager here and this is something I have struggled with my entire decade long career. I never desired to be an actor. I enjoy stage managing because it gives me an inner sense of self-respect, power and success. I feel like a birth doula in my field, it is rewarding.
I believe my choice to retain my femme identity at work prevented me from getting taken as seriously as men and other women with a different aethstetic. I lost job opportunities to that. The most frequent comment I got when meeting new colleagues “wait, how can YOU be the stage manager??” I felt less respected from all departments: casts, artistic, and production alike.
Femme visibility is an important discussion within the larger discussion of female inclusion and sexual harassment in the world of professional theater. It is empowering for me to hear from you, fellow technical femme. Rock on, I look forward to more blog posts and hope to have the pleasure of experiencing your designs!
Hi Corrie! It’s great to hear from others who have experienced similar trouble feeling respected for dressing feminine. Thank you so much for sharing! 🙂
I’m a female lighting and sound designer and it’s neat to hear your point of view. recently, and for the first time in my life, I’m working on an all female lighting crew and I was shocked that my fellow electricians felt bad that they couldn’t wear dresses to work. It wasn’t something I had ever thought about when I fell in love with tech theater one of the reason I loved it was because I could wear jeans and a tank top every day. I love climbing all over theaters and getting filthy and sweaty with work. It’s cool to hear a different perspective. I would just watch calling women who don’t wear make up or glitter “de-feminized” or imply that the only way to be “pretty” is to spend a lot of time and energy on your appearance. I’m a badass female tech/designer/playwright and I’m very female and very pretty in my jeans and work boots. It sucks that women who enjoy dressing in a feminine way feel like they have to dress down to blend in with there male counter parts, and it sucks that I would be forced to dress in a more feminine way in almost any other profession. Breaking into a male dominated industry is hard and we should all stand together whether in heels or in boots. Great post!
Hi Beth!
Thank you so much for sharing your perspective as well, and thank you for calling to my attention the impact of my word usage. To be clear, I certainly do not mean to imply that a person who doesn’t spend time on their appearance cannot be pretty too. I guess that when I say “pretty” what I really mean is “done-up”, but I find that terminology less pleasing. It is certainly not my place to pass judgement on anyone’s appearance, as beauty/attraction is all relative anyway, right? Again, thank you for your insight!
A fellow stage manager (who also enjoys wearing dresses etc) posted this to her fb wall, and everything you say rings so true!
I had PSM who once said (when I rocked up to rehearsal post-gym in sweat pants and sneakers) “Oh thank goodness! You look normal and not so intimidating!”. I think she may have been “intimidated” by the fact that I expected people to be able to compliment my pretty dresses and great shoes AND see that I am good at my job (and that how I look has nothing to do with my professional abilities) whereas she felt that she needed to wear jeans and work boots all the time to be taken seriously as a stage manager and not be seen as “the cute blonde chick”.
And luckily, I tend to work with people who don’t judge my work by the way I dress, even if I do get the occasional actor who is surprised by the heel height I can wear when SM’ing.
Good points well made. I feel like half the people I talk to about being a director and a playwright want to wave off the things I’ve accomplished in making a play happen to ask me why I don’t act. “You could do it – you’re confident and charismatic and PRETTY!” The idea that I might want to be the one who takes control and makes choices and so on, rather than be stared at and evaluated for my physical presence (as almost all women are at all times in their day-to-day life), seems to be completely alien to far too many people. I love the actresses I work with and they do a difficult job well, but part of the pleasure of being a director is that nobody gets to tell me how I should look or what I should be.
I’m an electrician by trade, and while I appreciate your point, I have to respectfully disagree. For me the idea of wearing dresses or heels to work is ludicris, simply for the reasons of practicality. Dresses can get caught and torn on so many things in a theater, and I honestly shudder at the idea of trying to lift a 70lb moving light while balanced on my toes in a pair of heels. While I do love being feminine and dressing up outside of the job site, when I’m at work, I’m there to work, and work safely. I don’t so much see not dressing in a traditionally feminine way as a “defeminization” of me as a female stagehand or the idea that “if I wanna hang with the guys, I gotta dress like the guys”, it is simply a case of wanting to come home with all my fingers and toes at the end of the call.
Hi Gilly,
Thank you for your input, and you are absolutely correct. It would be completely impractical and dangerous to be working as an electrician in a dress and heels. However my point is not that women should feel empowered and be dressing up for work, but that a technician’s skill level is not affected by their taste in appearance, so female technicians who choose to look more femme should not be discounted for doing so. I wrote this piece based off of my experiences as a female sound technician, as a precursor to future posts about sound theory. I suppose I felt compelled to write it because I know how people tend to look at me and assume I have no idea what I’m talking about. It is very frustrating. Anyway, thanks again for sharing your point of view!
I have a lot of thoughts on this and so many stories that come to mind while reading it. I can’t say I agree with every point, but I like your overall message.
I like that you manage to articulate *perfectly* the exact reasons why I started my light design jewelry line on Etsy. I always felt like girls in every other profession (office jobs, psychologists, teachers, etc.) get to dress “pretty” for their jobs; why can’t I?
And the way that girls are treated so differently by men in our field… It makes me sick. Just today I was hit on by a director – a guest director in my theatre – who noticed that instead of wearing black today, I have on a purple striped v-neck. He goes, “wow, you clean up nicely. Is this your sexy outfit?” Wtf. Seriously, wtf.
Oh my gosh, so many more thoughts… I could start my own blog. Hahah
Thanks for posting this. I had no idea a blog existed about this until a friend of mine shared it on Facebook, and I think it’s really cool
I, absolutely, could not agree more. I am and costume designer and technician, it is often times assumed I should be and display the epitome of fashion. Nope, I like my sweaters, jeans and tennis shoes…it’s who I am and what I am comfortable in. Just because I don’t wear the latest Vera Wang or Vera Bradley doesn’t mean I am not good at what I do. And you look uniquely you in your picture.
I couldn’t agree more with your article! It’s frustrating to be in an environment that is supposedly very accepting of people, but is extremely possessive of traditional gender roles when it comes to technical theater. There have been times where, at a big group meeting, I’ve been assumed to be an actor due to the way I was dressed, instead of a carpenter (Makeup, really, the red lipstick I chose to wear that day). It’s fustrating to be in this enviroment. As long as you dress practically and safely for your job (No heels in the gird, or tutus in the scene shop, for example..), does it matter if it’s not “traditional”? I love the line “What correlation could wearing lipstick possibly have to someone’s ability to do their job?” and I’ve said something similar to people. Wearing a ribbon in my hair, doesn’t affect the work I do. Wearing lipstick, does not affect the work I do. And if I know I won’t be crawling around god knows where (or as long as I bring backup shoes), I’m going to wear my “pretty” clothes instead of my work clothes.
Reading your story is comforting, and I’m glad I’m not alone!
I’m a professional sound designer. I’ve been told many times that I don’t “look the part” as it were. You keep being you. With what we do, there can be so much of our own emotion in the work that if we mask ourselves we can loose that raw emotional edge that drives us. Being who you are is a huge part of how you design and I think it’s awesome that you’ve taken this stance.
[…] This post came my way yesterday. I immediately shared it on facebook and jumped into a couple of conversations about it on twitter. But I wanted to follow up here. So go read the whole thing, then come back so we can talk about it. […]
Reblogged this on Exit, Pursued by a Lark.
I’m a female film sound designer and I cannot tell you how much I appreciate this post. Unlike theatre, sound post-production has no practical considerations whatsoever – we spend most of our days sitting in rolly chairs. And yet I am the only woman at my job (and there are very few of us to begin with) who wears feminine clothing regularly, and while my style is appreciated to a certain degree, it also definitely works against me. My male coworkers usually describe me ways that put my gender first. They assume that we can’t possibly have any common interests, or that I spend all my free time shopping and doing my hair. It never occurs to them that this is my version of the jeans and t shirts they wear: clothes in which I am most comfortable, that allow me to focus on my work instead of feeling out of place. It’s incredibly small-minded and I often feel like I’m alone trying to increase femme visibility in sound. So, you know, thanks. Keep fighting the good fight.
Very well written! This is so true on so many different levels. As a lighting director who is a one woman team at my job (lighting designer, board programmer, master electrician, board operator, etc) I deal with many of the same challenges you describe. My coworkers expect to see me in a tshirt and jeans everyday and act mind-blown when I show up in a dress and heels and assume I can’t do my job. After two years now, they’ve now seen me climb ladders and catwalks in heels and go up in a genie lift in a dress (with leggings on if course, lol). Sadly I even had a higher up in my company teach her the basics of media/lights/sound tell me after 5mins “oh my gosh, any woman who would choose to do this for a living and love it MUST be a butch!” Yeaaaah lets just say that didn’t go over well with me. Long story short, we’re women and we’re creative and smart. And most of us in tech theatre KNOW we’re in a predominately male run industry, but that doesn’t stop us from going heads up with the best 🙂
It is fantastic that you can express yourself through your clothing choices. Be free and love it. Awesome! Feel lucky that you have the ability to express yourself both visually and sonically. It seems that you are very aware of the history of the struggle and your genealogy as a sound designer. As you probably know, women have been paving the way for many decades. We are relatively new to the area of professional sound design. Let me tell you that the path has been full of thorny bramble. Along this journey, we’ve had to negotiate difficult circumstances in order for our work to be taken seriously. Hopefully one day, it won’t matter what we dress like – at ANY point of the feminine-masculine perspective. I’ve never wanted to be judged by what I look like and have always preferred to be judged by the work that I do. Personally, I wear my boots to a work call, my sexy shoes to rehearsal (because directors, actors and visual designers take me more seriously as a creative person if I show some sense of style) and my stiletto heels to opening night.
[…] for theatre, from my own little dumb baby perspective and experiences. I prefaced it all with a post about being femme in a field that’s overwhelmingly anti-femme, because it’s relevant to […]
I’m currently writing my dissertation on the gender split in technical theater (as a woman looking to go into lighting design) and your post has been such a reassurance that I’m not the only one.
For as long as I can remember I’ve always worn jeans and a black vest (whether in the theater or not) and had short hair, but I was criticized by my lecturer for not promoting my femininity more in an industry where ‘making it’ as a woman is quite rare. I was told that I should be proud to be a woman and be feminine AND be a technician, when in reality, I’m just proud to be me and be a techie, regardless of gender.
It’s when you’re applying for jobs and having to debate whether to use the gender neutral version of your name so that you don’t get prejudged when you realize that something needs to change.
Much techie love to you all ❤