Girls Can Too

"Girls who are boys/Who like boys to be girls/Who do boys like they're girls/Who do girls like they're boys." The chorus to Blur's gender-bending "Girls and Boys" is an homage to the notion that maybe the lines that differentiate masculinity and femininity are less defined than Pat Robertson might think. After all, many men are more convincing femmes than those born with XX chromosomes. This is hardly news—Elizabethan playwrights had men in drag onstage for all the female roles. Five hundred years later, the opposite is happening at the Dallas Theater Center as seven women take on a Shakespeare classic. A Macbeth is a tragedy about what happens to the characters in a bloody rebellion, a "streamlined version with a contemporary edge," says director Melissa Cooper. Each actor will play multiple roles designed to bend gender expectations, just as Shakespeare did when he cast a man as Lady Macbeth. It's girls who play boys and play girls like they're boys. A Macbeth will be performed in Bryant Hall in the DTC's Heldt Administration Building, 3736 Turtle Creek Blvd. The play runs Thursday through April 2 (8 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays, 2 p.m. Sundays and 9 p.m. March 31). Tickets are $15. Call 214-522-8499 or visit dallastheatercenter.org.
Wednesdays-Sundays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m.; Fri., March 31, 9 p.m.; April 1-2, 8 p.m. Starts: March 23. Continues through April 2