Article by J. KELLY NESTRUCK
published in The Globe and Mail – April 25, 2018
All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players – now competing against each other.
Toronto’s top theatre, dance and opera awards are going gender neutral in 2019, the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts (TAPA) announced on Wednesday morning – making this June’s Dora Mavor Moore Awards the last where male actors will compete against male actors and female actors will compete against female actors.
While it will no doubt provoke the ire of a Jordan Peterson or two, retiring these outdated gender silos is the most sensible decision that the TAPA, which runs the Doras, has made in a decade.
After all, male and female directors, designers and playwrights already go up against each other in the same categories – and we’re living in a theatrical time in Toronto where you might as easily find a woman playing Hamlet as a man.
