We’ve all become accustomed to the plethora of awards ceremonies throughout the year, for all forms of achievement within Arts & Theatre. From the Oliviers to the WhatsOnStage Awards, BOLT Awards to Tony’s, every year we are inundated with accolades for the world’s favourite cultural achievements and the people who have made them possible. But in a world which is becoming more and more inclusive, there remains a glaring issue when it comes to these awards, before we even get to who wins. And that’s the categories themselves.
Take the Olivier Awards for instance. The Oliviers are the highest theatrical accolade in British theatre, celebrating the shows, their production teams and casts which bring some of our favourite plays and musicals to life in increasingly extraordinary ways. Besides there still being some categories missing such as Best Book of a Play/Musical and Best Score, which have been addressed by Forge recently, the Oliviers present awards in 26 categories – 21 for theatre, two for opera, two for dance and one for a Society of London Theatre (SOLT) affiliate member.
Many of these categories (eight in total) recognise individual cast members, either in leading or supporting roles in plays and musicals, in the form of ‘Best Actor…’ and ‘Best Actress…’, recognising both male and female excellence in the arts. However, this is an increasingly problematic arrangement for LGBTQ+ cast members, who often face challenges when being nominated for these awards. For non-binary performers particularly, how can they find themselves nominated for any of these awards without being misgendered, despite their talent?
These issues are becoming more pressing with every passing year. In 2023, non-binary actor Liv Hewson chose not to submit themselves for Emmy Award consideration, despite her fan-favourite role in Yellowjackets. Similarly, The Last of Us’ Bella Ramsey competed in female categories despite “being aware that it’s not ideal”. Every non-binary and gender nonconforming person will deal with these challenges differently, but it is increasingly apparent that this issue is becoming one that more and more talented professionals are facing.
So how can we address these issues? Well, in my opinion, there is a glaring simple, obvious and overdue solution, and that is to scrap the gendered nature of award categories. By ending this meaningless differentiation, we would put to an end the conflicts faced by non-binary and gender nonconforming performers by providing a single ‘Best Actor in a [Play/Musical]’ category and ‘Best Supporting Actor in a [Play/Musical]’ category. It would enable all performers who wish to nominate themselves to do so without having to select a side on an arbitrary binary system.
This would also allow the community and world to have a definitive figure to name the best performer of the year according to the awarding body. The current system, particularly in the Oliviers, sets two winners in each ‘Best Actor…” and “Best Actress…” categories, which if you’re anything like me, always leaves me wondering: “Who would win between these two?”, with often no definitive way to determine this (although I almost always tend to lean towards the actresses, sorry lads).
As well as this, by removing the splitting of these categories by sex, in the case of the Oliviers you would be eliminating four awards. This would leave a significant portion of the budget which could be reallocated to introducing other award categories, such as the aforementioned ‘Best Book of a [Play/Musical]’ and Best Score. If we were to keep the number of awards the same, this would leave an Olivier spare for another new category, which I think should be made for a ‘Best Operator / Technical Team Member’, another group overlooked in theatrical recognition, albeit for vastly different reasons. We recognise those who design the groundbreaking technical aspects, why not those who actually operate them and make them a reality?
In my mind, removing the pointlessly-gendered nature of awards categories is a simple, no-brainer solution to a distinct and very apparent problem. But of course, there are arguments to the contrary in this issue, which I will also seek to address. The first is the observation that this would recognise less people and therefore drastically increase competition for the titles. There’s two parts to this so lets tackle each separately. The fact that we would recognise less people, I believe, is a complete non-issue. Making theatre, music, film, TV or anything else there are awards for, is an achievement in itself and the gaining of an award shouldn’t be the driving force behind this. Whilst it’s true that awards such as this can accelerate careers, they aren’t essential for progression. Samuel L Jackson has never won an Oscar. Melissa McCarthy has never won a Golden Globe. They’ll be fine.
There is also the point that this will increase competition in these categories and make them much harder to win. And honestly, isn’t that the entire point? There are hundreds of performers playing in the West End every single night, there will be countless applicants to awarding bodies to win every year, a little more competition would only increase the prestigiousness of the awards, which is by no means a negative development. If anything, it highlights the exceptional talent of the eventual winner.
Now the biggest argument raised against this related to competition arises from fears that this could lead to female performers being squeezed out of nominations in favour of their male counterparts. By having separate categories for male and female performers, the awards ensure that there will always be representation of women in the creative arts. Whilst this is a noble attribute, an inclusive approach must be inclusive to all people, which this system inherently isn’t.
This also gives the suggestion that female performers would be unable to compete with their male counterparts in direct competition, which is not only untrue but in my opinion, an inherently sexist approach to take. Olivier Awards are decided by “a group of distinguished industry professionals, theatre luminaries and members of the public specifically chosen for their passion for London theatre”, so in an event where women are being consistently erased from competition, that’s not because of the categories themselves, that would be due to the humans who ultimately select their winners.
The final consideration is more of a personal one for the performers themselves, and that is how the award would be named. The most obvious solution would be a simple “Best Actor in a…[Play/Musical]”, and whilst the term ‘actor’ is gender neutral, it always tends to have male connotations, especially when seen alongside ‘actress’, and whilst I am extremely confident that I would never be in a position to even be considered for an Olivier, I know I’d much rather be named ‘Best Actress’ than ‘Best Actor’ as it’s a much more affirming term for me personally.
The solution then could either take the form of using the term ‘performer’ as a blanket term, or be try something novel and ask the winner what term they’d prefer for themselves. It could still be the same award, just with a slightly different noun used to be determined each year by the talented individual who has worked hard enough to find themselves facing such a question.
Awards categories recognise all sorts of talent and achievement in many different fields, and being able to be named a winner is such an honour for anyone who reaches those dizzying heights. But there’s still important work to do. As more and more people feel comfortable expressing their true selves, it’s time that awarding bodies followed suit, by scrapping an arbitrary system of division and making use of the additional provision to recognise all people involved in theatre production.
