It's Time for Women on the Hasty Pudding Stage

As a former member of the all-male Hasty Pudding Theatricals cast (2004–2007), I would like to commend the women who signed up to audition for this year’s Hasty Pudding production. I am thrilled to hear that their act of civil disobedience has earned them audition slots for this year’s production. This is not the first time, though, that the Pudding has allowed women to audition for the company, and even as they’ve let women audition in the past, they have yet to actually cast one. I am hopeful that this time around, the auditions will be more than a token gesture. It’s long past time to offer equal opportunity to men and women to participate fully in this revered institution.

I would like to think that for the vast majority of Harvard students, this would be a no-brainer. To deny women a chance to perform alongside men is patently discriminatory and therefore unacceptable; that should be the end of the discussion.

But I remember thinking, when I was a student, that to allow women into the cast would somehow compromise the “character” of the Pudding. At one point, I casually observed, “Women in drag aren’t funny.”

I wince at this mindset. First, deferring to tradition over inclusion doesn’t exactly bring to mind anyone terribly sympathetic. (If George Wallace were a drag queen, where do you think he’d fall on this issue?) Second, the strength and popularity of the Pudding hardly rests (completely) on the monumental comic power of men in dresses. The Pudding owes its success to the talent and professionalism of its creative teams—its writers, its directors, and its visionary designers—and its performers. Broadening that talent pool would in no way hurt the quality of its productions.

There is certainly a more palpable comic tradition, for whatever reason, of men in drag than of women in drag. But that comic tradition is not under attack here; no one is asking the Pudding to put an end to cross-dressing. And even if we allow for the idea, true or not, that society thinks men in skirts are funnier than women in suits, there’s no reason to think that including women in the cast would make the show any less funny. Under the current policy, the next Tina Fey would be barred from appearing on the Pudding stage.

The idea of a show cast purely on the basis of who would be funniest in any given role, gender aside, would be immensely appealing to me as both an actor and an audience member. (For the record, I think I’ve only once seen a show that featured a woman in comic drag. She was great. Funny is funny.)

There does not seem to be any reason why, with a little boldness in leadership, this can’t happen now. While I am not familiar with the minutiae of producing for the Pudding, the Pudding president’s claim that allowing women to perform would require “structural changes to the production, the company, and our larger institutional traditions” isn’t immediately convincing. What structural changes?

The Pudding has a choice: it can continue putting on professional-grade productions stocked with enormous talent while being inclusive of all students and rejuvenating both itself and drag as a form of comedy, or it can continue going the way of the country clubs, excluding women for the sake of “tradition” and some nebulous ideas about the Pudding’s aesthetic.

Keeping in mind that sooner or later the Pudding will stop discriminating against women (because it’s 2015), that we will all one day be embarrassed to have ever defended such discrimination, and that this will all be on Google, I strongly urge the Pudding leadership to give legitimate, equal consideration to the women who want to perform with the Pudding and take full advantage of all the opportunities our organization has to offer.

Let’s get with it already. The Lampoon figured this out forty years ago.

Benjamin K. Kawaller '07 graduated with a degree in sociology. He performed in four Hasty Pudding Theatricals productions, 156-159. He is a writer living in Los Angeles.