What Do Male Performers “Fear” About “The Bechdel Test”?: Between “Weakness” and “Perpetrator Consciousness”

Abstract

 The purpose of this paper is to clarify what kind of fear male performers face when performing in the improv format “The Bechdel test” and how to mitigate that fear. As improv emphasizes spontaneity and “yes and,” various biases of the performer are incorporated into the story on stage. This paper focuses on gender bias therein.

 The Bechdel Test was developed in 2016 by Lisa Rowland, a US improv performer, inspired by the test of the same name used to measure gender bias in movies. The format has four characteristics: (1) Women play the main character, who has a monologue opening and closing the performance; (2) the performers create fragmentary, non-linear short scenes called “snapshots” with the aim of depicting the diversity of the main characters; (3) the performers explore the “alternative potentials” of the stories that have unconsciously been excluded from improv performances so far; (4) a “discussion” time is made part of the performance to reflect on the improv just performed from a gender perspective and to engage in dialogue.

 In 2021, I formed a group with Reiko Naoi, who learned The Bechdel Test from Rowland and started its advanced practice in Japan, to continue learning and performing it. This paper focuses on the fear of a male performer (A) and its transformation process. His behavior in practice and his narratives in post-performance interviews were used as analytical data.

 The results show that he had a fear of expressing his own gender bias. His feared “women” (his fellow female performers and female audience members). This fear, which stemmed from an unwillingness to be perceived by these women as gender-biased, was alleviated as he continued to study The Bechdel Test. He came to regard this format as “theater that shows the multifaceted nature of the main characters” rather than “a measure of personal gender bias.”

 His fear may be related to the duality of improv, in which the performer must improvise three roles at the same time: actor, scriptwriter, and director. Therefore, the audience may believe that the story unfolding on stage and the characters who enact it are controlled by the performers themselves.

 He found out a new way of mitigating his fear by choosing his own character to display the main character's multifacetedness in snapshots, and by speaking in discussion from the character's point of view. However, the audience sees not only the world of the story woven by the characters, but also the way the performers work to create the story. Therefore, the performers cannot continue to hide under the cover of the characters. In discussion, he expressed his own fear during the scene as “weakness.” The expression of his “weakness” worked as a “safety device” to destroy the structure of “perpetrator/victim.”