[carolecat]

Love the show, but I'm not sure we have enough guys to be all the brothers. Anybody ever done it with some girls playing brothers??

[Vanessa20]

I've heard of a few middle school and high school productions that cast some female brothers, though I have yet to actually see one. Based on the photos and cast lists I've seen online, it seems to be a common practice.

[Jman383]

When I was in the show this past summer, three of the brothers were chicks, and it was community theatre, as oppose to a children's production or anything. It actually worked quite well, because some of the upper tenor harmonies are just INSANE (aka "Those Canaan Days") so they took those, and it worked out for everyone. It was completely fine.

[le_moofin]

Yeah, at my school we had a handful of the brothers played by girls. And it worked out well for harmonies, just as Jman said.

[Salome]

it can work if you give the female brothers no solo line and costume the cast so you can hide thier hair.

[Monsieur D'Arque]

I've seen it a few times when a few roles were surreally gender-bent. Mrs. P was a man, Potiphar was a woman, the Ishmaelites were female, the sphinx was a man, etc.

A few of the brothers were women, and they were played as fairly obvious man-drag- overly masculine parody.

[Set_Buildin_Dad]

Topic moved to the Joseph forum.

[Nettik]

Two years ago, I saw a community theatre prodction where about half of the brothers were female. They costumed them with hats for every scene to hide their hair, and really downplayed their figures with baggy clothes and such.

You had no idea until curtain call when they took off their hats and let their hair fall down.

[Casser]

I'm a girl, and I have played one of the brothers in a community theatre production of Joseph, and about two others were played by girls. We were costumed in baggy Arabian-style clothes with turbans, but we all had long hair and we just let it hang loose. It was pretty obvious we were girls playing boys, but I don't think it would have made much difference to the audience. Our company is pretty low on males.

[Beagle On Stage]

[Monsieur D'Arque]

In which copy of the score? I'm pretty sure in some of the revisions there are harmonies in the song. That's why, professionally or amateur, you'll rarely hear the song as one extended solo with no harmonies.

If not, the music directors take their cues from the album and add the harmonies.

[Beagle On Stage]

As far as the question itself, my high school production cast eight guys and three gals as the brothers. (Side note, the cast referred to us as the "bros" and the "bras" to distinguish between the two.) One of the girls and I sang the high tenor parts together; the other two sang melody in the female octave. One girl led "One More Angel," and the other two split "Benjamin Calypso." I personally could not condone this setup in any way, but the director literally owns about half of the amateur theatre opportunities in this city, so anything he touches is presumed to be pure gold. It's pretty sickening. But I digress.

Even though the show is widely conceptualized in a silly and light-hearted way, I feel that it is much better to cast all men as the brothers if at all possible. If not, serious effort should be made to be discreet about casting females. Women cast as brothers should be on the tall side for gals (a tall woman at 5'9" = a short to medium size guy), and more of a mezzo or alto than soprano (singing the tenor parts in their intended octave, along with one or two real tenors to mask it). Their racks should be controlled, hair should be concealed, and beards are a good idea. The exception would be casting a petite soprano to play Benjamin as a pants role, portraying him as a pre-teen kid brother regardless of the fact that many years pass during the show - I must admit that I have never seen this done and the idea is the fruit of my own brilliance, but I anticipate that it would work and be quite clever at that.