In May 2016, my theater company took on a new venture: George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion,” with a transgender approach. In our adaptation, helmed by award-winning director Anthony D. Pound, Eliza Doolittle would transform from a lowly flower-girl to a high-class gentleman named Elijah. I played the character in question.
The story of this 1913 play is often better-known from its musical counterpart, “My Fair Lady.” Eliza is selling flowers on a rainy night in London’s Covent Garden when a group of people of all classes runs in to take cover from a sudden rainstorm.
Eliza quickly becomes the focus of a conversation between phonetics professor Henry Higgins and Colonel Pickering. Higgins boasts he could improve Eliza’s diction, elocution, and speech to the point she could pass for royalty. Eliza sees this as a chance to get a better job and visits Higgins’ home the next day to take him up on his perceived offer.
In our adaptation, Eliza asks Higgins—who is invested in this transformation—to teach her how to live in society as a gentleman instead. As far as the text goes, that’s it; Eliza doesn’t need to voice all the reasons she is a man born in a
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