Sunday, April 29, 2012
One Hundred and Twenty Seconds
2AMt: A lot has been said about the Guthrie’s season announcement, and probably a lot more will be. I want to focus on one part of it. But first, I want to say that while I don’t disagree with most of the criticism the Guthrie has worked hard over the last decade or so to foster –I’ve yet to hear anyone I’ve known from Minnesota stand up for Dowling—it should be clearly stated that the Guthrie is not alone.
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3 comments:
This is always going to be a problem. I think we'll finally know that this isn't a problem when we don't have to consciously decide to include women and ethnic minorities. Instead, it will just happen. Although its a step in the right direction to be focusing on playwrights they aren't old dead white guys, it's still something that we as a society need to focus on, and that's a problem.
Once again, I'll say that if you look back 50, 25, or even 10 years, you can see just how far we've come. I have faith that we'll get even better.
While I do agree broadly with what this author has to say, his list is completely compiled of plays only theater people are going to know, if even that. I think that this desire to have more diversity is a good impulse but I think that it can be misguided. Just wanting to have diversity for diversities sake is counter productive it will just mean that once the craze of being diverse is over none of the plays will stick. No one will feel they are meaningful or important to produce just that they were good to do to save face. This does not mean that there should not be diversity within seasons, people should strive to look for plays that are written from different perspectives because that will tell better stories to a broader audience. Companies should try to include everyone in the dialog that they are putting out into the world. And one would hope that what they are trying to say is broad enough to reach everyone.
This article is interesting but Joe Dowling's point is at least partially valid. There are considerably more plays from the classical pantheon that are written by dead white guys than any other group. There was not a lot of diversity in the playwright community in the western world during most of the included time that the Guthrie pulls from. Could they try to pull from the limited stock to save face sure but would it really help them at this point?
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