AMERICAN THEATRE: In 2002, I was working as an arts analyst in the theatre program at the New York State Council on the Arts, where, in partnership with Suzanne Bennett, I had recently completed a three-year study on the status of women in theatre which generated a widely read report. Encouraged by my interest in the subject, two visionary directors, Gwynn MacDonald and Mallory Catlett, approached me to fund “The First Hundred Years: The Professional Female Playwright,” a remarkable yearlong citywide staged readings series directed by an eclectic group of directors, complemented by symposia involving a slate of distinguished scholars. I heard for the first time the names Elizabeth Cary, Margaret Cavendish, Joanna Baillie, Elizabeth Inchbald, Hannah Cowley, and many others. This was the beginning of my education about the Other Canon: some good, some great, some successful in their time, some way ahead of their time, all almost erased from history and the repertory.
7 comments:
A huge problem with American theatre is our idea of reverence. We choose the ideas to revere, and constrict our world views to those works have been told are 'great.' Once we have our great works, we selectively ignore every other option. Because of this, our greats have all been established with canon of white men. Great plays by women exist. They are simply unrecognized and unknown. Viola Davis said in her recent acceptance speech that “the only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity.” I think that this hold true for all women in artistic fields. It is not that women are not capable of producing great work, have not already produced great work, and indeed, are not continuing to produce great work, it simply that their work is overlooked in favor of that which closer fits the established cultural canon of what makes "great theatre." Theatre cannot be great if it is only told from a single point of view. We need to continue to support the under heard voices in theatre. Staying only in the realm of the "greats" is, frankly, boring. We as a theatrical community can do better.
There is not much to say after reading an article like this other than let's do better. The power of tradition (patriarchal tradition, mind you), is the reason that we are unaware of the work of these playwrights. From an educational point of view, we have to improve ourselves and our community so that such work will be created in the world. Perhaps forming a class surrounding particularly women playwrights and requiring it of all drama students would begin the trend. Eventually, the class ought not to be necessary, as our generation and the one after us will bring about the social change necessary to grant actual equality for all. The truth of the matter is that we simply need to share this body of work in whatever capacity it can be shared, for rewriting the history of theatre may propel us to write its future in a better way.
I believe that better inclusion of pre-nineteenth century female playwrights in modern theatre will not only do worlds of good for today's female playwrights; it can also be extremely beneficial to today's actresses. This century's better known female roles do little to help actresses grow because they hold them to the same old story. Not only is it impossible for actresses to do anything new with this roles - it is also increasingly difficult for modern women to continue to hold themselves to the characters of dated male playwrights. But female roles written by female playwrights at a time when the women writing these plays were mostly ignored - that has to be fun for modern actresses. Beyond simple fun, it allows these actresses to flex muscles they didn't know they had, to go deeper into roles written from a much more similar perspective to their own. Designers too can have fun with texts, examining how the female voice influences the visual aesthetic of the play and portraying female as well as male characteristics of design in a whole new light. Both the study and production of these works can only make a more interestingly gendered landscape for the world of theatre as we know it, creating new works through previously ignored perspectives.
I think this article is really great. The quote at the beginning is of course infuriating but I think that’s the point. I took two years of theatre history in my undergrad and I can honestly say that out of the 40-45 plays I read over those two year maybe only 10 of them were by female playwrights. I think that the author poses an excellent question, why don’t we want to or seek to hear the other side of the story? Women were heavily restricted in the past but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t have a story to tell. I’m hoping as the years go on we can come to respect female playwrights the way we respect male playwrights. What’s the use of ignoring this part of the canon? Our society is moving on from the notion that female artists are inferior, why not support women with their history?
The lack of female representation in theatre history is extremely problemamtic, and seems to be a problem wherever I go. So far in Foundations of Drama class most, if not all, of the work we have read has been written by a man. At first I thought this because there simply weren't any published female playwrights during the periods we learned, but this article has disproved that. In all of my time doing theatre in high school we only produced one play written by a women, The Heidi Chronicles . This play wasn't even chosen by administration, it was something that we chose to do as our student produced show at the end of my senior year. There is obviously interest by young in learning more about these women and their work, so this is something that should be changed in the way that theatre history is taught. By refusing to recognize these playwrights we are not only damaging their legacy, but are also depriving ourselves of some potentially wonderful theater experiences.
I honestly wish I could say I recognized more plays and playwrights on this list than I actually did. Of the playwrights mentioned I only recognized four names: Abbess Hildegard of Bingen, Aphra Behn, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Gertrude Stein, and although I've been involved in theater since middle school at least half of the names I just said I only found out about within the last few months. Perhaps even more notable is the fact that of all the plays on the list, I personally can only recognize two of them by name: Aphra Behn's restoration comedy, The Rover, and Lorraine Hansberry's, A Raisin in the Sun. What's even more unnerving is the fact that while I've known A Raisin in the Sun by its title for quite some time, up until now I had no idea it was even written by a woman. I'm really glad that Susan Jonas decided to comprise this list because it really does highlight a lot of ignorance within our community. Although they've been oppressed and less performed throughout history, there have actually been a pretty significant number of plays from female playwrights before the 21st century. Although many of these plays were likely suppressed and thought of as inferior to the work of males, I think we should work change the tradition of performing rich white male's work and make a conscious effort to explore the scholarship of theater through the words of women whose voices have gone unrecognized for far too long.
This is a well-written article on a topic that unfortunately we all should be more familiar with in the 21st century. Before reading, I could most likely name only one or two female playwrights, and this is surprising when one considers the medium of novels. Both plays and novels feature many similar qualities, which leads me to question the author's statement that the lack of female playwrights is due to the lack of female experience in worldly matters in previous centuries. While women indeed were barred from learning and participating in various activities and topics, they still had the power of their imagination to construct a world which was beyond their immediate experience. Perhaps the longer tradition of writing plays as a male dominated sphere barred entry to females, as in contrast novels emerged at the same time as female writers. I find the initiative by Jonas' students to be very uplifting, as I believe the leaders of theater going forward have a responsibility to expose more and more people to works of the other sex.
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