AMERICAN THEATRE: In 2002, a New York State Council on the Arts study by Susan Jonas and Suzanne Bennett showed that 17 percent of all works produced on the city’s stages were written by women. There were no more reliable statistics until this August, when the Lilly Awards and the Dramatists Guild released “The Count,” a report on the gender of playwrights programmed in major nonprofits across the country over the past three seasons, which showed that the number of works by women was 22 percent. Our own American Theatre tally, culled from upcoming seasons at Theatre Communications Group member theatres, puts the figure at 21 percent, meaning we’re at least holding steady for the next year.
7 comments:
Hooray for more women in the theater! I am always thrilled to hear about women making strides in theater, and everywhere, but the theater is special because as more people enter the field the field will grow and the work it produces will evolve. Women have a completely different take on every day aspects of life, and as we start to explore that as a community we will be more able to relate to audiences and reach more people. I am thrilled to hear that more women are joining the conversation and are supporting women in the arts, but there is so much more work to do. The arts have always been a community that works to be more inclusive and it's very important for us to continue to lead the world and lead he charge in equal rights for all genders, and races.
I wonder if there would be any better way to call out theatre's that weren't producing works that empowered or employed females. If we had some kind of "Consumer Report" system for the theatre that would rate theatrical organizations based on a variety of factors, one of which being gender inclusion. If it could be endorsed by well-known theatre critics and publishers, I think a system that functioned in that respect could become incredibly valuable and influential to the theatre community. There are incredibly popular websites that already rate organizations based on a list of criteria, and form a final score based on the overall "goodness" of the firm/organization. For instance, Charity Navigator has a database of all not for profit organizations in the world, and supplies their public financial documents and comments on the legitimacy of their actions. I think something of this nature would work pretty well in the theatre world, and i'm curious to know if something like this has ever been attempted.
As someone who prides herself on being a feminist and quite well read, I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't know absolutely any of the women who write or were even mentioned in this article. Even the establishments were foreign to me -- though, if I may point out, it's pretty difficult for students to learn about contemporary theatre (especially women's contemporary theatre) if they aren't actively searching it out for themselves with the proper knowledge of how to search online and library databases. This article makes me glad to know that there's a slow but steady rise of women writers, yet I can't help but be disappointed that we aren't trying to produce or study plays that come straight out of theaters or workshops. I love the classics, and always will, but there's something about contemporary theatre that helps and makes me want to do it, or at least create it on my own.
The first thing I noticed when I opened the page was that in the photo of the women participating in the Women's Voices Theatre Festival, of about 25 women, four to five were women of color. While it's wonderful to see an increase in female work in theatre, we must also focus on other forms of diversity in theatre, rather than just gender. The article handled the subject well, however, they quote the artistic director Molly Smith saying that only 10% of the writers participating in the festival were women of color, that upset me.
Gender parity is something that I cannot fully wrap my head around in the context of the world. I just don’t understand how men and their pieces are so available and resourced while women and their pieces are not. 22 percent barely cuts into any kind of demographic worth sharing – in my opinion. Throughout history, women have been kept out of jobs and education based solely on the fact that they were women and had nothing worthwhile to contribute because of their gender. It’s great that some progress is being made, but I can’t help but think that the progress is slow and not as easy to come by as it should be. Another thing about this article that rubs me the wrong way is that the article seems more geared towards awareness rather than action. It informs people of what is going on with women in theatre, but it doesn’t give a means – which it probably should if the numbers are to grow.
I really like how realistic this article is. They are celebrating that there has been an increase of women written plays from 17% to 21%, but they realize that to most people that seems like nothing. In 13 years it went up 4%? But considering the fight has been going on for so much longer the fact that almost a quarter of the plays are written by women is a cause for celebration. Because without the little steps, nothing could be accomplished. It’s kind of crazy that so many theatre’s still don’t realize that there even is a big gap between the amount of male verses female written plays, but each time we talk about the gap more and more theatre companies will be aware of it and take it into consideration when they pick their next season. There is one point in the article that talks about how it has become easier to find women who write plays because more of them are being admitted into playwriting programs, which is the first step that I think often gets left out of the conversation. The colleges with the programs also should be under scrutiny and I am interested to see what their gender parity is.
The issue of gender parity in the world of the theatre (and the world outside it) needs to continue to be addressed. Just because it is getting better doesn’t mean we can stop trying. There is one line in the article that really stood out to me. “The theatres that most often are left out of the gender-parity discussion, ironically, are the female-identity-focused theatres”. This is a major part of the problem. Theatres that focus on gender equality need to be a part of the discussion on gender equality. The problem of gender parity exists outside of playwriting. There needs to be a higher number of women represented in all aspects of theatre. It is great how theatres are promoting this issue in festivals such as the Women’s Voices Theater Festival in Washington D.C. but this also needs to be a continuing thing, not just a one year season.
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