CMU School of Drama


Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Not There Yet

Theatre Communications Group: "Discussing the status of women in the theatre feels a little like debating global warming. I mean, why are we still having this discussion? According to a report issued seven years ago by the New York State Council on the Arts, 83 percent of produced plays are written by men—a statistic that, by all indications, remains unchanged. Nobody doubts that the North Pole is melting, either—we see it on the news. These are both looming disasters produced by lazy behavior that nobody bothered to stop. End of discussion. What we have to do in both cases is commit to change before it is too late."

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I think that in order to fully take in the meaning of the statistics that this article is pointing out, one needs to first think about what plays the surveyed information is truly using. If you take into account all of the classical plays and even a lot of contemporary plays before a lot of action had begun to be taken on the subject, you run into times in the past when. yes, it was predominantly just men that were writing plays. however, if we continue to produce these plays, then of course the statistics are going to change at a much smaller rate since a large sum of your information is blocked out as constant.

Molly Hellring said...

I agree with Jacob. The fact that so many plays run over and over again has a lot to do with the statistics. This will probably be skewed for a long time. As more and women write it will start to even out, however it may never be even. People are still putting on ancient greek plays.