Women and Hollywood: Since 2001 Guerrilla Girls On Tour! have staged an annual protest around the time of the Tony Awards to highlight sexism in theatre. We chose the Tony Awards because we wanted people to think about the fact that women aren’t nominated for Tony’s because they aren’t hired on Broadway, the highest paid part of the theatre. Yes, there’s a tragedy on Broadway and it isn’t Electra.
The Tony Award is named after Antoinette Perry, for goddess sake, so you’d think that more women would be up for a Tonys. But even during seasons where there are 4 plays by women produced on Broadway (2011/12) not one of them was nominated for Best Play.
2 comments:
This article bugs the crap out of me. Poor grammar aside (they're called "The Tony Awards," you win a "Tony Award;" there is no such thing as a "Tony's Award" or a "Tonys Award") and vanity aside (I know you're proud of your brand new iphone 5 but the rest of us don't and shouldn't care), the author's written attitude here seems less about how feminist theatre is important and underrepresented in New York and more about how HER feminist theatre is [somehow] important and not being done enough.
There's no denying that NYC theatre, ESPECIALLY Broadway, is very one-sided; that's easy to see and I'm not even IN New York. And getting people involved in your work, be it feminist theatre, gay theatre or what-have-you, is admirable and important. But good theatre, good artistic work that can stand on its own, is about accessibility, isn't it? It's about producing work that can cross divides rather than create them, right? Do you just want to do work that preaches to the choir? Or do you want your work to reach people who aren't already on your side? Convince them that the work of feminists (and the equality they stand for) isn't really all that different from what's important to them. You're doing SOME things right: Inviting Todd Haimes to your event might help convince him the Roundabout wants its season to include women playwrights & directors (I doubt bullying him and vandalizing his theatre will help convince him much at all, though).
Which brings up another issue I take with this article: the interchanging use of "feminism" and "women." I know this is difficult to accept but not every WOMAN is a feminist; just as every white MAN is not a chauvinist pig who hates feminists. "Post-feminism" doesn't mean the feminist movement is OVER so much as it means the movement did it's job of making us all AWARE and now we have to choose the impact it has. So, are there not enough WOMEN involved in Broadway & in NYC's theatre scenes or not enough FEMINISTS doing FEMINIST-RELATED theatre? There's a difference; and the author's lack of acknowledgement of that difference bothers me.
A great deal of this piece reads not as No One's Ever Done Something This Important but more as WE'VE Never Done Something This Important Before and You Should Be Impressed.
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