Thursday, October 31, 2013
Dispatches from LALA Land: California Women Got it On Lock
HowlRound: In just one September weekend, Los Angeles theater patrons had at least three totally different productions of Shakespeare plays from which to choose. The Los Angeles Women's Shakespeare Company's all-female Hamlet was running at The Odyssey Theatre; a three-person adaptation of Richard II opened at The Theatre @ Boston Court; and Will Geer's Theatricum Botanicum presented an outdoor Taming of the Shrew. Each production offered an alternative way of doing Shakespeare: Hamlet was performed in Elizabeth dress on a traditional set; Richard II was a modernist/dream-play take on one of Shakespeare's most psychology-driven plays; and director Ellen Geer turned Christopher Sly and his tricksters into modern urban archetypes who watch/present Taming of the Shrew in Elizabethan dress.
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3 comments:
I would be interested to see how the numbers of women in theatre in LA stack up against their representation in Film and TV. I know from other articles and my own experiences that women are just as underrepresented in Film/TV as they are in theatre (if not more so), but in a city like LA that is less centered on theatre, I wonder if more opportunities have been created. In addition, the article talks about how most of these female artistic directors got there through untraditional paths, and that very few of them had set out to be artistic directors. Does this possibly say something about the opportunities they might not have been able to access in their intended fields (producing, writing, etc) because of their gender? In the end, the article gets it exactly right that while 25 female artistic directors in LA may seem impressive, it's only 8% of the overall group. And that simply isn't enough.
I have to say I get rather disappointed when I read articles like this. I always start out thinking that maybe I'll find a new break through for women in theatre but then I find statistics like only 8% of artistic directors in a major city being female. It doesn't seem like this kind of inequality would be happening in today's world, but I am always surprised to find it does. While it is great that these women feel they are making an impact, it is unfortunate that they felt they couldn't make the same impact any other way. I do hope to see more women doing what they originally set out to do.
It is exciting to know that women are starting to get more power in the theater world but it is sad to hear that rise can be represented by a mere eight percent. This seems like something that as a society we have move past by now, unfortunately it is still something to work on. Hopefully within the coming years this large difference in gender roles will decrease and there will be more women in authority roles.
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