And the Best Musical Tony Award is no different.
Saturday, October 18, 2014
The Last 20 Years of Best Musical Winners: A By The Numbers Infographic
And the Best Musical Tony Award is no different.
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And the Best Musical Tony Award is no different.
13 comments:
It is astounding how under represented women are in these statistics! I would understand an inequality if these numbers were for every Best Musical award ever, but these statistics are only for the past 20 years. But in all this time, only two Best Musicals have had a female protagonists, and three have had female directors? That is ridiculous. Theatre is supposed to be a representation of the human experience, but looking at these statistics, it only seems like we are getting half of the world's voices. I understand that the tony voters choose who they believe has produced the best work, so I don't think the problem is in the selection. When we get right down to it, the problem is that female-helmed musicals, for whatever reason, are not reaching broadway. What we know for sure is that it is not because of lack of talent. Given the revolutionary nature of today's times, why can't we see more amazing musicals about women, by women? To be honest, the fact that Broadway hasn't made more of a concerted effort to create more diversity on its stages is disappointing. Broadway is supposed to be an artistically rich and accepting place. They should be ahead of the pack when it comes to representation. Your move, Broadway.
The infographic was a bit underwhelming, but I guess there can only be so many trends in such a diverse business. I was a little surprised that there were not more women directors or writers but not surprised when I consider the many gender inequities elsewhere in our workforce. I am surprised that only three of the shows included "stars". It is also surprising that only two of the shows opened in the summer but I guess that is related to when the awards are. I was surprised that four of the shows did not recoup their expenses.
When looking at the infographic, my first reaction, like Olivia, was to be surprised and outraged at the obvious lack of female representation in this category. But as I think more and more about it, I realize that it isn't that more people enjoy musicals with male leads/directors/writers/songwriters etc., it's that there aren't many musicals that do have that sort of representation. That's definitely why Broadway must begin to encourage diversity amongst their musicals.
Another issue I had with this infographic is all of the statistics were created by a sample of twenty musicals, even though the Tony's have been running for almost seventy years. When a statistic says, 50 percent, for example, that's only ten musicals out of the sixty-something musicals which won. I think a bigger sample size is necessary to make more of an impact.
This is a pretty disappointing infographic. Obviously the under-representation of women is a major issue, and I think one of the worst ones is that 90% of them had male protagonists, which is just awful. I'm assuming this means only "Thoroughly Modern Millie" and "Hairspray" passed as having a female protagonist. This is especially disappointing since I've always thought "Thoroughly Modern Millie" was a pretty horribly sexist (and racist) musical. I also thought it was racist and sexist because it was written a long time ago, but apparently it came out in 2002, so there's really no excuse. It's also disappointing that only 15% of the musicals that won were entirely original, and almost half were based off of movies. Since there's already an issue in the rest of the media with representing women, it makes sense that this is carrying over to musicals if so few of them are actually original.
As Paula mentioned, I'd also be interested in seeing a analysis of a larger range of dates- this one is interesting since it's focused on modern musicals, but it would also be interesting to see trends over time (maybe an analysis of representation precentages every 5 or 10 years, since they were established).
This could have been a fun infographic, but it didn't present the information as clearly or creatively as it could have. The information was cluttered and jumbled all together and there was really only one color used to present the information. On top of the poor presentation, the statistics presented were disappointing, too. I completely agree with Olivia and Sarah. It is pathetic that there is so little female representation in the Tony's best musical winners. I've always thought theatre was better at that than movies and television, but I guess I never really looked at the facts. I can't believe how many male protagonists, producers, directors, etc. there were and how few female ones there were. It is depressing and simply pathetic that there are so few women in theatre and on top of that, how few out of that small selection who are recognized for their work.
This infographic strikes me as underwhelming, but not necessarily in the same sense as others were. In discussing the productions that recouped their losses, they refer to Contact, which was produced by a non-profit. They not only exclude the show, but rather arrogantly and unapologetically try to justify it saying "because who knows?" when referring to whether the show recouped or not. It just shows a flippancy and a lack of detail oriented research that compromises the integrity of the infographic as a whole.
These are some fun facts, maybe not so interesting, but fun pieces of trivia. I was almost expecting to be shocked by what I was going to see but sadly nothing really stood out to me as that outrageous or something I didn't already know. I don't really foresee myself writing too many musicals in my future so maybe these facts are more intriguing to an aspiring playwright then they are to me. Some things that i did find mildly interesting, but that i felt as though i already knew subconsciously was that most of the winning musicals featured a male protagonist and that few featured already well known stars. Typically a new musical features newbies or lesser known actors because nobody knows if the show will be a flop or not.
Hmm. Well this is interesting. I personally like to look at data like this for all kinds of things, but like Sarah, feel they could have done a better job of fleshing it out. About half of the statistics they included were based on gender, and didn't really look into the "because" of anything. I would like to see an info graphic that includes something like, "Of the Best Musical Winners, the ones that had _____ ran the longest." I'd also be interested in some statistics stacking nominees against each other. For instance, "A musical based on a movie or book wins against an original musical __% of the time." Just some thoughts on how this might be improved.
This infographic was a cool idea, and I'm glad that the intern who worked on it got credit for their work on it, but I wish that the execution was a bit better. The infographic itself isn't that visually interesting (last year that was a cool infographic on theatre budgets that compared Broadway, Las Vegas, and London that was fantastic), but the information in it was. I liked the attention that the article paid to gender, and even though the statistics suck it's nice to see that they included a lot of that information. Thankfully though, that trend is changing and more and more women are directing and writing winning musicals. To me one of the most interesting statistics is that only 15% of the winners had stars in them. Overall I really enjoyed the information, but the infographic could have been a lot better. Even just playing more with color would have been a huge improvement, and it could have added a deeper meaning to a lot of the information if it had been used well.
With all this analysis and facts, I am interested to see if a method will develop in writing musicals. If there is a certain form that they will take in the coming years: a sure fire way to make it to the top.
I almost feel like this info graphic was more a step by step process to earning your Tony Award. Saying: if you have a male heavy show, a period piece, based on a movie, or open in the spring, then there is no reason for it not to be a hit, granted the writing, acting, and singing is legit.
I am interested to see if these facts will start to become what is common on broadway and in a hit musical, and if, in order for the business to change, someone will challenge the "norm" or success of the Broadway formula.
I love infographic presentations! I think that they are a very strong way to present information in a visual way. This article is no exception of this . However, I wish it was a little differently organized. Mainly, I would move the list of shows up to the top, so readers know what shows are being referred to. However, by having it at the bottom it creates more of a discovery. Never the less, it is really interesting to look back on these plays when we know how they got to be where they are, what is going to happen to them in the future. It is surprising how many of them are comedies. What I will end with is, it really says a lot about each season by what show won the award.
The lack of women directors and writers surprised me at first. While I do know that this is a male dominated society I expected that in art women would be more prominent. The fact that there are not many women in power shows the power struggle in our society. In CMU's directing program there is a large amount of females. Now i see that women have been chosen in an effort to help change the last of women in the industry. I am excited for the future and I am hopeful for the rise in women directors.
The other day in directing, we had a conversation about the obsession with statistics in American sports, so it was interesting to see a similar sort of article about theater. Like many others, I am disappointed by the lack of female presence on this list, but I am not surprised. As much as I would like to believe that an industry like theatre would be well past exhibiting signs of prevalent sexism, we are in the business of imitating the "real world," and our world is a disgustingly sexist place. I hope that if we take a look at these stats 20 years from now, they will tell a different story.
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