TheaterMania.com: Arena Stage artistic director Molly Smith is quick to point out just how unlikely it is that seven artistic directors competing for audiences in one city would come to a joint decision, let alone a unanimous one, over a mid-morning meal. Equally improbable, Smith posits, is that they would quickly agree to open up their new project to include the city's entire theater community. However, the fact that such a chain of events really did unfold just two years ago in Washington, D.C., at the home of Eric Schaeffer, artistic director of the Signature Theatre, can be seen as a testament to the vital importance of the issue at hand: a glaring lack of gender parity among the playwrights being produced in the American theater.
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I think this festival is doing a great service to women in theatre. It is statistically proven that women are grossly underrepresented in the entertainment industry and having a festival completely dedicated to the works of female artists is a giant leap in the right direction. The article mentions the pre-conceived ideas surrounding women’s shows, saying that people think they will not sell and are all similar, but Zacarias firmly believes that the works are all diverse and deeply interesting to audiences as a whole. The one aspect of the article I didn’t like was Smith’s position on the matter, specifically her usage of the word ‘bitchy’ in reference to the voices of the women contributing pieces to the festival. In a general context, bitchy has a negative correlation and doesn’t seem befitting to the women-positive and progressive message that the festival is meant to have. I definitely expected the speakers for this event to be excited and down to earth, but their vernacular could have been more careful.
This is one of those instances when, if the message is important enough, everyone will come together to support it, competing or not. I think it is really powerful that the point of the festival is to show that the work of female playwrights is marketable, especially in such a politically charged city where a lot of people are aware of social issues and how they affect not only theatre, but also the world at large. The article does a good job of demonstrating that the diversity of the D.C. theatre scene will help propel the festival to the heights it needs to make its message heard and to show that the lack of women’s plays being produced is not just a problem but a political issue. If theatre is producing plays about the worst parts of the world and how to change it, the theatre should represent the change in the world and represent the change it wants to see.
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