Women and Hollywood: Viola Davis said in her Emmy speech last month, “The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity. You can’t win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there.” The same can be said of Broadway, where there is currently a small surge in leading roles for women of color. But, despite a season hailed as a one of diversity, the number of women writers of color on Broadway remains dismal, especially in musical theater. Off-Broadway and regionally, the numbers are better but still low, and the pipeline to Broadway needs to be addressed.
1 comment:
I find the quantification of plays and musicals in this article very...unsettling. Yes, it's good to keep a headcount of how many women of color have been in or have written the shows of the past season, yet I can't help but feel that these tiny numbers reduce the efforts of these women to a percentage. We should be celebrating that we have so many women coming onto the Broadway stage and boost their successes rather than focusing on the lack of women of color on the stages of years past. I think there's nothing better the encouraging a group of people than harping on mistakes or flaws in the system. Like the New York Times removing the design and management production from their write up of shows, it only seeks to destroy future theatre artists from taking that leap and becoming their idols simply because they have no concrete knowledge of people who put in and do that good work. We should make bigger deals of the successes of women like Lea Salonga, Audra McDonald, or plays like Lynn Nottage's sweat instead of counting on one hand how many women of color have made it into the Broadway season.
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