These are a handful of actions Pike performs in That'swhatshesaid, a dramatic collage written by Courtney Meaker and directed by HATLO.
Monday, February 08, 2016
Erin Pike Performs Only the Women’s Parts from the Most-Produced Plays in America, and It’s Brilliant - Slog
These are a handful of actions Pike performs in That'swhatshesaid, a dramatic collage written by Courtney Meaker and directed by HATLO.
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3 comments:
This is a very cool idea for a performance. I’ve commented on many of the articles on here that deal with the lack of representation for strong, diverse women in theater, and it’s sad that even in the 21st century, the statistics still speak for themselves; out of the 11 top produced plays of last season, 9 were written by men, and of the 34/74 roles in them which were written for women, 28 of them were written by men. It’s upsetting to constantly read about statistics like this, which openly put into perspective how theater isn’t nearly as progressive or accepting as we sometimes like to think it is, and how things aren’t improving as rapidly as we’d like to think they are. However, I do think that it is important to keep aware of these things, because an ignorant artist isn’t a progressive artist. I’m surprised the article didn’t go into the differences between Act I and Act II- I’d be interested to see how women wrote differently for women than how men wrote for women. Some of the stage directions which are quotes here are just ridiculous. I think there is definitely a difference between some shows including female stereotypes/ a parody of what a feminine person is perceived to be in order to emphasize comedy or an archetype, but the fact that almost all female roles are reduced to cheap, flat, and personality-less women is just depressing. I can only imagine how difficult it must be for a female actress to have to not only fight to have a job at all, but then have to take roles that are very hard to gain any dimension out of. I hope that projects like this continue to raise awareness in order to provoke change about this issue in the entertainment industry, but I can’t help but feel like these types of shows aren’t reaching the audience they should be.
I saw this article on Facebook before even seeing it on the blog, I think it’s so interesting the reactions and emotions this piece is eliciting from people and the amount of attention this piece is getting, because by definition of what the piece is, this is all material we have seen before. In fact, Pike picked her material based on exactly how many people had seen it before. I think this goes to show just how ingrained in our collective subconscious these harmful stereotypes of women are. We accept them as part of our culture and our story-telling, but the moment someone like Pike strips them of their context and makes us think about them, we react strongly. I think this is such important work, as feminists in the entertainment industry we must not only discourage new work with harmful stereotypes of women but also make our society aware of all the ones they are already ingesting.
I am totally entranced by the idea of this performance and would really love to have seen it. I felt really drawn to this article by the first line: "Erin Pike stands onstage and apologizes for over a minute." This is, of course, something I would completely expect from a compilation of this sort, as it seems that almost every female character has some sort of apology in her performance, whether it is blatantly stated or not. This line really made me think of another article, "Famous Quotes, The Way a Woman Would Have to Say Them in a Meeting" (https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2015/10/13/jennifer-lawrence-has-a-point-famous-quotes-the-way-a-woman-would-have-to-say-them-during-a-meeting/). It is completely tragic the way we can expect a certain amount of assertiveness from men that, from a woman, comes off as "too aggressive" or "too distracting from the plot." At least that's how I imagine the stream of thought of these male playwrights to go..."Hm, this woman seems a little weak in comparison to the women I know. I could beef her character up a bit, but...mmm, no. It's fine how it is, really. No need to distract from the story with too many large characters." I love that the play is split into male playwrights and female playwrights. I think it really sends the message about amount of content for women in male-written shows and the difference in perception of female characters between the sexes. A beautiful choice for performance.
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