Sunday, July 03, 2016
Front and center
Isthmus | Madison, Wisconsin: When Forward Theater Company announced that all of the plays in its 2016-17 season were written by women, many people may not have realized the potent symbolism. Even the person most responsible for that decision, Forward’s artistic director Jennifer Uphoff Gray, admits she didn’t set out to correct a historical wrong. But here’s why it matters: Less than a quarter of plays produced in the United States are written by women. - See more at: http://isthmus.com/arts/stage/meet-the-women-making-theater-in-madison/?platform=hootsuite#sthash.7HDBl5Ps.dpuf
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3 comments:
More female playwrights/producers emerging in theatres recently is definitely an exciting news. Nearly all kinds of occupation were exclusive to women at their origins, especially in the world of theatre, which emerged in Ancient Greece, a completely male-dominated society. Even in the time of Shakespeare, females were not allowed on stage as actress. Female playwright existed, but only one or two in centuries who were nuns or noblewomen that held no professional interest. It's not until Aphra Behn in 1600s that women started to take their parts in real theatre production. However in recent years, it's exciting to see that more and more women have started to develop their theatrical talents. All women being interviewed in the article are quite remarkable, working in theatres of various sizes and types, and taking the jobs of directors, playwrights, artist directors, performers, etc. They can be very inspiring models to new comers, and the coherent bond between them is precious. Also, as the article mentions, more plays are submitted to the theatre by men than women, so it's also important to emphasize the education that can lead women on to the track of productive playwright. I'm excited to the change we can make.
I found this article really compelling because there is such a lack of female playwrights in the theatrical literary canon, and we hardly ever realize it until we read a play and see the playwright's name as a woman's name. My high school is all girls, so every production we do is an all female cast. Furthermore, the directors and department heads and most of the adults on the production team have all been females, so sometimes it's hard for us to notice the extent of male presence in high positions in theatre, but the lack of female playwrights is noticeable for us. I remember reading a play we did last year for the first time and getting so excited when I realized the playwright was actually female. I didn't even realize how rarely I read plays with female authors until I read that play and got excited about it. Off the top of my head, I really can only think of three female playwrights (Wendy Wasserstein, Anne Washburn - who wrote the play I was just talking about, and Marsha Norman - who was mentioned in the article). I was glad to see that at least in Madison, females in the theatre world were sticking together to support and help each other.
This article was very eye-openeing. I never realized the drastic difference in women playwrights to men. But know that I look back on all the plays I've read, the number of plays written by men is an absurd amount. However, its great to see these 10 women talk about their successful careers and what they are doing to change this statistic. Even in my school, I have many literary art majors who are females and are dedicated to doing playwright and making a change. It was interesting to see that a good amount of these women are working on this social female activism and trying to stop this strange idea of a selective group of women working in theater. There was a time not long ago where women weren't really able to write plays or be in theater, so they're always trying to catch up. I hope this statistic and idea changes very soon and we bring more praise to the successful female playwrights
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