WhatsOnStage.com: Here are some blunt statistics. Last year, actresses made up 39 per cent of the casting on our stages, women directors were responsible for just 36 per cent of the productions, and women writers for 28 per cent of the plays, according to the Sphinx Theatre Company. This is marginally better than in 1983 when of 1024 productions surveyed only 11 per cent were written by women (mainly a single woman called Agatha Christie) and 2006 when only nine per cent had a female brain behind them. But it is still quite a long way from gender equality.
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I am positive that this article would have had a very different tone had Clinton been elected on November 8th. There would have been a sense of triumph (and the need to continue to triumph, just in theater) in the writing rather than the battle-like quality that it actually emits. I have previously seen the visual charts of the discrepancies between men and women in various aspects of theater (the diagram I had seen might have helped this article because an effective visual allows a viewer to instantly understand the gravity of certain information) and wholeheartedly agree with the message of this article – e.g., women need more representation in theater, especially when it comes to having their plays produced. The only part of the article that I have some reservations about is when it starts discussing all-female or majority-female casts. There is nothing wrong with having all-female casts, but if it is always done in order to promote gender equality, it is skewing the scales towards the other side. The quote in the article about how “the moment we stop noticing that women are taking centre stage is the moment we have succeeded” is so powerful but also slightly contradicted by the emphasis right before that quote on female-dominated plays.
On some level, I do agree with the notion that once we stop noticing that women are taking center stage, that's when we've succeeded, but I'm not entirely sure that that phrase accurately grasps what we're looking for. We're looking for equality, but that can really only come from two places. First, is that more work written by women with large female roles is picked up my major producing houses and marketing the same way as a show starring Sir Ian McKellen. In this scenario, this starts in educational theater, teaching a wide range of literature to kids, not just the same, tired Arthur Miller plays in every single class. It can work bottom up, or it can work top down. One example I can think of is Chicago. There are three main female roles (if you count Mama Morton, which, heck yeah I do). From its successful Broadway run (and movie!) it has trickled down into high school repertories all over the country. The second way to get more women onstage in main roles is that you have a director who wants to gender bend the cast. That way is either hit or miss, depending on the production, and is not as accurate as say, doing a play about actual real women.
Wow. This article was quite a slap in the face. I had no idea that the statistics in professional theatre was skewed so much in favor of men. Which is interesting to think about, especially when a majority of drama programs I’ve seen have had many more women than men. Theatre I think has always drawn more women than men, especially in recent years. However, this article seems to refute that notion that I held. I suppose it makes sense for more male playwrights and directors to be present, but that doesn’t make it ok. I like the quote placed in the article stating: “The moment we stop noticing that women are taking centre stage is the moment we have succeeded”. It seems somewhat backwards in its logic but I understand the message. If more women are onstage it will be less of a big deal to see women onstage.
I think this article makes a very clear and important distinction between telling stories about women's "issues" and simply showing women's "experiences." It is one thing to write a play about objectification or a woman's struggle to balance work and the home or even her carving out a voice in a sexist workplace, but it is another thing entirely to show her living her life as any woman would without the framework of a narrative so specifically female. Stories about women's issues are incredibly important, but they are not equality. Equality is unquestionably letting a female character take the reigns of the story without allowing her femaleness to undercut the relatability or relevance or power of the story in the eyes of any audience. Stories about feminism and sexism and rape culture and domestic abuse are extremely important and must always continue to be told - but women in the theatre will never be equals until they are not quantified as women, until we stop clapping playwrights and directors on the back for putting them onstage as real, undiluted representations of their gender. Equality is neither a token gift nor a polite courtesy - it should be the expected norm.
This article says something that I have been saying for ever. We succeed when we can finally stop talking about it. I have commented over and over again that I am so sick of commenting on equality, because how do we not already know that women and men should be equal AND equally represented. What I am starting to see more in articles this year are ways that these companies are trying to fix the problem. Last year I read a lot of articles screaming about inequality but very few offered a solution. The theater companies now are fixing things on a small level hoping that it can then transfer into something larger and world wide. Change happens at home and in our every day lives before it happens globally. We just got hit with a big reminder that there hasn't been nearly as much change as we would like. The way that we finally get to make the change that the country so much deserves is by having small conversations in our homes and in our small theaters. One day women will be able to be seen on stage as powerful and intellectual and smart, and maybe after that we can finally elect one to the presidency.
This article relates a lot to a group discussion we had in Foundations of Drama II last week about the play “Fefu and Her Friends”. It was definitely also colored by the fact that it took place the Thursday after Donald Trump won the election. The play is a cast full of only women, and shows their relationships through how they interact with one another in the space of a domestic household. It was very interesting how Maria Irene Fornes showed how the women were still very much affected by the men who were just through a doorway/ window, even though the physical presence of a man was never felt. While some people said it felt very different to read a play with an all-female cast, others said they didn’t even think of the characters as women because of the realistic style of Fornes’ writing. Instead, they were simply people. In part I disagree with this sentiment, because I feel like a lot of pressure is put on women, in plays and in society in general, to not be “too womanly” or discuss too many “female issues”, because it isn’t palatable. But to be a woman who is just “chill”, or “laid-back” (characteristics that are usually associated with being distinctly masculine) is “acceptable” in the eyes of society. Either way, I definitely agree with the statement the article makes that “the moment we stop noticing women are taking center stage is the moment we succeed”. But we are definitely far from that at the moment. In the midst of Clinton’s loss, it’s easy to feel like people, men AND women, just don’t want to see women succeed.
I really like how this article approaches this issue of Women taking center stage in theatre. First and foremost, about how they qualify what it means for there to be equality in theatre. I enjoy how they express equality as being that we do not notice nor mention that there is a minority as the lead role — in this case a female. I think that there has been noticeable progress from a long time past — not that there should not have been more progress since the time of Shakespeare but I think that this example expresses the advancement discussed by the article. The Shakespeare Theatre in DC did an all-male version of Taming of the Shrew. The fact that it was defined as “an all-male version” means that we have moved beyond where we were at the time of Shakespeare since all of the original productions were “all-male versions.”
Here goes my second feminist rant. This one will be about actual theatre and not just me being mad that men are sexist sometimes.
I totally agree with the sentiment that the minute we stop being surprised by women onstage, we will have won a major battle. I am tired of being impressed by theatres that attempt to diversify their casts. I am tired of being excited by an all women design team - it reminds me of a Ruth Bader Ginsburg quote in which she is asked when she thinks there will be enough women on the Supreme Court. She says, "When there are nine." The reporter is shocked and asks her how that is fair to men. She says, "There's always been nine men and no ones ever had a problem with that." She's right! No one bats an eye at seeing a stage populated entirely by men. Women are told to accept these stories and watch them like they were their own. But when a stage is full of women, many men will say "I can't relate to this!" And walk out. Theatre for women doesn't need to only be for women. Fem theatre is for everyone, just like male theatre is!
I wonder how much people in the theatre community will continue to write about this and notice the issue before finding out ways to actually fix the problem. It seems as if I've seen articles about the disparity between men and women in theatre for as long as I've been commenting on articles, and that is more than a little troubling. At CMU, it seems like there is a relatively even split of men and women, and yet most of the shows have male leads, and women rarely get a fair shake unless they are put into roles originally designed for men (Lord of the Flies, Three Musketeers). For a school that prides itself on being an open forum, it seems uncharacteristic to be so exclusive against plays on the mainstage that would focus on strong women who aren't focused on a man. Regardless of whether or not things have been improving, they need to improve a lot further before real change actually takes hold, from the bottom up. More plays need to be written with the women of the world in mind, and less men need to perpetuate the stereotypical women in their plays.
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