AMERICAN THEATRE: In 2002, I was working as an arts analyst in the theatre program at the New York State Council on the Arts, where, in partnership with Suzanne Bennett, I had recently completed a three-year study on the status of women in theatre which generated a widely read report. Encouraged by my interest in the subject, two visionary directors, Gwynn MacDonald and Mallory Catlett, approached me to fund “The First Hundred Years: The Professional Female Playwright,” a remarkable yearlong citywide staged readings series directed by an eclectic group of directors, complemented by symposia involving a slate of distinguished scholars. I heard for the first time the names Elizabeth Cary, Margaret Cavendish, Joanna Baillie, Elizabeth Inchbald, Hannah Cowley, and many others. This was the beginning of my education about the Other Canon: some good, some great, some successful in their time, some way ahead of their time, all almost erased from history and the repertory.
2 comments:
Women are underrepresented. This is a problem present in textbooks, lecture classes, and general novels. However, that does not mean they do not exist and I am so happy to be smarter after reading this article. Jones has left me with ten new names of playwrights that have every right to be apart of my education as any male playwright within the timeframe she presents. After reading this article I will definitely take the time to read one of these plays. I do not understand why the work that women do in theatre is often not recognized. I know that theatre was mainly a male dominated workforce for centuries but I still think that women deserve as much recognition - if not more for being in a male dominated industry. It’s really frustrating that part of her article was her writing about the journey to discover these women playwrights names and their work.
As someone who knows very little on this topic, a lack of playwrights’ diversity seems like a vicious cycle that needs to be ended. The article brought up how little is being done in local and regional theatres to add more female playwrights to the dockets and how little works written by women are successful. It seems that theatre’s look for shows that will make a profit or break even and that companies are worried about what they are producing. Since for female playwright’s work doesn’t seem to be making company's profits, the companies shy away from these shows. This, in turn, creates a cycle of only producing work of straight white males. The article brings up how little regional and local theatres do to curb this problem and as someone who spent the last ten years at a local company, I’ve seen how important choosing a fiscally successful show is. I think this means that bigger theatre’s need to start the change in who the playwright’s being produced are as well as university theatre’s that worry more about the educational experience and less about making a profit. This would hopefully create a snowball effect or a different cycle that diversity in playwrights creates a fiscally successful show, leading to more and more female playwrights' works being produced.
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