Tuesday, November 20, 2018
Who Designs and Directs in LORT Theatres by Gender
HowlRound Theatre Commons: I first published this study in 2015, hoping to provide a baseline on gender of designers in League of Resident Theatre (LORT) Theatres. This article and the accompanying charts are the result of the last five years of collecting, confirming whenever possible, and analyzing the data. The chart in the original study looked at the 2009-2010 through 2013-2014 seasons, whereas these represent 2012-2013 through 2016-2017.
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2 comments:
Wow this is an impressive study! It is incredible to see so much data so relevant to our industry in a concise, visual graphic. I was not expecting such disparity between percentages between genders. I thought, surely, a few departments would sway one way or another, but it was baffling that it was all male-dominated except for costumes. Seeing the data put in multiple perspectives was also very helpful. Seeing the graph that showed average number of jobs over the 5 years showed that average men were getting two more shows than women. That is a huge difference, especially when considering the USA design fees at most LORT theatres. I'd like to see this data broken up by theatre to analyze their location, artistic direction, and regional data. It seems very odd for such a disparity in an industry with so many designers. I wonder if any regional theatre initiatives for diversity use this study to help the initiative get started from the board of directors.
I love statistics so articles like this are always very interesting to me, but it’s a shame to see the results of this project. In the article the person conducting the study said that, “Overall, women held 28.2 percent of all design positions in my first study, and hold 29 percent in this latest one.” That’s a pretty dissapointly small increase over a four year period. Obviously change takes time, but with the amount of theatres that keep saying they’re committed to diversity and equality this is a pretty disappointing number. I feel like a lot of LORT theatres are pushing for equality onstage, but are forgetting about their production teams entirely. The reality is the same designers keep being hired by the same directors and same theatres, and those designers are predominantly male (expect for in the area of costume design). I’ve seen way too many all male or almost completely male design teams in both the professional world and at CMU (my team this spring only has one woman). I’m not sure what the way forward is, but I think that people need to make these theatres aware that this practice is not okay.
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