In this blog post, playwright Jacqueline E. Lawton interviews many women who work in theaters across America (including Director of New Work at c1 Ilana Brownstein and c1 artist Aditi Brennan Kapil) on where they see “opportunities for growth/unexplored challenges/gaps to be filled in your arts discipline.” Read the responses here.
Category Archives: Gender Representation in America’s Theatres
TCG Circle: Being Female is Inherit to My Work
In this interview, playwright Catherine Weingarten talks about the preconceived notions that female playwrights face and how we can help increase female playwright visibility through gender-based companies and partnerships with early career playwrights. Read the interview here.
Playbill.com: Sundance Playwrights Sound Off on Female Emergence, Blacklisting and Advocacy Group The Kilroys
This playbill.com article features playwrights Annie Baker (C1 artist: The Flick, The Aliens), Sheila Callaghan, and Dominique Morisseau talking about gender parity, race, and class on America’s stages. Read the article here.
Gwydion Suilebhan: Defining Gender Parity
In this blog post, theatre artist Gwydion Suilebhan defines his idea of success regarding gender parity in theatre. Read his post here.
Rounding Up #TheSummit
On Feb 17, 2014, Peter Marks of The Washington Post hosted an event called The Summit — it was a public conversation with several of D.C.’s leading artistic directors. As Peter noted in an article for The Washington Post, “Several months ago, Molly Smith, artistic director of Arena Stage, approached me with an intriguing offer: organizing and moderating a series of discussions, with theater people and topics of my choosing, onstage before an audience at her theater.” It was the first of three planned public fora — the others are scheduled for March 24 (focusing on actors), and April 28 (playwrights and directors). The event with Artistic Directors was not livestreamed, but it was live-tweeted by several attendees, chief among them Elissa Goetschius, artistic director of Baltimore’s Strand Theater. It’s probably fair to say that no one involved expected the event to blow up twitter as it did that evening, nor to spark a renewal of the national conversation on gender parity and representation on American stages.
In an effort to capture the vast amount of conversation that evening on twitter, and to bank Elissa’s excellent live-tweet reportage, I created a Storify (a kind of twitter narrative) of the tweets using the hashtag #TheSummit, which you can find HERE.
There was a tidal wave of response to #TheSummit, and I’m using this space to attempt to catalogue it for future reference. If I’ve missed an article of note, please let me know in the comments section.
• Elissa Goetschius wrote a narrative account of The Summit for 2AMT: “Climbing #TheSummit”
• DC Theatre Scene’s account, by Brett Steven Ableman
• Brett Steven Abelman continued on the subject via his personal blog: “Season Programming and Personal Agency”
• MD Theatre Guide: “Through Lines: The Summit Part 1 — The State of Washington Theatre”
• Christine Evans: “Cumulative Advantage and Women Playwrights”
• WE EXIST, an open-source list of female playwrights, initiated as a response comments at The Summit that women playwrights weren’t “in the pipeline” that runs to major stages for production.
• Holly Derr for HowlRound.com: “The Myth of the American Theatre Pipeline”
• It was already in the works when The Summit happened, but Boston playwright Patrick Gabridge’s count of the Boston area theatre season (looking at gender and ethnic diversity for playwrights and directors) was well timed for this conversation. It’s in three parts: Part 1 (large and mid-sized theatres) — Part 2 (small/fringe scene & overall numbers) — Part 3 (New England theatre).
• This one preceded The Summit by about 2 weeks, but is topically related: Ms Magazine’s “Binders Full of Women and People of Color Playwrights”
UPDATE 3/17/14: Here are some additional, pertinent articles. Thanks to everyone for the links.
• Chicago Tribune: “In Chicago, Plays by Women, Bucking the National Trend”
• Philadelphia’s genre-defying performance group Swim Pony also took on #TheSummit
• Some context for Pat Gabridge’s Boston count (linked above) — here’s a count I did for Boston’s 2012-13 Season.
• Mike Lew was prompted by #TheSummit to address how “Arts Education Won’t Save Us From Boring Inaccessible Theatre.” And in case you missed it at the time, Mike also wrote wisely on gender parity in the theatre, back in June, 2013.
• Rick Davis on HowlRound: “Plays by Women: One Theater’s Story”
And for those who follow our C1 Intersection blog, you’ll have encountered these next two articles before — they touch on #TheSummit, and deserve a 2nd mention:
• Playwright Gwydion Suilebhan asks what we might mean when we say “gender parity.” And, here’s his count of DC theatre seasons regarding racial and gender diversity.
• Patrick Gabridge took on the topic of “Creating a Diverse World: Choices, Opportunity, and Trade-Offs for Playwrights and Theaters”
• Joel Brown in The Boston Globe framed the issues of The Summit in terms of Boston theatre: “Spotlight Shines of Area Theater’s Diversity Gap”
• BOSTON THEATRE TOWN HALL MEETING ON DEFINING GENDER PARITY: SATURDAY APRIL 27, 11A, AT BOSTON PLAYWRIGHTS’ THEATRE. Rsvp at the link.
— Ilana M. Brownstein, Director of New Work at Company One & Founding Dramaturg at Playwrights’ Commons
Star Tribune: A Moment of Unprecedented Diversity on Twin Cities Stages
This Star Tribune article details how theatre companies in the twin cities have addressed concerns regarding diversity in their current season’s programming. Read the article here.
The Kilroys: THE LIST
This is a list of the 46 most recommended plays written by female playwrights. The Kilroys asked 127 theatre professionals from around the country to recommend the best female authored plays they have encountered in the past year. The list in its entirety has 300 nominated plays that were eligible. You can see the entire list here.
This is an interview that Polly Carl of HowlRound did with members of The Kilroys regarding “The List.” Read the interview here.
Even the New York Times picked up on the list here.
The Kilroys are a group of LA-based playwrights and producers who are tired of just talking about gender parity and “were ready to act.”
JSOnline: Mamet Letter Forces Alchemist to Cancel ‘Oleanna’ After 1 Performance
Alchemist Theatre ended its production of Oleanna by David Mamet after the company received a “cease-and-desist” letter from Dramatists Play Service because the company decided to cast a male in the role of Carol. Read the article here.
HowlRound: Women, Leadership, and Parity: Interview with Julie Crosby
Polly Carl of HowlRound interviewed Julie Crosby, former producing artistic director of Women’s Project Theatre, about her departure from the company and the future of gender parity in the field. Read the interview here.
NY Times: Women are Missing From Tonys and Broadway
In her opinion article, playwright Lynn Nottage talks about her frustrations with Broadway’s lack of women and people of color playwrights, bookwriters/composers, and lyricists. Read the article here.