Tag Archives: playwrights

Link Roundup! – 3/6/15

Link Roundups feature articles and bits of internet goodness that our dramaturgy team digs up. If you find something you want to send our way, drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter!

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August Wilson; Photo: David Cooper

August Wilson; Photo: David Cooper

An essay about August Wilson is up at The New Republic, as well as a link to the PBS American Masters documentary August Wilson: The Ground on Which I Stand, which aired recently to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Wilson’s death.

The economic hardship and systemic racism suffered by African Americans were hardly the only subjects Wilson tackled. Seven Guitars deals with black manhood. In King Hedley II, set in the 1990s, actors, such as future Oscar nominee Viola Davis, powerfully brought women’s reproductive choice into an African American arena. Wilson also delved into the paranormal in The Piano Lesson and Gem of the Ocean. In that way, the playwright perhaps helped us see aspects of our lives even we tried to erase.

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At The Guardian, Maddy Costa writes about the need for theatres to be less uptight about the behaviors and disruptions of their audiences, and examines how theatre culture could change if “relaxed” performances weren’t just one-off events:

A vital question was raised at the event: what might the theatre landscape look like if it were more relaxed, not occasionally, but all the time? Last summer, a Theatre Charter was proposed, detailing expected behaviour for the benefit of occasional theatregoers: no rustling sweet wrappers, no mobile phones, definitely no eating McDonald’s. How much more inviting might theatres feel if they didn’t just reject the snobbery embedded in such a charter, but offered a different manifesto, in which it was clear that all people – whatever their backgrounds, ages, physical or mental abilities – were welcome to see any performance, any day they wanted, together?

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Link Roundup! – 2/27/15

Link Roundups feature articles and bits of internet goodness that our dramaturgy team digs up. If you find something you want to send our way, drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter!

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Playwright Chisa Hutchinson, who recently received a Dramatist Guild award for early career playwriting, has an interview on The Interval about the development of her work and the representation of women and non-white writing in the theatre:

Q: How do you think theater can better address race?
A: To give room to everyone. It’s hard for me to listen to people who literally cannot imagine the experiences of other people and therefore dismiss those experiences like, “No, of course that doesn’t happen. This is post-racial America.” Can we just make room for other experiences? Or just acknowledge that there are experiences different than yours?

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It’s Native voices week on HowlRound and the site is featuring essays from various Native American artists, including this thoughtful piece by Larissa FastHorse:

Do white playwrights ever think about this? Do they worry about losing jobs for white actors? Do they question if they are writing about enough white issues? Are they expected to be the voice of all white people even when they are just speaking for themselves? Do they fear their play about a girl who wants to be a ballet dancer is responsible for the genocide of their race?

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Link Rounup! – 2/20/15

Link Roundups feature articles and bits of internet goodness that our dramaturgy team digs up. If you find something you want to send our way, drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter!

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janetmock

Janet Mock, writer and Host of MSNBC’s “So POPular!”, recently wrote a moving essay about the trans women of color who have been murdered so far this year:

Personally, I know that my visibility has to be more than just about my own pursuits. When I walk into a space, I am cognizant of the fact that I am bringing communities of people with me, communities that have historically been exiled and silenced. The weight of that responsibility never lightens, even as I navigate uncharted terrain as a TV host. My show So POPular! explores the intersection of popular culture, representation, politics, identity and community. Though it doesn’t explicitly cover trans issues, it’s a space created and fronted by a trans woman of color, so the lens to which I explore topics on my show is that of a trans person, a black person, a woman of color. My goal is to take the focus away from myself as a subject, and instead be the person asking the questions, shaping the conversation.

I’ve seen folks juxtapose the recent media visibility of trans women of color and these recent murders. I’ve read sentences to the effect of: “At a time when trans women of color have visibility, we still see trans women murdered.” I find this logic to be quite basic.

Yes, trans women are being murdered. Yes, trans women of color have gained mainstream visibility. But trans women, particularly those of color, have always been targeted with violence. The differences now? There are some systems in place that better report violence and there is finally visibility of a select few that helps challenge the media’s framing of these women’s lives.

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In advance of this weekend’s Academy Award broadcast, The Hairpin featured a roundtable conversation about this year’s lack of diversity in the pool of nominees and whether the Oscar’s matter in 2015:

As for the role Oscars play in our lives? Aside from giving us an excuse to drink wine on a Sunday night and joke with our friends? I definitely agree with it seeping into our everyday lives, even if we don’t realize. We are aware of what movies/actors/directors win even if we don’t watch the ceremony. It’s impossible to ignore. But more importantly: Yes, representation is vital. You may not care about the Oscars or think it matters but when you’re a minority and someone who looks like you wins? That means something. That means everything — especially to this film nerd who was often surrounded by way too many white dudes in film classes. I’m reminded of the pilot episode of Black-ish when Andre is up for a promotion and narrates that, because there are so few black people at his company, when he wins and moves up the ladder, it’s like every black person at the company wins. When a woman or a person of color wins an Oscar, I feel like I’ve won, too.

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Link Roundup! – 2/6/15

Link Roundups feature articles and bits of internet goodness that our dramaturgy team digs up. If you find something you want to send our way, drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter!

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Over at HowlRound, Yvette Heyliger wrote a post about her petition calling for new legislation mandating that nonprofit arts organizations and institutions receiving tax-payer dollars must allocate an equitable portion of that funding to women artists:

The 2013 Women Stage the World Parade in Manhattan’s Theatre District. Photo by Jeff Colen Photography.

The 2013 Women Stage the World Parade in Manhattan’s Theatre District. Photo by Jeff Colen Photography.

This petition is one way to create a seat at the table of artistic opportunity. In 2015, women continue to find themselves at the children’s table, sitting on chairs too small, eating from mix-matched dishes and drinking from plastic cups. The petition is simple and straightforward. With only initials and perhaps states as identifying markers, all are welcome to sign. If the petition receives 100,000 signatures by February 6, 2015, an official response from the White House will be issued.

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Playwright Marcus Gardley has a great interview on the Art Works blog about his creative process and the way he views playwriting as social activism:

GARDLEY: I consider myself an activist, and I couldn’t do it if I wasn’t hoping that the work would somehow spark a dialogue, or somehow cause people to look at social issues differently. What I intend for [the plays] to do, is cause conversation afterward. From that conversation, [I hope] people are not only inspired to see more theater, but also inspired to do things in their community, so that the work is actually, literally causing a spark for change.

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#LinkRoundup! – 12/5/14

Link Roundups feature articles and bits of internet goodness that our dramaturgy team digs up. If you find something you want to send our way, drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter!

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The diversity building initiatives and programs featured in this Boston Globe article called 12 Ideas for Making Boston More Inclusive are varied and certainly worth reading up on — check out number 11 for a nice shout-out to C1!

Scott Bakal for The Boston Globe

Scott Bakal for The Boston Globe

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This Love Letter to Dramaturgs, penned by playwright Sarah Ruhl, is a good look at the writer’s perspective during the development process:

We need you to be publicly articulate about our plays when we feel dumb about them, so we can do the more private, blunted and blind task of writing. We need you to be as articulate about unconventional structure as you are about conventional structure. We need you to fight the mania for clarity and help create a mania for beauty instead. We need you to ask: is the play too clear? Is it predictable? Is this play big enough? Is it about something that matters?

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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.”

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.

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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

[Cross-posted here and here.]

The Writing Life x3: Creating a Diverse World

In this blog post, writer Patrick Gabridge talks about the need for white writers to specify the race of the characters in their plays and how the racial make-up of theatre companies make just as powerful a statement, if not moreso, about diversity in theatre. Read the article here.