Women in Theatre
In Dress Blues
Monday, June 28th, 2010 | Women in Theatre | No Comments
I spent part of my morning in a NH National Guard uniform.
Dress Blues, to be exact. So I was told. I make no claims of knowledge about anything remotely war-like.
I joked, briefly, that I hoped my parents never saw me. They’re old hippies and such. I feel awkward when I find myself talking to someone who ever served in anything army-like. I just don’t know what to say. So I made the joke. And then I realized that the director was in the Guard (duh) and I actually had no idea who else standing in the room in a convincing costume was either.
Awkward silence while I tried to pry my foot out of my mouth.
But, it did get me thinking as I was standing out in the sun alternating between serious and smiling for the photo shoot that there is no guarantee that an actress will ever play a combatant whereas I am almost positive that every professional male actor has at some point played a military role on stage.
I have no point other than that I was thinking about it.
Sometimes I’m like that.
Me as Hamlet
Friday, May 14th, 2010 | Photography, Women in Theatre | No Comments
GAN-e-meed Theatre Project
Hamlet runs through May 30
To Do Good Stuff
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 | Lessons, Personal, Women in Theatre | No Comments
Mama: Okay, I’ll sit with you for three songs and then I’ll run downstairs and get my computer and sit in the big chair and work while you fall asleep.
Avi: What work?
Mama: I’m designing a postcard for my theatre company and I have to finish it tonight.
Avi: You go to the theatre?
Mama: Yes, I own a theatre company. We don’t have a building yet, but we are a company. I’m the boss.
She giggles and I smile.
Mama: Is that funny?
Avi: Yes. She giggles some more.
Mama: But you know what we do? We hire women and girls. We help them become better theatre artists, and stronger leaders, and change the world.
Avi: And Do Good Stuff.
Mama: Yes, And Do Good Stuff. Just like….do you remember who’s birthday it is today?
She points to herself and smiles slyly.
Mama: Martin Luther King, Jr. He was a great man who changed the world.
Avi: Why do we say it’s his birthday?
Mama: Because he was a great man. He worked very hard to help all people be treated well, no matter what color skin they have. And we want to remember him so we always celebrate his birthday.
Avi: And he was born this day?
Mama: Yes.
May we all remember this birth that changed the world, honor the women and men who continue and broaden his work, and honor the births of new movers and shakers.
Go Read ‘Living Oprah’
Friday, January 8th, 2010 | Personal, Women in Theatre | 1 Comment
It’s 10:30pm and I just finished Living Oprah by Robyn Okrant. I picked it up right around the new year. I had a couple hours to myself, the first in a while and I found myself, of course, at the bookstore attempting to convince myself not to buy anything. I failed.
And then I failed even more when I spotted Robyn’s book. I knew it’d be coming out. I’ve been reading her blog on and off since she started her social experiment. I was actually privy enough to be on her big email list announcing her new experiment. At the time, I thought to myself “what a fun idea” and “how nice to hear from Robyn, even by way of a mass email, because I really liked her and was always a little bit sad I wasn’t brave enough to get to be more than just a colleague.”
I feel lame writing that. Because now that she has graced a dozen or so TV talk shows, radio talk shows, newspapers, and magazines,I feel like I have to tell everyone how I personally know her. Like I can finally claim I know someone famous. This is a big deal. In a weird way. I think I’m the only person in professional show biz who doesn’t actually know anyone famous. I can’t even claim I’ve met a famous person. But, I “knew Robyn back when.” Although, she probably wouldn’t claim to be famous; I’m going to say she is, just for kicks.
Anyways, I was at the bookstore preparing to go pay too much money for my armload of guilty pleasures (one of which I’m currently sitting on so that I am at the proper height for my keyboard. go figure.) when I spotted her book. And, it wasn’t just sitting anywhere. It was on the second table as soon as you walk in the door, smack dab in the middle of the “New Year, New You” section. There she was, smiling up at me.
And now I’ve read her book. It was really good. As an objective reader, I can honestly say that if you like autobiographies and clever writing, you’ll enjoy this book. You’ll probably like it even more if you’re a woman.
As a biased reader, I can honestly say that I loved this book. I loved it because I knew Robyn before this all began. I knew her when she had frizzy hair that framed her entire head with a life of its own and it looked singular and gorgeous even when it was messy. She’d come off the Chicago street lugging that weird awkward yellow bag that she’d detached from the back of her bike. Her cheeks were always red from cycling, her eyes shone. She has a booming, raspy, deep, dare-I-say, sexy voice. The kind of voice I’ve always wanted because it is far more expressive than my tiny child-like soprano that gets tight and giggly at the most inopportune times.
She was a power house already. She oozed confidence and made me feel inferior in my inability to crack out witty comments. She seemed to know far more than me about pretty much everything. And the day I got pulled aside from rehearsal to “have a talk” about how I wasn’t really improving (we were doing an improv spoof) I turned bright red and almost cried because I wanted to succeed at this thing that terrified me more than anything. And she spoke to me with her deep action-taking voice while I shrunk into my chair.
I didn’t get fired. But she did push me in unexpected ways, like making us run the entire 1 hour show (okay, maybe it wasn’t the whole show but it certainly felt like it) and told me I had to be in every single scene no matter what. And still make sense. Oh, and talk.
This improv show…she created it, and it’s the show that changed the course of my entire acting career. I showed up to audition for a spoof of Lord of the Rings. I had some improv experience, enough to know I was pretty good at carrying a character but not so good a quick, witty comments. I felt confident at the auditions; I’d done my research. I assumed we’d be creating the script from improv in rehearsals and was ecstatic to get cast. The only woman in a cast of men, most of whom had a helluvalot more improv experience than I. We were, after all, in Chicago, the boarding school for modern improv.
And then I showed up and discovered that, actually, the entire show would be improv. All the time. Every night. I think I froze and forgot to breath for an entire minute.
I don’t get nervous before I perform. But opening night of this show, I thought I was going to puke backstage.
And here she is, smiling up at me from the center of a prominent display in Barnes ‘n Noble. A women I have admired since I met her.
And then I got to read about her year. And I understood with personal clarity the theatre life she described, the references to improv shows, her very tall and quiet husband, and her friend Scott. I know Scott too. And I learned things about her that I never knew since we were never really friends. She, of course, had no reason to tell me these things. So I read them in her book. And came to realize that, yet again, here is a woman I found entirely intimidating who is, in fact, just as human as I.
She has her pains, her loves, her fears, her shames. And, maybe, if I’d stepped back–or stepped in—or did something to recognize that she was just like me–maybe I could have been her friend.
This is significant for me because I’m currently very good friends with another beautiful woman who I met in college but was never brave enough to truly befriend until school ended. She was just so smart; I felt stupid whenever I listened to her because I didn’t know what she was talking about and didn’t want to admit it by asking. As we grew closer after college, I discovered that she, like Robyn, is just like me. She has her insecurities, her ego, her shame, her loves, her hates.
As it turns out:
It is not for me to judge myself in the eyes of others.
Interestingly enough, this is pretty much what Robyn discovered during her social experiment. If we spend all our time trying to live the life that others tell us, we’re too busy to be us. And we’re too busy trying to predict what others think of us. Our bodies, our brains, our successes, our failures.
I’d rather just be me. Just like Robyn would rather just be herself. Okay, well, let’s be honest, she got a book deal and national exposure. This may have started out as a personal experiment, but it’s much bigger. I wonder if anyone reading her book who doesn’t know any part of Robyn’s life will be as impacted. I’ll foist it on my mom and see what she says.
Sharing the ‘O’ Love
Thursday, September 24th, 2009 | Women in Theatre | No Comments
I have a colleague from the past, who I absolutely loved working with. She was so wonderful that I was always somewhat sad that I would never truly get to be her friend. She was one of those ‘Intimidating Unattainables,’ at least in my young eyes. She was my senior by several years, far more established and mature, quick-witted, intelligent, clever, beautiful. I made up for it by attempting to befriend her other friend who seemed more catchable. A 6′8″ married man who also made me laugh really hard and was equally intelligent and beautiful, but he wasn’t as intimidating so I felt more comfortable weaseling my way into his friendship.
Well, I reconnected with her last year when she introduced her blog, Living Oprah. She lived the prescribed life of Oprah for a full year. A really fascinating social experiment, to say the least. She’s also an accomplished Theatre Artist, just so you know.
Her book comes out in January. Go check it out.
Risking Innovation Day 2: The Glass Proscenium
Sunday, August 16th, 2009 | Lessons, Political Action, Women in Theatre | 1 Comment
Now that I’ve recovered from NYC induced sensory overload, I figure it’s high time I gave you a full wrap up. Let’s revisit Day 2, previously shared only in nutshell form.
The Glass Proscenium: The Current State of Women in Professional Theatre.
As I wrote in my last post, Holy Panel! The women included (forgive me if I miss anyone, I’m pulling this list directly from the conference schedule): Natka Bianchini (U. of Maryland-College Park), Jill Dolan (Princeton), Sara Warner (Cornell), Leigh Fondakowski (Tectonic Theatre Project), Nadine George-Graves (UCSD), Julia Jordan (freelance playwright/director), Sarah Lambert (Tectonic Theatre Project), Esther Kim Lee (U of Ill, Urbana-Champaign), Lisa Merrill (Hofstra), Priscilla Page (New WORLD Theatre/Umass Amherst), Sheri Wilner (freelance playwright).
Before I re-cap, I went and double-checked the meaning of “glass ceiling.” Looks like it was originally coined by Wall Street 20-odd years ago. It, as I remembered correctly, refers to the “unofficial” and “invisible” policies and non-policies that prevent women from gaining top positions, climbing career ladders, and receiving equitable wages. Since then, the phrase has been modified to fit various sub-cultures and minorities. The term “Glass Proscenium” does, indeed, seem fitting in a theatrical setting.
We started out by getting to hear Emily Sand’s recent thesis presented by her. This was well received, as expected, and I, personally, was thankful for it. I’m not an economist so when I went to read her thesis and look at the slides (when the original NYTimes articles covered the story) I felt a little lost in the numbers. I also had questions about the inherent flaws within arts studies due to the nature of judging art itself. This answered a few questions for me and opened the floor to some interesting comments from panelists.
First of all, there are two beginning theories accounting for WHY fewer plays written by women are produced: Human Capitol (Fewer plays are written in the first place and submitted to theatres.) and Discrimination (Gender bias prevents the production of plays written by women). Second, she used doollee.com to find some basic statistics about playwrights, gender, and the gender of characters in plays. According to Sand’s findings, women are more likely to write about women and they make up for it by writing about fewer characters. First of all, the stats at Doollee are far from a complete picture of women playwrights (which she admitted as a potential flaw) and secondly, to assert that they “make up for it” by writing plays with fewer characters is placing an assumption on choice. That’s probably grounds for yet another study.
Sands sent out 4 different scripts–and here’s what I was most curious about–written by established playwrights of both genders. My original thought when I read the study was “women and men write different plays; how does she account for that artistic factor?” It was nice to hear that she did. She included an unpublished script by Pulitzer Prize winning author, Lynn Nottage, who is a woman and black. The rest you can glean from articles: they were sent out with fake names to 250 theatres along with 18 questions concerning economic viability, audience likeability, artistic quality, etc. The results included clear stats that plays perceived to have been written by women, although considered equally artistic, were deemed as “lower overall quality” and with “poor economic prospects.”
There is no qualitative or quantitative evidence that audiences prefer plays written by men, but apparently artistic decision-makers are making that assumption. She continued to posit that scripts with male protagonists did far better than scripts with female protagonists. And she concluded with the poorly received quip “You may be better off trying to disguise your gender.” A well-placed line that hit home all to well and felt like salt poured into our existing scratch marks.
Esther Kim Lee responded:
She’s been taking informal surveys from women playwrights and of 51 submissions was able to use 49 playwrights to gather some additional information. Aged mostly 36-45, only one had a play produced on Broadway. Their success has an “upside version of what we perceive as success,” most plays had been produced at colleges and local community theatres with the least number being produced off-Broadway. Which led into self-perceived questions about how certain items had affected their careers as playwrights: 45% said gender, 38% race, and ethnicity was even higher than gender (sorry, no percentage was provided). She interpreted these findings to suggest that these playwrights were interested in finding a community in which to create their art.
She continued to ask about the importance of various items, of which she shared a few: the gender identity of the audience was the least important, 60% said the diversity of audience is important, 50% said a Broadway production is not important to them. Finally, 65% said it is not advantageous to be a minority when writing about which she shared many quotes which followed along the lines of it initially giving them an advantage based on being trendy but “when the novelty wears off” the Artistic Directors lose interest.
When these 49 women were asked to look at Emily Sand’s study, the responses were two-fold: 1 – “I’m not surprised” and 2 – “I’m not interested in mainstream Broadway productions.”
Here’s where I should interject and note that Sand’s study includes another part about economic impact. Because it is virtually impossible to get a hold of economic impact data from regional and small theatres which are by nature and definition non-profit, she included an economic impact study of Broadway. So, the ability of women playwrights to create revenue was based on Broadway productions. This is important to remember because it meant raising the question, “What IS the measure of success for women playwrights?”
Priscilla Page responded next:
She did even more informal questioning, gathering entirely qualitative anecdotes and opinions from women on FaceBook. She raised the initial doubt concerning using Broadway as a basis for measuring success. The doubt as o the effectiveness of Doollee.com as an accurate stats tool. As an example of success, Lynn Nottage just won the Pulitzer Prize for Ruined, and yet it continues to run on off-Broadway not Broadway. Furthermore, her company, New WORLD Theatre which produces 60% women-led projects just had its funding pulled.
Julia Jordan chimed in:
Plays about war and rape written by men are on Broadway, why shouldn’t Ruined got to Broadway?
Based on Sand’s Study: if these are the numbers here in NYC [with women's plays on Broadway bringing in MORE money in LESS amount of time] why wouldn’t you think they match up elsewhere?
“Women are submitting to theatres that produce them.” So it’s impossible to determine whether there are fewer submissions by women at theatres because they don’t bother submitting to places that don’t produce them. [That last sentence is mine, not Jordan's.] Agents only want to represent writers who make money, so they are unwilling to represent women playwrights which means they can’t get produced or published. [Furthermore, I just discovered from a colleague that most regional theatres no longer accept scripts that are not represented by an agent. So, if an agent won't take you on because women aren't produced, you can't get produced to convince an agent to take you on. Self-perpetuating circle.]
Plus some TCG facts I didn’t know: Of the most successful plays in the past 10 years, 70% have female leads AND 70% of Pulitzer Prize winners have female leads.
Nadine George-Graves came next:
“This leads to many questions…tend to dance around speculating about reasons..” How about we cut to the chase and say, “This is what’s happening. What do you think?” This statement came with a collective chuckle of relief. Personally, I felt like we’d been doing a lot of dancing and not much action-taking. Action-taking beings with frank dialogue. She suggested we combine personal data and hunches to make “provocative statements that aren’t polite.”
She continued to suggest: Let’s look at history and see what’s happened in the past? Male playwrights can make the excuse that they “don’t write women well” but we can’t make that excuse and chose to write more about men anyways. As an historical example she noted that the first black professional baseball players had to be better than their white counterparts to be taken seriously. On Broadway, there’s still an “old boys network” and women don’t benefit from mentorship opportunities because of this. And the word she repeated the most? Hegemony. Hegemony. Hegemony.
Finally, she asked us, What are NEW avenues of intervention. Ah Ha! Here’s that Innovation theme finally cropping up.
Sarah Lambert continued the success discussion:
Is it “making a living”? And yet, how many playwrights actually make a living at writing plays? What are the stats on how many men versus women are making this playwriting a living? And how many of them are “independently wealthy”?
Sheri Wilner changed the focus:
She referred to an ad by a now defunct theatre company that invited women to bring their female friends along for a free ticket, which allowed their male friends to “opt-out” of women-centered plays. Is this a good thing for production, or detrimental to allow men to get out of watching women on stage?
Personally, I’m not sure this really applies. Considering we had already visited the fact that 70% of the most successful plays in the past ten years had female leads which means male audience certainly are watching women on stage instead of “opting out.”
Here’s where we finally started to head towards action…
Lisa Merrill suggested:
Let’s look at unconventional places that account women in history. Women have not been recorded in history due to its being considered non-essential. We need to find their stories in gossip, letters, and journals.
How internalized is sexism and gender bias: The assumption of the universality of the male story.
She is “inspired by groups who raise questions.” like “How do we get invested in working against our own interests?” [She's referring to the above statements about self-perpetuating circles of catering to agents and assumption-laden producers and artistic directors.]
Susan Zeitler continued the action refrain:
Can we look at youth data? Since we know we have it?
And “How do we develop these young audiences to not replicate our current adult gender issues?”
Julia Jordan chimed in again: “Women are prophesizing that people will be discriminatory to protect their economic self-interest.”
Jill Dolan:
Finally, we get a response to the NYTimes coverage of Sand’s thesis which picked up on the anomaly that it appears as if female artistic directors are more likely to turn away plays written by women. She points out that they included this fact and expounded it into a “women hate women” theory: it’s all our fault that we don’t produce ourselves. When, in fact, most regional theatres are NOT headed by women. The artistic decisions are being made by men so this media statement does not hold its own when looking at the theatre industry as a whole.
[Don't worry, folks. Almost done. Yes, this 90min discussion was long, fact-filled and very powerful. My post does not do its dialogue justice.]
“How can we keep it visible to people?” Continue the discussion so it doesn’t fall by the wayside and then is “found” again in five years…as if gender bias in theatre is a new problem that’s never been tackled before. Cultural presumptions about gender, race, etc still exist even with new national dialogue thanks in majority to the respective races of Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama.
How can we generate more stories?
“We have to work on all sorts of levels to make ideology change.”
Priscilla Page:
“We are responsible” for adding our work to history and “documenting oneself.”
The Panel stated:
We guess 80% of the people at this conference are women.
————-
As you can see, the discussion ended up focusing on Playwrights, but their challenge is our challenge. In fact, our challenge is not just one of theatre. Just today, the NYTimes put out another article on women, this time about women in military service. We started this fight a long time ago and we’re not there yet. We are far further along than when my mother was 30 and when her mother was 30, but how much farther can we get by the time my daughter is 30? What will the gender landscape be in 27 years?
And, where can you find all those female playwrights?
Your first job is to search locally. Just ask. Start conversations and find out for yourself. Welcome your doors to writers who are not represented by agents. Make a concerted effort (goal, even) to create a season that is made up equally of male and female playwrights.
For a list of emerging playwrights, you can check out the archive for the Jane Chambers Award run by the Women in Theatre Program.
Next Up:
- Writing About Theatre Practice
- Risking Theatre for the Very Young – Art, Education or Experimentation?
- Risking Innovation in Directing Training: A Presentation of Manifestos on the Academy’s Approach to Training Directors for the Future
- Enhancing Teaching and Learning through Theatre: Support for Model Programs; Research Findings; and Collaborative Opportunties
Risking Innovation Day 2: Nutshells and Photos
Monday, August 10th, 2009 | Photography, The Meaning of Art, Women in Theatre | 1 Comment
I am propping my eye lids open with rye crackers. Yes, I’m really that tired. Today was packed.
- The Glass Proscenium: The State of Women in Theatre Today. Holy Panel. These ladies are in the tops of the field and in the top of their game. It was a good good panel. I will report in full tomorrow when I’ve had time to disseminate.
- The Falling Girls: Innovative Theatre for 4-6 Year Olds. Incorporating pre and post show sensory, kinesthetic and artistic sessions for the children. A fantastically innovative approach to bringing them into the space, and a beautiful sample performance by two talented actresses. The rye crackers are starting to crumble so you’ll have to wait for this one too.
- Publishing Your Practice. Editors of three theatre journals told us how to get out writer’s game on.
- Many Studies and Examples of Research that Prove that the Arts in Education and in Collaboration Make Us Whole People. If I couldn’t write about the Falling Girls, there’s no way I can get into this one.
Since you’re not getting anything remotely resembling a re-cap today, feast your eyes on 2.5 days worth of photos:
Day One
Only at a theatre conference would there be actors rehearsing in the lobby and making weird whooping noises.
Howard Gardner
Check out the sneaks. Holy ’80s, Batman!
Day Two
Glass Proscenium
Falling Girls
Women On Top
Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 | Political Action, Women in Theatre | No Comments
This past Sunday, the Board of my budding company, GAN-e-meed Theatre Project met to discuss, among other things, the mission. We’re new so we need to define, enhance, and pinpoint what exactly we want to do. We all agreed, in a nutshell that we “advance the role of women in theatre.” What comes after that…precisely…we’re still working on.
Of course, along with this discussion came the question: Where’s the proof that women theatre artists need advancement? We all know that there are far fewer roles for actresses than there are actresses to fill them, but what about directors, designers, technicians? Where’s the proof? I was able to point to anecdotal references to a study published in 2003, citing that only %20 of theatre directors are women. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find the actual study (That’s next on my list) but I did find a survey of studies published by the Fund for Women Artists in 2002, and an article published by tcg in February of 2008 about The Women’s Project and the reasons around its existence. Both articles include the aforementioned decidedly small percentage: According to TCG, in the 2000-2001 season of the 1900 member theatres, 23% of shows were directed by women and 20% had “women on the writing team.” These numbers actually decrease in the following season (2001-2002) down to 16% and 17% respectively.
Furthermore, I pointed out that as an attendee at this Year’s Elliott Norton Awards in Boston, I was pleased to note that the percentage of women nominees for fringe/small companies was high (sometimes 100%) but as soon as the budgets went up, their representation declined proportionally. And I believe I can say this is simply because fewer women are hired at theatres with larger budgets. You can go here for the results of this year’s awards.
This trend was reiterated just this weekend at the Tony’s and deftly summarized by blogger Laura Collins in her recent post, Where the Boys Are: At the Podium.
Whatever the reasons (and I’m sure a few good feminists can point you the way if you’re not entirely sure on your own) there is a definite lack of female representation among directors, writers and designers. I know they’re out there, so it’s not for lack of trying; it’s simply for lack of hiring.
Affirmation of Purpose: Women in Theatre
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 | The Meaning of Art, Women in Theatre | No Comments
Late last night, I sat staring at my screen attempting to re-write the Mission of GAN-e-meed Theatre Project, a baby of a theatre I am spear-heading to give women actresses, playwrights, directors and designers a larger voice in theatre, life and the arts.
It started out as a spring-board for actress-proposed theatre. But as I thought about my true goals and the possibilities I realized I needed to include more than just actresses. Like the rest of this country (and the world) women are under-represented. We make up more than half of the stage actors and although I don’t have statistics on directors and playwrights, I am sure there must be just as many.
And then, lo and behold, they announced the winner of this year’s drama Pulitzer Prize: Lynn Nottage, a woman. And I stumbled across this eloquently written article.
Now is a very good time for GAN-e-meed Theatre Project to be hitting the skies.
SerahRose
