Last week over dinner a friend and I had a long discussion about being a woman working in the theatre industry. We were both relatively disheartened and surprised by the on-going struggle we and our peers go through in both the commercial and nonprofit world.
Laura Collin-Hughes wrote a great post on this in her Tony Awards follow-up. And yesterday I got an invite to a discussion of a study being developed by a group of wonderful playwrights (female of course) on this disparity.
Over the summer I hope to use this blog to discuss this issue – is it an issue? I would really like others to join in, so PLEASE add you comments or email me if you have thoughts about this or would like to be a part of the conversation. It would be really great to have you all help me create a list of topics on how we can address this once and for all.
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Hi there. My friend sent your comments to me this morning. I beg to differ. There are more opportunities, speaking from a producer’s prospective, than ever for women. I think if you look closely at the Theatrical Index, you will see more women in this industry then men. I see more organizations out there to mentor women such as The Women’s Project, to train playwrights/directors than ever before. Instead of complaining about how difficult the industry is, we need to focus on the great opportunities. If you cannot raise money in this economy to put on a show, no one has a job – male or female.
Sent via email so posted anonymously.
Good work to create this dialogue. – A
I have even been told by some of the “Good ol’ boys”…that being a woman is more challenging!! I was stunned…but indeed that’s what I was told!!
If my anonymity is okay with you…fire away!
Thanks for taking this on!
it’s not just being a woman…it’s also “age” related struggles
Sent via email so posted anonymously.
That post was right on. Students are shocked and do not comprehend when I tell them that gender bias is alive and well in today’s theatre. Men still prefer to work with men, and the old boys’ network is still alive and well. Even more than in design, young male stage managers, often with very little experience, are regularly promoted ahead of their female counterparts (at least, on Broadway). I have seen this first hand and have discussed it with many of my SM friends.
With a few exceptions, many Broadway carpenters, electricians, (okay, I’m also going to throw in directors, producers, and general
managers) etc., simply don’t see, hear, or respond to a woman with the same respect that they do a man. I have frequently had to dispatch a male assistant for coffee so that my questions and answers would be acknowledged rather than theirs–or I concede, and have them make all of the contact, which can lead to “the assistant is really in charge” syndrome.
If you look at the roster of designers at Lincoln Center theatre, there are very few women–and it certainly isn’t because there are no talented women. The same, of course, applies to playwrights and directors.
There are a couple of things that women need to develop in order to be more successful–at least, according to my observations as one who lacks these skills: the ability to play politics, and the ability to tell jokes and entertain–it’s not enough to do your job well, and it’s very bad if you take your work seriously or, god forbid, lose your temper. Men can, women can’t—-yes, it’s still true, after all this time.
Then there’s also the fact that Broadway is still a very different environment from off-Broadway, developmental, and regional theatre.
How things are done, why they are done, etc., all are different.
Unless you are very lucky and have a guide, a mentor, a family member, someone to help initiate you into Broadway, there are a million ways to screw up, no matter your accomplishments in any of the other arenas. In fact, too much experience in any of those other arenas leads to distrust, to ageism, to “you’re not one of us.” That is certainly my experience.
Needless to say, I prefer to remain anonymous–but I look forward to following the development of this discussion.
The pay scale isn’t equitable either–after all, men “have families to feed.”
You’re e-mail struck a chord with me. It is extremely disheartening how few strides women have made in theatre. I found my career, as a stage manager, completely cut off once I let it be known I was pregnant. One GM, a good friend of mine, looked at me like I was crazy when I said I could work on a show until the baby came. He said, “But you’re pregnant.” I was a bit speechless. Things change so much in theatre, jobs come and go, people jump ship at a moment’s notice, it just happened to be that we knew I’d take a bit of a leave on a certain date. After the baby came and I was back in the mix people were like, “but don’t you want to be with the baby?” My thought was “yeah, but they baby and I need health insurance.” It wasn’t until [theater] hired me that I returned to the theatre. I’ve actually found more work and understanding in the corporate world where I now work as a show director for conferences, awards ceremonies and retreats. To be truthful it has made me bitter toward theatre. There is very little understanding, especially for stage managers, toward having a life outside the production and for women it is even harder.
Anyway, that is my experience. Not sure if it helps you, but it was great discussing it with someone. Hope to hear more from you on this.
I don’t think women have made the huge strides that might have been expected in the aftermath of the Women’s Movement, even with such fine organizations as the Women’s Project to foster the work of women playwrights. There seems to be some question, too, as to whether any incremental advancement of women playwrights, women artistic directors, women directors is due to a leveling of the playing field or to openings created when the men go off to Hollywood and the movies (and the money!) — and, let’s face it, the money is in the movies not the legitimate stage.
So, as a director, have I been given the opportunity to work for months on a showcase production for a stipend of $500 because of a gender-blind hiring practice — or because it’s not a living wage and fewer men will accept it? I don’t know.
In terms of writing, it seems clear, if you look at the numbers, that women playwrights are under-represented. And, as I think the Dramatists Guild’s recent forum on this topic pointed out, this becomes a vicious cycle. The economy is bad. Struggling theatres need shows that will attract an audience. An audience will go to a play written by someone of whom they have heard before they will go to a play by an unknown. Men have been produced more often and, therefore, have a greater likelihood of name-recognition and that all-important “branding” effect selling their tickets. So the previously-produced male playwright has an edge when a theatre is picking a season — and because he gets produced again, he keeps his edge while the female playwright continues to have difficulty because she has no track record. Of course, there are always exceptions — but I do think there’s some truth to that.
Actresses have always had it rough because the canon of dramatic literature is just completely unbalanced. For every “Uncommon Women” or “Agnes of God” or “Top Girls,” there are dozens of male-dominated plays: “Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” “Twelve Angry Men,” any Shakespeare, etc. This may be changing slightly as women playwrights begin to gain ground and as women continue to make strides in all fields — so that their stories are more visible to male and female writers.
One thing — not sure whether it’s comforting or not — theatre is not the only artistic field struggling with this. Here’s a link to a short summary of an interesting study done at Princeton on the effects of blind auditions (behind screens) for symphony orchestra positions:
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/A94/90/73G00/index.xml
Turns out, when you can’t see whether the musician is male or female, the number of females hired goes up.
Sent via email so posted anonymously.
I have noticed preference for men in top paying positions. They get them a lot faster than women who are required to do a lot more grunt work before beng offered a promotion. There not only is an old boys network, but gay boys nework as well, with preference for jobs given to members of that community who aren’t as experienced in the job as women — or men– who aren’t members of that community.
I’m going to step on some thin ice here- but please know that I am looking for insight and not pronouncing “fact”
I’m listening (long commute) to Madeline Albright’s auto bio (read by her) She went to Wesley in the very late 50′s and felt that she and her contemporaries had one foot in the end of the quiet good dedicated daughter to quiet dedicated wife era and the other in the life of personal and individual value era.
The true and necessary path to gender (not to mention race, religion, sexuality very many etc.) equality cannot help but be a reactionary one. . Even today we still live in the foothills of the promised land and generations must pass before we can enter (true throughout history – Moses never made it to Israel)
We always live in an environment and have benefits and costs associated. Things are far better – but nowhere near perfect.
Things still have to be stated clearly and fought for-
Sometimes other issues – pure aggressiveness- choices made by a circle of friends that go into hiring decisions feel like bias against, when it was another sort of community interest decision.
I have found the women of the theater to be my favorite business partners & clients. I find an intellectual openness. A willingness to hear and take the ideas of others. A humanness, honesty, and long term view of situations that I find missing in men.
All of this – of course is sometimes- a general statement.
There are great men and great women-
the people who give you your jobs do not give you you.
If theater holds a mirror up to nature, why are there not as many women’s faces in that reflection as I see around me?
We live in a patriarchal society. Anybody see the TV ad for some cleaning product (I won’t mention the brand name), where a group of women sit in a “lab” and are getting a lesson on what to use for tough stains from a man?? What message does that send?! We’re not so far removed from the stereotypes of the past as we think!
Who do we see ON stage? Mostly men. Whose stories are being told? Mostly men’s. There is a perception that men can speak with credibility to the “human condition,” but women can speak with credibility only to “women’s issues” (whatever at means — at 51% of the population, the majority gender, we ARE the human condition).
I am the Founding Artistic Director of Tennessee Women’s Theater Project, where we tell stories of the human condition in the female voice. We don’t silence men’s voices — I’ve cast plenty of men. But I realize that until shows with predominantly female casts (who aren’t bound to the home or the beauty parlor or the funeral parlor or the shopping mall or the PTA) are as common as shows with predominantly male casts, and until we change/augment society’s perception of “storyteller,” change for professional women in theater (from designers to directors to playwrights to actors) will be painfully slow.