My friend Liz Maestri wrote a blog post the other day laying out the results of an experiment she did on the subject of gender parity in DC theater. I admire Liz, a fellow playwright and Taffety Punk artist who worked as the assistant director on a production of my play The Faithkiller, and her analysis inspired me to do what the AA folks might call “a fearless and searching moral inventory” of my own track record on the subject.
Liz’s analysis, which she conducted on the 15 most recent shows she’s seen, focused on four criteria:
- From whose perspective was the play told, a man’s or a woman’s?
- Who wrote the play?
- Who directed the play?
- How many male or female cast members were there?
The first of her criteria is difficult for me; many of my plays are ensemble pieces that really feature multiple perspectives. I have, however, done my best with it. The second of her criteria I eliminated because it obviously doesn’t apply to me; I’m a man, so all of my plays were written by men. For the third of her criteria, I have decided to indicate the gender of whomever directed the initial production. The fourth of her criteria is also a bit difficult; my plays are written for men, women, and (sometimes) a few characters that could intentionally be cast either way. I have tried to be honest with myself in those instances and indicate which gender I was imagining while I wrote.
My goal in doing this analysis is simply to learn my biases and to reveal them publicly in the hope that by doing so, I encourage other male playwrights to do the same… because self-knowledge is the first step to making real (and necessary) changes.
One final note: I’ve included not only all of the plays you see in the right column, but also:
- One play that was commissioned and produced three years ago but that I no longer promote very much;
- One play I spent more than a year developing (and that had a reading) but that (for various reasons) I abandoned; and
- Two plays that are currently in the latter stages of development, both of which will be read publicly within the next six or eight months.
With no further adieu, then, the analysis.
From whose perspective is the story told?
Of the 12 plays I analyzed, five were written from a primarily male perspective and two from a female perspective. The other five are clearly ensemble pieces that encompass multiple perspectives. I have clearly written more “male” plays.
I’m unclear about whether this is cause for question or concern, but I’m fairly certain it’s unsurprising. What I do wonder about are the reasons for this disparity. Am I being subtly rewarded by a system that encourages male-centric plays (and thus writing more of them)? Am I simply telling the stories that emerge from my (obviously) male mind? Also, I wonder… is this bias something I could consciously overcome? Could I will myself to have more female-centric stories to tell?
Who directed the first production?
Of the plays that have been produced, five of the first productions were directed by men and five by women. This is also an unsurprising bit of news. I have worked modestly hard over the years (though I don’t want to take too much credit) to find female directors to collaborate with, for no other (conscious) reason than to use what little influence I have to create opportunities for women. I plan to continue to do this; I can think of several female directors I would love to work with and have even approached as collaborators. Without sacrificing any of my relationships with male directors who mean a lot to me, I want to continue to make inroads in this direction.
Finally, how many male and female cast members are there?
I wish I could report a better balance here, but the facts are the facts: 32 roles for men, all of which I believe are substantial, and 27 roles for women, only 23 of which are genuinely substantial. That’s 54%, which is only marginally better than the 59% Liz reported. Naturally, the goal shouldn’t be 50% for any one playwright, because that would be disingenuous… but if every male playwright uses that excuse, then none of us advances the cause of writing good roles for women, and the overall balance remains unfair. Someone has to lead; I’m going to try, if I can. I’ve written two shows that are for all-female (though small) casts; maybe another is in order.
(For what it’s worth, a recent study I heard about from The Dramatists Guild suggests that in plays written by men, 81% have a majority of male roles and 19% a majority of female roles. Of my twelve plays, three had more male roles, two had more female roles, and seven were evenly split between male and female… so I’m ahead of the national average. Woo-hoo!)
So that’s the analysis. I don’t want to claim any tremendous insight here or set any unrealistic goals, but I will say this: I’m going to revisit this analysis from time to time, perhaps annually, and see how I’m doing on this front. (I’m going to be doing a similar analysis of racial parity as well in the next few weeks; the results will likely not be anything I’m proud of, but they will be honest.) It’s the very least I can do.
Hmmmm. I’d love to see designers added to the criteria, after directors. I encounter a lot of women as costume designers, a fair number as props designers, a few as lighting designers, almost none as sound designers … and a tiny handful other than myself as set designers.
And if you factor in the craftspeople, almost all the costume folk are female, the carpenters trend heavily male, props female, painters female, sound male, and electrics split. Stage managers trend moderately female.
So, for whatever it’s worth, there are a lot of women doing shows — but many are in support capacities.
Naturally, I’d love to see better gender parity in every aspect of theater. (We haven’t even talked about artistic directors!) But as a playwright, I have no control and little influence over the designers responsible for the productions of my work. There’s only so much I can do, save for recommending certain folks be considered… which I do. Still, my outsider status on designer selection makes that a criteria I probably won’t analyze…
I did some quick and dirty calculations of my own work. All but 1 of my plays are from the Female perspective. My character breakdown: 21 F, 24 M (interestingly I have 3 plays where the breakdown is 3F, 1M and one where it’s 2F, 1M, trying to say that more than 50% of time women out number men in my plays). I’m almost 50-50 on director being Female or Male.
I wonder what the figures are like for other women playwrights, for other male playwrights.
After reading your post I wonder if playwrights should try to create personal quotas to create gender parity onstage? Or would producing more women playwrights do that? That last question assumes something I’m assessing about my own writing, that my plays are mainly Female perspective because I am. When I start thinking of a play I’m thinking in first person as I explore the idea. Does that process then somehow lead to me creating a Female main character? I think it might.
And if I add a cultural lens to this, only 1.5 of my characters is not Latino. The .5 is a character that is specifically described as being neither American, nor Mexican, yet both, but not Mexican American.
All of this just seems to tell me that I’m writing myself into my plays. I have several characters that are artists, most of them are in their early to mid 30s, many have interests that are my own (astronomy, useless trivia, politics). If this is true, which I think it is in my case, then it might be true for others.
I think everyone’s individual numbers are going to be their numbers for esoteric and personal reasons… but I suspect that unless we keep a lens trained on this issue, we’ll never make any inroads.
I like that you’ve already done a cultural/ethnic assessment. I’ve got one in the works for a few weeks from now. My own numbers there are really embarrassing… I wish they were better.
I’m having lots of thoughts all of a sudden regarding the cultural lens. You see, I’m trying to cast for a reading I have and the producing org has an Equity contract that requires 60% of actors be Equity.
But here’s the thing. A few years ago I had a workshop production and we couldn’t find someone to play a 14 year old Latino kid. At the time I was like, where are all the young (that can play that age) actors? Were they all going to LA where there were more roles? We found a local guy who was nonEquity and had to get special permission to have him in the workshop production (that cast was 50% local actors, 50% non-local, and 3 of the 4 roles were specifically Latino characters).
Now as I’m prepping for a reading I’ve found actors I want to use, but none of them are Equity. The situation I’m currently in, has made me wonder why the Latino actors I want to use don’t have Equity cards yet.
Is it a roles issue? Meaning, there aren’t a lot of Latino roles in Equity productions here in the Bay Area (let me be clear that I have no definitive info on this yet).
This brings up a slew of questions re playwrights getting productions to casting when characters aren’t specifically one race or another aka color blind casting. (You may be wondering why I don’t just do color blind casting for my reading…well, I’ll answer that below).
Then I thought about 3 recent (past 2-3 years) productions of plays with Latino casts at three different LORT theatres. Two of the productions had 50% or more local actors, the third was pretty much all non-local (actors coming in from NYC and LA–a whole other issue all together).
These are all thoughts at the moment…all just observations at the moment.
Oh, and re my own desire to cast Latino actors for Latino character roles. So Theatre Bay Area has this really awesome database of actors that you can search. It’s pretty cool. You fill out the search for to say that you’re looking for a female age range 20-30 Latina and it shows you actors who can “play” a Latina. The first time I realized this it kinda blew my mind. But hey, it makes sense. The Latino community is a spectrum of race, skin color, ethnic backgrounds, etc. So naturally there are plenty of actors who aren’t Latino that, say, look Latino. So why don’t I just find Equity actors who can “play” Latino.
This is where I have a personal realization.
As a writer of color I’ve struggled with this idea of who am I obliged to. Am I obliged to my cultural community? And what does that mean?
I will say that I do feel a certain obligation to Latino actors. What I mean is, my characters are Latinos. I don’t sit down and deliberately say I’m writing an all-Latino character play. It’s just, when I start imagining the play that’s who shows up in my imagination.
And when I say I feel an obligation to Latino actors, I mean that I would love for them to be cast in those roles. Especially if the roles resonate culturally with them because then they bring an understanding of the character to their performance.
Sorry for the rambling thoughts. I still don’t have all of them formed completely and have questions that I need explore with others here in the Bay Area before I have a more concrete view point. Meaning, all this is gestating and this is an early draft of my thoughts/views. But thanks for reading and for getting me to realize that my casting issue is part of a larger conversation.
This was a fun exercise. I come down at 61% from the female point of view; 23% male; 16% a true split. And 55 female characters (57%) versus 40 male (43%). I always recognized that I write more for women than men–and enjoy doing so–but it’s neat to see the math.
And this summer, I’m the lone man involved in my Fringe production. Which I was supposed to be creating a page for on my website. And instead I was doing math.
Math is fun! And, sometimes, revelatory. Seems you already knew you were awesome though… and I agree.