After last year’s analysis of the 2012-13 DC theater season, which focused on playwright demographics, I determined to expand the scope of this year’s study and, in whatever ways I could, to make the data more extensive and robust. With that goal in mind, I brought new partners into the mix for this year. Patricia Connelly and David Mitchell Robinson, both playwrights themselves, have a level of comfort with and understanding of data that helped ensure the statistical and intellectual soundness of the endeavor. We’ve collaborated in our research, and we’ve also put our heads together to figure out how to track the upcoming season, what data points to gather, how to make our calculations, and what conclusions we can safely draw. This blog post, furthermore, has been vetted by all three of us as well.
This year’s analysis of the 2013-14 DC theater season explores more than playwright demographics; we’ve also taken a look at directors. In addition, we’ve investigated the plays themselves as well, though only to a modest extent. As of the writing of this blog post, our analysis is only partly complete. We’ve gathered data on roughly one-third of the theaters producing plays in the upcoming season, though those theaters represent approximately 70% of the plays being produced. We believe that these initial results are worthy of examination—thus this blog post—but we will continue to update our analysis throughout the coming year, too. We’ll present revised numbers toward the end of 2013, when we get closer to 50 or 60% of the theaters and 90% of the plays, then present final numbers at year’s end. (For reference, our analysis covers plays that are opening between September 1, 2013 and August 31, 2014.)
Wherever possible, the data we’ve presented have been compared with numbers from last year’s analysis. In some cases, direct comparisons are possible, but in others—because the nature of the analysis has changed—we are only able to make rough approximations.
If there are any questions about any of our statistical methods, we are happy to entertain them.
Thanks for this Gwydion! Would also be interesting to see the stats in parallel with that group’s percentage of general population–i.e. what percentage of US population is white, African-American, etc? This would also underscore that women playwrights and directors are still egregiously underrepresented–since women are a little over 50% of the population, and form the majority of theater audiences.
I think what might be appropriate, too — perhaps more so? — would be to compare these stats to the data about the population of the DC metropolitan area.
I would argue that the question of female representation on stages might be better tackled by looking at how many roles there are for women, rather than looking at the gender of the playwright. I believe in the transformative artistic power of the writer and his or her ability to write the experiences of others, even if they’re not that particular gender or race.
Not to discredit your suggestion or approach, because I agree there’s much to be learned there, but you are presuming a question (female representation) where there isn’t one. We are simply gathering data and presenting it, leaving it for others (yourself included) to ask questions.
Having said that: while we’d very much like to look at that data point (and so many others) as well, we don’t have the person-power to do so. If you’d like to take it on, however… you’d have our great sympathies. 🙂
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Ok so this was interesting and having recently done a bit of this type of breakdown for one of our Grants I wanted to do it for Inkwell. Parity has never been in our mission (either Gender or Ethnicity or Race or Religion or etc), but I find it fascinating having grown up in a planned community where the all were forced to mix together.
So, in doing our numbers I took all the programs we worked on this year (showcase readings, full staged readings, long term development, and partnerships with other companies to support development) this is from September 1 last year to now. Each artist was only counted once…so for example if I personally worked on 4 different projects I was only counted once. If Kyosin Kang worked on 3 different projects (which she did) she was only counted once.
All artists we worked with:
We worked with 89 different artist this past 3/4’s of a year
56% were female
22% were artists of color
42% were from directly in the district (the study wouldn’t let us include MD/VA)
Playwrights:
We worked with 18 playwrights over this past 3/4’s of a year
50% were female
17% were artists of color
17 % were from the district
Directors:
We worked with 9 directors over this past 3/4’s of a year
56% were female
22% were artists of color
44% were from the district
Its interesting to me. Over the years we do this and this year is fascinating because the number of artists we worked with went down (mainly because we did a couple less programs so we could launch submissions), but the percentage of females stayed the same in almost all areas. The percentage of artists of color went down slightly, mainly because we started working with a number of the same artists of color multiple times. The number of people from the district slightly went down don’t know why…maybe more artists are moving to the suburbs.
For playwrights the number of playwrights from the district we worked with this year went way up, because we had more submissions that fit our aesthetic from local DC playwrights, and in this years submission from last that number has doubled so the hope is we will work with more this year then last. Artist of color are interesting because we never look at that when choosing the plays, but the plays we choose always have diverse casts or open casting.
All of it interesting…I don’t think it makes me want to change anything…but good to keep in the head as we decide to do things.
Very interesting stuff, Lee. THANK YOU for sharing, and for being so transparent. This is really useful stuff. I wish others would do the same.
It’s interesting to do…especially since none of those topics of Parity or Diversity are in our mission or the way that we think about doing things…but keeping a mind or ear or eye out for it and knowing what your numbers are allows you to better analyze why you are doing the things you do and consider the cracks in your systems…if there are any.
Interesting study; thank you for sharing this. It would also be helpful to know what the range of scale of payment to playwrights was for the rights to their plays, as well as the payment scale to directors (and the comparison). The financial survival of theatre artists is critical to the survival of the art form itself!