20% Theatre Company Chicago - that_s_the_point_

Not There Yet What will it take to achieve equality for women in the theatre? By Marsha Norman

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:32:00 -0600

I'd like to encourage all of you to read the below article by Marsha Norman. Marsha Norman is the author of 'night, Mother a show we produced at 20% four years ago. More then that however, she is one of the few "well-known" female playwrights as her plays have been produced both on and off Broadway for more then 20 years.

It is an article that gets to the heart of what we, as part of 20% do, and why we do it.

Elizabeth Schwan-Rosenwald
Artistic Director

Not There Yet

What will it take to achieve equality for women in the theatre?

By Marsha Norman

Discussing the status of women in the theatre feels a little like debating global warming. I mean, why are we still having this discussion? According to a report issued seven years ago by the New York State Council on the Arts, 83 percent of produced plays are written by men—a statistic that, by all indications, remains unchanged. Nobody doubts that the North Pole is melting, either—we see it on the news. These are both looming disasters produced by lazy behavior that nobody bothered to stop. End of discussion. What we have to do in both cases is commit to change before it is too late.

But, you ask, why is it a disaster that women writers are wildly underrepresented on the American stage? Actually, it's awful all over the arts world for women. My painter pals tell me that at one big museum in New York City, the new acquisitions by men are on the walls, while the new work by women is all in crates in the basement. Only in the orchestra world are the gender numbers equal, and that's because they started holding blind auditions a few years ago.

The U.S. Department of Labor considers any profession with less than 25 percent female employment, like being a machinist or firefighter, to be "untraditional" for women. Using the 2008 numbers, that makes playwriting, directing, set design, lighting design, sound design, choreography, composing and lyric writing all untraditional occupations for women.

National Endowment for the Arts Issues Research Note on Women Artists: 1990 to 2005

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 04:25:48 -0600

National Endowment for the Arts Issues Research Note on Women Artists: 1990 to 2005

Gender pay gap persists among full-time working artists

For immediate release:
December 2, 2008

			Contact: Sally Gifford (NEA) 202-682-5606 giffords@arts.gov

Washington, D.C. -- A new National Endowment for the Arts research note shows that women are making gains in traditionally male artist occupations, but still earn less than male artists. Women Artists: 1990-2005 takes a closer look at female artist employment trends that were previously mentioned in the May 2008 NEA report Artists in the Workforce: 1990-2005.

Totaling almost 919,000 artists in 2005, women represented 46 percent of the artist labor force, comparable to their percentage of all civilian workers. The note reveals significant patterns in pay disparity, demographic and educational trends, and women’s advancement in various art fields over the past 15 years. This note draws on data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2003-2005 American Community Surveys (ACS), along with the 1990 and 2000 population censuses.

"This important new report provides a factual overview of the situation of women in the American arts, said NEA Chairman Dana Gioia. "Committed and entrepreneurial, women artists are making enormous progress, but still lag behind their male colleagues economically, especially in fields such as photography, design, and architecture.”

Among the key findings:

Female artists earn less than male artists. Women artists who work full-year, full-time earn $0.75 for every dollar made by men artists. Women workers in general earn $0.77 for every dollar earned by men.

Women’s pay disparity increases with age. In 2003-2005, women artists aged 18 to 24 earned $0.95 for every $1 made by young men artists. This ratio fell to $0.67 for 45-to-54 year-olds. Similar pay gaps by age are found in the overall labor market.
Pay gaps vary by occupation. Men and women had closer earnings parity in lower-paying performing arts occupations (such as musicians and dancers), where women earned an average of $0.92 for every dollar earned by men. The gap tended to be larger in non-performing art occupations (such as designers and art directors), where women earned 72 percent of what men earn.
Pay gaps vary by state. The pay disparity was smaller in ten states, such as New York and Arizona, where women made 80 percent or more of what men made. Women made less than 75 percent of what men made in 27 states, including Virginia, Michigan, and North Dakota.

Women make up just under half of all artists nationwide (46 percent), yet they are underrepresented in many artist professions. In 2003-2005, nearly 8 out of 10 announcers and architects were men.

Women have achieved a greater presence in some artist occupations. By 2003-2005, women made up 43 percent of all photographers and 22 percent of all architects – representing gains of 11 and 7 percent, respectively, since 1990.

Women artists are as likely to be married as female workers in general, but they are less likely to have children. In 2003-2005, more than half of all women artists and all women workers were married. Yet only 29 percent of women artists had children under 18, almost six percentage points lower than for women workers in general.

Female artists cluster in low-population states. Women made up more than 55 percent of the artist labor force in Iowa, Alaska, New Hampshire and Mississippi in 2003-2005. They represent well below half of all artists in New York (45.8 percent) and in California (42.6 percent).

"This important new report provides a factual overview of the situation of women in the American arts," said NEA Chairman Dana Gioia. "Committed and entrepreneurial, women artists are making enormous progress, but still lag behind their male colleagues economically, especially in fields such as photography, design, and architecture."

The NEA research note Women Artists: 1990-2005 is available for download at www.arts.gov/research/ResearchNotes_chrono.html.

Resources

The NEA Office of Research & Analysis issues periodic research reports, brochures, and notes on significant topics affecting artists and arts organizations. The NEA research note Women Artists: 1990-2005, as well as a full report and executive summary brochure of Artists in the Workforce, are available in print and electronic form in the Research section of the NEA website, www.arts.gov.

About the National Endowment for the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts is a public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts, both new and established; bringing the arts to all Americans; and providing leadership in arts education. Established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government, the Arts Endowment is the largest annual national funder of the arts, bringing great art to all 50 states, including rural areas, inner cities, and military bases.

http://www.arts.gov/news/news08/WomenArtists.html

Broadway's glass ceiling. The majority of plays on the Great White Way this year are about men and written by men. Want to hear some scary statistics?

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 03:54:40 -0600

Broadway's glass ceiling
The majority of plays on the Great White Way this year are about men and
written by men. Want to hear some scary statistics?
Theresa Rebeck
Tuesday September 9 2008
guardian.co.uk

Top girls? Elizabeth Marvel and Marisa Tomei in the Manhattan Theatre Club revival of Caryl Churchill play.
Photograph: Joan Marcus/AP

Boys, boys, boys! This year on Broadway it is a celebration of boys! Step aside, girls - it's time for the boys!

The New York Times tells us this week that this is the Year of the Man. This year is nothing like last year, when there was actually one new play, written by a woman (me), on Broadway. At the tail end of the season a revival of Top Girls by Caryl Churchill snuck into the lineup too. And then lots of awards went to Tracy Letts - who is a man, but whose name sounds like it could be a woman's name. So that's TWO women and one guy whose name sounds like a woman's. It was exhausting dealing with all that estrogen. Time to give the men a chance.

Could we get real? Every year is the Year of the Man, with a couple of women who manage to crawl their way into the lineup. In the 2008/2009 season, as it has been announced, the number of plays written by women on New York stages will amount to 12.6% of the total. Want to know the same figure for the 1908/1909 season? Let's see, it was ... 12.8%!

One might put this trend down to something like, hmm, discrimination. But actually what we're told is that the plays that are produced are just the plays that were worth doing, and that playwriting is in fact a Y-chromosome gene. So women should just back off, because putting plays written by women into production because maybe audiences might like a really well-written play that was well-written by a woman would be pandering to ideas of political correctness. And art doesn't do that.

What art does is celebrate the lives and struggles of men.

It also apparently celebrates big nasty women who wreck their children's lives. Last season, Mama Rose once again held the stage; the mother in August: Osage County is a real monster too. So two terrifying women in plays written by men were up to their old tricks. This, we are told, is really what made last season a woman's year. That and the fact that the audience is at least 60% female. Which, by the way, we wouldn't want to pander to either. Letting women writers speak to an audience that is mostly women? It's a grotesque idea. We might as well sit around and knit sweaters. Forget it.

There's some feeling in rehearsal halls and writers' retreats and drunken dinner parties, that maybe the American theatre participates rather too enthusiastically in the supposed gender bias that the American media tosses about willy-nilly while discussing candidates for higher office. Mostly it is women playwrights who feel that way; male playwrights think the system is really, really fair and that women playwrights who raise these questions are whiners or dirty feminists. After all, everyone is discriminated against! It's show business! Nobody's happy! We're all narcissistic egomaniacs, you can't expect it to make sense! This is about the work. Which means, apparently, that any woman who cares enough to raise her voice about the fact that women's stories are not reaching the stages for which they are intended is a whiner, a dirty feminist and a lousy artist too - because a true artist wouldn't care.

Honestly I am not making one word of this up.

"Who owns the stories, owns the culture." For the life of me I can't remember who said that, but by God it is true.

The New York Times, October 24th, 2008

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 12:04:15 -0500

Important article in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/25/theater/25women.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Read this article...and read our mission statement

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 17:38:08 -0500

PI ONLINE:
10-13-06
Women’s Voices in the Theatre

BY Becky Brett

Playwright Lydia Diamond points out that more women need to run theatres for female playwrights to succeed.

Rough statistics from area colleges indicate there are two female students for every male student in their theatre departments. Stories abound from actresses who show up in droves to audition for a play with just one or two female roles, while the men have their pick of juicy parts. We are now centuries past the days when women weren’t allowed in the theatre, yet the art form still struggles to create roles for women, both on and off stage. What is happening here? From acting to writing to producing, where are the women’s voices?

To be fair, no one’s life in the theatre is easy. Actors’ Equity Association’s most recent report for the 2004/05 season states that 14.4 percent of Equity actors and stage managers held a weekly contract during that year. Although there is never enough work for everyone, the deck is particularly stacked against women as they enter the industry at a higher rate than men and compete for fewer positions both on and off stage.

In just one regional example of inequity, the Speakeasy Stage Company in Boston is producing The Women (cast of 6 women) this fall, and the production is being hailed as a balance to productions of 1776 (8 principal men/2 women), The Pillowman (4 men) and Radio Golf (4 men/1 woman). I’m not sure what kind of balance that reflects – perhaps “balance” in bizzarroworld.

One significant step would appear to be in the area of playwriting. Conventional wisdom suggests that when more women write plays, they will write more roles for women. Playwright Susan Lieberman says, “I don’t see how it could not result in more women’s roles. When I hit 40 I made sure there were one or more parts for women over 40 in each play [I wrote] and that over half the characters in the play are female.” She has been successful, with only one exception, and notes that she writes “a lot of strong women…not just young pretty ones either.”

In talking with several other women playwrights, it is clear that although they are keenly aware of gender distribution in their scripts, two other elements are at work. First, the story is what it is, and no playwright should feel compelled to start with an affirmative action cast list. Even playwright Mia McCullough says, “I feel self-conscious when I have more men’s than women’s roles in a play. But I don’t plan my cast list based on gender.”

Second, it appears that developing women playwrights is not the real issue. McCullough adds, “I think there are a lot of women playwrights, but they’re not being produced.”
Susan Lieberman
Susan Lieberman writes roles for women her age.

Ralph Sevush, executive director of the Dramatists Guild, supports that assumption, noting that theatres tend to program their seasons conservatively and produce plays that are already proven successes. “It’s a self-perpetuating system of exclusion,” he says, as professional theatres rightly or wrongly perceive an economic factor behind their play selection.

The Women Playwrights Initiative (WPI) in central Florida found statistics that show only 17 percent of plays produced nationwide are written by women. The Dramatists Guild’s stats put that number at approximately 25 percent of their active membership. In either case, the statistics are disappointing.

Sevush gets particularly frustrated (“It is reprehensible…”) at the nonprofit theatres, which are charged with a mission to serve the community. “I think they fail in that mission,” he says. “I think they fail miserably.” He notes that even on regional theatres’ second stages, where experimentation is supposed to take place, audiences are treated to new works by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights instead of new voices.

Playwright Lydia Diamond reminds us, though, that we shouldn’t “sit around and criticize institutions that have been around for years and don’t have your agenda. More women need to be in the upper echelons of theatre management or start their own theatres. It’s easy to get seduced into forgetting this is a problem.”

In Chicago, the Stockyards Theatre Project has developed a new program called “Play for Keeps” in order to create more roles for women on stage. Stockyards has been around since 1999, and Francesca Peppiatt serves as their managing director.

“We aim to bring women designers, actors, technicians and directors to work together,” she says. “When you’re doing a show, you generally like to work with people you’ve worked with before, regardless of whether it’s a man or a woman. We want more women to be known, so that they are an automatic first choice.”

For “Play for Keeps” Stockyards paired up actresses who have ideas with women playwrights who can help realize those ideas on the page. This program developed 10 new pieces that were presented in readings at the end of September, and will be developed through workshops and further readings. Peppiatt was most surprised at the number of people who wanted to work on the project and the output of material. “I thought we’d be lucky to get two people to work on it and create a one-act,” she says. “But then they’re like, ‘No this is a full-length play.’” In the end, the writers came up with “everything from the surreal backstage meeting of minor musical theatre characters to a play about a Nigerian woman who is lured into the sex tourism trade.”

She hopes to begin the next round of submissions in January or February 2007, and a submission form will be available on their Web site at www.stockyardstheatreproject.org.

Getting a first production such as this is a big step, but the even bigger step comes in getting second productions. “Chicago is such a macho theatre town,” says Lieberman, “And let’s face it, a lot of the people who make decisions are men.” However, she is also quick to point out that not all men are choosing male voices to represent their theatres. “Russ Tutterow at Chicago Dramatists really works at it with promoting woman and minorities,” she notes. Kevin Heckman at Stage Left also produces a lot of female playwrights.

Why is it that so many theatres stick with the tried-and-true, when the medium has so much more to offer its audiences? Dare we ask the question and risk the flaming response: Are women’s stories just not as compelling as men’s?

“The crazy thing is,” says Diamond, “the majority of people who attend theatre are women dragging their husbands.” Which brings up another question: Why do these female audiences not demand to see plays that look like them and speak to their experience?

Lyndol Michael, president of WPI, feels this is an educational outreach issue and would like to address it as early in the education process as possible. In much the same way that mathematicians and scientists are looking for the time in a girl’s life when she starts “dumbing down,” WPI’s theory is that somewhere along the line a girl’s unique voice is taken away from her.

“Where do little girls quit writing?” asks Michael. “If we could learn back where girls quit writing and why, we could address it. We need to tap into all that dialogue that is dwelling in young women and teach them that you can put in on paper and it can be creatively and collaboratively produced so that others can enjoy it as well.”

Many theories exist to attempt an explanation for why women are possibly less reticent to experiencing theatre through a man’s voice. Lauren Golanty, managing director of Appetite Theatre, suggests that possibly we do not demand to hear women’s voices because they are not what is familiar to us. “It’s not that women’s stories are not compelling, but that we just aren’t used to hearing them the way we are used to a man’s voice.” Chicago playwright Ben Alvey points out, “We are taught in a male voice. Just look at the classics, the Greeks, Shakespeare…” And McCullough notes, “Women write different kinds of plays, and maybe they resonate differently…I think women tend to experiment more and men tend to write more of the ‘well-made play.’” Diamond sums it up best when she says, “As women we have not been taught that our stories are interesting and compelling. We don’t know to ask for them, and there is no other paradigm for how to be.”

In contrast though, Michael points out, “If you take the whole issue back in time, we each can ask ourselves, ‘Who kept the stories in my family?’ Chances are it was your mother or your grandmother.” She continues, “Unless we offer the diversity of women’s stories and women’s voices, audiences don’t have the selection to which they might respond and the selection and diversity they deserve.”

I discussed this issue with a wide variety of colleagues. One suggested that men know what they like and women will generally find something appealing in whatever the men they’re with are enjoying. Perhaps so, and Diamond feels these very issues of empowerment strike at the heart of why we do not see or hear as many women in the theatre as we do men.

She and other playwrights also note that many exclusionary forces felt by women in the theatre also hold true for people of color and the disabled.

Playwright David Holstein noted that when he, a white male, writes a black character, it is never just a character in a play. It is a statement. Peppiatt notes that women playwrights will be segmented until women can get past “being a category” and just be writers. “You want to hear women writing about women, but you also want to hear them writing about the rest of the world. We need to get past the assumption that we can only write about girly things.”

No one interviewed pretends to be able to reach any conclusions, but it is important to raise the questions and re-start the discussion. However, many people had advice about how we may begin to develop more roles for women.

First, continue focused efforts to develop the work of women playwrights, through such programs as the one at Stockyards mentioned above. WPI also has an initiative for promoting women playwrights and supporting them by producing workshops and readings, along with fully staged productions of their work. Many other programs exist around the nation, and it is important to seek them out, so that they may succeed.

Second, continue to celebrate those women who are working in the theatre, especially the writers.

Third, acknowledge the companies that promote women in theatre. Locally, in addition to Stockyards, there is Teatro Luna, Babes with Blades and the Women’s Theatre Alliance (among others).

PerformInk will do more articles this season looking at women in theatre. Please let us know who you think deserves some attention.

Also, please go to our message boards at www.performink.com to share your experiences and opinions.
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Will Theater in Los Angeles Fade to White?

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 10:20:00 -0500

New York Times
August 7, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/07/theater/newsandfeatures/07jeff.html?pagewa
nted=print

Will Theater in Los Angeles Fade to White?
By MARGO JEFFERSON

HOW does a majority theater support minority playwrights?

You probably stumbled over the phrase "majority theater." It is awkward, but
no more awkward than "minority playwrights"; it's just unfamiliar. Majority
groups don't need such ID tags. They're considered the norm.

In traditional mainstream theater, that "majority" consists of playwrights,
producers and directors who are largely white, male, middle class and free
of physical disabilities. So let's rephrase the question: how do mainstream
theaters make space for all those minorities, those "others" whose lives are
rarely shown on their stages?

Recently, this familiar question has aggressively reared its head in Los
Angeles. Michael Ritchie, the new artistic director of the powerful Center
Theater Group, announced that starting in July, four programs devoted to
minority play development would be eliminated: Other Voices (for the
disabled), the Latino Theater Initiative, the Asian Theater Workshop and the
Blacksmyths Theater Lab. These labs were founded in the 1980's and 90's by
Mr. Ritchie's predecessor, Gordon Davidson, and their goal was to commission
and develop new works.

The Center Theater Group is made up of the 750-seat Mark Taper Forum, the
2,000-seat Ahmanson Theater and the Kirk Douglas, a new 300-seat theater
devoted to new plays in Culver City. In explaining his decision, Mr. Ritchie
said the programs were not effective in getting plays onstage, generating
only dead-end readings and workshops. Those are "a luxury we can no longer
afford," he said. "We have to focus on production and focus less on play
development."

Of course no one claims there is only one blueprint for nurturing talent,
and Mr. Ritchie insists that he is committed to developing works by
minorities. Still, the announcement had a grim symbolic resonance,
especially coming shortly after Los Angeles elected its first Latino mayor
in more than a century. For the moment, something tangible was being
replaced by something hypothetical.

The issue has resonance far beyond the West Coast. What is the role of
powerful theaters like the Center Theater Group, or Lincoln Center and the
Public Theater in New York, or the Arena Stage in Washington, in developing
other voices?

The Cuban-American playwright Eduardo Machado, who got his first big break
at the Mark Taper in the early 1990's, says the big nonprofits are not doing
enough. Mr. Machado now heads Intar in New York, the only company in the
United States devoted to works in English by Latino writers. Like all small
companies, Intar must fight for every arts council dollar it gets. "If none
of the minority theaters get city money, isn't it the responsibility of the
bigger companies to represent the entire population?" Mr. Machado asked.
"They're public institutions, not private enterprises."

After all, if minorities are still marginal in the theater, it's a different
story outside the stage door. The majority of Angelenos are not white. And
though the majority of Angelenos are women (as are the majority of
Americans), inside the theater, women are just one more underrepresented
group.

When Ellen Stewart founded the La MaMa Experimental Theater in New York City
more than 40 years ago, she wanted to create a truly international center
for artists. She calls it a theatrical pot in which no culture melts down.
"You put work in and you take work out," she said. "You give others your
choices; you get their choices. You infuse each other."

This vision is rarely found in the United States. Chay Yew, the playwright
and director who ran the Taper's Asian Theater Workshop and is now out of
his job, is right to ask: "Is the theater still doing an effective job of
reflecting and representing the world we live in, or is it merely reflecting
a select few? If so, we deserve the dwindling, aging audiences."

In Mr. Davidson's time, the Taper mounted six productions a year and the
Ahmanson was mainly devoted to touring shows. The theater has grown and its
policies have changed. This time, the board wanted an artistic director who
could mount 20 or so productions a year. For the 2005-2006 season, six are
planned for the Taper, seven for the Ahmanson, and nine for the Kirk
Douglas.

The Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts, where Mr. Ritchie was
stage manager for years and then artistic director from 1996 through 2004,
has long been famous for elegant, crowd-pleasing productions that feature
celebrated playwrights (Chekhov, Shaw, Coward, Miller), and star
well-known-to-famous actors (Blythe Danner, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sam Waterston,
Jesse L. Martin and Kate Burton, Mr. Ritchie's wife). His tenure there has
been described as profitable and successful.

The Center Theater Group's offerings this season make Mr. Ritchie's
commercial focus very clear. The lineup is tasteful, respectable and very
conventional. The Taper season includes works by David Mamet, Alfred Uhry
and Chekhov (a "Cherry Orchard" that will star Annette Bening).

The Ahmanson will import brand-name hitmakers like Robert Wilson, Matthew
Bourne and Dame Edna. The Web site tells potential ticket buyers that "We
are in final negotiations with major British talent" for a production of
"The Importance of Being Earnest."

Mr. Ritchie proudly cites two new musicals that he hopes the organization
will send to Broadway. One, still in development, involves the music of
Kander and Ebb; the other, "The Drowsy Chaperone," is an homage to 1920's
Broadway musicals. Clearly this is the "everything old is new again"
principle.

The Mark Taper Forum's two world premieres will explore the range of the
history play. Robert Schenkkan, best known for the sprawling, romantic
"Kentucky Cycle," will be represented by "Lewis and Clark Reach the
Euphrates." And Culture Clash, a dynamic trio of Latino writer-actors, will
present "Power and Water," a tough-minded look at Los Angeles history. This
work, Mr. Ritchie said, represents part of his streamlined new model for
play development: "I came to them and told them: you have a slot. I will
guarantee you a production. Now let's develop a piece."

The other minority voices will be heard in the small Kirk Douglas. Nilo
Cruz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Cuban-American playwright, is adapting "A
Very Old Man With Enormous Wings," a story by Gabriel García Márquez, for
young audiences. Another program will be devoted to a group of solo artists.
Given the disproportionate number of women and minorities in solo
performance, variety should be no problem.

Still, so far, no female playwrights appear on the roster of 22 plays this
season, although "The Drowsy Chaperone" does have has a female lyricist.
Otherwise, as the former head of the Blacksmyths lab, Brian Freeman,
observed: "It's jaw-dropping, the sheer number of plays by white men."

Mr. Ritchie insists the doors are still wide open to minority writers. "The
difference is, it's one door," he said.

In an ideal world there should be just one door. In the real world, though,
that door usually isn't wide enough for minorities or women to pass through
until labs and workshops devoted to their work become part of an
institution.

The Center Theater Group's minority labs had problems; work too rarely made
it to the main stage. And Mr. Ritchie's view of what he called the "slow,
meandering process" of play development was shared by some lab veterans.
Readings and workshops that lead nowhere can feel like slow torture if the
theater's artistic director ignores them.

But Mr. Ritchie didn't have to ignore them. The labs used to hold a yearly
festival of readings called "New Plays for Now"; it was supposed to provide
the Taper and other interested Los Angeles theaters with plays they could
develop.

"Last spring we flagged the plays we thought were most likely for
production," Mr. Freeman said. "Michael did not attend a single one. When
questioned about it, he said he doesn't believe in readings."

On that point Mr. Ritchie agreed, saying: "I generally don't attend
readings. My strength is getting plays from the page to the stage." To which
Mr. Freeman responded: "What does that say to actors, directors, audiences?
It's about not being in the conversation."

So who is Mr. Ritchie including in the conversation about what gets
produced? I find it distressing that Luis Alfaro, who had run the Latino
Playwrights Initiative before being made director of new play development,
lost his job. And I find it distressing that there is only one minority
woman on Mr. Ritchie's artistic staff. No one should have to bear that
burden, artistically or practically.

When I asked Mr. Ritchie who else on his staff would be on the lookout for
interesting new work by nontraditional writers, he assured me, "Oh,
virtually everybody."

More specifically, he promises joint productions with small Los Angeles
companies that cultivate new writers, directors and actors. This season, for
example, he will join forces with the Robey Theater, a black company, and
the Greenway Arts Alliance to produce Thomas Gibbons's "Permanent
Collection" at the Kirk Douglas. Mr. Ritchie proudly said: "The idea for us
is not to take ownership of the production, but to give those companies
greater exposure. The intent is that it's more to their benefit than to ours
to do those productions."

Hopefully, such money and exposure will benefit the playwrights and the
companies. But this plan is hardly daring. The Robey produced "Permanent
Collection," which has had more than 20 productions around the country, last
year. And Mr. Gibbons is white.

At this point, I'm sure, some readers are thinking, "Talent is not an equal
opportunity employer." It certainly isn't. Most of the plays produced by
traditional mainstream theaters are written by white men; many of these
plays are terrible. Quality isn't the barrier. Access is. Experience is.
Exposure is.

Loy Arcenas is a Filipino-American set designer who has worked for some of
the best theaters in the country. He is directing now, at the Ma-Yi theater
in New York, which presents plays by Asian-American writers. "You don't just
become a good writer or terrific writer," he said. "You need to be helped.
Nurtured. You have to have the ability to fail. The only way you can do that
is to be put in the same league as everybody else."

Directors, producers, even audiences need to be nurtured too. Our cultural
realities are changing rapidly. How does art map those changes? How do we
learn to see the world differently and stretch our imaginations in
unexpected ways?

Asked about his theater's place in the city of Los Angeles, where whites now
make up only about 30 percent of the population, Mr. Ritchie answered: "Los
Angeles is probably the most diverse and vibrant city in America right now.
It's to our well-being to be as diverse and vibrant as possible."

Let us hope he lives up to the far more eloquent words of Joseph Papp.
Papp's Public Theater helped create a long, still singular tradition of
artistic excellence through diversity. Thirty years ago, he wrote: "What
fills me with everlasting hope is the diversity of the people who make up
this impossible cosmopolis. ... New York's energy has always come from the
bottom of the heap, the minorities ... the Irish after the potato famine,
Italians, Jews, Puerto Ricans. ... And long before any of them, the blacks.
As Shakespeare wisely said, 'the city is the people.' I say amen to that."

Margo Jefferson is a cultural critic for The New York Times. Since joining
the staff of The Times in 1993 she has been a book reviewer and theater
critic. In 1995 she received a Pulitzer Prize for her criticism. She has
been a staff writer for Newsweek and a contributing editor to Vogue and
7Days. Her reviews and essays have also appeared in The Nation, Grand
Street, The Village Voice, American Theater, Dance Ink, and Harper's. She
has been a professor of Journalism at New York University, and a lecturer in
literature and popular culture at Columbia University. Jefferson's tenure as
2nd string critic was remarkable for its brevity and the ire she inspired
among theatre professionals. Producers and artists widely objected to what
they perceived as the patronizing, professorial tone of her reviews, which
often began with lofty pronouncements on the theatre and concluded with
prescriptive advice for the playwright. The turning point in Jefferson's
career may have been her review of the Lynn Nottage play Intimate Apparel,
in which she derided the work of Daniel Sullivan, one of the most uniformly
respected directors in the theatre. The review read, "Daniel Sullivan is a
mechanical director. His blocking is efficient, never organic, and props are
always used predictably." The notice caused enough of an outcry to inspire a
mention in Variety.

Why we do this...

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Tue, 31 May 2005 16:40:00 -0500

See the article below...just recently published in the may 19-june 15 2005 issue of UR Chicago.

Just reinforcing the importance and the need for companies like Famous Door and 20% in the Chicago theatre community.

You go girls!

-abigail

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Theater of the Empowered!
Back in the olden days—that's 1960, if you must know—a measly 6 percent of all plays produced in this country were penned by women.

Now, I know what you're thinking: "Holy Mother of Mamet! Thank goodness in this post-'Vagina Monologues' world, such Cro-Magnon man stats are ancient history!"

Right?

Wrong.

"Forty five years later and only about 20 percent of the plays produced are written by women. That's kind of alarming," says Women at the Door co-founder Elaine Rivkin.

To read the full article, go to:
http://www.urchicago.com/listingsEntry.asp?ID=302391&PT=cultureshock