Tags
#ReadingForParity, Female empowerment, Female Playwrights, Gender Parity, Lilly Awards, Lisa Kron, Parity Play Reading Project, Playwrights Horizons, Primary Stages, Second Stage, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, The Kilroys, Women Writers
As evidenced by my recent blogpost all about The Lilly Awards, I’ve been focusing a lot lately on the importance of celebrating women in theater. As a feminist and an advocate of equal rights, I ardently believe that now is the time to be addressing the issue of gender parity in the theater (and in society at large). To quote the brilliant Lisa Kron, “It’s absurd that we don’t just fix the parity issue. There is no reason to not just fix it.”
On my own, I might not be able to overtly impact the percentage of plays by female playwrights that are produced nationwide. However, there is something that is in my power to change and I am making a commitment right here and right now to do so.
As a vociferous reader, I own many books, plays and musical librettos—more than three floor-to-ceiling bookshelves full. But when I recently counted the number of plays according to the gender of the author, I was shocked to realize that only 20% (barely better than the infamous 17% statistic) of the plays on my bookshelves were written by female playwrights. It would seem that I have unintentionally been reflecting society’s unconscious gender bias.
Furthermore, of that 20%, the majority were from previous generations and were writers whom I had studied in an academic setting. I am all for exposing people to the work of women such as 17th century writer Aphra Behn, but with very few exceptions (namely Sarah Ruhl and Quiara Alegría Hudes), I did not own any plays by women writing in contemporary theater today. I did, however, own many such plays written by men (including John Guare, A.R. Gurney, Tracy Letts, John Patrick Shanley, Christopher Shinn, Tom Stoppard, Doug Wright….the list goes on and on).
I have therefore decided to remedy this situation and to practice what I preach about gender parity. I have gone through databases and lists of female playwrights (such as The Kilroys, The Lillys, The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize etc). I have looked at what’s been presented in recent years at Off-Broadway theatres like Second Stage, Primary Stages and Playwrights Horizons, as well as at regional theatres like the Signature in Virginia. I discovered literally dozens of incredible plays that I cannot wait to read, written by women whom I admire and respect.
And so begins My Parity Raid Play Reading Project of Summer 2015. Starting next week (6/8), I will read a play a week by a contemporary female playwright (I’m defining “contemporary” here as something written, first produced or first published within the last twenty five years) and I will blog about it. By the end of the summer, I will have raised the percentage of plays by women on my bookshelves from 20% to over 30%. If all goes well, I will plan to keep this up until I get to 50%.
I invite you to follow my experiences as I read and blog about these plays. Please recommend your favorite contemporary female playwrights to me so I can add their plays to this project too. This summer, let’s get a conversation going that is a celebration of all the great work being written by female playwrights and let’s keep each other accountable with #ReadingForParity.
Click here to read #ReadingForParity Week 1: A Lifetime Burning by Cusi Cram