Okay I’m bit late opining on this, but what can I say — I’ve been busy.
On Monday evening I attended a presentation by Princeton economist Emily Glassberg Sands, who spent a year looking into whether or not women playwrights were discriminated against. She introduced her results at an event, hosted by Primary Stages, took place at 59E59, in front of an overwhelmingly female crowd.
And that crowd was in for a shock, as a couple of Sands’ findings didn’t neatly fit expectations.
First was the revelation that most playwrights are men (68% to 32%) and most scripts are written by men (74% to 26%). Meanwhile, scripts by men and women are produced at equal rates. So yeah, theaters are going to show more plays by men because more men write plays.
Second and more surprising to me was the result of a little experiment Sands conducted. She sent out four unproduced scripts to artistic directors across the country, asking them to rate the plays. Half of the scripts were sent under a male name, the other half under a female name (the same scripts, that is).
The shocker here was that male artistic directors were more likely to be even-handed, regardless of the author’s gender, while female artistic directors were more negative towards female playwrights. Oh there were loud groans when this was announced. We are the foot soldiers of the patriarchy, as a friend would say!
Another reveal was more encouraging, if equally baffling: It’s that over the past 10 years new plays and musicals by women have done better, in financial terms, on Broadway than the ones by men. You’d think Broadway producers would actively look for female playwrights but there’s still as few as there ever were. And despite doing well at the box office, they don’t get significantly longer runs.
My personal observation is that women tend to do quite well Off and Off-Off Broadway, both in terms of writing and in terms of directing, but they have a much harder time making the transition to the big league. (Big in prestige and money, of course.) The bar is set much higher for them.
Maybe one of the reasons women have been doing well for themselves at the vanguard is that they don’t have good access to commercial theater. It’s not that they’re fundamentally more experimental, it’s just that it’s easier for experimental female directors and writers to get jobs in smaller venues, while men hog the more mainstream venues. I can’t think of an American equivalent of a Phyllida Lloyd, who can do something as fluffy as “Mamma Mia” and operas or a “Mary Stuart.”
And whenever a woman has a breakthrough there, again the bar is set high: One strike and you’re out. Look at director Leigh Silverman, for instance. She’s only directed one show on Broadway, Lisa Kron’s “Well.” It closed after 52 performances despite positive reviews. I think some male directors could very well get another go despite that middling result, but Silverman is back Off Broadway, and not doing the prime Off venues of the big nonprofits either.
On the other hand, Theresa Rebeck is doing well for herself, and her track record is spotty both commercially and artistically.
So, food for thought there.
In the meantime, the aforementioned Primary Stages, under the artistic direction of Andrew Leynse, has three women playwrights out of three offerings in its 2009-10 season: Cusi Cram, Charlayne Woodard and Lucinda Coxon.