Women Playwrights Lose the Limelight

Within the late days of June, because the previous theatre season was ebbing away and new-season bulletins had been streaming in, a shock hit New York. Playwrights Horizons, the birthplace of reveals together with the Pulitzer Prize winners “Sunday within the Park with George” and Annie Baker’s “The Flick,” introduced its programming for 2025-26. It was, in some methods, a normal combine, together with works by returning Playwrights artists (John J. Caswell, Milo Cramer, Shayok Misha Chowdhury) and several other writers new to its stage (Jacob Perkins, Nazareth Hassan, the writing staff of Jen Tullock and Frank Winters). As of late, a six-show season is a surprisingly full slate; many theatres of comparable measurement, crippled by rolling funding crises, have decreased their choices. However one thing else stood out, too: in a notably various lineup (nearly all of lead artists are queer, and two are nonbinary), there was just one lady author, and she or he occupied half a slot.Playwrights Horizons wasn’t alone. Different main theatres revealed their programming, a few of which reverted to acquainted patterns from a decade in the past. The Roundabout Theatre will give one slot out of 4 to a girl, whose work will seem within the nonprofit’s Off Broadway house. The Manhattan Theatre Membership, which, like Roundabout, makes use of each Broadway and Off Broadway theatres, will host two performs written by girls of the 4 reveals it has introduced up to now; nonetheless, in what’s develop into a typical pattern, each will probably be produced on its smaller, and thus much less remunerative, Off Broadway stage. Basic Stage Firm, underneath its inventive director, Jill Rafson, confirmed a season of three reveals, all written and directed by white males. And the Williamstown Theatre Competition, having fun with its first summer season underneath its new director, Jeremy O. Harris—the playwright who, in 2021, requested to withdraw his “Slave Play” from Heart Theater Group when it offered a season with just one lady in it—has zero performs written by girls amongst its 2025 productions.In 2015, the Lillys, a bunch that honors girls within the American theatre, revealed the Rely, a nationwide survey that assessed the demographic make-up of playwrights discovered on the nation’s levels. As one of many group’s founders, Julia Jordan, places it, “Statistics are our superpower.” For years, advocates had been protesting the underrepresentation of girls playwrights, significantly girls of shade, however they had been getting little traction. Some theatres pointed to the canon and shrugged helplessly—was it their fault that Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and Shakespeare had been inconveniently male? Notably, when a theatre did program a girl, her play was relegated to the so-called “second house” or to a studying sequence. The Rely gave theatres a solution to see their place within the bigger area. Particular person programming decisions—reflections of 1 theatre’s, and even one particular person’s, style—seemed fairly totally different when positioned in a nationwide context.Consideration-getting strategies just like the Rely—and, later, accountability tasks corresponding to “We See You White American Theater,” which revealed an in depth assertion calling for the American theatre business to deal with racial imbalance, in addition to publishing hiring metrics on Instagram—pushed the sector towards change. In 2023, the Lillys introduced at its annual awards that, for the primary time, New York theatres had achieved what the Lillys known as “parity,” with town’s playwriting lineups roughly paralleling the gender and racial distribution of the nation at giant. Was this victory? The Lillys started to consider disbanding; maybe its work was performed.So when the brand new Playwrights season hit inboxes, Jordan known as the corporate’s inventive director, Adam Greenfield, to ask what had occurred. (Greenfield is a longtime good friend of the Lillys; the group truly received its begin at Playwrights, in 2010, again when Greenfield was nonetheless an affiliate inventive director, and the group holds its annual awards ceremony on the Playwrights important stage.) The Lillys informed him that it needed to convene an open assembly about what felt like a severe backsliding, and Greenfield immediately responded.On the ensuing city corridor, the Tony Award-winning playwright Lisa Kron stated, “Adam acknowledged it as a ‘misstep,’ ” and famous that he shortly supplied the Playwrights theatre for the event. Six days after the Playwrights announcement went public, a capability crowd turned as much as discuss illustration and curation, and to attempt to think about methods to regain progress already fought for and, if briefly, gained. “We’re right here to mark that one thing appears to be amiss,” Kron stated from the stage. “It feels emotional to us as a result of this occurred at Playwrights; it occurred underneath Jeremy O. Harris. We really feel these individuals to be our allies—they’re our allies.” She went on. “Our challenge just isn’t with one another however with a system that considers one group central and the others as disposable.”Within the assembly, Jordan famous that the low representational numbers for girls are troublesome to sq.. By numerous measures (together with the numbers of girls graduating from diploma applications within the arts), roughly two-thirds of the sector’s writers are girls—there’s not, as inventive administrators as soon as argued, a pipeline challenge. It appeared significantly bitter that, at the same time as theatres made passionate arguments for variety and new inventive administrators took over from the previous guard, sure habits had been creeping again. Are we seeing a mirrored image of the nation’s more and more misogynist politics? Is there a type of ethical fatigue at play? “Final yr, an all-male, all-white season didn’t exist,” Jordan stated. “However this yr . . . permission has been granted.”On the assembly, Greenfield answered some questions from the gang. “What does steadiness imply? Previously week, I’ve been occupied with that subject loads.” Greenfield later wrote to me about his reasoning and about whether or not “misstep” truly describes his feeling in regards to the season. “On the assembly, I needed to right away acknowledge that I ought to have prioritized girls writers extra in my decision-making. I see that, and I agree that it’s a shortcoming. In my efforts to uphold variety and convey vary to different facets of the season, whereas staying aware of finances constraints, I did not make sufficient house for cisgendered and trans girls,” he stated. “However I’d by no means name this slate of performs and artists a ‘misstep.’ I deeply love each one of many performs and artists programmed subsequent season.”Greenfield continued, “One of many many questions this assembly left me stewing over is, are we working from a shared definition? The definition of a ‘balanced’ season was vastly totally different 5 years in the past than it’s as we speak, and will probably be vastly totally different 5 years from now; it evolves alongside a worldwide cultural dialog. Can anybody season maintain good steadiness from each particular person’s perspective?”Rafson, from Basic Stage Firm, wasn’t in attendance, however she informed me later that she was conscious of the paradox of saying a season with no girls in it whereas additionally strongly believing in inclusivity. “It will be wildly deceptive to say I hadn’t seen, and I really feel assured that my colleagues had been in an identical place. We all know that it’s a problem when it’s occurring,” she stated. Rafson famous a number of elements that contributed to the scenario: the brevity of a three-show season (“It’s so laborious to get a full illustration of your theatre’s pursuits throughout so little work”) and the Basic Stage mission to reëxamine the canon (“I solely have two commissions out proper now. They’re each to feminine writers doing variations of classics.”) “Don’t choose me by one season. Decide me by the breadth of labor,” Rafson stated. She takes consolation within the openness of the dialog across the challenge. At the least, she stated, “we is not going to faux that that is good and O.Okay.”On the city corridor, the query of what may occur subsequent nonetheless appeared very a lot up within the air. One particular person instructed that inventive administrators announce their subsequent seasons early, weighting them extra closely towards girls writers. One commenter levelled criticism on the Lillys for not learning one other underrepresented group, disabled playwrights; others advocated for girls writers over fifty. The playwright Chisa Hutchinson requested that the room keep “answer oriented” by reminding these current that ladies purchase nearly all of theatre tickets. “Present up! Purchase some tickets!” she stated.And there did appear to be a certain quantity of exhilaration, in truth, within the displaying up itself. Within the weeks after the assembly, Jordan stated that she was truly feeling optimistic: “Our theatre neighborhood is so small and is so simply shamed!” She spoke warmly about Greenfield’s response, in addition to Harris’s, who wrote to her instantly expressing his allyship. And—greater than most—Jordan is aware of that it is a tide that may transfer again within the different path. “There’s not that many theatres, perhaps 5 hundred throughout the nation, and, by and huge, I’d say 99.8% of them don’t need to be assholes,” she stated. “They don’t see themselves that approach; they don’t need to be that approach. Earlier than, all we needed to do was present them the mirror; as soon as they seemed within the mirror, they really modified actually shortly,” Jordan stated. “So I simply—I’m extraordinarily hopeful, and I really feel like, if anyone can, we are able to make this correction of turning the ship.”Maybe the previous technique will work once more: a public calling out, appeals to the well-meaning in energy, cautious software of each strain and gratitude. However what’s worrying is how simple it was for essentially the most conscientious amongst us to miss such an enormous swathe of the panorama. It’s true that it’s doable to program a various season—the Playwrights lineup reveals an exciting vary of race, gender expression, sexuality, and inventive method—and but nonetheless nearly ignore half the inhabitants. What’s it that makes girls so invisible? So many are standing proper right here. ♦