One small thing (that’s also huge) that you can literally do RIGHT now

I’ve spent a lot of time the past couple weeks writing about my feelings. I’ve spent a lot of time talking about the things that I’m trying to do to make Philadelphia a more equal place for artists who are women.

Today, instead, I’m asking you to do something.

Take a look at the websites of your favorite performance companies. See what seasons they have lined up. Or see if they haven’t announced them yet.

And for ones that are still undecided, and ESPECIALLY for ones that have announced seasons with imbalance toward men, send a quick email to the Artistic Director, Managing Director, and head of their board.

Tell them you are their audience base.

Tell them you want to see women employed by their company.

Tell them it matters to you that this happens.

You can do this today. It might take you 15 minutes It could change an entire year of programming. That’s how powerful your voice could be.

And if you aren’t feeling creative, I’ll even give something badass and awesome to cut and paste into an email:

“Dear _______ Theater Co/Ensemble/Theatre/Whatever,

I love your work.

I also love female art makers.

And I’d really love to love both of those things at the same time.

I want you to know, because of how much I care about your company, that I’m concerned about the inequity of representation for women artists in next year’s theater season. As a member of your audience base, I’m letting you know that one of the ways I will make choices about what I will or won’t see will be based on whether I see women getting the space on stages they deserve.

I care about seeing female characters. I care about hearing female voices. I want to see women in directing and design positions. And because I want to believe you want this to, I’m reaching out.

I’m asking you, as an audience member, as a fan, and as part of the community your mission seeks to serve, to please look long and hard about the work you’re bringing me next year and make sure that gender parity – for playwrights, for designers, for directors and actors – is a priority in the work you present.

Because I know it is for me.

And I hope you make me proud.”

Steal, change it, do whatever you want, just DO it. Right now, this very moment, you could make a difference.

– A

The Problem Still Exists

Hey All,

I recently wrote a little something for TCG’s blog on gender parity in the arts. Obvs, I figured I’d share it here as well.

If you prefer to read it on an orange background with a silly picture of me sitting backwards in a chair you can click here. Otherwise, the full text is below:

———–

The Problem Still Exists

(This post is a part of the Diversity & Inclusion blog salon led by Online Curator Jacqueline E. Lawton. Check out further Diversity & Inclusion interviews on Jacqueline’s blog. If you are interested in participating in this or any other Circle blog salon, email Gus Schulenburg.)

Diversity & Inclusion blog salon: Gender Parity in the American Theatre

JACQUELINE LAWTON: Year after year, research shows that approximately 17% of all plays produced in the United States and the United Kingdom are written by women. We’re stuck at this number and it’s hard to comprehend. Last year, Forum Theatre convened a symposium to investigate the gender imbalance in theatre and posed this question: Is there a female dramaturgy (ie. a specific point of view that female writers bring to theatre)? If so, what does it look, sound and feel like? Who holds the agency for it?

ADRIENNE MACKEY: I think that any artist can’t help but create out of the materials of their own experience. Being a woman in the world means dealing with assumptions about how women are and can be.

I work in the devising community so my plays don’t come fully formed and ready for rehearsal. The space between the story/material at the work’s center and those tasked with representing it is a much smaller one and therefore less tricky to navigate. What is the makeup – it’s look, sound and feel – of the female dramaturgy in these works? Its the mixture of the women taking part in the process. And the agency for it is held by the particular women creating that particular piece at that particular moment.

JL: Where do you live? How do you feel your community has addressed the issues of gender parity? How has this particular issue impacted you and your ability to practice your craft?

AM:I live in Philadelphia where it feels the artistic community exists in two spheres – the half that works in the traditional regional theater mode of season programing and the half that works in a generative and original collaboration style without a set amount of content to be produced. Though the two halves are very fluid (many performers traverse between these two worlds often) I make this distinction because I see gender parity playing out very differently depending on which of these two worlds you’re operating in. Most of the women here in Philly, myself included, who feel a high degree of ownership over their artistic output and less at the mercy of others’ biases towards women artists are making their own stuff. They are self-generators and self-producers and they aren’t stuck waiting for roles or slots in a company’s season.

Last year on my blog I surveyed 12 different season-based theaters over the past six years in Philly for numbers on women directors, playwrights, performers and designers. (https://swimponypa.wordpress.com/2013/02/07/true-story/) The results were mostly skewed towards men in all categories (generally with 2 men for every woman) and were most pronounced in this regard the larger the budget size of the company. I see how the weight of that imbalance can simply corrode a person’s soul after a while. So I feel lucky that I am mostly in control of the work I make and my ability to create and program plays that are representative of a world where female narratives are an important part of the conversation. The only real barrier to feeling total equal is my sense that funding organizations may also be mirroring the trends we see in the theaters. My next project probably ought to be the number breakdown on funding sources and whether their support is equally gendered across their grantees…

JL: Do we need gender based theaters? What is gained by having stories of a certain community told by artists of that community? What is lost?

AM: I don’t know if I think we need gender based theaters per se. I think it’s an impulse to equalize the numbers and while I have nothing against it, it doesn’t help integrate the female perspective into the spaces that need it most. We need women in all theaters so that the next time a work has potentially misogynistic imagery or themes, there are women interested in talking through and discussing them. I personally want to give our male allies the eyes with which we see these works rather than simply secreting away. I believe this will pave the way to true equity faster.

Better, I’d propose, to create financial incentives for companies that consistently display a parity of representation in its performers, writers and directors. Reward the outcomes not just the intentions. Try and tell me that a $25,000 grant at the end of three seasons of equitable gender distribution wouldn’t motivate AD’s to find themselves plays with more women writing, directing or performing in them.

JL: What practical action steps would you recommend to local, regional and national theatre companies to address issues of gender parity?

AM: Assume the best intentions of all creators, that no one wants inequity. So when you have these conversations, work hard on both sides to remember not to pull into defensive postures or aggression towards the folks that might want to change but just don’t know how yet.

Find measures that are quantifiable that you want to meet and share them with others.

And while I don’t necessarily advocate for only doing all-women works, I do most definitely advocate for creating an all-female spaces to discuss and strategize how to tackle these issues. It is nothing against one’s male colleagues to say there are certain struggles they just can’t really understand. There are times you need to talk to people who have dealt with the same issues and one of the unfortunate outcomes of an unequal field is that if you don’t seek it out, it’s rare to find that many female creators gathered in one space.

Most recently in Philadelphia, my company Swim Pony launched the Awesome Lady Squad – a forum to meet and use the collective brain power of women to systematically tackle the inequities we see here in our community. In two short meetings I created a longer list of actionable steps to start working on this issue than I have felt able to do on my own in the past several years. (https://swimponypa.wordpress.com/2014/02/14/dispatches-from-the-awesome-lady-squad-4-on-the-topic-what-wed-like-to-see-instead/)

JL: Why is it important that we continue to have these conversations to address issues of gender in theatre?

AM: Because the problem still exists.

When it’s done – when I see an equal distribution of female artists across the theaters of Philadelphia – I’ll stop talking about it.

Adrienne Mackey is the founder of Swim Pony, dedicated to works that are loud, strange and never seen before on earth! She has directed SURVIVE! – a 22,000 square ft installation exploring the universe and LADY M – an all-female take on Macbeth. Most recently, Adrienne directed THE BALLAD OF JOE HILL at Eastern State Penitentiary boasting a completely sold out run and a profile on NPR’s Radio Times. She has received two Knight Arts Challenges, an Independence Fellowship, a Live Arts LAB fellowship and New Edge Residency. Adrienne also sings backup vocals as “The Truth” for Johnny Showcase and the Mystic Ticket.

Jacqueline E. Lawton received her MFA in Playwriting from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a James A. Michener fellow. Her plays include Anna K; Blood-bound and Tongue-tied; Deep Belly Beautiful; The Devil’s Sweet Water; The Hampton Years; Ira Aldridge: Love Brothers Serenade, Mad Breed and Our Man Beverly Snow. She has received commissions from Active Cultures Theater, Discovery Theater, National Portrait Gallery, National Museum of American History, Round House Theatre and Theater J. A 2012 TCG Young Leaders of Color, she has been nominated for the Wendy Wasserstein Prize and a PONY Fellowship from the Lark New Play Development Center. She resides in Washington DC and is a member of Arena Stage’s Playwrights’ Arena. jacquelinelawton.com

Lady-Festo!

What time is it? LADY-FESTO Time!

Mark your calendars friends. It’s official.

From 7 – 9:30pm on March 23^rd and 24^th at Headlong Studios (formerly the Arts Parlor) The Awesome Lady Squad will write it’s Lady-Festo.

“What, pray tell is a Lady-Festo?” You might be asking yourself.

A Lady-Festo is the document that will lay out the ways our Squad will carry out it’s awesome missions and how we promise to treat each other as Awesome Lady Squad members.

I’ve also recently contacted the Squad with some updates about our goings on and you can read all the details here. The long and the short is, we want your ideas. So come one night or both. And if you can RSVP to swimponypa@gmail.com so we get a sense of the group size.

If you want to join the Squad email list, have no fear, you can do that RIGHT NOW.

And later this month hammer out a document that will change the face of ladies in the arts for eternity!

Stay awesome.

– A

Can we talk about canon for a minute?

I’d like to talk honestly about the canon for a second.

There’s a tiny moment I recently saw a production of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar.

First off, for the record, I’m not writing about the particular production. I’ve seen it a bunch and it’s been in there every time. And so while the moment that struck me was indeed performed in this particular version of the play, but my guess is that the lines I’m wondering about are with all likelihood in almost every production of this play.

What struck me was this series of lines:

Brutus. You are my true and honourable wife,
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart

Portia. If this were true, then should I know this secret.
I grant I am a woman; but withal
A woman that Lord Brutus took to wife:
I grant I am a woman; but withal
A woman well-reputed, Cato’s daughter.
Think you I am no stronger than my sex,
Being so father’d and so husbanded?
Tell me your counsels, I will not disclose ’em:
I have made strong proof of my constancy,
Giving myself a voluntary wound
Here, in the thigh: can I bear that with patience.
And not my husband’s secrets?

Can you see them? Can you see the ones I want to write about?

I didn’t. Or rather, I didn’t really hear them initially, while I was watching. I just saw the scene for what it was – a woman asking her husband to unburden himself of whatever it was that was bugging him. But then, I started talking about the scene to someone and I was trying to summarize what Portia had said. It was when I did that, and had to put her words into my own, put Shakespeare’s words into modern parlance that I suddenly said, “What the hell?”

Right? Now it seems really obvious.

Portia begs Brutus to tell her what’s wrong and he says he can’t and in trying to argue with him that he should she says, “Look I know I’m a girl, and by my very nature that means I’m not as good as you. But you did marry me. And my dad is pretty important. Isn’t that worth something of value?”

Can you imagine a female character saying this in a modern play? You’d better have contextualized that character out the wazoo to be able to say something like that and not have an army of actresses beating down your door. But here? Nothing. No reaction. No one thinks its weird.

Brutus responds by saying, “O ye gods, Render me worthy of this noble wife!” He clearly holds Portia in high regard. He thinks she’s the best kind of woman that a woman can be.

But the implicit assumption in this world is that the best a woman can be is never going to be as good as any kind of man.

That’s what’s super f-ed up about those lines in that scene.

So I’m asking: Are we ok with this?

Are we ok with presenting not only the antiquated language of these works but their antiquated morals?

(Sidebar: Can we all be honest too, that though there are probably a freaking ton of women who would die to get into this role, it’s a pretty weird one? Who uses the argument, “PS I also happened to have STABBED MYSELF A LITTLE IN THE LEG to show you how reasonable it is to tell me things.” WTF? Just sayin’…)

The power of the canon is one I still have trouble buying into. I don’t doubt the validity of aspects of these works. But I am not sold that these aspects justify some of the stuff that comes along with them. If we don’t remark on these things, we quietly, gently perpetuate them.

A huge part of the reason I don’t often engage with canon is that I tend not to feel like the roles and stories told about women align with my personal politics or with my sense of equity for women in the artistic workplace. Usually, rather than fighting that system I often find is set up to place women in a disadvantaged position, I prefer to spend my artistic energies on creating new works, stories that I DO believe in, that have the potential to become the canon of the future. While I can see the value of these works from the past, and understand why people pursue this study, that value ultimately doesn’t add up to enough for me to choose a classical work unless it can also be a part of my artistic code of ethics be that in terms of morality presented, absence of obvious and unquestioned sexist or racist attitudes, stories that not only offer women interiority and emotional depth but a sense of agency over their surroundings, etc.

Why are those Portia lines still in a modern interpretation of the play? Just because they might have said something like that back then, is that enough reason to keep saying it now?

For me, the answer is no. For me, a passive presentation of such language is also a tacit complicity. For me, ALL the plays I present have to support my sense of a female character as fully formed a human and narratively important as a male character. And when I have engaged with the classics on occasion, it’s only when those works either already do that, are tailored in small or large ways so they eventually can do that, or are re-shaped to point out the lack of this quality in an actively examined way. If none of those things can happen, for me it’s just not worth doing.

In the past few years, I’ve required that women re at least 50% of the cast in a canon work. That’s true from massive Swim Pony retellings of classics like LADY M, to more traditional takes like this past summer’s The Tempest, to academic productions like my Midsummer at Arcadia this past fall. And in all of those pieces I also made a conscious effort, especially with student productions, to carefully comb the text for language that might include morals from the past that I find presently repugnant. We need to talk about why certain parts of text are (and should be) cut so that it’s clear we don’t agree as a cast, as a creative space, as a community with these statements if they are left unquestioned and unexamined.

Why this past summer did I cut massive portions of Prospero’s language about the importance of Miranda’s virginity and warnings to Ferdinand to preserve it?

Because even though I see that this is clearly written into the character, I personally find that patriarchal kind of dominance based solely on a women’s sexual purity pretty unacceptable. And I think there are plenty of ways to create a deep and complex parent/child relationship without it.

Because in the context of Prospero’s journey, neither Prospero or anyone else remarks on this as a possibly invalid way of valuing his daughter. And because I don’t value that value system, I’m not willing to support that viewpoint onstage.

If I HAD to keep it in there, because of a producer or purist’s objection, I wouldn’t do that play.

It’s the same reason I cut the classic Lysander line about Hermia being an Ethiop and Sebastien’s about Claribel being loos’d to an African. Because I would never allow those kind of casual and unremarked upon racist statements in a play I was making in the present, so I don’t include them in these plays from the past either.

And look, I understand the historical context in which they are made, but that just isn’t enough for me to justify continuing to say them. When such language is discussed or remarked upon, or featured in a new contemporary understanding, as say, many newer productions of Titus Andronicus do, or are explored or exposed in some way to unseat the assumptions they are based on (as we did often in LADY M) then I believe that the audience will see that my take on this work is different than the attitude of the character. But when such language is left in and is left un-examined or un-remarked on, I believe it creates a tacit assumption that othered identities ARE these things that the characters say they are.

So my rule is always, if I wouldn’t tolerate it from a modern playwright, I won’t tolerate it from a classical one either.

I think that there are a lot of folks who will never want these works modernized and clearly, cutting to change a character’s attitude in this regard or cross gender casting IS a modernization: A modernization to reflect the idea that women or people of color can indeed occupy the kinds of positions and embody themes that were only allotted to white men in Shakespeare’s time. And I think that those who chide cross gender casting for not being “real” or corrupting the text in some way are just refusing to see that argument from the side of the people it most affects.

So lately, I just tell myself that they’ll all die out and I will become the lord-ess of the Philadelphia art scene.

Not really.

Ok maybe a little bit.

– A

Flamenco Hoy

Small detour from talking about ladies today folks. I’ve been asked by the Philadelphia Flamenco Festival and Pasión y Arte to write about this film “Flamenco Hoy.” Check out their other articles here.

Here goes.

My first encounter with Flamenco as an art form came back in 2008 when I was creating and staging Echo – an entirely musical retelling of the classic Greek myth – with local company Tribe of Fools.

For the piece I was exploring sounds that fell into a few categories. I wanted music that blurred the line between declamation and structure – sounds that blurred the difference between structure music and the noise a person screaming to the Gods above them. I was seeking the heightened sound that such a plea would provoke but also a form in which the musicality, the beauty, and the depth of that need to express were also heard.

I also wanted a music rooted in chant. I wanted to underscore the feeling of storytelling that is passed along from person to person over many many many generations.

And lastly, I wanted a musical base in which feminine beauty is can be seen not only in the light pure and clear sounds we hear in most western music forms, but that includes the depth and experience and texture that life can bring. And I wanted to find a sound that came from a human but was so deep and richly felt that person it goes beyond their human form. I wanted to hear the sound of a human channeling the Gods.

So when a friend passed along a video of Carlos Saura’s 1995 movie Flamenco and I heard this woman for the first time I had no doubt I’d found that sound.

What a treat then to be asked to return to Mr. Saura’s work for Flamenco Hoy in watching this filming of a live stage piece exploring Flamenco both past and present.

There’s something pulsing underneath the work on display in this film. It’s akin to the gentle clapping pulse that underpins so much of the music. The performers of Flamenco Hoy are a study in tension and release:

Two men carrying large sticks drum the floor in alternating bursts, each like a tiny message or challenge that builds. The energy of the face off is palpable. And then, simply, easily, they step forward, closer into waiting pools of light and begin again.

A woman (the stunning Patricia Guerrero) bounds across the stage bending in impossibly long lines. She is holding a fan that snaps open and shut like a tease between her and the audience. She is fluid and graceful one moment with fingers that flutter over each other. The next she squats and jumps like a rebellious teenager.

This alternation of hardness and softness is what makes the form so interesting for me to watch. It is this inherent conversation between rhythms that that creates stories between bodies and within voices even when they speak words I cannot understand.

And the pounding of the floor. Can I just say that it must be impossible to hear it too much. I am most sad, perhaps, not to be in the room with this performance in this regard. To feel the vibration of the floor under my own feet, to feel the rapid pulsing vibration of their feet beating into the ground and resonating through the hall and in my bones.

In what was for me the most stunning solo of the entire piece, Nani Paños (who looks charmingly similar to Zachary Quinto and had me imagining Spock as a Flamenco dancer) emerges in a modified, almost painted on, Torero outfit. The tightness of his clothing means that every quiver, every breath, every twitch is visible to the audience. The guitarist plucks out a melody that almost seems designed to taunt the poor, serious looking, dancer. He slowly begins to gently move himself across the stage. Then suddenly without warning the music seems to capture him and his feet explode. He wildly shakes in the throws of it until again without warning he is completely still but for the deep need for breath he is clearly trying to hide.

The effect is one of a human battling with supernatural forces. And this battle of the dancer and this tension between stillness and a need to fling the movement out of himself is completely engrossing from start to end.

And there’s also something captivating about the way that the staging often does not attempt to integrate the disparate parts – the singers, musicians, dancers, and those that simply take up the subtle punctuation of palmas hand claps. It is refreshingly simple to see one part of the whole watch and enjoy the other when a dancer simply listens in to the free flowing cascade of notes from a singer. It is almost as if the whole cannot be contained by any single of its component pieces.

The only admission I must make is that in the pieces where more modern elements are incorporated – projections of lines across the stage as a group of men with pained faces dance, or a nod to 1940’s noir, or a mix of jazz saxophone and the lilting rhythms of a flamenco singer – for me, they fall flat by comparison. I see the interest and desire for such an experiment. But they lose just a touch of what makes the other pieces so magical. The ease and depth and plea to the gods in these pieces, somehow gets a just little lost in translation.

– A

3 years and $300,000 and I’ll fix it, for realz…

Alright, enough moping.

So remember how I said that the tough thing about talking about the issue of gender parity, the problem, wasn’t intentions, but a lack of culpability for outcomes.

In other words, how do you get people to not just think about doing the right thing but actually motivate them to do it?

Guess what?

Yesterday, I figured it out.

You just need some money.

You need a funding program that has nothing to do with intentions, because we all have the best intentions. What you need is a reward system that is entirely based on outcomes.

So.

Without further ado, I give you:

SWIM PONY MASSIVELY OVERHAULS THE STATE OF WOMEN ARTISTS IN THREE YEARS AND WHO KNEW IT WOULD BE THIS FLIPPIN EASY GRANT PROGRAM

Also known as:

AWESOME LADIES GETTIN’ WHAT’S DUE (ALGWD for short)

(With support from Pew Charitable Trusts

Or maybe William Penn

Or maybe The Wyncote Foundation

Or The Knight Foundation

Really who cares, someone has to fund this, right?)

Here are my proposed guidelines:

1) The ALGWD team announces to the Philadelphia-area theater community that starting next season any company, of any size, with access to their own non-profit status or a fiscal sponsor is eligible for an award at the end of a three year period.

2) The funding awards will be made in two categories:

$25,000 will be awarded to 5 companies with the highest percentage of women artists represented across three artistic categories (see below).
Any company that achieves 45% female representation across all three categories is eligible to receive $10,000.
PS – You have to hit the minimum in all three. No exceptions.

3) Female artists represented will be calculated based on a statistics over three categories:

Number of women playwrights
Number of women directors
Number of women actors

4) Other rules and guidelines:

Companies will submit their statistics and then have them validated by the grant committee in order to be eligible.
The statistics must include all artistic output by a company.
Artistic outputs included must be open to the public.
A company must meet a minimum of three public works to be eligible for consideration.
Funds are string-free. You can use them for whatever you want.

5) And maybe we could also add this as a bonus:

A $1,000 in additional funds are available for any company that can also show an equal parity across all categories of theatrical design regardless of whether they reach the above minimums.

This means for three years there’s a looming pile of cash incentivizing the choice to bring women artists in. It’s not the only consideration, but it’s enough to help counteract a tiny bit of that un-intentional push away from a female artists in the other direction.

And happily, unlike calling someone out or making a stink, this grant doesn’t hurt anyone who decides they can’t or won’t be able to meet the gender equality minimum. You can do all the dude heavy, dude written, dude directed plays you want. It just means you’re missing out on the free money party.

Of the 12 companies I surveyed numbers on last year, a few were pretty darn close – Flashpoint, Simpatico and Azuka – but not one would have hit this minimum requirement across all three categories. But if there were $10,000 at stake, how much do you want to bet they’d tweak their selections just a tiny bit to nudge them over the line? If the next time the AD’s of these companies looked at their numbers and knew that hiring one more female director got them $10,000 do you think they’d think as hard about whether or not to do it? Do you think that the choice between a female playwright and a male one would be quite so agonizing if one picking the former meant they might be one of those companies competing for the top 5 slot?

For most companies, $25,000 or $10,000 in funds that aren’t project ear-marked would make a huge difference. That’s an entire person’s salary in some cases. That’s the budget for an entire show for the really small ones. And even if you’re a bigger dog, one where the scale you’re operating on won’t be totally transformed by this kind of cash, think about how hard you chase donors on this scale. You could just do the work you’re already doing AND save women artists from inequity while getting money handed to you.

The way I see it there are something on the order of 30 – 40 companies in Philly and the surrounding areas who’d be eligible. If I had to guess, right now, there are probably only a handful – 5 maybe – that potentially meet those guidelines already. From rough estimation it seems like about half those companies could probably hit those numbers with just a bit of effort to add a few female directors or playwrights or plays with more female roles. If I were a betting woman, I’d guess the same half of those 30 – 40 would come out the other side of three years with hands outstretched for their $10,000.

Think about the impact that would make in this community:

5 companies at the top x $25,000 = $125,000
~16 more companies at the minimum x $10,000 = $160,000
~15 that also hit the design minimum x $1,000 = $15,000

That’s $300,000.

This is really not that much money.

Think about that Philly funders… For a single upper limit Pew organizational project grant:

You could have an incredibly concrete means to measure the impact of your efforts by surveying the stats on gender before the award period and after.
You could incentivize not promises or discussions but measurable, quantifiable outcomes.
You could reward those companies already employing positive gender parity practices.
You could send a message that your organization cares deeply about the status of women artists and is able to take steps to do something about it.
You could create an art-making environment in Philadelphia that can be nationally recognized as the most female friendly in the country.
You could massively shift everything about the way this city works for women artists.

No hemming or hawing. No yelling or fighting. No pipelining. No apologies for what we intended to do but couldn’t quite make happen. Just three years to make it happen or not.

Some folks will ask you for a whole new system and ten years or more to implement it.

I’m just asking for three years and $300,000.

Let’s do it now Philly before some other city snatches up our good idea.

– Adrienne

PS – Shout out to Brad Wrenn who dreamed this up in the car with me when I was having a shitty morning yesterday.

Tired

How best do you root this shit out?

I have been seriously trying to think on this one in the past couple days.

I keep thinking about #thesummit and I’m still not sure how best to proceed, both when it comes to talking with folks who are semi-anonymous AD’s I don’t personally know and with my close friends and peers. There are a couple of recent specific incidents that have sparked this post’s train of thought, but it’s also an issue that I’ve struggled with for a while, and, based on convos from the Awesome Lady Squad, a phenomenon that I think is much much bigger than just me.

It’s easy to make a list of female directors. I’m glad I did it. But it’s harder, by a lot, to actually get people who are making artistic choices, to take that list and hire them. I really believe that almost everyone, in theory, supports that list. Is there anyone in this community who would admit they don’t want women to hold an equal place? But somehow, seasons get chosen, shows are cast, and it continues to happen. If we all agree it’s bad, how and why do such inequities persist?

The problem, I think, isn’t that any one choice is particular misogynistic or horrifying. I think that’s actually pretty rare in this community. What’s more likely and perhaps far tougher to solve, far more problematic, are singular well-reasoned, well-intentioned choices across many many companies that still add up to a gender inequity in the community as a whole.

The problem, I think, isn’t intentions, but a lack of culpability for outcomes.

Which is why trying to tackle such a thing is so tricky. You don’t want to feel like you’re attacking any particular person or company, any particular choice, because of course those people have well reasoned and thought out plans for why they’ve chosen the way they have. It feels mean. It feels punitive. But then what exactly are you supposed to do about the fact that women are still vastly under-represented on and off the stage in almost every theater in this city? How in particular does one try and make a dent in this?

I’m trying. I’m trying to throw darts at what I think might be the board. I’m trying to initiate conversations with a fair number of different people on both the very tiny and very large scale of company sizes to see if I can get them to engage. I’ve been having this conversation everywhere, from theater lobbies to parties and even in my own home with my own fiancée who has his own company.

But I’ll be honest, right now, I think I’m failing. Right now, this morning, it’s feeling like a real uphill battle. And at this moment, it’s feeling a little defeating. Because despite trying to be intensely careful about my wording, despite continuing to reiterate my respect and admiration for folks, it still feels a little like I’m the one who has to constantly justify what I’m seeing. That if I perceive an imbalance that I want to unpack or converse about, I have to ensure that I’m completely grounded in my observations before we can engage. That it is my job to make sure I don’t put people on the defensive, even if my aim is to provoke and question an aspect of their work. That I better walk in knowing an awful lot about the person or company and their reasons for doing what they’re doing or I’m doing something wrong. It feels like I’m the one with the onus to prove there’s a bias.

And that’s hard to do. And it feels a bit like an impossible task at this moment. It’s hard to know everything about why someone selects a season, why someone has picked a particular play. It’s hard to be sure that under intentions, there are less obvious things that still might be worth addressing.It’s hard to know exactly how the issue is feeding into the situation, especially the closer in you zoom.

What I do know is that as I’ve looked at a few companies, I still see that fewer actresses will get cast and fewer female playwrights will be produced next year. That’s what I wish I could fix.

When I talked about this conversation with my fiancée he said this:

“The thing is, I just think it would be sad if people felt inhibited to talk about things. Or if their imaginations were squashed because they were trying so hard to be careful.”

I thought, “I feel that way so much of the time.”

I feel that way whenever I try and bring this up. That if I’m not so terribly careful, I’ll make people feel unfairly labeled and then I’m the bad guy. That I’m not giving them a chance to show their side of things. Sometimes I so get tired of always having to hear the other side of things first. Because my aim is never to put people on the defensive but it feels like regardless of my tactic this is always the result. And many times, the risk of alienating someone doesn’t feel worth it in a given moment and not bringing it up is the only way I can ensure someone won’t get their hackles raised.

So sometimes I don’t.

And sometimes when I do, the result doesn’t always feel that I’ve been able to communicate what I’d hoped. More times than I wish, I’ve walk away feeling further from the person I wanted to engage than when I started. And this in particular makes it harder to do the next time.

This must be part of why these things persist, no?

I don’t want to squash the imagination of others. But it sometimes feels to me, and I hear from other women that they feel this too, that this problem squashes us all the time. And it’s hard to know what to do when I don’t think people aren’t trying to do it. It’s hard because it feels like for me to ask for what I think is fair, I’m also punishing or taking something away from someone else.

We’ll have to think on this one a bit more…

– A

The Means To Manifesto

Hey all,

After a couple of mammoth posts past, and a few I’m working on to come, I’m keeping things short and sweet today, if still terribly important.

Instead of sending tons of my thoughts out to you all, I’d like you to send me your thoughts so that I can compile them in time to undertake a task for the next Awesome Lady Squad meeting.

Here’s our first official creation mission: A re-framing of how we look at each other as female artists. Replacing the model of scarcity and competition to a model of abundance.

In other words? An Awesome Lady Lady-festo.

I want to create a code of ethics for how the Awesome Lady Squad will function. This document should contain clear and simple guidelines that underpin the way Awesome Lady Squad members promise to work with each other and the world around them. It is an agreement that details the ways we can model the behavior we want to see around us.

So you tell me: what does it mean to be an Awesome Lady creator? How do we define what kinds of working models we want to hold up?

Think specific, think concrete, and ideally concise.

Throw thoughts in the comments or on facebook or by email (swimponypa@gmail.com). I’ll be compiling and setting up a committee for this soon.

– A

PS – for some initial inspiration look to the Core Principles of Artist U

A penchant for ladies designing

Last week I put up a post listing female directors in Philadelphia so that next time someone is having trouble coming up with some they know exactly where to look.

Today I’m doing the same for designers. These are folks that live and work here in the city (with a couple folks recently moved that folks I polled felt super strong about including anyway) and are ordered only by alphabetical last name. I’ve divided the list up by category and put people in multiple places when they are multifaceted designers.

I’ll keep updating this, so feel free to send me more names.

And if you want a link to your portfolio or site, send that along too.

– A

Set:

Erica Hoelscher

Meghan Jones

Mimi Lien

Maiko Matsushima

Sara Outing

Cory Palmer

Maura Roche

Lisi Stoessel

Lights:

Kate Beutler

Madison Cario

Angela Coleman

Oona Curley

Alyssandra Docherty

Janet Embree

Lily Fossner

Shelley Hicklin

Amanda Jensen

Leigh Mumford

Maria Shaplin

Robin Stamey

Laila Kjørsvik Swanson

Jessica Wallace

Sound:

Susan Adelizzi

Elizabeth Atkinson

Tina Brock

Karin Graybsh

Ren Manley

Ashley Turner

Props:

Jen Burkhart

Ginger Dale

Natalia de la Torre

Amanda Hatch

Alisa Sikora Kleckner

Ren Manley

Amy Radbill

Gwen Rooker

Alice Yorke

Puppets:

Alisa Sikora Kleckner

Lorna Howley

Gina Leigh

Sara Outing

Martina Plag

Gwen Rooker

Robin Stamey

Danyata Ta

Video:

Janelle Kauffman

Costumes:

Ameera Ansari

Becca Austin

Meredith Boring

Marie Chimet

Kelly Cobb

Katie Coble

Rachel Coon

Natalia de la Torre

Kate Edelson

Mary Folino

Katherine Fritz

Jamie Grace-Duff

Colleen Grady

Millie Hiibel

Erica Hoelscher

Marla Jurglanis

Rebecca Kanach

Jillian Rose Keys

Alisa Sikora Kleckner

Maiko Matsushima

Rosemary McKelvey

Fiona Mulligan

Lauren Perigard

Julia Poisze

Regina Rizzo

Alison Roberts

Robin Shane

Susan Smythe

Janis Stefanowicz

Jennielynn Streed

Laila Kjørsvik Swanson

Charlotte Chloe Fox Wind

Amanda Wolff

Abbie Wysor

For the love of ladies, think of the children…

First, an admission:

Last night I gave myself a small break on the blog to close WELCOME TO CAMPUS at Drexel University.

Second, a short diversion:

I like the final product of CAMPUS for a lot of reasons. I’ve loved the process even more. I could go on a lot about this piece, why I feel like it’s the personal, intimate kind of work that theater ought to be doing in the digital age. If you haven’t seen any of the press for the show, it’s is a traveling campus tour that tells true stories exploring what the college experience is actually like in the spaces around campus that a traditional tour might not take you to. We went into dilapidated dorms, anonymous classrooms, cram into elevators, and stand in the stunning atria of the campus’s spaces. Students emerged from background landscapes to blend the lines between what is real and what is the play. I built it over 16 weeks with the students of Drexel, turning every day students into secret, highly trained public performance ninjas.

There’s a big part of me that just wants to spend this space today rolling around in the wistful sad fact of finishing a process so dear to my heart.

And now back on target:

But it’s gender parity month here at Swim Pony and so I’m taking the proud teacher vibes o’erflowing from me this Monday afternoon and sending them in a slightly different direction.

2013-2104 has been the Year Of Teaching for me. It’s the first year the training of theater to others has become the majority of my day job income. Teaching, though, has always felt like a kind of performance – one in which my class’s material ought to be as thought provoking and meaningful as any play I might make, one in which my persona ought to be as interesting as any lead character.

I use personal stories a lot in my directing and teaching work. I talk about aspects of the way I live and see the world to try and help myself relate to the material at hand, and hopefully in the process, hear and learn how my students do so as well. It’s a theory based in a kind of lemming bravery principle: if you see me jump off a scary cliff into the action of the scene or the idea from the reading and dive into the messy complexity of my own life, you are likelier willing to do the same.

I try to be honest with them. I try not to only paint in the nicer aspects of myself. And in this vein if we’re doing something that seems weird or silly or just plain not working, I usually will acknowledge the feeling. I try to explain to them why I make creative choices, to not only get them to execute an action but to understand why I am aiming for this particular choice and not another. I do this because when it works well, I soon find myself with students who are able to think about and question those choices. And sometimes offer new ones that are even better than the initial ones I’ve proposed.

This past year, I’ve also become particularly aware of things like this:

A book I use for my voice class (a book I love and use all the time) has a couple weird sentences about how women place their voices

A scene in a classical play I’m staging with students offhandedly mentions a woman as the weaker sex

I might know that a couple of paragraphs in the voice textbook are problematic but find the book still worth using. I might realize that there’s a historical context for the scene I’m directing but still think it important enough for other reasons to include. But I’m realizing that unless I say that, I run the risk of not communicating those caveats. And by not bringing it up, by not pointing it out, by not having the conversation I have in my head out loud with the little people in front of me, it’s possible that I’m passing along a tacit complicity with the aspects material that I don’t subscribe to.

It’s the same questions from a couple of days ago:

Are we aware?

Are conscionably contextualizing?

Take a classical work where a female character’s whose worth is hugely determined by her virginity status.

The reason for reading this text might be the beauty of the language or the significance of the author and play to theater history or possibly to see the first emergence of a theatrical device that occurs in the play. This might be why you want them to read this work.

Is the reason also that you agree with the implicit moral assumption that young women must wait until marriage to have sex or they are tainted and less valuable?

It might seem obvious that the outdated gender morals underpinning the action of the play are contained to the world of that play, that obviously you as the professor don’t feel that a women should be stoned or banished or shamed for being a sexually active adult. It might seem obvious that the trope of the tragic heroine undone by her loss of innocence isn’t something you actually think about the real young women sitting in the room with you.

When you say it out loud it seems obvious. This is exactly my point. You need to make sure that it’s obvious. Because if you don’t say it, how can they know?

I try to pass on the sensibility that every artist actor, director, playwright alike, is the author of his or her own artistic experience. That we all have choice and agency and therefore responsibility in the material we present and engage in. That whether we are in the position of learning versus expertise, it is still incumbent on us to have thoughts and opinions about the work they engage in and that we must examine and decide if we accept into ourselves and how we do so.

If we don’t, we run the risk of perpetuating the same things we’re frustrated by.

If we don’t share all the lessons we have to offer our students, we risk passing on others we never intended.

– A