The more (of us) you know…

When you really start looking for something you start see it everywhere.

This is how I’ve been feeling the past few days as I draw my attention fully focused onto the topic of gender parity in the arts.

When you really start looking for something you start seeing it everywhere.

I’ve had more substantive conversations and been struck by more observations about this in the last 48 hours than I probably have in the last 48 days. And that’s really saying something, because I think about this a lot. But what’s most interesting and exciting? I’ve also felt freer and more invested in really trying to articulate the difficult honest version of my thoughts. I haven’t dumbed it down. I haven’t tempered my real feelings for the sake of the easier chit-chat. I’ve really tried to say what I believe and then listen back in a way that is open, non-presumptive and curious.

I want to try and capture some of those observations and conversations. I feel like talking in generalities gets us only so far. I really want to share and discuss real world examples here in Philly and figure out how we as a community feel about particular choices. I think this is the best way to really get into the meat of the matter. But I am also cognizant that part of creating safe space is making sure people don’t feel like they might say something to me and then see it online without having been consulted or that I’m putting really specific thoughts about their company in the public eye without being invited to the table.

So I’m gonna work a bit on those writings and I’m going to send them to the people they are in reference to, and my hope is that those folks will not only consent for me to share my thoughts, but possibly get in on the action.

So for today, instead, I’m going to start with what I know: female directors.

One of the things I catalogued last year was the number of women directing for companies in Philly. Female actresses and playwrights didn’t have it easy, but female directors (most especially at larger sized companies) had a rough go of it, especially if you factor out directors who occupy multiple directing slots in a season.

Part of the problem, I think, is a chicken and egg syndrome. More guys are directing which reinforces the idea of the pool of directors being more guy heavy generally and so when AD’s think about bringing in outside directors their first instinct is likely one of the people already visibly working.

Elissa Goethschius started an awesome thing on her website in which she literally just catalogs names of female directors. There is no plug or assessment of each particular person, just a list that shows the sheer size of the population that a person in a position of choice might choose from.

So in that vein I’d like to put out into the Philly arts ether a list, as comprehensive as I can muster of female directors/lead artist types (cause sometimes that distinction is fuzzy) who are working in theater (though again that line gets blurry) that I know of who you might consider to direct the next time you’re considering…

Abigail Adams

Krista Apple

Gedney Barclay

Samantha Bellomo

Suzana Berger

Deb Block

Cara Blouin

Carly Bodnar

Tina Brock

Karen DiLossi

Anne Marie Cammarato

Liz Carlson

Jen Childs

Candace Cihocki

Jess Conda

Ginger Dayle

Emmanuel Delpech

Amber Emory

Lisa Jo Epstein

Lee Etzold

Rebecca May Flowers

Charlotte Ford

Kate Galvin

Allison Garrett

Tamanya Garza

Arianna Gass

Brenna Geffers

Anisa George

Karen Getz

Amanda Grove

Jill Harrison

Allison Heishman

Jenna Horton

Candra Kennedy

Maura Krause

Kathyrn MacMillan

Manon Manavit

Deb Marcucci

Sarah Mitteldorf

Maria Möller

Sebastienne Mundheim

Gigi Naglak

Charlotte Northeast

Megan O’Brien

Erlina Ortiz

Malika Oyetimein

Michelle Pauls

Lizzy Pecora

Martina Plag

Harriet Power

Nora Quinn

Erin Reilly

Gwen Rooker

Jen Rose

Sarah Sanford

Chelsea Sanz

Rebecca Schaffer

Jessica Schwartz

Joanna Settle

Micki Sharpe

Catharine Slusar

Amy Smith

Eva Steinmetz

Elizabeth Stevens

Sam Tower

Meg Trelease

Mary Tuomanen

Daniella Vinitski

Meghann Willians

Becky Wright

Blanka Zizka

And of course me, Adrienne Mackey.

That’s it for today.

PS – I know there are more. Let me know and I’ll update. Also, I’ve only included in town folks for now, though I know there are many who work in Philly but may not permanently reside here.

Talking about talking

So I’ve been thinking a lot in the hours since my last post about how to have this conversation.

I’ve been thinking about how we can best begin to discuss issues of unequal representation in a way that both is honest and straightforward and is also productive and provokes dialogue instead of defensiveness?

In other words, I want to start by talking about how we talk about this.

I find it easy to provoke and push when the target seems large and imposing. I find strength in feeling myself becoming a David in the face of a Goliath. My guess, without having been there, is that this was the awesome power of what happened at #thesummit. It was a moment where the folks on the stage, the ones with some degree of sway and power and perhaps a degree of unknowing complacency, had to take in the might of opinion and feeling of the voices sitting on the other side.

But in a business as tiny as this, in a community where community is key, when networking and positive relationships determine your ability to get a job or a grant next week, month or year, it is easy in the micro-moments of inequity to excuse the tiny things. Too often any one moment or choice or thought seems isolated or small enough to swallow. And as the distance between we and the “giants” gets smaller, the harder it is to see them as the Goliaths they once were. Little things amass because it’s sometimes hard to know what is and isn’t a battleground.

And let’s also point out that these are really hard conversations to have.

Because so often I see an cry to battle dissolve when it has to translate into the daily implementation of such ideas on the nitty gritty detail level. Based on the conversation in our few meetings of the Awesome Lady Squad I hear female artists find the balance of when and how and where to try and bring these issues up the biggest barrier to change. “Do I really want to make this tiny line or scene or interaction a soapbox?” “Do I want to be that actress today, tomorrow, through this whole process.” “Am I really seeing this or am I being overly sensitive?”

It’s exhausting constantly trying to parsing it out in the moment.

And even if you are sure and you do know it’s an issue, it is so so so so so so so much more difficult to say things that are tricky and sticky to people we know and care about. It sucks to be a watchdog. To be a nag. To feel like you’re stopping everyone’s fun. To put people on their guard. It can feel like the opposite of the artistic impulse, where we want to feel open and accepting of each other. And I think it’s so hard because to have that conversation is also to acknowledge that the ills of our culture, the biases and darknesses that float around us all the time, also make their way into our brains. That we are sometimes making choices with little pushes from beliefs or stereotypes we’d never support if we said them out loud.

I wrote a while back about a study that showed how academic scientists displayed preferential treatment of men when filling a position for a lab manager.

In that post I explained how candidates in the study were never seen in person and scored based on identical applications save for the gendered first name of the potential employee. I underscored that this bias was shown in both men and women assessing the candidate. And I made a particular point of noting that none of the decision makers felt their choice had been affected by the applicant’s gender in any way. They all felt they were being totally gender objective in their assessments.

In other words, you can display bias and stigma and stereotype even when you don’t subscribe to them, EVEN when YOU are the negative recipient of them.

It is scary to think that stuff is in us. Even scarier to come to terms with the fact that it can affect our actions despite the best of our intentions. And when confronted with it, defense is natural. From the outside it seems ignorant and bigoted. But my guess is that the real cause is that no one wants to find in themselves dark things they didn’t ask to be in there. So sometimes it’s easier to believe they aren’t.

And it is here I want to point out the latent superpower we are missing: Yes, this is hard. Yes, It is tricky to talk David to David rather than David to Goliath. But. The closer we are, the more potential impact we are likely to have. The closer we are to them, the more likely we can get people to let that guard down. The closer we are to the offending source, the more likely we are to find a safe space to excise these demons with their hosts intact. And if we can win them to our side we grow our army of soldiers. The less it looks like a war and the more it looks like a conversion, I think the faster the battle will be over. If we have to kill them all, we may still do it, but I bet we lose much more time and resource and energy.

So I think we should begin with two assumptions, even if it may seem idealistic or naïve:

1) No one intentionally wants to make harmful choices to women artists.

2) Everyone imbibes some level cultural crap that will predispose him or her to doing so.

So when we look at the choices of a company, or another artist (or in our own work for that matter) and we see something that makes us feel squicky, our goal should be to remind them of #1 and help them see where they might be displaying the crap of #2 (pun by the way, totally intended).

To do that I think we start by asking these questions:

Is it conscious? – i.e. Does the person or company know and realize what they’re doing? Do they identify their behavior as a problem or are they truly unaware of it and its effect?

And

Is it conscionably contextualized? – i.e. Have they passively presented potential problematic material/decisions or have they taken steps (even if imperfectly) to justify them through dialogue or contextualization? In other words, do they balance a guy heavy Glengarry Glen Ross with another play with mostly female cast? Do they perform a problematic cannon text in context of a conversation series about historical representation of women in history to point out the potential in conflict with the morals we have today?

How we assess the answers to these questions will help set the stage for the modes through which we express our concerns and I think also help start to identify the solutions. And in tailoring it in this way, I think we get closer to coming to real understanding of what’s at play in each specific case. Because the devils really are in these details. And if we don’t treat all offenses alike, I think we’re likelier to find specific tailored solutions, likelier to find and commit the people who are ready and wanting to change but may not yet be brave enough or know how on their own to do so.

#thesummit

Look.

I am bad at twitter. I don’t tweet much or well. Call me twit-illiterate. It’s also been a heinously busy couple of weeks. Which is why it’s taken me a bit of time to catch up on #thesummit.

More than a few people have passed along thoughts about this. More than a few have asked my opinion. But I wanted to wait until I felt like I’d really read enough about it to have an informed opinion before responding. If you haven’t caught up check out this for an overview. And this for the much commented on tweets in-situ. And here’s the quote from Ryan Rilette quoted from the DC Theatre Scene article:

“It’s really hard, and here’s why it’s hard. I think it’s hard because there’s not enough in the pipeline right now. …There are a lot of new plays that are getting produced by small theatres that are by women.”

He went on to discuss how there are not enough plays by women produced in New York City and not enough in London (although he credited London with doing a great job), and said that a theatre needs something that’s going to help sell any play they put on. He said one can’t choose a total unknown, and that to find three plays a season by female playwrights would require them to have name recognition or something else to draw audiences, if one is not going to go the route of using star actors.

He said there are “not enough yet in the pipeline” and that “it’s gonna take a couple of years… a decade… before it’s going to shift, but it’s going to shift.”

A decade. Wow. I’ll be in my 40’s then.

That would be awfully… depressing to have to wait that long for more opportunities to arise. Probably depressing enough to just stop entirely. Something I see an awful lot of my female counterparts begin to contemplate around this age. It would be something I’d contemplate if I actually believed it would take that long. If I really thought my female peers had to wait around for these folks to use that whole decade’s worth of time to see some progress.

But I don’t buy this. And I also don’t feel like waiting.

Which is why what’s far more interesting to me, and what seems to have shifted this forum out of the standard and unremarkable bias women artists see and deal with all the time, is the final provocation of the night from Elissa Goetschius from Strand Theater that included a series of statistics:

At Signature, since the 2005 season, only 10 of 90 credited writers have been women, with women directing 2 of 54 productions.
Since Ford’s reopened after renovations, 2 out of 29 productions have been directed by women – the same woman.
At the Shakespeare Theatre, since opening the Harman in 2007, they have produced 51 shows – none of which have been written by a woman. 3 were adapted by women, and 9 were directed by women.
At Arena, since the 1998 season, 44% of productions have been directed by women. However, three women account for over half of those woman-directed productions, while 49 different men have directed here. The plays and lyrics that have appeared on Arena’s stages reflect the work of 110 men, but only 35 women.

When I read that and I thought, “Sounds familiar.”

I’m guessing, like myself, she’s been having this conversation for a long time. And as I went digging into her online presence I found this from March 2013.

I went back and checked my own blog for my statistics project on representation of women in Philly theaters. The dates of these posts? January 8th, 2013 AND February 7th, 2013 AND Febraury 8th, 2013.

Just about a year… Just about a year those facts have been out there. Hard numbers that do not lie about the state of the art we are in. Mine in Philly and Ms. Goetschius’ in DC. As a former student of chemistry, I really thought when I threw my info out there it would set something off in other people. But it’s been a year now and not enough is different. I still think numbers and data are useful; they are a tool to wield. But they are not, as it turns out, enough on their own. I admire Elissa Goetschius for going to #thesummit with numbers but I believe it is her fortitude to require their presence in the conversation that really started the firestorm.

Is it odd, do you find it strange, that within weeks of my post about gender parity in Philly theaters last year that another female director in another large America city was taking up another numerical compilation project in much the same way?

I do not think this is incidental. This means that it is clearly time to be having this conversation. I think it’s a sign we are gearing up for the real deal fight. I think it means the troops are gathering the tools we need to start taking this on. The numbers are a beginning. And now it’s time for all of us to make the response to them a necessity.

Elissa, if you happen to be reading this, I want you to know we are having this conversation in Philly too.

Like you, I am not waiting 10 years. I’ve already waited one, and not enough has changed.

So, like you, I’ve decided we’re having it now.

Which is why in honor of last March’s statistics project, I’m devoting this entire March’s blog to this issue. Every day a new article.

Every. Day. A few hours of time devoted to thoughts or actions to tackle this shit.

Cause it is shit.

Which why it stinks so badly.

You can expect more updates from The Awesome Lady Squad soon.

You can expect more thoughts about how we can critique and work with critics to change the way we frame women in theater to our audiences.

You can expect more observations about the myriad of ways we undercut women in subtle and unintentional ways.

You can expect more on what we can start doing NOW to make next year look different.

And hopefully by the end of March, by the time my 3/30 birthday rolls around, I’ll get a big fat present in the form of some actual movement and change.

I’m not giving it a year to start moving.

I’m giving it a month.

Are you ready?

I am.

– A

PS – Also worth reading is the fateful final question-er Elissa Goetschius’ thoughtful response and Brett Steven Abelman‘s as well.

Connor’s Story

When I first started doing theater I was in 7^th grade. It was a way for me to get out of my own skin, skin I wasn’t super comfortable in yet. It was a way to escape and be someone else. It was also a chance for me to be with other people, to find community. I liked having what felt like a secret club of people who got together to create something bigger than any one of us individually.

When I first started doing theater the stories I told didn’t really matter: Annie, The Music Man (twice) and Neil Simon’s Start Spangled Girl. But it was the act of telling them that made meaning for me of my experience, the act of being together with people. In high school, I wanted very much to be Bernadette Peters, to have big hair and a big voice and a fancy costume and to be very good at what I did. Somewhere in the midst of that time my desire transformed from simply wanting to be a part of something to wanting to be a part of something amazing, to create it at a high level of skill. So I trained in music and acting and having always prized myself a very good student, I threw myself into that study with fervor and drive.

When I first started doing theater I thought that the purpose of it was to raise myself up to the level of the creators whose works I was enacting. I thought that playwrights and composers had some kind of magical skill. I thought that their works can from some nebulous place that was very different than the kind of place I pulled my own artistic feats from. And it wasn’t until I first found myself making a piece of my own that I realized that I too had that capability, that capacity. And it wasn’t until then that I was really really hooked.

When I first started doing theater, my experiences shaped my ideas of what the end product was supposed to look like: fancy, professional, expensive. When I first started making theater my experiences shaped my ideas of who the audience for that work was supposed to be: increasingly large and anonymous groups of people who come to see me and my works because of my skill and excellence. It was an impulse to impress. And when I first started doing theater I thought that my job was to try and tell the stories that matter to the most people. To try and create as universal a message as possible. To create a Great American Play. To try and reach people I didn’t know and pour into them the experience of my greater artistic truth.

I don’t really think that any more.

If your plan is to see Welcome To Campus and you haven’t yet, don’t read this next part. If you’ve already seen it, or know you won’t make it, go ahead and proceed.

There’s a moment early in Campus where the student tour guides, who have been up to this point manically presenting Drexel in a shiny brochure-style intro, crack just a little. They are listing, as one ought as a highly school spirited representative, their favorite letters in the word DREXEL. Student Cami, a go-getter, chooses D for its primary position. Garth relates his choice of the E as the “workhorse” of the word. And so on through L and X. And then just after Dean has also chosen D (without which he would “just be EAN”) there’s an awkward pause. A sort of looking around and then realizing “Oh right…” kind of moment. And then Lexi breaks the uncomfortable tension with a plaintive, “Connor’s supposed to be the R.”

Through the rest of the play – a walking tour in which the students relate their actual college experiences in the locations in which they actually occurred – Connor and his obvious absence are hinted at and remembered. His return is promised and reiterated. And while we grow closer to Lexi, Carl, Cami, Garth and Dean, our sixth tour guide Connor remains an enigmatic mystery. The audience knows only that he seems to have been rather important to our tour guides and that clearly he isn’t going to be here.

The stories the tour guides tell (once having broken their shiny personae) do not relate to him really. They are stories about their experiences from their actual college lives. They are stories of a kind that no traditional tour will give. What the actors and I aimed for was to find a way to share the intimacies and strange details that really make up their experience of higher education. And yet, in these moments in between performances of the most awkward dates of one’s life or ruminations on feeling terribly alone in a new place, they all keep hinting at this other unseen person.

An outsider to the show might wonder what exactly the decision process was behind including such a motif through the show.

I could create a fancy and artistic sounding justification. But the real reason is this: there really is a Connor and he really was going to be a sixth tour guide. He also doesn’t go to Drexel any more.

I taught a class last fall in preparation for this show. All the tour guides in the performance were part of this class. We spent 10 weeks together talking and playing and writing and reading and sometimes farting around trying to create an idea for a play. Over the course of this term we found together this idea of a college tour, an offshoot of an initial idea I’d proposed, one that included their own personal stories. And for their final I prompted them to give a theatrical tour of an actual moment from their lives in a non-theatrical space, ideally the actual location if possible.

One of the last ones we took was Connor’s tour, which happened in a large and scary building called Drexel One Plaza (Garden Level for those in the campus know). On a cold day late in the term we walked from the black box theater over to the building, tried the back door with no avail and then walked around to the front to be told by a security guard that the building wasn’t open to the public after 6.

We got in anyway; the group managed to sneak in through a side door after one of the students confidently declared he could find a way to get us in. When we did get in, filled with excitement and giddiness at having outsmarted the proverbial castle guards, we walked through the empty building’s halls. And though I pretended not to notice the security cameras lining the ceilings, I did gently encouraged Connor to get a move on with his tour.

We walked through the strange windowless floor to a simple and unremarkable classroom. Connor’s story was relatively straightforward. It talked about feeling a distance from the Drexel. It talked about being displeased with the administration and academic environment. It talked about how his long distance girlfriend and her support was really the only thing standing in the way of him throwing in the towel on this version of the college experience. And then he told us about the day that she sent him a text message.

He told about a recent day he had been sitting in this classroom and how he had been looking at the board (the one we were now looking at just then) and how he had been holding his phone (the one he was now holding) and how he’d received a text message. He told us that reading the text he knew he would break up with his girlfriend later that day and how he knew when it happened he was going to have to leave Drexel.

It’s how I found out he wouldn’t be there next term.

And we all sat there. Sat and stared at him and his phone and the room and each other. Each thinking about the fact that this was the room where that choice had been made. The same way you stare at the walls of Versailles knowing a king used to sleep in a bed there. It was a weird kind of re-enactment, one where you become aware of just being. Aware of your being in a place where someone else’s being has just been.

As I was sitting with the class thinking about all this a security guard arrived and told us we had to leave. We giggled and pretended to be sorry for breaking rules we clearly weren’t sorry to have broken at all.

This is one of my favorite moments of teaching, ever. I still have trouble putting into words quite why.

I really like the play I’ve made with these Drexel students. I think that Welcome To Campus is a really lovely play. But it’s funny sometimes when I watch the audience. I think about the fact that to them Connor is just some name. That even though the actors and I went to the trouble of re-creating the whole thing – mentioning Connor’s absence, staging a security guard denying us entry to a building, building in a covert break in, telling the story of the text message, the sitting in silence and getting kicked out at the end, all of it – there’s some part of me that is sad that they don’t know that what they’re seeing is just a re-creation of the real moment that has stuck so hard with me in this process.

A few days ago Connor came to see the show and I got to watch him watch his scene.

This is one of my favorite moments from teaching, too.

I didn’t direct this play solely for this moment. There’s more in this piece than just this particular layer. But it felt like the right kind of full circle. That finally we had an audience member who really knew what the journey of this play had been. Because even though he wasn’t there when we built so much of the later parts of it, he was an insider in one of the moments that sits at its center. And now I could watch this insider see the thing as an outsider. See a creative voice get to be an observer of the artistic result.

Connor is the opposite of the kind of person I used to want in my audience. He knows more about the moment of his personal scene than I can, than I ever could, understand. But that scene feels like the kind of gift I feel my work needing to be – a way to see our own lives reflected back to us, to parse them out for meaning and beauty – through the help of the artistic process. And while I don’t want to deny the anonymous who see the work their place, for the few I’ve met have been lovely and effusive, I wonder in a piece like this if the point is not for this insular community to create a message to send to the outside world, but for us to use the work as a way to understand our place within it.

How do we open our process to an audience that will not only be our external viewers but our internal community? How do we bind them to the building of the thing? How do we share in the depth and power of expanding and filling our stories with shape and craft?

I don’t yet know. But it feels like the calling.

– A

Dispatches from the Awesome Lady Squad #4: On the topic what we’d like to see instead

Yesterday I reviewed the last meeting of the most Awesome-est of Lady Squads and I ended with a section called:

What we’d like to see instead

This section for me is key.

I believe in the power of talking and sharing and creating a sense of community in perspective. But I value even more the ability to take the power of that sense of community and perspective and identify problems and find awesome ways to solve them. Tackling the issues we identify, this is for me what elevates support into a sense of empowerment. It’s the thing that brings me back to my super lofty goal for us Awesome Ladies: To make Philadelphia a model city for how women work in the arts. Some part of that will be discussion of the problems we face. But I hope a much bigger part is piece by piece finding concrete projects to start tackling them.

And I find that the easiest way to get to that new place is to have a vision of what it might be. So in identifying how to best channel the building energy of the Awesome Lady Squad I started with a line from the “What we’d like to see instead” category and coupled it with a concrete projects to help start to accomplish it.

This is the list I came up with:

The “What we’d like to see instead”

– 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.

A project that could help us get there:

– Create a concise and clear code of ethics for how the Awesome Lady Squad. Inspired by the Core Principles of Artist U 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.

The “What we’d like to see instead”

– More models of women in roles of leadership and success in the arts. Seeing female artists successful in their practices. A commitment by established artists to identify and foster talent in emerging female art makers.

Two projects that could help us get there:

– Foster an Awesome Lady Squad Recruit! This could include: creating an survey for young artists to talk about interest areas that is then used to pair them with artists and administrators already working in the field, “Take an Emerging Lady to work day” in which young creators get to shadow women doing their awesome professional thing in action, and/or an “Ask the Lady Squad Anything” advice column in which new Squad members send their questions to the email list in search of advice.

– An Awesome Lady Arts Administrators caucus. Bring together women who already get to make choices about the work they make and produce (as self producers or as a member of a larger company) and talk about how they can use that leverage for positive gain.

The “What we’d like to see instead”

– Skills to handle tough conversations about gender parity. A way to talk about this that doesn’t become apologetic or defensive. Something to say when I sense people starting to roll their eyes.

– The ability to say no to a project that doesn’t conform to my moral code.

Three projects that could help us get there:

– A “manifesto” of the AwLaSq that details in a fuller form the believes and aims of its members. Defining your core principles specifically will help when you have to articulate them to others

– A workbook or simple writing project that helps codify and set bars for situations you will and won’t tolerate artistically that you can come back to when trying to decide if you want to take part in a new project.

– Conversation toolkits and practice. Just like a business negotiation, knowing that you’ve done this thing before is half the battle. This task force will identify such potentially sticky moments and help craft language and talking points that are clear and concise. It will also identify the potential counter arguments and possible responses. These “toolkits” could be downloadable online. We could also organize a session where people simulate these conversations with others coaching from the outside so that there is a low stakes situation to practice so they are more confident and comfortable in the moment.

The “What we’d like to see instead”

– Female directors, designers, administrators and actors represented in equal numbers.

A project that could help us get there:

– Create a symbol of Awesome Lady Approval for arts organizations that meet a certain minimum set of Awesome Lady requirements. Before minimum wage was mandated if you were an employer willing to pay a certain wage you could display a certain color flag. What if Philly had a stamp that you could put in your program, on your door, in your marketing material that indicated that your company had a commitment to women in the artistic community? Using this positive reinforcement, we could also find ways to make sure our audience bases understood what this symbol means and to help promote the theaters that make this commitment.

The “What we’d like to see instead”

– More awareness of the size and scope of the problem.

Two projects that could help us get there:

– Create an Awesome Lady Squad shirt. Make it something awesome that you will definitely want to share with the world. Then make a promise that any time you wear it and someone sees it and asks about it you stop and take a second to share a bit about the vision of the squad. Possible offshoots:

Use any proceeds to fund childcare at future Awesome Lady Squad events
Organize a city-wide Awesome Lady Squad “shirt-in” day to show the size and reach of all the awesome ladies that live and work here

– A marketing effort in conjunction with our other projects (like the gender report card or Awesome Lady approval symbol) to help reach not only fellow creative sector workers but audiences as a whole. Use the model of the DC based female playwright initiative to create powerful marketing leverage that makes it Awesome and sexy to be a part of the movement.

The “What we’d like to see instead”

– A genuine curiosity in discussions we have with people about these issues. Figuring out what’s really motivating the choices that undercut female artists and getting at them. Not assuming the worst of our peers even if they display behavior we don’t approve of.

A project that could help us get there:

– Create a “Gender Parity Report Card”:

Develop a set of standards as a Squad for what poor, mediocre and outstanding work at creating equal opportunity for Awesome Ladies looks like.
Gather measurable, concrete, data to evaluate artistic producers in Philly and then create an awesome and well-articulated assessment of that data we share with these companies along with an invitation for dialogue about the results.
The key here is to find out 1) if theaters know their own stats in this regard 2) if there are trends that might indicate a lack of opportunity for women if they are willing to dialogue about how and why such trends occur 3) if they are willing to make a commitment to change

The “What we’d like to see instead”

– A way to share these issues with my male colleagues. A means by which they can help support these issues when they see them.

A project that could help us get there:

– Bring together an Awesome Lady Squad support team: Set up a meeting that includes a discussion forum specifically for guys who think the Awesome Lady Squad is awesome. Talk about ways that they can become Awesome Lady Allies and strategize about means through which they can help. Give them some of the tools we offer the core members so that they can go and spread the Awesome word.

And finally:

The “What we’d like to see instead”

– Funding targeted for women that doesn’t carry a social change element.

– Non-traditional funding opportunities and alternate way to fund and produce work

– Subversion of some of the power systems that currently undercut the issues we’ve discussed. Starting a conversation on “this is the way that funding has worked” and “here’s how it might work in the future”

A project that could help us get there:

– An Awesome Lady Grants and Funding Task Force that:

Meets and discusses what might be problematic about certain kinds of funding structures
Strategizes about ways to approach funders about these concerns
Envisions and articulates the kinds of funding we would wish in Philadelphia for the future and shares this vision with the funding community
Works together to try and brainstorm and create alternatives to the current structures

These are what I envision as the first tangible steps towards seeing the “What we’d like to see instead.” And over the next year, they’ll be the ways the Lady Squad starts gathering energy and focus around all those things we discussed.

The next step is to figure out which of these takes our energy and focus first.

If you have thoughts about what should happen first, let me know.

If you have expertise in one of these areas and want to help out, let me know.

If you have a lot of passion about one of the items and want to get in on the ground floor, let me know.

If you don’t really care where we get started but are interested in helping to organize or send emails or type minutes or whatever just let me at it, let me know too.

And soon, let’s say in the next couple weeks, we’ll roll out the first phase of one or more of these…

Until then…

Dispatches from The Awesome Lady Squad #3: In which the vision grows and begins to come into focus

Did you feel it?

On January 26^th at 9pm did you sense the pulling undertow of a wave the coming change? Or perhaps it was subtler, more like an aftershock. A tiny rumble under the feet that you almost could have missed.

Did you sit back and say, “Hey… Did Philadelphia just get a little more… Awesome?”

Well whether you noticed or not the unequivocal answer to that question is a big fat defiant “Oh, HELL Yes.” Because on January 26^th the Awesome Lady Squad gathered again for the second time. We chatted some more, shared topics and questions with those who couldn’t make it to the last meeting and even more excitingly began to come up with ideas for how we begin to spread.

Today’s mission on the blog: a recap of the last meeting.

Tomorrow’s: a roll out of some potential projects for the future.

So let’s get to it!

Below is a summary of the three main questions we talked about in the general order we tackled them:

i) What is your work? Does being female affect you as an artist/creator? Does it change the kind of work you make or the way in which you make it? If applicable, has that shifted in any way over time?

ii) How do you get it made? How does your female identity intersect with the ways you get your work into being? Do you think being a female artist differs from being a male one? If applicable, has that changed in any way since you started your career?

iii) What should the future look like? If money, time and other people’s attitudes were no barrier and the world could be exactly as you wish, what would be the working theater community look like? Try and answer as often as possible with “It would have –“ or “It would be – “ versus “It wouldn’t – “

And, as with the notes from the last one, these are some of the things we expressed, written down to the best of my note taking ability and grouped together by my own intuitive categories.

Making Your Own Work

– I’m curious to know how many people didn’t want to make their own work but started to because of lack of opportunity? (About half the room raises their hands.)

– My dance company really values showing the opposite of the expected, of the equality inherent in our values. The women also lift the guys because we want to show that women are equally capable.

– One of the reasons we started making our own work was to look at our perspective as women, especially as sexual people. Turns out that’s very hard and very complicated. I’m 36 now versus 26 when I started. Now I feel a stronger commitment to these issues now than when I was younger. Now I’m seeing more people, especially women creating their own work

– Does being female affect the work I make? The way I make it? Has it changed over time? Yes. Yes. and Yes. The reason I founded a company was to create opportunities that were lacking in my life. I wanted to get away from a spirit of competition that was not welcome to me. Philly has always been different than so many other places that I’d done theater. I picked here because that kind of competition wasn’t here when I started.

– I run a summer theater camp, about 2 years ago I started writing a children’s musical, the lead character was a guy, the best friend was a guy. I realized, I don’t think I’m telling a story that I as a little girl could identify with. So last summer I made sure that the two leads were both female.

The Need to Impress

– I recently had two young interns, one male and one female. And of course this is anecdotal, but I was so struck how the young woman spent almost all her time trying to impress me and figuring out how to help me do things and the young man spent all this time asking questions about things he wanted to know.

– It’s the audition paradigm. I feel pressure in this inherent idea that you have to impress. That even when you’re doing the work, good work people like, you’re still auditioning every day. That paradox, that are in tension with each other plague me wherever I go.

– My personal experience is that you’re applying for a job or going after a role and you’ve got 80% of the stuff they want, a man will apply. But women will say that I don’t know 20% of the job and not apply. That instinct to focus on the 20% unknown versus the 80% we do is part of the issue. In particular as a younger woman I get nervous about speaking something that is truthful for fear of offending. I wonder if maybe the outcome is not as bad as we fear.

– I was at an audition sitting with 4 or 5 actresses and we’d all done the work of reading the show before showing up. As we were talking we realized that we didn’t love the play. In fact, it was pretty bad and the female roles in particular were really bad. And as we’re talking about it, an actor that works all the time comes in. I asked if he’d read the play (no) and later found out he booked it that day and we didn’t. The point isn’t that I didn’t get cast. It’s like, why did I do all this work on something I didn’t care about? Why show up and get judged for something I don’t know that I even want to do. Young women want to impress. You’re constantly trying to insert “I am smart and just as good” into the conversation but you have to think about who you’re having the conversation with in the first place.

– Often I’m auditioning for a piece I didn’t conceive, for fewer female parts and parts I don’t really like. So now if I read it and I can’t sit in a comfortable place with it, I remember I don’t have to submit for it. If I’m not enthusiastic about it then why am I doing it? I would rather have les work that I’m more passionate about.

Being on the Management/Administrative Side

– I feel like I come from a different place because I’m a managing director, my experience has been that I came in and there were too many men. I’m really glad I’m here because there are now women. It’s a constant conversation in the office. The way that plays and playwrights are talked about. There’s something really strong advantages to “oh you’re here and at the table.”

– In the dance world there are a million female dancers, and so many times I see people get to a point where you have a company and working with all women, and then feel like they have to bring in a male dancer to legitimatize dance or funding or get audience

– I come from a different context, a new discipline, and when I decided I wanted to make performance, I was the only person doing that in Philadelphia at the time. There was no place that could support my work because I need aerial rigging. So we had to make every opportunity for ourselves, had to educate all our reviewers and audiences, and because all our work is inherently about women’s bodies and shapes, I don’t feel conflicted about that at all. I do feel disconnected sometimes but I’m free not to have to have someone else’s conversation.

– WHY do grants for women always seem to have to have a social change aspect??

Being A Spokeswoman

– In my company I became the self-appointed gender watchdog. I always made sure that there were equal female playwrights and directors and designers and roles. Sometimes I could feel eyes rolling.

– As a brand new company doing classical work, I want to help this company and tell these stories equally. But it’s really hard. What I need help with is figuring out how do you talk about it. What to do when I feel the eye roll. What to say when just a little attempt is not enough. How do I be assertive and say this is important? To get out of the place where I feel like I need to apologize.

– I am trained as performers and show my feelings. And that ends up hurting me sometimes. This matters to me and I hate feeling myself getting red and blushy and upset.

– I want to find ways to have open and non-defensive discussions about this. Getting men to understand that they don’t understand means more advocates on our side. It’s not a fight against, it’s fighting to bring them with.

– Being young, I’ve been in a position of having to learn a lot. If I get a gig I take it, if I take it then it seems like I have to deal with anything that happens. I’ve been doing a lot of backstage work – set design and carpentry. There are physical and weight carrying aspects that I see people not letting me take part in. I want to find a way to voice that I’ve not been treated like the others, that people won’t let me be the same. I’m trying to figure out how to voice this as a student, who admittedly doesn’t know as much.

Talking About How Identity and Labels Play Into the Work

– I struggle with having to make work about being a woman. Can it just be about me as a person, who happens to be a woman, or does it have to be a statement?

– It’s something I think about a lot. When I’m making work, I’m trying to think of things about sex and romance and body image, female topics, it’s something I struggle with internally, “Here she goes again talking about her hips.”

– No guy says “Am I just doing this because I’m a man?” I see so many women come in and apologize

– Because I’m Latina, I have to do Latina work. You don’t have the freedom of being a white man, it’s like being a white canvas, as soon as it’s a white woman, there’s more paint, with a Latina, there’s more even more paint

– Sometimes with women who’ve had to fight SO hard there’s a sense of I had to bust my ass and get here and you should too

What we’d like to see instead

– Funding targeted for women that doesn’t carry a social change element

– Female director and actors in equal numbers

– A genuine curiosity in discussions we have with people about these issues. Not assuming the worst.

– Women in funding positions, in places of deciding power over the work that gets made.

– A chance to practice these conversations and develop language that I am confident in ahead of time.

– New ways to fund and produce work that could subvert some of the power systems that currently undercut the issues we’ve discussed. Starting a conversation “this is the way that funding has worked” and “here’s how it might work in the future”

– A re-frame of how we look at each other, remove the model of scarcity, to a model of abundance. That no matter what work I make, not matter what economic level I make it at, to know that we are not in competition.

So there’s what we said. And tomorrow, check back in for some ways that we (and hopefully you too) can start to take action.

– A

Quickie

Just a reminder that we’ll be convening the Awesome Lady Squad this Sunday the 26^th at the Parlor (come snow or come sun) from 7 – 9 pm at The Arts Parlor (1170 S Broad Street).

All ladies of all genres are welcome – artists, administrators, creators, interpreters, any and all folks with thoughts about how they’d like to see women take part in the arts community in Philadelphia. Feel free to pass the invite along to others as well.

And if you want to make sure you’re on the list to hear all the awesome updates about the Awesome Lady Squad as they happen just click here and you’ll be assured to get the info.

Have an awesome day.

52 Weeks, 52 Plays: Week 2

So first off I want you to know that I’m aware it isn’t the second week of 2014.

I have been reading a play a week. I’ve just been a little backlogged in getting thoughts about them onto (virtual) paper. And I say this mostly because I am super judge-y of folks that start grand resolutions and barely complete the opening stages. And because I assume everyone in outside world is the same as the voices in my mind, I want to appease your judgments.

Clearly, there are times it’s a dark place in my brain.

Anyway.

For the second week of the year 2014 I read The Play About My Dad by Boo Kellebrew. For the uninitiated, a reminder that I’m intentionally not reviewing these works (you can read about why here) but instead free associating on the theatrical elements or ideas this play proposes or makes me think on.

The Play About My Dad is indeed, as the title suggests a play about the playwright and her father. It is also about Hurricane Katrina and the way in which we think about epic disaster on both the very small and personal and very large and overwhelming scales. The piece weaves past and present by jumping between conversations between the playwright and her father, ostensibly writing the play for the audience in this moment in front of us and three other perspectives on Long Beach Mississippi, a town very close to the Gulf and massively affected by the storm. The three other stories center around Essie – a woman who raised Larry (playwright Boo’s father), Neil and Kenny – a pair of EMTs who knew the family when Boo was young, and Rena, Jay and Michael – a family who are caught literally and figuratively over their heads when they try to ride out the storm and who meet Larry (a doctor) when they arrive at a local hospital.

Unlike the play from week 1, this piece is satisfyingly messy in lots of ways and doesn’t wrap up storylines in neat packages. There are little bits scattered through the play – the rift between Essie and her daughter – in which the playwright hints at connections between these characters and the turbulent relationship between the playwright and her father. The show is clearly a metaphor, but an incomplete one, one that seems not wholly processed or understood. I liked this about the work, that like most of us, our deepest interpersonal relationships are not ones that we often have completely sorted out and that this complexity is brought into sharp focus most when we are confronted with extreme calamity.

From the moment it begins there is a meta device at play in this play, one in which the playwright’s father is supposedly speaking to the audience. We hear “Boo” (the playwright’s same name) tell her father to stop putting on his “acting” voice. Later the same character points out the theatrical devices (changing lights to indicate shifts in time) that underpin the staging. “What a funny thing,” I thought as I read, “to draw my attention to the insincerity inherent in acting by one who is in fact acting and therefore inherently insincere themselves.” I looked up the show’s past production to note that in fact the performer was not the playwright’s father (nor did the playwright appear onstage) a fact the audience would ostensible know. It requires a fair amount of mental calculus I think to ask us to become aware to some aspects of the “falseness” while still blissfully suspending our disbelief for others.

This theater trick, one that happens a lot, falls under a category I call: The Betrayal of Fiona Shaw. A while back I saw her at BAM in Rime of The Ancient Mariner. At the start of the piece Ms. Shaw emerges from the wings in a track suit and tennis shoes. She walks out into the house and begins to talk with people one on one. Some are clearly friends she knows, others are strangers she greets and chit chats with. It was literally electric in its effect on the audience. It was one of the most amazing moments of theater I’ve seen in recent memory. She began to bring up men to the stage, one at a time, to try on a hat and strike a pose, ostensibly to take a small part in the story she was about to enact. Her simple presence, us knowing who she was and the fact that she was out among us made the entire room focus their attention like lasers on her. Small children’s arms almost pulled out of their sockets as they vied for a moment onstage. Men around me furtively chatted with their wives about whether they ought to throw themselves into the selection pool. It was fabulous.

And then. And then. And then.

And then Ms. Shaw brings up a guy with a super fake looking trench coat. He clearly has never worn such a coat in real life. She goes through the same motions but this time there’s something awfully rehearsed abut the proceedings. All of the energy and immediacy is gone. I notice he has dance shoes on. I look in the program and I can see there is a second performer in the picture of the show. And he looks exactly like this guy. Back in the performance she pretends as if she is dissatisfied and has him sit, not back in his seat, but in the front row while she selects a few more.

This, what I can now see is a charade, enrages me. All the things that I loved about the moment before now seem fake and tainted. I feel as if I have been tricked and I want to expose the trickster for doing so. So when, as I knew would happen, she goes back to the young dancer man with the shoes and the bad coat, I am nothing but smugly disappointed that I knew the whole thing was a lie.

This is the Betrayal of Fiona Shaw.

It isn’t that theater requires me to pretend. It’s that you take advantage of that generous instinct when you expose or undercut the fantasy with such antics but then require me not to go too far. Get me to think that I might get to be a part of the stage show, then make me feel foolish for have invested the energy to believe I could be in it.

Ms. Shaw’s Betrayal made me want to point out that I know that the actor playing Larry is not actually Boo’s father, nor is Boo actually Boo. Would it be impossible to truly put that person onstage? Maybe… There is something compelling about a “non-actor” (as one sees in some characters in a Wes Anderson movie or a piece like Beasts of the Southern Wild). As a group we discussed what it would be like in a play like this to work with the actual father, discussed the trickiness of this, because unlike a movie you not only have to pull this moment out of someone but get them to do so consistently, over and over again, that this is the endurance power that a theater maker needs. We settled on a wish for another layer for the work that says “I’m not actually the father but I’m going to act as if I am.”

What is barely indicated in the play is sound, a recurring fascination of mine, an element I think would also change this work intensely. I hear the sound of the storm as I read this play and I imagine it coming from everywhere. Again like the previous week’s play, the sense of the rhythm of this world as created by sound that surrounds the space, makes it more than a disengaged visual and binds the bodies of the viewers into the space. Unlike the previous week, the sounds of this world seems to need to be human sized and I kept hearing a chorus of voices rising and falling in layers of sound beds as the piece continued. In this vein, I love the idea of a performance in a place that was as anti-theatrical as the instinct to put the father onstage, to expose the workings. Perhaps it is a room where we see all of the things that make the play happen, capitalize on the power of theater to transform the pedestrian into the magical. Or perhaps we are in a space where there are dark corners and things that can hide unseeable but in plain view. Either way it feels like entrances from wings and “offstage” undercuts the feeling that all of this is happening right now around and among us, that there is no escaping and that we as the audience, just as the characters are bound to ride out this experience until its end. There are no places we can escape here.

Throughout the reading of it, this work made me think about the texture of water. Its undulating, slow amassing, its pelting cold, its fetid stagnation. Water is everywhere in this play – both in the imaginations of the characters and increasingly surrounding them as the story continues – and as a stager of plays I kept thinking, “In performance what would be more powerful if that presence were real or implied?” For the pair of EMTs stuck in an ambulance marking the level as it slowly raises around them, I really really wanted to see and feel real water. And contrastingly, with the family stuck in their attack, I wanted just the opposite – water that is implied through light, through sound, a presence that is ominous and lurking, but never actually visible.

There is something delicious about water in a theater space, an element that feels simultaneously alive and inhuman, one that is so incredibly un-controllable. Its presence en masse seems almost decadent. Why else do we coo at the thought of Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses in a pool? It feels like some of the purest kind of spectacle, almost cheap in its ease at satisfying our craving for theatrical effect. While discussing this play I came across a company that created a silent version of The Tempest for DC-based Synetic Theater.

Try and tell me that without the water that production looks half as interesting. In college, I created my first devised work on the Greek myth of Ceyx and Alcyone. It was one from the Zimmerman Metamorphoses actually and tiny Adrienne was so hungry to create in her own rehearsal room the lush grandeur that I saw in that production (three times, no less). In performance one of the buckets of water that we had placed onstage slipped out of the performer’s hands and covered the theater floor in an inch of standing water. The scenes that followed – one lover fighting another not to leave, a god destroying a tiny boat as its occupant’s families watched, the transformation of a sail into the giant wings of a bird – were all utterly transformed as water clung to the bodies and fabric. It was the moment I learned that as creators we must must must accept our lucky accidents. That we must be open to creative gifts that we haven’t planned. It elevated the thing I was trying to tell in a way I didn’t know I absolutely needed.

Theater always looks better with water. (Hey that’s Ben Camp in college!)

But I also wonder if that kind of clear and poetic and beautiful water is the same water of Kellebrew’s play. The kind of water in these pictures does indeed seem somewhat cruel but it is also achingly lovely. It, like a Baudelaire poem, is an image whose savagery is blunted by its beauty. And so perhaps to give us that poetic water is an easy out, a way to shield us from the real horror of such an experience. The other thing that I felt so intensely in this work is the suspense of waiting. Early on in the play, the semi-omniscient Kenny reveals that today is the day that he and Neil will die. In another space, this could be maudlin or silly, but here it truly sets the tone of anticipation. Of the sense that one’s outcome is determined and all that is left now that the wheels are in motion is to wait and wait and wait. So I wonder if the staging, like the play, doesn’t also require us to wait for that water, to want to feel its beauty at the same time we fear its power and perhaps, as Essie is released near the end, to use that loveliness when we need it most: in the midst of our most difficult moments, when we need to create poetry out of the depths of our despair.

And I think that’s about it for this one. Week three soon to come!

– A

And if you want a little bit more info about the playwright you can get her bio from her company CTown here: http://www.collaborationtown.org/whos-who.html

Dispatches from the Awesome Lady Squad, #2: In which the ladies plan to meet for a second time

I’ve been feeling lighter lately.

I’ve been walking around with just a bit more bounce in my step.

I’ve been feeling, well there’s just no other word for it, rather awesome indeed.

I believe I’ve been feeling that way because for the first time in a long time it seems like change is imminent. Over the past few years, I’ve spent a lot of time worrying about finding my place as an artist in the world. I’ve worried about whether I was doing the right thing. I’ve worried about whether a choice I made would get me on the right path. I’ve worried if I’d ever land in the place where I was supposed to be. But you know what? I think I’m finally, finally, finally, realizing that the whole idea that there is a right place, that there is one just path, that there’s even a standard of measurement that is anything close to absolute is a load of crap. And that realization is part of what I think is making me feel so awesome in particular about the Awesome Lady Squad.

After the last squadron meeting I felt the positive power of defining a new perspective. About refuting the idea that there is an absolute when it comes to what’s “normal or that there is a fixed set of disadvantages and that there are givens that stay given about the way that things work.

I thought about the way I run my theater company: as a hybrid artist somewhere between non-profit and individual who is able to make the kind of creative work that doesn’t fit easily into categories and still manage to pay my collaborators the same level as many mid-sized theaters in town. I’m pretty sure that if I’d asked my mentors first coming out of school if such a set up would be possible, they’d have all said no. My guess is that at that time they would have told me there wasn’t funding or structure or opportunity for such a different way of doing things.

At the time, there probably wasn’t an obvious route towards what I wanted.

Now, there is. But that’s only because I found it.

I’ve spent a lot of time in 2013 fretting about whether it’s possible to change how women are treated in the arts. And as one of the attendees from the last meeting said, it’s a feeling that has taken up a lot of space in my life. I’ve felt mad that things aren’t the way they should be. But at this moment, I’m a lot more interested in putting that energy towards actually getting them so they are.

Right now, the route to doing that isn’t obvious.

But after we do it, other cities can look to Philly and see that it was there all along.

The resolution I want you to join me on in 2014 is this: you have to know – not desire, not wish, not hope – but deep down truly know that there is a future world where the Awesome Lady Squad doesn’t need exist because we’ve solved all the problems we’ve identified. And we need to know that it’s going to become reality, and soon. Gathering people and realizing that you are not alone, that your perspective is one that is shared by many, that your view of the world need not be rage-inducing or isolating, that you can indeed find a space where every person around you also starts from the same set of ethical givens, this is the first step. It’s an important one. Because it’s the one where we all have to stop and say, hey, the things that I disagree with are actually NOT truth. They are NOT givens. Not in this room. Not right now.

And once we carve out a little bit of space to stake our the Awesome Lady Nation, we’ll be able to invite the rest of the world in as citizens. One by one, we’ll make them all denizens of our Awesome new world.

Charting that course is already underway and you can check out our first scouting mission here. On Sunday January 26^th from 7 – 9pm at the Arts Parlor (1170 S Broad) we walk just a little further down that road.

We’ll use the same format from last time, me asking some big questions, and you guys sharing your big answers. For a few hours in a few square feet of space we’ll create a world where people believe in equity and fairness and respect for female creators. And if we can make it true in a room at the Parlor for a few hours at a time, there MUST be a way to expand that perspective, that new sense of reality past that room and out into the world.

Hope to see you there.

An as always, thanks for being awesome.

– A

Dispatches from The Awesome Lady Squad: #1

At the start of 2014 I made a resolution to become a superhero.

I made a resolution to seek out and form a superhero-style team of bad-ass ladies who are art makers to help spread our art and bad-assery across the city of Philadelphia. I began forming a group that will henceforth be known as The Awesome Lady Squad.

Oh, excuse me. I meant to say:

First thing you ought to know: there are a lot of us.

I didn’t need to send out a bat signal. I only had to put up a single facebook post and a note on the blog. Almost as an afterthought. I thought I’d get a handful of people. A dozen if I was really lucky. Instead I found 40 people gathered with me last week for two hours to talk and share and start to plan. Clearly, there’s a need to be filled here.

Because from what I can tell, these awesome ladies are just the tip of the iceberg.

So here’s what we, the Awesome Ladies of the Awesome Lady Squad, did in our first gathering:

1) We put out a whole bunch more chairs (Because there were, you know, a lot of us).

2) I said hello. I said that I was excited (Because I really really was).

3) We went around and said our names and the kind of awesome stuff we make.

4) I shared a vision. It went something like this:

Hi, I am Adrienne.

And you are all awesome.

You are all awesome ladies.

I’ve been thinking a lot over the last year about what it means to be an awesome female artist and the rewards and challenges that come with that. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, in lots of different ways – through writing, through conversation with friends and colleagues, in the back of my brain as I do my work each day.

I think part of the reason I’ve been thinking about this so often is that one of the most powerful developments in my artistic life of last few years has been finding other women who make work. I’ve found women further along in their careers who have experience that inspires me. I’ve found brand new artists who come to the table with a whole new perspective that invigorates and uplifts me. And in meeting these creators, I’ve been craving a way to take all the interactions and thoughts and excitement generated with them individually, and collectivize that into something more power than any of us singularly might be able to achieve.

I believe in talking about problems and highlighting them. I’ve done a fair share of that over the last year. But even more, I want to assume that there are concrete things we can do, that with effort over time, can shift the problems we see into solutions. I believe very strongly in Philadelphia’s strength as an artistic community. I think we are different than most places in our support of each other as not only as creators but as human beings.

Which is why I’m inviting you to join me in a lofty goal: To make Philadelphia a model city. A model of the way we believe that female artists should be treated, a model for the kinds of work that’s possible when such awesome artists are allowed to access their full capacity, a model for how an imperfect situation can be shifted through collective effort and a will to do better.

What I want to do today is ask a series of questions that I hope will be useful in the future. I want to use your responses as a kind of divining rod for what work we should be doing. For what it’s worth, my assumption is that there is no such thing as a singularity of perspective. I think there is no such thing as “a” female creative voice. So it’s great if you share someone else’s experience. But I think it’s interesting and useful to hear a multitude of opinions even if they differ. We begin from a place of respect and support. So feel free to respond to a question however you want to, even if you are a minority voice. That’s the Awesome Lady Squad way.

And for today, you’d prefer to just listen, that’s cool too.

I think we ought to get started.

And then we moved onto the last part of the meeting:

5) We got down into the dirt and started digging.

The two-hour conversation that followed, it flowed, it morphed, and it moved all around. It was, I have to say, pretty damn awesome. These are the three main questions we talked about in the general order we tackled them:

i) What is your work?

Does being female affect you as an artist or creator? Does it change the kind of work you make or the way in which you make it? If applicable, has that shifted in any way over time?

ii) How do you get it made?

How you get your work into being? Does being a female artist differ from being a male one? What are the advantages or disadvantages? Are there things you crave or stuff you wish could be different? If applicable, has that changed in any way since you started your career?

iii) What should the future look like?

If money, time and other people’s attitudes were no barrier and the world could be exactly as you wish, what would be the working theater community look like? Try and answer as often as possible with “It would have –” or “It would be – ” versus “It wouldn’t –”

And these are some excerpts of what people shared, grouped roughly by my own intuitive categories:

Making it work in the current system or setting off on your own

– When I started working, I was auditioning in NYC with a million women and 5 men who all got cast. It was a constant feeling of, “God I hope there’s a part for me.” That was the model for a long time. But at some point I decided I wasn’t willing to sit and wait around for theaters to call me. That all changed when I started making my own work.

– I stay away from classic pieces. I don’t like the kinds of women in those stories. They aren’t familiar. They aren’t modern. They say things I don’t agree with. And yet, a lot of modern drama, I don’t see myself in either. I think this is why there are so many creator-slash-director-slash-performer-slash-I do everything people here. Because it’s an outlet. If I’m always going to be assigned this kind of play through the traditional spaces, I’ll just go make my own.

– It’s a real privilege to be able to make one’s own work, to self-produce and get space and money, etc. In addition to gender both race and socioeconomic status factor in. It can be shocking how segregated theater is.

– A few years ago I did this show that required me to bring myself to the work. It was a turning point in my life. Men have had a big voice for a long time. I see the context of this moment in this room, of women finding their voice. We are getting closer. The younger people in this room, I wish I had come out of college like you saying, “Yeah I can do whatever I want.” And it makes me hope this room may not be needed 20 years from now.

Juggling identities, finding one’s place in the artistic world

– There’s a catch 22 sometimes. The roles that are available are fewer, and they are more likely written poorly or as a stereotype. But if you protest how women are represented you’re not supporting the director’s vision. It’s actually a very patriarchal system by its nature. I want to work and it feels like I’m choosing between being seen or sticking to principles.

– I have kids and lots of life in addition to my identity as an artist. I have to juggle so much more compared to men. My sense is that unlike men I see who just say yes when opportunity arises, I have to “check” to see if there’s a conflict with others’ need for me. I’ve started embracing the doing of everything. And realizing I just need to say yes rather than check.

– I have been lucky in not getting cast by “regular” theaters. It’s meant I primarily have a resume of projects that are devised rooms full of women that are awesome and not “normal” roles. Go up for things that aren’t me, I always felt really strange at the auditions. That strangeness and otherness that kept me from getting parts became the work I’m now known for.

– As a young artist, I sign on for projects because I want to be doing. But I think I have to look at it and saying, do I really want to be doing this? Maybe I just can’t be a part of this. Ethically sticking to our guns will matter in the long run.

Strengths and challenges in being a female artist

– I notice that I’m often asked to be nurturing. I’ve never seen actors ask a male director ask for that. I’m not looking to be cruel, but I don’t want to be required to have a motherly element.

– I think it’s important to remind myself sometimes that I believe in listening and being attentive. That’s my strength as a creator. It took a long time not to feel bad about it.

– All of the working models were very male. Very auteur mindset. I get so tired of that word. But its useful to remember there are things that style can’t do. Collaborating, cooperating, being sensitive, working differently with different people, facilitate for collaboration. Those are artistic strengths. And I think we need a model that celebrates that.

– Collaboration that is very deep produces different art. It can solve problems in new ways. If you don’t have to worry about the desire to put a stamp on everything as “mine” you have room to find the actual best idea.

– Creating a warm and collaborative environment has demonstrably powerful effects. Collaborators have told me it’s an easier space to work in.

Habits, situations and problems that need to change

– I hate saying sorry. I hear sorry a lot. “I’m sorry can I ask this question?” “I’m sorry but have you noticed this?” I’m sorry but I think that maybe there’s another way to do this.” I hear myself making excuses before even start talking.

– I also can get mad about the fact that if I were a man I’d be working more. And when I see scripts that say shitty things about women I get mad that I can’t direct them. Because I want more work, but I also can’t do that play.

– This is the trouble with being a “mercenary” working on other people’s shows. Lately I feel like the representative woman in the room. I become acutely aware if I end up seeing something I disagree with. I only want to put my name on things that represent my ethics but I am young and don’t want to overstep bounds. I don’t want to “not work” because of this.

– I’ve been told that I didn’t have enough vision as a director. I think what’s actually going on is that I don’t articulate “vision” in this masculine way.

– I also don’t know why but I get worried if my work feels like a stereotype. If I explore gender in my art it feels like a stereotype. Why do I feel defensive about exploring genuine questions for myself?

– It’s tricky to try and start these conversations. I don’t want to punish people who don’t realize what they’re doing but it’s tiring. It feels like I’m doing calculus on this issue and they’re doing arithmetic. At a certain point it’s hard to be impressed that they can add simple numbers.

Getting the support to get your work made

– A huge aspect of this also comes into play with the funding community. Often you’re forced into writing about your work in male language. Can we talk to the funding community about how the way their language is gendered? The most insidious glass ceilings are in the semantics of that language itself.

– I dealt with a funder who just didn’t think the work I did qualified me as an artist. And I had to realize they don’t hate me, they literally just don’t understand. That took an enormous amount of energy and engendered a world of anger in my life. I am tired of feeling like all the dudes get opportunities. I am tired of thinking “This is no fucking fair.” I don’t want that rage to take up all that space in me.

– It’s also important to stop seeing status that doesn’t matter to you. It’s easy to get caught in what other people tell you are important. How can you say no to this thing that other people would kill for? I’ll tell you how, because I don’t value it.

– The funders, the presenters, they need to change. We also need more women in these roles and need to become aware. Eventually they have to die. But we also have to get into positions where we can make them change the system.

And finally, we ended the conversation by starting a list of things we’d love to see, things that might be a good place to start if we’re trying to make an awesome future:

– I wish Philly had a grant for women that was not linked with social change

– I want to see equal genders represented in directors, actors, plays, etc.

– I’d like a world where we stand up for each other.

– I want more resource sharing – of space, info, etc

– I want more women becoming the new gate keepers of festivals, funding, etc

– I’ve never seen a woman direct, never assisted, etc. I want to see that.

– I want funded apprenticeship with younger artists with older female artists.

– I want to offer and accept opportunities, not just wait for things to come to me, but actively give whatever I can to folks coming down the pike.

So.

What comes next?

First thing: another meeting. This will either be Sunday 1/26 or Monday 1/27 in the evening with the same format as meeting #1 to give 9 – 5ers that couldn’t get to the first one a chance to share their thoughts too.

And then?

Well, I’m going to think long and hard about how to take these awesome thoughts and feelings and translate them into a setting where we can start to take action. This is really where I think the Awesome Lady Squad really will become a superpower. I know that we are capable of changing some of the problems we see and my hope is to come up with a plan for how to do that. If you have ideas, feel free to send them along!

That’s it for now.

Oh, and thanks for being awesome.

– A