Up the Sisterhood!
Mon, 6 Dec 1999, 03:51 pmWalter Plinge9 posts in thread
Up the Sisterhood!
Mon, 6 Dec 1999, 03:51 pmOK I have a question, one I hope will lead to intellegent discussion and not nasty fingerpointing and intellectual skullduggery.
If men are in such short supply in ameteur theatre, why don't more companies do plays for women? Indeed with the ratio of men to women you would think almost all of the plays out there would be predominantly female and yet they're not.
And before I hear the cries of "There are no plays written for women!!" how come Kim Shaw has managed to find brilliant ones for Blak Yak every year since our inception?
Riddle me that Batman!!
LEAH
If men are in such short supply in ameteur theatre, why don't more companies do plays for women? Indeed with the ratio of men to women you would think almost all of the plays out there would be predominantly female and yet they're not.
And before I hear the cries of "There are no plays written for women!!" how come Kim Shaw has managed to find brilliant ones for Blak Yak every year since our inception?
Riddle me that Batman!!
LEAH
RE: Up the Sisterhood!
Mon, 6 Dec 1999, 11:07 pmHi Leah
> And before I hear the cries of "There are no plays written for women!!" how come
> Kim Shaw has managed to find brilliant ones for Blak Yak every year since our
> inception?
As Kim and several others are proving on a regular basis, there are plenty of excellent plays with a surfeit of roles for women. In fact, a quick search of the ITA library shows that there are no less than 372 plays in the catalogue with roles for four women... and that's not counting plays with roles for 5 or more!
However, we all know that historically women have been under-represented on the stage. While there may be a growing collection of plays offering truly magnificent roles for women, there's still a very much larger group of very worthwhile plays that don't present much in the way of female roles.
I think personally it comes down to committment. Kim is clearly committed to searching out these new plays to take advantage of the pool of strong female talent present in her "community". This must require determination and focus; a focus on plays with strong female casts. Other directors will choose to focus on other priorities when looking at a script.
I've rarely based a choice of play on the ratio of gender opportunities presented. I'm not suggesting that Kim does, but i imagine it rates more highly as a priority for her than for me. I certainly consider the likelihood of being able to cast the major roles from the pool of available people - and this might sometimes sway me away from some of the testes fest's towards a strong female cast.
Another factor is undoubtedly a lack of familiarity with more recent plays providing more and better opportunities for women. The stories may be apocryphal, but how many directors do you know that choose to do a play because they have seen it done before? Like the proverbial chicken and egg, these plays might be performed more if people got to see them more often!
Cheers
Grant
> And before I hear the cries of "There are no plays written for women!!" how come
> Kim Shaw has managed to find brilliant ones for Blak Yak every year since our
> inception?
As Kim and several others are proving on a regular basis, there are plenty of excellent plays with a surfeit of roles for women. In fact, a quick search of the ITA library shows that there are no less than 372 plays in the catalogue with roles for four women... and that's not counting plays with roles for 5 or more!
However, we all know that historically women have been under-represented on the stage. While there may be a growing collection of plays offering truly magnificent roles for women, there's still a very much larger group of very worthwhile plays that don't present much in the way of female roles.
I think personally it comes down to committment. Kim is clearly committed to searching out these new plays to take advantage of the pool of strong female talent present in her "community". This must require determination and focus; a focus on plays with strong female casts. Other directors will choose to focus on other priorities when looking at a script.
I've rarely based a choice of play on the ratio of gender opportunities presented. I'm not suggesting that Kim does, but i imagine it rates more highly as a priority for her than for me. I certainly consider the likelihood of being able to cast the major roles from the pool of available people - and this might sometimes sway me away from some of the testes fest's towards a strong female cast.
Another factor is undoubtedly a lack of familiarity with more recent plays providing more and better opportunities for women. The stories may be apocryphal, but how many directors do you know that choose to do a play because they have seen it done before? Like the proverbial chicken and egg, these plays might be performed more if people got to see them more often!
Cheers
Grant