DG National Report: D.C. by Gwydion Suilebhan
@dramatistsguild @GwydionS
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably noticed that DC recently played host to the Women’s Voices Theatre Festival: more than 50 new plays, all written by women, produced by more than 50 theater companies in DC. Quite an achievement.
The mission of the festival was to “highlight the scope of new plays being written by women, and the range of professional theater being produced in the nation’s capital.” Given the quality of the work that appeared our stages, it’s safe to say that the mission was, in fact, accomplished. But did the festival actually move the needle on gender parity… which was, it would seem safe to assume, its raison d’être? The unfortunate but honest answer: a bit, but only time will tell whether the changes will stick.
According to the early results of this year’s DC Theater Demographic Study, which I conducted with my partner Olivia Haller, 36.7% of the plays being produced this season were written by women. (It’s a preliminary number—our final report will be issued this coming spring—but it’s at least 95% accurate.) That 36.7% seems like progress. It represents an increase over the previous three years, during which we saw numbers of 28.7% (2014-15), 25.9% (2013-14), and 21% (2012-13), after all. But a quick dig below the surface tells a more complicated story.
The first number that gave us pause was 23, which represents the number of plays whose authorship would STILL have to change from male to female to achieve parity. Another 23 plays in a season that only includes 180 overall: it seems like a tall order, especially given the fact that the Women’s Voices Theatre Festival was a one-year phenomenon. We may, in fact, see a bit of a regression next year, rather than continued progress, though only time will tell.
(On the other hand, 23 plays isn’t THAT huge a number. There are only 44 theaters in our study, after all, so if half of them take one more step forward, we might be there. Fingers crossed?)
Here’s another data point that seems to be worth examining: 38.9%. That’s the percentage of new plays in the current season as well, a figure that’s bumped up quite a bit from the previous two seasons (32.6% and 30.2%, respectively, in 2014-15 and 2013-14).
(For context, our analysis divided the season into three types of productions: new plays, which included first, second, and third productions; plays by living playwrights; and plays by dead playwrights.)
During a season in which DC theaters produced a significantly larger number of world premieres than they ever have before, where did those production slots come from? They were largely taken from what we might call the entrenched power base of classical theater: the dead playwrights, whose share of the season fell from 22.1% to 18%. (Plays by other living playwrights fell, too, but less sharply: from 45.3% to 43.1%.) Seems like a victory for those of us living and writing in the 21st century, no? Let’s hope it holds, though it’s safe to assume a bit of a regression here, too, now that the Festival is over.
And the final number to take a look at: 16.2%. That’s the number of plays in this year’s DC theater season that were written by playwrights who live in the DC metropolitan area. It represents a slight uptick from last season (15.6%), which was itself a big jump from two seasons ago (12.6%)… but the number three seasons ago was pretty much the same (16%) as it is now, so there’s no clear trend. Perhaps a DC Voices Theatre Festival might make sense somewhere down the road, too?
And perhaps, at the end of the day, the only thing that will actually move the needle on gender parity is… well, gender parity: a commitment by theaters to maintain a five-year or seven-year rolling average of 50% plays by women. Then we won’t need any festivals at all. We’ll be able to celebrate Women’s Voices all the time…