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Christine Howey takes the Cleveland Public Theatre stage in January with her autobiographical solo piece Exact Change and quite a story to tell. Her journey began as Richard Howey, who, growing up in the ‘50s, liked Roy Rogers but also liked Dale Evans. He ached to do what the girls were doing and devised ingenious ways to deal with well-meaning psychologists. Along the way, he discovered that the most tortured soul could be soothed through playing other people’s lives on the stage. Acting credits following his graduation from Kent State University included Richard Nixon (Gore Vidal’s An Evening with Richard Nixon), the title role in James Leo Herlihy’s Terrible Jim Fitch; and Givola in Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Artuo Ui.

In fact, it was during a performance of Good, by C.P. Taylor, that Howey realized the shocking dissonance between the (male) role he was playing on stage and the one he was living in real life. A poem entitled “End Play” describes how he went up on his lines with four minutes to go in a seven-minute monologue, “Dark terror lit brilliant by ten overhanging suns. You want words?/Here are words: I don’t belong here! Not like this! This is not who I am!” Adding insult to injury, a fellow actor (playing the role of Hitler, no less) consoled him afterwards: “‘Don’t worry: nobody knew.’/ When Adolf is your comfort, how deep is your fall?”

By the time Howey made a first attempt at writing for the stage, it was the 90s and Richard had become Christine. Theatre now offered a vehicle to explore and share the inner byways of the transgender world. And so she penned the autobiographical one-hander Making Faces. She planned to play the 25 characters herself until her director (wisely) counseled against it with a simple “You’re not right for this.” The play had a New York Equity Showcase production in 1999 starring Lenny Pinna, with Jim Sterner directing.

While Howey’s performing voice would go silent for nearly 30 years, it was loud and clear off-stage. She spent 35 years as a copywriter and creative director in advertising. Her second career, now seventeen years old, is as one of Cleveland’s most respected theatre critics. But her first and ongoing love was poetry, the stuff that now fills her plays – and in August won a standing ovation at the National Poetry Slam in Boston as she read her poem “Passing.”

It was clear from a workshop production of her solo piece Like a Doberman on a Quarter Pounder, which ran last season at Cleveland Public Theatre, that Howey was ready not only to return to the stage, but to be “right” for this role. Audiences embraced both the work and the performance.

In assembling material for the upcoming Exact Change, Howey has pulled material from both Making Faces and Doberman and then digs deeper into her transsexual journey. As she points out, the rate of attempted suicides in the general population is around 1.5%; in the transgender population, it’s 41%. Violence against this particular demographic is equally staggering. In one poem/vignette from Exact Change, Howey remembers Cemia (“CC”) Acoff, a 20-year-old woman (born Carl) found in March 2013 in a pond in suburban Cleveland, her body tied to a block of concrete. News accounts that referred to her as “it” and offered irrelevant details about her apparel became a source of instant outrage in the LGBT community.

Howey hopes there is a future for her work on college campuses and with anyone wanting to know about the lives of transgendered people. She is prepared to talk forever. And it’s a role that suits her fine.

fsholiton@dramatistsguild.com

@dramatistsguild @kimstinson

Having flown away from The Dramatists Guild’s Second National Conference less than a week ago, I feel renewed and refreshed as a writer. It was amazing to connect with other playwrights from around the country to discuss craft as well as share ideas. This is happening not just on a national level at the Guild conferences every two years, but is happening on a monthly basis on the local level. Here in North Carolina, we have at least three playwriting groups. North Carolina has three geographically diverse sections of the state – mountains, piedmont and coast. Oddly enough, each of these sections is home to its own playwriting group.

In the mountain region, there is the Lost Playwrights of Western North Carolina. Run by Ludy Wilkie, this group meets once a month. Typically meeting at the Hendersonville Library, they sometimes change meeting locations. The group shares their collective theatrical experience with one another through reading members’ works and providing feedback. There are no dues associated with this group.

In the piedmont area, The Greensboro Playwrights’ Forum (GPF) also meets once a month on the second Wednesday at 7 p.m. They have a writing assignment for each month that is given prior to the meeting. Playwrights then bring their response to the writing assignment to share with the group for feedback. One example of a past writing assignment is, “Write a short play that takes place on a front porch. A weather system of some kind is coming in or is already there. Use the line, ‘How many can you fit in there?’”

GPF also conducts readings of members’ plays at the meetings. This group has a long history of producing plays chosen through various contests in addition to holding the monthly meetings. The meetings are at the Greensboro Cultural Center at 200 N. Davie Street. The meetings are open to the public, but in order to be a full member, one must pay a yearly membership fee of $25.

The coastal region has the youngest playwriting group as it was started early in 2013 by DG member Susan Steadman. Steadman moved from the Atlanta area to Wilmington and had trouble finding an already established group. So, she began her own. The Port City Playwrights’s Project (PCPP) meets at Old Books on Front Street at 249 N. Front Street in Wilmington. At the meetings, the group reads writing by members as chosen at a previous meeting. The works are discussed in a respectful and open way so that playwrights can improve their work. PCPP hopes to produce some of their members’ work in the future. Current plans are to have their first readings sometime around Valentine’s Day 2014.

All of these groups are doing something that the Guild advocates: They are making things happen for themselves rather than waiting for opportunities that may never appear. After attending the “Self-Production Primer” by Roland Tec and Rebecca Stump at the conference, I am an even stronger advocate of this philosophy myself. If you are a North Carolina playwright in search of a writing group, join one of these mentioned here. Or, if these groups are not close enough to you, start one on your own.

kstinson@dramaatistsguild.com

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While this report is designated Los Angeles, I am technically the Southern California regional rep, which means I occasionally venture out and meet wonderful playwrights from as far away as San Diego, Ontario, Palm Springs and – most recently – Orange County.

In May, I headed to The Big Orange to powwow with the Orange County Playwrights Alliance (OCPA) at the beautiful Chapman University. I was there ostensibly to share my knowledge of self-producing, but I was the one who got schooled. The OC has it going on!

According to OCPA director and Guild member Eric Eberwein, in the lates 80s, “Orange County theatre was just South Coast Repertory, Laguna Playhouse and a bunch of bad theatres named after cities.

“But then someone got the notion that Orange County was ready for non-Equity storefront theatre of a more provocative nature. Storefronts are the middle ground between community and professional 99-seat Equity theatre (which is popular in Los Angeles).”

Pioneering companies like STAGES Theatre, Alternative Rep, Revolving Door Productions and Vanguard Theatre Ensemble began popping up: attracting attention and audiences. They paved the way for more intrepid groups: Rude Guerrilla Theatre Out, The Chance, The Maverick and Breath of Fire Latina Theatre Ensemble were.

Some are no longer, while others continue to evolve and thrive. Today, Orange County boasts more than twenty theatre companies and more than 100 produced playwrights.

In 1995, seven playwrights converged to form OCPA (ocplaywrights.org). That organization still exists today serving its 30+ playwrights including Guild members Erica Bennett, Frank Farmer and Johnna Adams whose play Gideon’s Knot was published in American Theatre magazine in 2012.

OCPA recently presented as part of its quarterly staged reading series Discoveries: Where We Find Ourselves, featuring five new one-act plays by its members, at the Newport Theatre Arts Center.

Another playwright-managed organization, New Voices Playwrights Theatre, was founded in 1997. According to John Lane, New Voices president, “We are slightly younger in origin than OCPA. A group of us took playwriting classes at SCR in Costa Mesa and decided to continue to meet for our playwriting development and to produce our own plays occasionally.”

New Voices (newvoicesOC.wordpress.org) currently has sixteen members, some of whom (including Lane) are also members of OCPA. “We have been associated with several small theatres in OC, usually filling in their open slots during the run of their shows.”

Case in point: New Voices recently presented Spring Voices, a four-night production featuring eight one-act plays by its members, at the Stage Door Repertory Theatre in Anaheim.

A major theatrical event for local playwrights is OC Centric: Orange County’s New Play Festival, now in its third year. According to Tamiko Washington, artistic director and producer, “OC-centric is the only new play festival in Southern California that draws on the talents of professional actors, directors and designers to exclusively present new works from Orange County playwrights.”

Not simply staged readings, but fully realized productions of two full-length plays and two one-acts which are mounted at Chapman University each season.

Guild member Julie Tosh was part of that festival held August 15 – 25. Her play

Skirt is a drama about a teenage girl who decides to wear a short skirt to school in an effort to “change the subject” from the tragic accident that disabled her brother.

“After working on this play at Carnegie Mellon and The Playwrights’ Center of Minneapolis, I was dying to see Skirt up on its feet again,” Tosh said.

“The play explores disability in a very theatrical way that doesn’t always reveal itself well in a reading. I was honored the Festival took it on. The artistic directors really grasped what I was going for and brought it to life with such vividness. It was a great first production in my new home base in Southern California.”

ldharris@dramatistsguild.com

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Scenes from the Common Wealth: Short Plays & Monologues by Kentucky Women, a new book published by MotesBooks (www.motesbooks.com) this past summer is edited by Shan R. Ayers, DG member playwright and professor of theatre at Berea College in Kentucky. Ayers was inspired to put together this excellent volume of dramatic writing in response to the recent furor over the continuing paucity of productions in American theatre by women playwrights. In his introduction to the anthology, Ayers takes issue with the designation “women’s plays” for its reductive connotation. “Yes, this anthology is limited to plays written by women specifically tied to Kentucky, but the packaging is simply to allow for greater focus on these works by these women. We have too many anthologies dedicated to the usual canon of ‘dead white male’ playwrights, and their plays are never labeled ‘men’s plays.’”

In her Foreword, the award-winning playwright Heidi Saunders provides a keen description of the work: “The themes in this collection of scripts include the devastating impact of self-delusion, the link between mortality and dignity, between morality and death, the bonds of family, and how hiding secrets destroy lives. These plays examine the healing paths taken or not taken, paths acknowledged or paths overlooked, and they embrace what is most important in life.”

This outstanding compilation of works by most of Kentucky’s best playwrights and writers – Naomi Wallace, bell hooks, Arlene Hutton, Sallie Bingham, Liz Fentress and Nancy Gall-Clayton, among others – is a must-read that deserves to grace the shelves of your personal library.

Jeremy Gillett, an extraordinary actor and playwright, was born in Cedar Falls, Iowa, grew up in Chicago and Texas and spent his formative years in Lexington, Kentucky. He was bitten by the theatre bug while attending Bluegrass Community and Technical College (BCTC) where he was mentored by professor Tim X. Davis and appeared in several college productions including performances at the American College Theatre Festival. Davis cast the fledgling actor in his first professional production, playing Cutler in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. “Throughout that process, Tim taught me how to conduct myself as a professional actor,” stated Jeremy in an email exchange. “Tim saw something in me and reached out to me. He encouraged my talent and intellect.”

Jeremy subsequently enrolled at the University of Kentucky where he majored in Theatre and rapidly excelled in classes and in Theatre Department main stage productions. I had the great good fortune to work with Jeremy in my independent study course in Playwriting where he developed his full-length play Black & 25 in America that, according to Gillett, “explores the issues of race, class, gender and identity through the life stories” of a diverse group of characters, giving the audience “insight on what it means to be a young, black adult in America through a series of vignettes,” all performed with theatrical precision and riveting subtlety by Gillett. “The play reveals how each character feels invisible and without voice.” The play, directed by UK Associate Professor Dr. Vershawn Young, was performed in the Lucille Little Black Box Theatre at UK.

Gillett graduated and went on to continue his studies at Arizona State University in the MFA Acting Program and will be graduating in the spring of 2014. He was recently honored to be selected as the first National Diversity Intern for the Broadway League and ATPAM and travelled to New York to meet with Broadway producers and professionals. This past summer, Jeremy brought his play to BCTC for a return engagement. The play has been further developed over the years and Jeremy’s performance in the piece is pitch perfect. He hopes to take the play on tour across the country over the next couple of years to college campuses and local theaters. “I believe the message and the questions in the show are important and the stories need to be told.” I wholeheartedly agree. For those of you interested in learning more about Jeremy Gillett and Black & 25 in America, contact Jeremy directly at rese98@aol.com.

hfarrell@dramatistsguild.com

Jeremy Gillett in Black And 25 in America.

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John Biguenet is the author of seven books, including The Torturer’s Apprentice: Stories and Oyster, a novel, as well as such award-winning plays as The Vulgar Soul, Rising Water, Shotgun, Mold, and Night Train, which he developed on a Studio Attachment at the National Theatre in London. His new play, Broomstick: Confessions of a Witch, won a Continued Life of New Plays Fund Award.

ROB FLORENCE: What impact does this region have on your writing? What does it mean to you personally to be a South Louisiana writer?

JOHN BIGUENET: As reality television programs such as Swamp People continue to demonstrate, the difficulty in setting stories or plays here is that audiences want their sense of New Orleans and Louisiana as romantically exotic locales to be confirmed – rather than to be confronted by the much more complex truth about what is happening at the mouth of the continent’s largest river. And whether we’re talking about the failure of underfinanced federal infrastructure, leading to such disasters as the flooding of New Orleans in the 2005 collapse of defective levees designed and built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, or the unwillingness of the nation to address climate change, resulting in Louisiana coastal erosion equivalent to the loss of a football field of coastline every half hour, we’re not just talking about what has already happened but what is going to happen. As I’ve argued elsewhere, this is where the future has arrived first. So when I write about my city and state, I’m also writing about the next hundred years of the country and perhaps the world.

RF: What impact do you notice the region having on other writers?

JB: Living in the wetlands as we do, writers here tend to be attuned to the delicate ecological balances that sustain life. So in a sense, there are no minor characters when we tell a story; each character is part of a web that tightens or slackens around everyone else in the narrative. An individual’s small disturbances are amplified in the larger community of characters. Of course, especially in a region that honors tradition, that community may well extend all the way to the graveyard; the enthusiasm for ghost stories here suggests a recognition of the past’s bony grip on the present. And just as our characters can’t outrun history, they also have a hard time escaping their links to family, church, and land. I had a local student who was deeply troubled by Descartes’ formula: “I think; therefore, I am.” I asked the young woman how she would phrase a proof of the self. She answered, “We are; therefore, I am.”

RF: What difficulties did you face in writing about the flooding of New Orleans and its aftermath in your Rising Water Trilogy and elsewhere?

JB: The most immediate problem, both for The New York Times columns I wrote once we had returned to the city after martial law was lifted and for the plays I began in the year following, was the absence of narrative structures in the American literary canon to describe the destruction of an entire city. I had to turn to post-war German literature and Japanese writing after the Kobe earthquake to find models. Another problem was to distinguish the manmade catastrophe in New Orleans from the natural disaster that wiped out much of the Gulf Coast. As audiences of Rising Water invariably said at talkbacks following productions around the country, “We had no idea that’s what happened to New Orleans. We thought a hurricane wiped it out.” And, of course, the simple tasks of daily life were very complicated in a city with only ten percent of its population having returned, with armed soldiers in Humvees patrolling impassible streets, with no mail delivery, with most neighborhoods pitch dark at night, and with our own house along with hundreds of thousands of other houses moldering in ruins.

rflorence@dramatistsguild.com

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This year, five local playwrights participated in Baltimore’s first season of what we hope will be many seasons of the Baltimore Footlights Reading Series. Graciously hosted by the Audrey Herman Spotlighters Theatre, we had an opportunity to share our newest drafts in front of appreciative and attentive listeners and receive feedback about our latest work. I asked each of the participants to reflect on the process.

RICH ESPEY: What was the biggest thing you learned about your play from the reading?

JOHN MOROGIELLO (Civilizing Lusby): I learned two things, both of them reluctantly: somewhere in the second half I neglected the importance of my female characters, and my play needs an intermission.

MARK SCHARF (Fortune’s Child): The reading confirmed the importance of excellent actors and a director who also likes the play – artists who illuminate all the small and big rooms and passageways in the play and approach the play from a position of “How can I make this work” instead of “Defend things to me.”

RE: What did the reading prompt you to do next? Have you done it?

PATRICIA MONTLEY (Shattering): Some audience members doubted my premise: that a fourteen-year-old African-American would be released from juvenile commitment into the foster care of an older white woman whose son he helped to murder. After the reading, I asked a social worker with lots of experience in the juvenile justice system to look at the script. She reinforced that my premise was credible, but I learned that I needed to acknowledge this audience doubt in the dialogue itself.

MS: The reading made me think more about my feelings regarding the viability of an ensemble piece vs. a strict single protagonist. It also made me reconsider the title, and I am still chewing on whether or not to make the change.

RE: Did the “deadline” of a public reading spur your creativity or force you to get a draft done earlier than you would have? Was this a good incentive?

JM: Nothing prods like panic

MS: A deadline with a performance of any kind at the end always helps to focus my mind.

RE: Were there any less tangible benefits from the reading (or series) for you? Contacts, new people to meet, getting to know actors and directors, etc.?

SUSAN MIDDAUGH (Not in Service): I was thrilled to locate ethnically diverse actors after reaching out to friends. The end result was very positive.

JM: Perhaps the greatest benefit for me was meeting so many playwrights in Baltimore and being exposed to their work. This was my first opportunity to talk shop with them. To be a playwright in Maryland is to be torn between Baltimore and Washington. I was happy to see Baltimore reach out to me in a way that D.C. never has despite 20 years in the area.

RE: What would you change about the series for next season?

JM: I would like to see Baltimore’s Equity theaters take notice of this series and send representatives to each reading. Both of them seem more interested in writers from beyond the Potomac and Mason-Dixon Line than in home-grown talent.

SM: It would be a big incentive if one of the sponsoring theaters agreed to produce one of the plays that are in the Footlights Series during its regular season.

We’re excited for season number two coming up this year, and we’ll be hosted by both Spotlighters and Single Carrot Theatre. Check those emails and join us!

respey@dramatistsguild.com

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We playwrights dedicate talent, time, and energies to telling our stories. But what action do we take once we’ve typed Curtain to signal we’ve finished telling the story? Do we give in to rewarding ourselves for finishing the current project by immediately circulating and submitting it? Or, do we let self-doubts compel us to shelf a script we do not have energy to deal with after re-reading (and not being satisfied with) what we wrote? Even though the pull in either direction can be tempting, at gut level we know the mature approach is to acknowledge more work always needs to be done to get a script to a production-ready state. For me, knowing that other playwrights also struggle with shepherding their scripts is therapeutic. I got a big dose of that therapy when I had the honor of hosting a panel at the August DG Conference in Chicago. On this panel, John Weidman, Rebecca Gilman, and Jeremy Cohen considered the question, “When Is the Work Done?”

The discussion points included: workshopping/developing a script; being proactive for our work and our artistic vision; when is a script ready for any kind of submission; whose notes to trust; and, how desperation for production can alter our honest assessment of whether our script stays honest to the story we started out to tell. In brief…

Rebecca Gilman said she doesn’t show her work to anyone (even her husband who is always her first reader) until she’s run it through about five drafts. She made the case that you’ve got to have a strong understanding of what your story is and who your characters are so that you know how to respond to criticism from any source. Rebecca rightly balked at the idea that our plays are anything like a math theorem; that they should fit into any formulaic model. She believes many stories require their own particular style to be dramatically effective. And so she feels that development can sometimes confuse a writer by suggesting too many prescribed formulaic changes.

John Weidman freely admitted that working with someone like Steve (Stephen Sondheim…with whom he has many times collaborated) automatically puts you into a best possible development situation. Bottom line in development generated by producers: they want a great production and will work with you. John did share that hurtful reviews once your show has opened, as happened with Assassins, were enough to send him and Stephen into a deep depression. He said at that point it was good to have a collaborator to share that horrible pain with. Even then, they agreed with each other that the production was exactly the story they had wanted to tell and they did not want to change it. And so when the same production in London received reviews as superlative as the New York ones were derogatory, John felt they had been right to have trusted that their work on Assassins was done.

Jeremy Cohen, an award-winning director and the Producing Artistic Director of The Playwrights Center, comes at these issues from a different perspective. Jeremy brilliantly emphasized that there is a lack of clarity in the development field when it comes to letting writers know what the exact nature of a particular development is. For instance, is it a reading so producers can see if they want to do the show; or, is it a true workshop where the only goal is to help the writer make the play better on his/her terms. Those premises need definition. Jeremy also said it is important for playwrights to know what they want their play to be…not what they need their play to be. If they want their play produced with particular production elements, they should say that and not act as though they’re fortunate just to get any kind of production. Their wants might not be realized, but they can strive for them.

Finally, all agreed that each development situation has its own particular questions that need to be answered. Good to know we’ve got the Dramatists Guild ready to take and answer those questions.

srinear@dramatistsguild.com

Sheila Rinear in conversation with John Weidman, Rebecca Gilman and Jeremy Cohen at DG’s 2nd National Conference. Photo by @joeystocks

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At first it seemed a little silly, on this night in muggy, buggy August, watching a bunch of audience members wearing their grandma’s love beads, climbing in and out of the “Magic Bus” (aka, the box office), and throwing around peace signs like cheap money – well, puleeeze. But then we got to a clearing in the woods where a good share of the Atlanta theatre community were wiggling like excited kids in vintage chairs alongside the rest of the lucky ticketholders in (yet another) sold-out show and I noticed how many twinkly little fireflies there are away from the city and heard the opening strains of “Aquarius” and … okay, it was really cool. This was Serenbe Playhouse, which bills itself as a “pioneer in modeling Green Theatre Practices with a commitment to social responsibility and environmental stewardship.” As with Hair, they walk their talk by performing outdoors with high production values that are still “in concert with nature” including building with “reclaimed and recycled materials” and using both “natural light and 90% LED theatrical lighting.”

Executive/Artistic Director Brian Clowdus founded Serenbe Playhouse in 2009, after receiving a Theatre and Dance degree from Amherst and an Acting MFA from The University of South Carolina, and then serving as a 2011 Fellow at Washington DC’s Shakespeare Theatre Company. Billing himself as an actor, educator, director, and producer, he has quickly managed to draw a contingent of stellar actors, directors, and designers to Serenbe as well as loyal audiences from all around the Atlanta metro area. Before seeing Hair, several people had urged me to visit the “really unique” theatre in a planned community about 30 minutes south of Atlanta’s Hartsfield airport that “passionately explores, embraces, and expands the connections between nature, culture and the art of living,” and where forward thinking residents have founded the non-profit Serenbe Institute for Art, Culture, & the Environment. It now includes Serenbe Playhouse, AIR (an artist in residence program), and the Serenbe Photography Center. Soon to come is a Serenbe Film Festival.

Clowdus himself is a high-energy dreamer with one foot still on the solid ground of practicality. He knows his community well and his season includes theatre for adults as well as children, the latter well served by, among other productions, DG member and (previously Atlanta-based) playwright Rachel Teagle’s adaptations of Alice in Wonderland and The Velveteen Rabbit. These award-winning productions and others are performed in magical places around Serenbe like The Grange Creek, The Wildflower Meadow, The Forest Glen Stage (near The Tree house), and The Farmer’s Market Clearing. As a participant in Atlanta Region’s DG Dramatist/Director Exchange last March, Clowdus spoke about his desire to incorporate new work slowly in tune with his ability to build audience. When I asked him more recently if Serenbe would be a place (still) hospitable to (particularly) local playwrights, he responded in the affirmative, reporting that he had produced a regional world premiere musical (last year’s Time Between Us) along with three of Teagle’s world premiere Family Shows. “I have a strong commitment to new work and always welcome new scripts. The first question is, ‘Will it work outside?’ If it doesn’t, it’s definitely not a right fit. Small casts are paramount as well. A brief letter with synopsis, location and character breakdown is what I always read first. If my interest is piqued I will carve out time to read the whole script.” Personally, this sounds like a stellar opportunity to flex all kinds of creative muscles. In the meantime, I’m heading back in October for The Sleepy Hollow Experience. (whisper) It’s gonna be in The Serenbe Stables.

pturner@dramatistsguild.com

Ryan Ortega, Sam Constantino & Kelli Owens in Serenbe Playhouse’s The Velveteen Rabbit. Photos by Breeanne Clowdus.

Doug Wright & Regina Taylor photographed for the March/April issue of The Dramatist by Walter Kurtz, shipping now from @dramatistsguild

The 2012 International Centre for Women Playwrights 50/50 Applause Award: ICWP gives a standing ovation to theatres that value women’s writing.

The International Center for Women Playwrights (ICWP) announces its inaugural 50/50 Applause Awards to five US theatre companies for seasons of plays with half or more written by women. In support of women in theatre, ICWP rewards and recognises those theatre companies who see gender parity as more than a desired goal.

ICWP started in 1988 with a mission is to support women playwrights worldwide and bring attention to their work. The creation of the 50/50 Applause Award coincides with the organisation’s 25th birthday celebration. President of ICWP, Dr Jennifer Munday, has stated that “these companies need special thanks for the integrity of their decision-making.”

In recent years, discussions within the global theatre community and the media have prompted both academic research and discussions to explain why the work of women playwrights is underrepresented in staged theatrical productions. In 2009, Emily Glassberg Sands released a study called “Opening the Curtain on Playwright Gender” which showed that only 18% of the productions done in the United States in 2008 were by female playwrights. She also found that “only 11% of shows on Broadway over the past decade [1999-2009] were written exclusively by women”.

Other research from countries with developed economies has demonstrated similar imbalances. Last year, Lyn Gardner of the UK’s The Guardian stated “…of the 57 productions on in the West End and the fringe that might be considered plays (rather than musicals or physical work), only six are written by women”. In Canada, Rebecca Burton and Reina Green reported that 30-35% of the nation’s artistic directors were female in 2006.

Aside from the imbalance of theatrical expressions of women’s experience, there is a clear economic trajectory that starts with a production. A professional production is typically followed by script publication, book sales, further productions, royalty revenue for the playwright and other financial rewards like commissions, residences and travel opportunities.

To that end, ICWP’s qualifications for the 50/50 Applause Award were that theater companies produced women playwrights in both 50% of productions and 50% of total performances in their 2011-2012 season. Theaters that included producing women playwrights in their mission were not eligible. Five theatre companies have been recognised with the 50/50 Applause award, through a strict nomination process. The winners are: Cleveland Public Theatre, Cleveland, OH; Little Colonel Theatre, Pee Wee Vally, KY; Nora Theater, Cambridge, MA; Playwrights Horizons, New York, NY; and, Symmetry Theatre, Berkeley, CA. The companies will receive their award in January 2013.

Website: http://www.womenplaywrights.org

To learn more about the award and the criteria, visit http://www.womenplaywrights.org/award