to these ladies. Just think that we're sitting around a coffee table with wine glasses in our hands. We're going to have just a really casual discussion about the topics that Henry has given us and this wonderful discussion of gender and in the development and dramaturgy of new work. So I'm going to ask them to introduce themselves and tell you a little about themselves. I'm Nan Barnett. I am the Executive Director of National New Play Network, which is an alliance of about 50 theaters from all across the country who have a dedication to the development, production, and continued life of new plays. I'm based in the office at Willie Mammoth in D.C. The theaters are all over the country of all different shapes and sizes. I am trained, a kid actor trained from North Carolina School of the Arts and transitioned from acting into management and helped start and grow and create a Lord Theater, which became the largest theater in the U.S. producing exclusively new and developing works. And in this last year I have transitioned over to the Executive Director of NNPN. So thank you for coming out and being here. Let's let you guys start. Great, yes. I went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There you go. I studied directing at Columbia University. So I am a director, a teacher, a writer, and a feminist. I believe that I was invited here today because I have a lot of strong opinions about Aristotle and a lot of strong opinions in general about how to make political theater, how to include more women in the process, and ultimately, I hope, how to sort of reach parity in the theater. Great. Good. I'm Jenny Webb. I'm a resident playwright here at Rogue Machine, and I run the new play program up at the Will Gears Theater in Botanica, up in Topanga Canyon. It's a classical rough theater for the past 12 years. We've been developing and supporting new plays. And I'm, as a playwright, I have a very specific voice, a very specific, very female voice, which is what drew me specifically to the subject of this panel. And in addition, we'll talk a little more about this, but after the SANS study, the gender parity discussion in theater really kicked up in 2009 after this SANS study, which we'll talk more about, a playwright, Laura Shaughness, who is a LA in New York, West Coast playwright, approached me and said, well, stuff is going on in New York. They've got to do stuff. What are we going to do about it here? So we formed the LA Female Playwrights Initiative. So it's called the LA FBI. So if you zoom this around, I'm at the FBI. That's what that is. It's a non-producing organization, to support playwrights and the theaters that love them and support them, to connect women artists to each other, and to sort of form as a springboard for projects that women come to us and we sort of hopefully will help make them happen. It's been since 2009, so we're hanging in there and doing it. I'm Ellen Gavin. I came to theater from more from the women's movement side of things. I was involved as a student activist and as a feminist. I wrote my first play about being one of the first women firefighters in the United States. Way back. And I was doing development in the Bay Area for a lot of theater companies. I was writing grants and virtually every one of those theater companies had a male artistic director. If it was doing African American or Asian American or Latino, and I worked for all of them or gay and lesbian, it was very, very male-centric. So I formed a group in 86 to address that issue and to start producing plays by women, started as volunteers, grew the organization over 23 years, I ran it, and it's still there, into a pit-sized theater. We bought an old Boddville Theater and renovated it in the mid-90s. We opened it in 2000 and did world premieres and West Coast premieres by writers like Shari Muraga, Irene Fornes, Susan Laurie Parks, Shirley Lee, and our mandate, our mandate, if you will, was to present works by new works by women with half of those women being women of color. So, coming from that perspective, it's interesting when you don't... Our mission was such that I didn't have a choice. Our mission was to present works by women, and of course there were many to present and produce in advance. At one point, we did start doing some work by male playwrights. We did culture class. We did work by Ricardo Bracho, to write about gay men of color's experience. So, it'll be interesting to talk about how the public perceives it, how the critics perceive it, how the audiences perceive it, and where the biases are, which I think still exist as biases. I'm now writing for a screen and television, and it's been interesting there because the dynamics are as bad, if not worse. So, I've been away for a bit from theater, maybe four years, but I've been looking at the statistics and studying out for this panel, not much has changed. So, I'm really interested in having this conversation about is it structural? Is it intrinsic? Where are these biases coming from? To the extent that we still have the same number, about 17% of the work being done on American stages being written by women. So, I'm looking forward to the conversation. So, I've just come from the national showcase of new plays that an NPN produces every year, and I was telling people that I was coming up here and doing this, and I was talking about what's happening in your theater and in your community, and there's so many people who've become really actively involved, and not in the, oh, I've been trying to do more women play, but really doing studies, gathering the information, and all the theories that are out there. And I just wanted to share one that was particularly struck by yesterday, and that someone said to me that I'm trying to think how to phrase this like that. They had a theory that the difference between how men and women create plays is tied to the differences in how men and women derive pleasure from the sexual act. And I was like, okay, that's a much better reason than I just don't want to produce a play by myself. So, I wanted to start off and talk a little bit about some of the theories and the studies that are out there. You know, we just did, and NPN just did a blind read of plays that were submitted by our member theaters. It's 51 plays submitted and only 20% of them were by women. Now, when we read them blind and we took them from the 51 down to the 20 finalists, that percentage held so there was still 20% in the finals. And when I say they're, you know, they're totally blind. So, I know that we, the SANS study, maybe you want to start by talking a little bit about that and what the thing that got everybody set up in arms about. Well, one of the, I mean, it was a very, it was a, it was her thesis at Princeton. Emily Glassford Sands, I think that's right. Names written down. There were a lot of components to the study, but basically in addition with the work that Julia Jordan had done in sort of taking stock of New York theaters, that's where the 17% came from. And a part of the study that was very controversial set up a portion where female artistic directors saw, you know, red plays that were not blind and, you know, sometimes they switched the gender of, you know, of who actually had written them. And female artistic directors said, you know, we're not going to take a chance on this play of plays by women. So, of course, that was a big hoopla in the media.  That's what this is about. But in reality, which is what I think a lot of the problem comes from is the women artistic director said, hey, we don't want to take a chance financially on these unknown women whose names aren't known to, because we have theaters to run and that is not going to fill houses and that's not going to be a smart economic choice. But where did that even come from? Well, technically the way it worked was they gave a male name and a female name to the same play and they presented it to artistic directors male and female across the country. The male and literary managers. The male artistic directors and literary managers did not discriminate. They gave basically equal evaluations and it was a point system. The female artistic directors and literary managers ranked the women 18% lower. Wow, wow. But part of what the discussion was that maybe female artistic directors and literary managers have a greater understanding of and this is the second part of the study which I found really fascinating what they call the Jackie Robinson effect which was that if you're going to be a female playwright and make it for example on Broadway, which is one in eight you have to be exponentially better than the men. And that maybe that factor of kind of being oppressed, you know those of us who, you know, people who are oppressed kind of being tougher on their own in the sense of, you know, you're going to have to really excel. And that part of the study the one in eight playwrights on Broadway have 18% higher box offices. So the concept that you can't sell a play by a woman is I'm just am astounded that that even comes into play. Yeah, and I don't think we have any data on that. I think it's an assumption that people feel that way. I was saying, I don't know I don't think I've ever run into an artistic director who says wow, that plays by a woman I can't do it. Well, I think what all this speaks to is how subliminal and subconscious most of this is. From the lack of women submitting to your thing from the way the women judge the other women I mean that says to me that we've internalized the backlash we've internalized the sense that we're not as good, that we're not as capable that we won't sell. And a big part of achieving parody is going to be letting go of that, having confidence. Well, that was one of the other things that somebody said to me this weekend was that they had a theory that women don't put their plays out there that a man writes a play and I think this is what gets linked to sexual act a man a man writes a play and he just goes there, take my play and a woman writes a play and she wants to take more care before it goes out so I'm interested to see whether nationally playing at work along with Doris Duke and the Mellon Foundation are creating something that's going to be called the new play exchange it's a huge database with social media aspects you'll be hearing a lot more about it we're about to begin beta testing on it and it will roll out to the field in January of 2015 and one of the things that we're going to be able to do is collect data about what plays are being uploaded by who and who they're being written as well as what's being produced so the thing that I put forth is with those new figures from the theater educators where we see that 68% of playwriting degrees in this country are still going to men instead of women so my question was are we because it is so ingrained are girls not even considering playwriting is that number changing as we see more and more women in MFA programs are they not getting the skills that they need because they're not training so 68% is that a piece of it you guys see the thing you said about the your submissions only 20% with female and in the second part of that study I don't know if the sand study was fascinating she went to I think it's called Dooley it's basically a script aggregator database we're exactly that percentage of men putting their plays up so it's not only that men have more boldness about what they write more prolifically and they're putting it up you know I think there's real questions about this if we want to get very kind of essentialist or determinist about it the studies just litterated in the last two weeks they have another study about male female brains the north south poles of men the connectors between the back and the front of their brains are more dense than women which are lateral and if you want to be determinist about it the women have more relational holistic thinking patterns in men but the men's pattern is to do a task well repeatedly and they're different if you want to be determinist about it but on the other hand as you know wordsmiths girls speak earlier than boys do women speak women say 13,000 words in a day than men do and we're talking about writing plays but not literature so if we want to this is a really it's literally slope I think because if you want to get into it the story telling the oral tradition the communication if we're going to be deterministic about it it's going to fall to women to say I would think so then you look at something structural you have to say these other factors and I would maintain that in running the theater that I ran that there's a synergy and there's an interrelationship between first of all the plays themselves the critics for example in the Bay Area we had two critics white men that controlled the reviews in the San Francisco Chronicle for 30 years okay and there's a little clapping there's a system in the Bay Area and there's an empty chair there's a little white man, bald man sitting there looking there's a little bald man clapping and there's a little bald man standing in his chair and I remember one year at Brava we developed, we had a cartoon that draws an empty chair an African-American woman that was starting to spout dreadlocks and grow breasts the third one she was bigger her hair was longer, she was screaming and the last one she was yelling this is our review and I saw systematically it was so difficult to not make decisions based on this as an example the first play we did at Sheree Moraga Shadow of a Man was directed by Marie Irene Fornes it was spectacular it was so beautiful and Irene did the set and it was at the Eureka Theatre and it was actually the same I think it was in the same month that Anches in America was at the Eureka Theatre the first production ever of Anches in America so I have these two things in my memory in 89, our production with Irene and Anches in America not one review I was like what? you're kidding me, it's a classic the next time that we produced a play by Sheree and it lined up I didn't select him for this reason but here is The Saints by Albert Tuckesakis who was a fabulous director who was very well respected in the Bay Area and I consciously thought if Albert directories play I think that's well reviewed and it put her on the map, it was just incredible now was that how did I interpret that? how did I interpret that? we presented so many cutting edge works like Susan Laurie Parks I knew Susan Laurie Parks was going to be too edgy let me hit him with all the New York reviews in a packet and he'll know New York like dirt I better investigate a little more so it was a conscious thing about because I could see smaller companies edgy companies that had very mail driven work that I thought was imperfect that it wasn't my taste get ready reviews and yet so many women and I did international work if I was having the second production and I could give him some educational material about it maybe but you know the constant battle so there's that issue there's also the issue of just female characters on a stage and how they're written and the perception of you know the stereotypes you know it's just that there's a lot in it and I feel like there's a synergy that has to be discussed you know it's women in the context of a sexist, misogynist society and there definitely are those kinds of structural things that keep women from getting involved whether it starts in education or in their early professional days and obviously all of those barriers are even harder to get over for women of color but you mentioned the male director one of the theories that I've heard is that theaters don't want to trust female directors with big budgets that it has to do with who they trust with money which I think is yeah I kind of buy that so the submitting thing though, I think we have to look at all the other fields and know that there's data out there that says that women also submit fewer op-eds, they submit fewer articles to publications, they don't ask for raises, they don't negotiate for a higher salary when they're getting hired so it's not just about the plays themselves, it's about how we put ourselves out there now I think a play that was written by a woman according to how we have sex I guess would have a lot of exposition in three climaxes sounds like a good play Josefina Lopez is a quote that I read on HowlRound which came out of the convocation that happened in Boston of a Latino artist and Josefina I guess made quite a stir when she wrote in Boston when she said this I want to see a world filled with the vision of theater as multi-orgasmic spiraling and flowing female energy I dream of a future where art making practice is no longer conceptualized after that model of male orgasm it's out there everywhere you live when I go to Henry's questions because I think this is a really basic starter for us in your experience are there real differences in the techniques women and men use to tell stories and can you describe and illustrate some of those techniques? in my experience there's a difference in the way feminists tell stories and so feminists could be either men or women so there's a difference in the way people tell stories who have an awareness and a consciousness of what they're doing with gender and sex and sexuality I personally as a director like to work with Paula Vogel there's something about that program wherever she's teaching the people come out of that able to write dialectic to use the Brechtian term they're putting out multiple points of view at a time the Aristotelian structure which I guess you could say is a little bit more patriarchal maybe a little bit more male is really one point of view if there are any questions about it it gets resolved by the end so people who have this consciousness about gender and race and class and all of those other things as well tend to be able to write with a lot of different points of view and then not necessarily resolve them all leave the audience to wonder about some of these things when they get home so that brings me to another question about women mentors are we will it change by virtue of there being more women like Paula like Marshall teaching in major universities I guess I'm here today because I'm going to talk for education I don't know why are we seeing a change I know when I first started as a managing director in the LORP system we had so few women managers that we would have ladies of LORP spa days because there were only seven or eight of us they wouldn't do that so now when you go to a LORP meeting it's like 60% women my dad was a small town veterinarian and didn't want me to go to vet school because he thought it was too hard for a woman to be a vet that number seemed like 80% of women getting vet degrees so there is that is driving it so as we see more students trained by Paula are we seeing we talked about a sea change how will that happen is it just not getting there anecdotally I couldn't find the numbers on this but I feel like there are more women in MFA playwriting programs right now than there are men just talking to people and knowing people that are in those programs and teaching in those programs saying that what they are seeing is many many more women coming into the field so maybe if we had this discussion 15 years from now you know I think that the point you were making about it's to just follow up on that for a second about the structural differences and the mentors I think of someone like a Morarian for NASA you know such a mentor of Latino playwrights across the country for 30 years a very different structural approach to writing Susan Laurie Parks with repetitive gestures and repetitive texts coming at things from the back end I mean Octavio Solis has a beautiful piece also on the TCG website or howl around about how he was influenced by Susan Laurie Parks I mean just is a catharsis but it's not happening in this straight line it's layering and it's circling back and I think there's a lot of male playwrights that are maybe plugging into a male feminine side of themselves Tony Kushner, Mack Welman and Eric Eng who are doing these word play, language switch ups, you know it's not a straight path a flawed character hit by circumstance overcoming it to a positive outcome it's like that's not what we have to have in American theater and I think leaving ambiguity um I keep thinking of that circling back I think it's just a very interesting approach to dramaturgy uncover, uncover, uncover you know is that a female impulse I don't know I just think that being trained as audience members artistic directors critics to have the same kind of explosive conclusion that wraps it all up is not necessarily and that single point of view thing which I think is really great to think about when we are looking at the structure of a play and how a playwright chooses to put a single point of view versus the multiple point of view that's sort of fascinating well regarding the mentoring thing I've heard a lot of stories about say 30 years ago in the theater women who were artistic directors who shall not be named who by choice never hired a woman to direct at her theater and I think there was a sense that nobody helped me I got here on my own why should I help you I think that that's changing I mean when I look at even students just one generation younger than I am they have these groups of women that are very tight they really support each other they have no fear about that and I think that really is going to change and I think that's changing in terms of mentorship and in terms of support and communication in other areas the gender parity movement and in New York and DC people are really communicating with each other and exchanging resources and exchanging and looking at each other's plays and saying oh this is different oh maybe it's okay then my voice is different and I think that's really exciting and I think part of that also has to be as playwrights or as artists we want to like associate with good artists that we respect and we like and can challenge us but I think we also have to open ourselves up with beginning artists who may surprise us too you know when we formed LFPI we specifically wanted it to be anybody you know come on you know come on sisters you know be a part of it because there are a lot of wonderful groups you know I'm a part of wonderful groups and people say oh how do we become a part of that well you have to be asked you know which is something but I think that just really sort of opening ourselves up to mentors to be mentors is really really really important it was interesting one of the what is his name Casey something or other at primary stages I wrote down numbers child child at primary stages it was interesting because right after the sand study came at and it was all this sort of pipeline energy primary stages did a season of all women playwrights and got a lot of so I was talking to him a little bit about that you know how it was how it was approached that one of the things that he said about he mentioned plays he says well I think male plays had different rhythms you know I mean first of course anybody would say oh no there's no difference in female and male plays and then talking a little bit more he says I think there are different rhythms in male and female plays and I think audiences are starting to get used to that I think they will have a long way to go to get used to that and then another thing that he said he was talking about Constance Condon who had a story about playwriting class an exercise she gave to students was write a scene about when you sort of broke away from your parents this is paraphrasing through all these people but basically the men wrote scenes about breaking chairs and screaming and throwing things and the women wrote things about closing books and giving looks and walking away slowly and you know so is the question do we need to he says you know Constance was saying you need to amplify that is that part of it or do we also I mean I find closing a book and giving a look more interesting than throwing a chair myself you know sometimes so is part of that changing audiences and changing what we expect when we come to the theatre which is you know back to how were the plays different what's dramatic you know it's funny that the professors at UCLA and the colleagues some of the women will say violence is sex that's it anything else is just not and then you have to take that and say but you know what first of all men perpetuate more than 90% of the violence in the world and women are the victims of it a lot so you see a play at a Pulitzer Prize winner and you know when not and you say okay that's the that's not that's a transition from victim to you know protagonist in your own life and so women's relationship to violence is very different and so if that's the paradigm which is that this kind of violent confrontation of a character flawed character with an outside force or you know the contropes you know then we've been a new language I mean the thing that I I've been feeling this week I guess it's Nelson Mandela passing and I hate I don't want to make what we're talking about you know have more significance than you know or equal his significance but power conceives nothing without demand and I think it's incredible that we kind of keep talking about women's plays in the theatre it's like you know what it's time to start counting the numbers of women on stages and saying it's just not acceptable I was reading the TCG blog page which is quite wonderful I have to mention the writer later who's coordinating it but there's a lot of talk on that page about you know kind of taking our rightful place it just seems like you know I got the Santa Theta group for example and I'm just going to say here 18 productions one female playwright one director one woman director three people call her all in the same repertory theatre you know at the Douglas so to me that's the male tape reform it's just not acceptable it's just not acceptable because it's not acceptable to have you know storytelling our culture our democratic right to express you know our lives you know not be fair you know and not be equal I got a young blogger another I'll tell you her name too and I look it up and she was talking about her generation which is kind of the Obama generation of ascendancy which is multicultural and feminist and aware of difference and supportive of you know disability and identity and gender and all of that it's like this is the new world and she was her I think the headline of her blog was something like is American theatres stuck I got the GOP yes same the same platitudes and not doing a damn thing about representation it's just not acceptable anymore but see so I question whether what we want is to be on the taper stage I mean when we think about who their audience is I don't know that that's who I want to necessarily speak to I mean maybe the answer is to just let those theatres die well they have the power to have the money sure no idea I mean hey as someone who built a theatre from scratch it took 30 years I don't know if we have to wait for that it doesn't seem right you know first of all they're receiving in many cases tax dollars huge support and huge support from the community you know they're in our spaces a lot of them are in you know many of them have breaks from the cities and cities that they're in they're unbelievable so I mean it's about resources to me and you're making the assumption Holly by saying their audience your saying their audience is old and white that would be my guess I mean I think that's so that's a perfect segue I have one I get it I read a theatre in Florida I can tell you a lot about it do you believe that women audience members believe that they would rather see a play written by a man I believe that women audience members would rather see a play with women in it I think they're probably looking for characters who speak to them and women who are you sort of alluded to this women who the characters are subjects they act they are not just acted upon and I think whether that play is written by a man or a woman I mean I don't know how many of you really look at the play bill and go oh this is by a man I don't like it as much I think it's about what we're seeing on stage how we're responding to that now women are more likely to write women characters who are active, who are subjects so they go together a little bit but I think it's about what we're seeing on stage more than about who wrote it yet women buy the tickets in America I don't know if people know the Bechtel world let's talk a little bit about that who has her wonderful play Fun Home which is a great review of New York written by Lisa Cron based on her graphic novel 85 she came up with a rule I thought it was so fantastic and I've used it to this day the Bechtel rule which is that you look at a film and you say it was done for film is there more than one woman in it and do they have names do they speak to each other about something other than men and it's a pretty simple rule is there more than one woman and they have names something other than men and if you go through the list of films I mean of course all the big terminators and all that they fail films like Simple Children's Toy Story Up Fails like many many movies failed Princess Bride Fails Dead Poe Society Fails two women simply talking about something other than the male protagonist in the movie I think it's a really good indication and it's about agency and it's internalized of course how we don't see ourselves as agents of agency so it's fascinating and I think that we've got it inside of us sometimes I write and I go why am I conceiving of this character as a man I could be conceiving of this character as a woman but somehow when I think of the powerful person that I want to write it comes up as male and I think that's really sad I mean it bears mentioning that gravity also fails the Bechdel test and I would argue that that's still a very feminist film so it has a limited you know it tells us exactly what it tells us well didn't she write about this? the Mikko Mori test which is based on the movie Pacific Rim so the Bechdel test really is am I going to spend my money on this or not it's a way of deciding am I going to buy a ticket and support this movie so when Pacific Rim came out came out there's one female character named Mikko Mori and she's an Asian American woman or maybe actually just Asian woman and she has a great story arc she's a subject she has things she wants she's trying to get them from other people she's different at the end of the movie than she is at the beginning so there were a bunch of feminists who wanted to support this movie so they created this new test the Mikko Mori test is there at least one woman in the movie who has her own story arc and that's another way of looking at it because conceivably in the Bechdel test they really it might be these two women and they have one scene and they're talking about what to have for lunch so that would pass the test yes, exactly so the Mikko Mori test gets a little bit more at that subject-object difference is she just being acted upon or is she really pursuing something on her own? I like both and you probably will have a very limited viewing opportunity in the next year but again, because because as you were saying they're being financed, created, directed driven by an industry that believes that that's what they need to do and yet you know like I've just been reading do people know it's Lois Weber or Lieber she was the first woman director and she started with she had her own studio she was a screenwriter, a director a producer, she had her own studio she developed the moving camera shot she came up with the first lighting I mean this woman was incredible she was the first one to have a cutaway to get the perspective of the woman in the film as opposed to just one perspective genius, genius and she literally had her studio wrenched away from her her husband and it wasn't around power and money and you look at this and you say genius, she directed I think it was 400 films she would direct 27 films in a year she did very socially conscious work about the early birth control issues and poverty and you know she was kind of an anti-capitalist anyway this woman is someone to look to and when you see that how the very beginning of an industry had these powerful women and the pushing out it's not a it's not a passive thing you know to say this is going to be mine and if you have American theater where white men basically are saying to people color into women this is mine I just think it has to be broken up and I do think again I don't have the writers, I have it written here but the blog that TCG has there are people there saying you know what, count and maybe the fact of the matter is if you don't have a diverse season you have a failed season and I know that Lauren Henderson has been involved in the San Francisco counting and Woody and Sullivan is doing it in DC and I assume that somebody here in LA is doing that as well and pointing it out so the idea that we are hearing a lot at NNPN is this we commit to a 50-50 season with writers and or directors I think specifically you start to look at the number of actors that you're employing that you make it just count you just say this is how we're going to do it if we have more of those start to happen and we have more productions does that in itself raise more productions? yes it does does that make more women think I can write, I can be produced I can be a director so just by bumping the numbers we can bump that at you it's interesting in terms of the 50-50 commitment there's been a lot of discussion Cindy Cooper in New York and then August Shulman the TCG 2.0 which is an online thing something rather they're working on a pledge to a gender parity tool kit somebody else is working on to give to theaters and a pledge for theaters to make like the writer there's a lot of discussion we can't make them commit to the 50-50 nobody will do that but can we say one play per season by a woman is that fair nobody's going to do that somebody says somebody came up with me Cindy Cooper this organization is committed to advancing and sustaining fairness, equality and gender parity for all theater artists anybody can say yes to that right? it is hard what is accountability is that poor as women we go we don't want to ask for 50 we don't want to ask for 50% but just give us one is that okay? no that's not okay but then the reality of the situation is I mean our artistic directors it's tricky, tricky territory how do you get into that? I'm not an artistic director I don't have a theater I can't do it if I could keep in mind Jill Dolan wrote something and I think it might have been as a donor I just found it on the internet the other day and I thought it was just like a nice simple way to say it without hammering people over the head and saying you must do this if all theaters believe that social diversity is an artistic necessity a multitude of stories and happily competing perspectives would radiate into our national imagination we would hear ever new stories about people people who aren't often represented on the stage we would delight in new perspectives and experiences seen through innovative narrative and visual techniques we'd come to the theater not to just affirm what we know but to expand our repertoire of knowledge about American society we could practice different ways to engage in a more human, extensive community I think that's kind of the feeling that I feel like it's like it's not a punishment to you it's like it's a flourishing I guess the writer that wrote about the Obama independent community of Americans who America is which is racially, culturally diverse it's just much richer and more interesting to me well there's the great Marcia Newman quote a theater that's missing the stories by women is missing half the stories half the stories, right when I first went to South Florida in the 80s as a young actor of female persuasion to be persuaded some days I can remember very specifically being on stage one time and the reason I'm no longer an actress because I was terrible at staying focused on what I was doing I was much more interested in looking at who was out there I'm sure I was having some very artistic moment but what I was really doing was going wow I better work a lot in the next five years because these people are all going to be dead there was no the houses were so gray and people would tell stories of my theater's audience the youngest audience in South Florida we have an average age of 72 or my grandparents go to the next theater but what continued to happen in South Florida up until a few years ago when we had a lot of theater there was that people filled in there were still retirees that were coming but there was another crop coming in so some of them would step to the other side of the curtain and other people in their 60s and 70s would start coming to the theater on a regular basis so if we are talking about the marketing piece of this do women buy the tickets women of a certain age buy the tickets yet I know how resistant people can be to having women of a certain age on stage those stories are scary to people to talk about aging to talk about what happens how do we start changing that I think women would be interested I know women are interested in the stories you might learn something about how to do it better why we go to theater to see another perspective how do we prove that how do you say right of play and produce it on a regular basis so that we start to see those numbers go up is it just do it instead of there is no studies that have been funded so we can't even say what's going on really and this notion that people have of being afraid that the audiences won't be there if there's more women on the stage is that anecdotal or is that real does that really happen like what's the truth of that that hasn't been proven and it's just kind of similar to what's happening in a film if you look at film it's like the number one movie going population in this country I let the inos that are making or breaking films women buying the tickets returning making some of the tentpole films work and I would maintain that if you look closer we might find those dynamics that work in American theater to among people of color and among women because it is true that women buy the tickets to go to things so I think living with this burden of unproven fears but I mean think about how many shows and movies Judy Dench has done about aging women that have done really well why has that not spawned more that's what I sort of wonder once we even have a couple of successes why is it harder to get more we keep mentioning the film industry that's always a really interesting question for me do we have a trickle down culture or a trickle up culture are we influenced by film theater people yeah if you're over 40 as a woman you're really probably not going to get much work for the rest of your life so are we really influenced by that or are we the people who are going to change things and that that's going to then change the bigger theaters the places with the bigger budgets and eventually film I don't know the answer to that I hope that it's trickle up I think we have a much better chance of changing these things than Hollywood does what you were saying earlier about whether we have to depend on the center theater groups of the world there was a notion of scale here I mean if you're putting $300 million into a tent pole franchise you could make you know what is it 10 $30 million movies for that and the idea that the smaller theaters seating the smaller theaters you create successful projects is a smart way to go over the same thing with independent film frankly the $20-$30 million movies that make $200 million surprise everyone because they're human interesters that people want to see if the studios would take that approach they're not it would be nice if they would but I think it's a question too a kind of decentralization of some of the resources I know they're not because of the money is that what you could make an argument why don't you take the risk on 30 films and you might have five of them or six of them that are spectacular make you your one tent pole in revenue but they don't think that way well the one thing that the film industry is facing that we're not is international markets so when the film industry says movies about women won't sell what they mean is movies about women won't sell in China and in fact what they mean because again we have really no data about what will actually sell in China it's a brand new market what they really mean is they won't sell to the Chinese government who has to say it's okay to show this here so now it will be really interesting to see gravity did incredibly well in China the first Hunger Games movie did incredibly well in China so are they gonna abandon this assumption they have that these movies won't sell or not but I think that's one challenge they have that we do I mean a lot of us do make international theater but that's where most of the money at this point comes from for films so if we're saying that marketing does matter and it does matter in theaters why don't we know why haven't we done the studies what's you know there ought to be a way well I mean I think we have a lot of studies on subscriber based theater but that's a really different creature than what we're talking about we're talking about trying to get new people in selling shows one show at a time not a whole season I mean I think a lot of these theaters with money and budgets and endowments and stuff they're programming a whole season for the same audience so we I think people are studying their own audiences and not necessarily looking at the larger culture yeah because you can only capture what you can capture right you know you're not standing outside in the street going why don't you go to theater you're just asking the questions of who is the... the people who are already in the seat yeah but I mean when we talk when I mentioned the thing about the same problem as a GOP I mean what is the sustainability model talking about having an elder white you know a buddy to audience in a country that's changing the way this country has changed in terms of the percentage of people of color being majority it's not very full of thinking well I think it's why we've lost so many theaters in Florida is that we were so completely consumed by that subscriber concept as people's lives change and they're no longer willing to commit to the third Friday of every run we didn't have a methodology for dealing with that and so they went away well Los Angeles theaters I mean the question is how do we get butts in seats and it has been for as long as we've been all doing theater and it's you know and as for as long as we've been all doing theater we realize oh my god there's no formula because just when you think you figured it out something else will change there'll be you know oh gee there's no press in LA anymore in the US and so it's different and in terms of one of the things that's frustrating that I've heard from a lot of people is it's very tricky to you know you think okay let's do an all-woman season a couple of people I mean Playwrights Horizons has been very female-centric for the past two seasons and Boston is doing an all-female season and Steppenwolf right now has four out of five you know five plays by women so we'll see what happens because I hate to say it but it's hard to get groups of women together to go to theater I mean at least in my experience and anybody else's experience because we're multitasking I mean you talk about studies it's like yeah we need to do a study of that well we're all making art you know I mean we're not getting paid for it for the most part Corey Perlov's doing a study right now about gender and leadership study and hopefully she's got some funding for that but there's been no funding for any of these studies there's been studies internationally in the UK Australia, Chicago did their own study Boston did their own study here in LA New York said blah blah blah and none of those have had funding the only one that's had funding is 2002 is the New York State Theater Susan Jones study so it's like yeah we need numbers we don't really know what's going on but there's no, it's all just us doing it because we care so much about it but it gets exhausting to care so how can we keep that and keep energized and keep connecting with each other and keep it going for the long haul because this isn't some oh we're going to like make a big fuss and it's going to solve the problems in two weeks I think we need some women PhDs to take this on there you go to do research within their institutions and get it funded what are the alternatives to in quotes the essence of drama is conflict the essence of drama is conflict I grew up in a family of women really strong southern women and there's plenty of drama so the idea of books and looks versus breaking chairs again I personally find it more intriguing as well you know anybody can break a chair but until you have been totally dressed down without words by your mother while you're standing at the kitchen sink you don't know drama in my opinion so is there a way of doing that is there a way of making it more viable that lack of violence the lack of door signing I think it is the essence of drama is conflict I think that's true and if you think about some of our greatest male playwrights August Wilson or Tassie Williams they were coming at it from an inside to my mind kind of relationship feminine point of view along with it's animus and anima it's both sides of the coin and I think we all should strive for that I think that women shouldn't say well we're the relational people you know what's the force the driving force is conflict well it's how it's expressed and you know whether there's you know I was just going to say who says there can't be a lot of conflict and you know you're my mom reading a book there can be right I mean as long as there's a line between us as long as there's that taught line that's conflict so do we not need to blow up New York City you know I mean can we kill the president I mean if you if we agree that that can be very dramatic I think Tennessee Williams is an excellent example of that voice that crosses the line well I mean I would not give this advice to playwrights because these are not the kinds of plays I want to direct but if you want to write something that's going to sell on one set has no more than four actors so I mean there's not right that's if you want to be on a regional theater stage that's what you need to write there's not a lot of room for chair throwing in this I don't know, Venus and Fert you know well I think the interesting thing in this conversation about Aristotelian structure is you know the idea that you know in the male orgasm the conversation was whether a structure, a Durango structure is building towards this explosive and whether and women writers get accused a lot of being episodic and that's the other structure which actually Jill Domen also mentioned well that's more of the female orgasm the small you know the series of explosions so you know I think that we might need to open ourselves up to those ideas that's a grand finale conclusive here's the answer to this and that ambiguity and that you know conversation about what it meant afterwards you know rather than tying it up in a bow and handing it to the audience but that's to me more interesting there are a lot of male and female playwrights that are exploring that but a critical beat you over the head with that term episodic you know what I mean kind of not you know honed in a very tightly long way to explore the end so I think that's important to open ourselves to different you know modalities right non episodic no no that episodic is an option I remember Brecht I don't remember Brecht but in when he was first starting out I remember he said we've got to train audiences to expect something different from the theater and it makes me sort of sad that we haven't yet achieved that because of course what he was talking about was episodic theater where one thing doesn't necessarily lead to the next where we skip around where we move in place and time and what he described his plays were his desire for theater to be cumulative rather than conclusive so we don't go to one big thing we add up a whole bunch of things and by the end we have maybe he was a little bit more feminine we have a lot of different little climaxes although in defense of old white men who you know follow this model if we think about the well-made play another sort of simplification of the Aristotelian structure I teach a doll's house or a doll house and if you ask students you know but where is the climax they actually have a lot of different answers you know is it actually when she walks out the door and slams it is it when she says I'm leaving is it when he opens the letter do you know what I mean so it's not as cut and dry as even the most cut and dry playwrights would like it to be I think one of the problems is that that is really hard to do it is really hard to write good realistic theater that logically follows from one thing to the next just exists in its own yeah well and to find it a satisfying ending yeah right so you know it are we taught even if it's ingrained that the only way to end it play is to tie it all up in a bow and say to the audience okay there that's the end of the story is that what people get so frustrated sometimes I think with what happens next or how why is it okay to do that and can we continue to embrace the idea that you don't have to have a climax in a reservation you know one thing that's really interesting to me about this is the way the human brain works right so when we're when our brains are developing when we're kids we learn a beginning middle and structure to everything we see something we want we go to it we get it beginning middle and so it's hardwired into our brains to think that way and what I've discovered when I've tried to deconstruct plays is even when you sort of take them apart there's this human instinct to put them back together in an order that makes sense it's very hard to get around that so even though I like other structures better I'm really sympathetic to writers who continue to use the Aristotelian model what's fun for me as a director is to try at least try to take them apart a little bit so if I did a doll house I would decide which of those places I thought should be the climax and maybe it would be a really odd place not where most people usually think it is and I would use that to sort of point out Nora's agency or the choice she's taking in that moment being revolutionary or something but it's hard to do I think it's powerful when women marry zoom in or play that speech reconstructing classics and finding the moment looking at the house of Bernadette again and going what's going on here and reshaping it and isn't that what we're asking for I guess that was when I read that from Joe Dolan it's like isn't it more interesting to have the structural question the cultural issues the format it had to be so unexpected and diverse in one season you might see five different approaches to play structure from different people I mean that's what I love when I see something that's culturally something that I've never experienced before it's thrilling absolutely thrilling to see something that you never you don't know the language you don't know the place you don't know the relationships it's discovery and I think that would be interesting I don't think it should be said that we can do the most when we probably do and there are men that are working in a non-traditional structure I think it's diversity is what we're looking for but we just have to recognize that we're trying to rewire people's brains it's a pretty big task you and I totally enjoy that but I understand why not everybody does this is one of Henry's questions what are the qualities that make producers and audiences feel comfortable with a play and to what extent is discomfort a cherished aspect I don't really need to see a play that doesn't and maybe this is where I'm in my life right now but I want to be taught something when I go to the theater I want to have my eyes opened to something I'm just really no longer interested in going out of the play and saying that was nice right is that just me? do we find that audiences like that challenge when you are you seeing that and do men and women want to challenge audiences in different ways we would talk earlier when we came in about a Julia Bear play that you saw 25 years ago and she's a good friend and I think of when I described Cherie's play with the director by Ruth Tornes or I mean I could say when I was 19 years old I was angry I was like how dare he how dare mess up music like this but I think those are the moments those are the moments that stick with us those visual moments, those emotional moments those surprising moments when we get upset because we don't quite get it but it stays with us for years Timmy that's what it's about getting shaken out of our out of our complacency by something that's incredibly beautiful or profound or disturbing there's nothing wrong with disturbing do women playwrights and men playwrights do that differently? I have to say for me the times that it happens they're both like transcending their gender right that's what I would say it's probably the same place male or female just for me I just saw the first of one of National New Play Network's world premieres Steve Yocchi called Pluto and it's a 90 minute play but it takes place in the three minutes between the time a mother first learns of a school shooting and the time she realizes that it's her son who's the shooter and he's dead and it is so unbelievably powerful and disturbing and funny and gorgeous beautiful beautiful and absolutely horrifying all in single play and Steve has written that mother as clearly as I understand my own self so one of Henry's questions is do men and women how do you find the voice how does a male playwright take a feminine voice and a female playwright take a male voice to be doing more of that does that matter what I would tell playwrights to do or suggest that they do is actually go ahead and write the character as a man and when you finished it just go back and change it to a woman because unless the play is about this case it's a mother but unless the play is about giving birth or some I can't imagine a whole play about a woman having her period but there's not a lot of things that actually require characters to be women or men there's not a lot of plays out there about prostate cancer so what you find when you do this kind of gender flipping thing is people are used to writing the male characters as subjects who have this depth and you have this action and these things they're trying to achieve if they're writing a female character again we're subliminally informed by the sexism that pervades our culture and we tend to write them a little more passive so go ahead and write it as a man if that's your first instinct and finish it that's the thing is finish the whole play because once you decide it's going to be a woman then you're writing it as a woman so write it as a man then go back and go now which of these characters then they'll be fully developed to me that's what makes no sense at all I mean just because for me my characters are who they are I mean then they're mostly women and you know there are men or there are jellyfish but you know they are who they are and gender is very intrinsic in every action they take in every decision they make in every line they say I guess I was thinking about advice to people who are wanting to start to write more female characters so is it sort of more of an exercise or if somebody is challenging themselves to get to that level I mean it would be an interesting exercise for me to like to make the men see how that works right exactly because then what I also start to realize is that all these ideas we have about gender are not really linked to biology right it's not sex is our biology gender is our behavior so there's plenty of women who can act with a masculine gender and there's plenty of men who can act with a feminine gender you know we have all these things lined up in our head you're male then you're masculine you're female then you're feminine you know if you're gay you're one if you're heterosexual you're another whereas these things are actually really fluid so but we have to I feel like a lot of people have to kind of trick their brains into doing that into thinking of their characters that way interesting writers writers yeah yeah I mean if you look at for example the whole alien movie series Ripley the character was originally intended to be a man right but you can only really look at the first film that way because from that point on she's obviously a woman and in fact they do add a child in the second one and they add a boyfriend in the third one and the whole fourth one is kind of about her having been reborn and reproduced which is why I say write you know write the whole play hmm play rights but even if you don't even if you're not going to take that advice and write the whole play that way the essential question to ask when you start writing is is there any reason this character has to be a man I think there's a any reason this character has to be a man and again you know if it's not really about dicks or press past states then you went there I was going to go there I was going inside whether to say penis or dick but I thought it was taking the masculine attention want to open it up to you guys anybody have a question you want to hear our thoughts on anybody are there questions from the howl around folks or anything or should we keep going with the yes see from Angie Morgan has any research been done about how audience demographics affect programming diversity and vice versa I don't know of any and I couldn't find any and I'm hoping that somebody's going to tell me I'm wrong anybody I don't know of anything if not I think we should be doing it I think it's important and I think that we may find that some of these you know well held thoughts about how are not true I hope so somebody in the back have a question it just feels like there is a big dinosaur dying in every field all over and it's making big loud noises and thrashing and whatever but it's dying my question has to do more with are we our audience is motivated see in my mind disturbing the piece is what it ought to do that's what it's about but I'm wondering how much we're motivated by just safety I mean when you say that you want to be disturbed I think a lot of audiences come to feel safe and reassured and and they're dying those people maybe but I think the idea of safety in art is a dangerous coupling and I don't know how much the feminine and masculine have to do with this but I just think that overall thing of no don't disturb me is unhealthy and needs to be addressed by men and women and I believe you know we can't just say to big regional theaters which by the way at the taper there was a play called first picture show about that woman ten years ago and you were dissing the taper but but I and really about the husband not her I think we can't just dismiss the audiences I think what we have to do is keep trying to pull them in and disturb them and say look you didn't die it was think they ask yourself new questions so I don't know we've kind of been trashing older white audiences I can think about San Francisco and if you read it for example and the magic I think as well and probably the ACT that there was this hardcore group of you know elder white fear goers who were the most adventurous and supportive and interesting and I feel like I'm just sitting here trashing them for an hour I do feel like that I guess it's all about it's all about nuance because they were they didn't want to be coddled at all right well it's how we got off Broadway the whole off Broadway movement those for us in south Florida those people who went off Broadway in New York are who supported the theater that I ran and they we did talk back three times a week and they never said how do you learn your lines in that moment where you came through the door what do you think the playwright you know so yes and of course I am rapidly becoming an older white audience so I think I hope it is changing and I hope we will continue to do that and I see things that are disturbing to my concept of what theater is even not just that play or my own thoughts but you know you go see you know an Adam Rapp play and you're like wow really and yes really it is because you just saw it you know so hopefully we can keep turning that out well I think there are two factors that influence all of this one is capitalism so they need to make money and the fact that our theaters are not subsidized so in Europe and Russia there's a lot of theater that's making people uncomfortable and it's fine if they walk out in the middle or don't come back because they have some support from the government and their audience is a little more used to that kind of thing and eager for that thing the second thing I think affecting American theater is geography so the audience in San Francisco is going to be really different than the audience in Minneapolis right and especially once you get into smaller and smaller towns in the Midwest and the South so we try to talk about American theater and mobile cell but the fact is that people who live in more cosmopolitan communities with more people who look different from they do and act different from they do are going to be more open to seeing plays about those people than I think in some other parts of the country but I hope we're changing that too I mean I hope we're certainly with National New Play Network it's been a big part of our mission is to take that writer from Philadelphia and make sure that their work gets heard in Iowa City because the stories are about humans and we shouldn't be frightened to show somebody something different than what they know right it's that challenge we shouldn't be frightened to but we should recognize that their imaginations are not trained to see though to see people who look different from them as universal right so women as an audience as audience members we're trained to identify with the men we're trained to go I see myself in that protagonist and people of color are trained to see themselves in white people because that's what we usually get but how do we train them if we're not putting in front of them? we're talking about rewiring people's brains some of the fresh young playwrights that are working of color I would add of color in American theater today to me are so exciting language structure content and they're you know this generation in terms of technology and understanding and they're trained and they're ready and they're ambitious and so I have a lot of faith in what's in what if there was the open door right and they're often writing gender and racially neutral plays right so his name is escaping me that I wrote appropriate you know there's there are no black actors on the stage he's an African-American writer and people you know they just didn't really people are shocked shocked when they find out that he wrote the fight I mean I'm glad they're shocked I'm glad they're being made to think about it but you know you don't you can you're allowed to write men and women right so why should we be shocked or startled by the fact that an African-American male is writing about white women you know it's a different voice and a different head yes you have a question there yeah I wonder about the sense of safety and security among the artistic directors especially when you talk about women not wanting to do plays by women because to me I'm comparing it to what was going on and probably still in the publishing industry where editors believed if a male editor bought a challenging book lost money he was considered a visionary a woman with a loser job and I wonder if you feel artistic directors are in that same position that women don't have the luxury of taking chances because their job is always on the line I think that's so real literary managers artistic directors criticizing your own theater can lose you to a job I mean I'm sitting here without those worries right now in my life so I can speak very boldly but there's a lot of women within the power structure that don't feel free to what's that about? we're supposed to be in the world of the alternative world of art and culture where people are intimidated to not stand up and like the fact that Jackie Robinson rule of 18% of the women on Broadway had 18% higher box offices even though they're only one in eight means that somebody was saying the bar has to be so much higher for women I think the stat of artistic directors right now is people who can make a living as artistic directors is 20% 20% women it hasn't changed in 20 years that's what it is so again are we not I'll go back to where we started this is a five now I'll go back to where we started which is are we not opening that door and training those women to be artistic directors because they don't have enough role models or they're not saying I'll go be a literary manager because that's a girl job instead of being I'll be an artistic director because I want to run a work B company or I want to run my own company that does only women writers and cast only but that's a niche theater why does that need to be a niche theater that goes through the whole sort of you write women's plays you know automatic plays oh alright so you'll have seven you know women singing on a Sunday matinee and that's it I mean I think a lot of this also the responsibility lies with the directors so even though if you hire me to direct a show with you I do want to hopefully get asked to come back the next season there's a little bit of pressure there to really be the person though who can be like you know what this character was written as white but what if we cast a latino person what if we flip this from a man to a woman obviously trying to serve the play and working with the playwright on that but we have a little bit more room to take risks I think than artistic directors do it's not ultimately going to be our fault if the play doesn't sell well I think too as artistic directors it's sort of the formula that I mean it does need to change a certain number of new unknown playwright slots right you're going to do known playwrights that you know where you're going to seed maybe work with or you know this is going to thing so if there's one unknown playwright slot is there something that can shift that and you have it between a man and a woman is there something that can shift that artistic directors can say you know what I have a responsibility to put a woman in there I don't know opposed to the responsibility of the better play no no no as a responsibility it is I don't know but is there is there sort of a responsibility to gender parity you know if we've got two plays that these would each work it does it way well this is by a woman and we were responsibility or this is by writer of color we have responsibility I want to go to Henry's original question just very quickly before we close and maybe we're just going to leave this with you to think about what are the dramaturgical assumptions and hidden biases that make us choose to produce far more plays by each year by men rather than women would you read that again and better this time sorry I got confused by the difference between an M and an N in Henry's room what are the dramaturgical assumptions and hidden biases that make us choose to produce far more plays by men than by women year after year and I think the bigger question is how do we change them yes well there's one little detail that you're talking about women buying the tickets but so often they're buying tickets to please because they want to drive them to the theater and they know he's going to fall asleep and so they want to please that kind of thing so I think that's really a strong element in everybody's thinking it's not like they are free agents in this so well that's a problem as old as time but we're not all heterosexual as a feminist and a lesbian I feel like the thing that troubles me is that I somehow don't match up with the inequality that I see in the world about us I kind of don't buy it I never have I've done women's work and men's work I've made every job I've ever had the only one straight job I've ever had was to be a firefighter I just kind of am always shocked I think it's the same for people of color and others interpretation of you don't buy it don't get it it's always hard for me especially when I was raised with four brothers I always felt like I saw things that they never saw they just didn't see it it wasn't in their line of vision because of the perception ability or because of language or subtext or whatever that they didn't read as well as I felt like I did so if anything I feel superior so it surprises me so I do think we have to count I really think we have to count and I think we have to speak with our ticket sales and I think people have to start being accountable like they do in every part of the society to be multicultural and to be fair and if they're not I don't think we should give them our money that's how I feel and I think it should be like I said in the beginning power concedes it should be a demand it's just nice stuff it just hasn't worked 50 years here I think my take on this and this hasn't changed since we started is I think we have to educate more women to be the good storytellers to be bold in their own way and to not be frightened of it to say Henry's making us say time out I think we could continue this thank you you caught so badly thanks Louise really interesting is that what you wanted my friend