Girls Playwrights Lose the Limelight
Within the late days of June, because the previous theatre season was ebbing away and new-season bulletins had been streaming in, a shock hit New York. Playwrights Horizons, the birthplace of exhibits together with the Pulitzer Prize winners “Sunday within the Park with George” and Annie Baker’s “The Flick,” introduced its programming for 2025-26. It was, in some methods, an ordinary combine, together with works by returning Playwrights artists (John J. Caswell, Milo Cramer, Shayok Misha Chowdhury) and several other writers new to its stage (Jacob Perkins, Nazareth Hassan, the writing crew of Jen Tullock and Frank Winters). Lately, a six-show season is a surprisingly full slate; many theatres of comparable measurement, crippled by rolling funding crises, have decreased their choices. However one thing else stood out, too: in a notably numerous lineup (the vast majority of lead artists are queer, and two are nonbinary), there was just one lady author, and he or she occupied half a slot.
Playwrights Horizons wasn’t alone. Different main theatres revealed their programming, a few of which reverted to acquainted patterns from a decade in the past. The Roundabout Theatre will give one slot out of 4 to a lady, whose work will seem within the nonprofit’s Off Broadway house. The Manhattan Theatre Membership, which, like Roundabout, makes use of each Broadway and Off Broadway theatres, will host two performs written by girls of the 4 exhibits it has introduced to date; nonetheless, in what’s grow to be a typical development, each can be produced on its smaller, and thus much less remunerative, Off Broadway stage. Basic Stage Firm, underneath its creative director, Jill Rafson, confirmed a season of three exhibits, all written and directed by white males. And the Williamstown Theatre Pageant, having fun with its first summer time underneath its new director, Jeremy O. Harris—the playwright who, in 2021, requested to withdraw his “Slave Play” from Middle Theater Group when it introduced a season with just one lady in it—has zero performs written by girls amongst its 2025 productions.
In 2015, the Lillys, a bunch that honors girls within the American theatre, printed the Depend, a nationwide survey that assessed the demographic make-up of playwrights discovered on the nation’s levels. As one of many group’s founders, Julia Jordan, places it, “Statistics are our superpower.” For years, advocates had been protesting the underrepresentation of ladies playwrights, notably girls of coloration, however they had been getting little traction. Some theatres pointed to the canon and shrugged helplessly—was it their fault that Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and Shakespeare had been inconveniently male? Notably, when a theatre did program a lady, her play was relegated to the so-called “second house” or to a studying collection. The Depend gave theatres a technique to see their place within the bigger subject. Particular person programming selections—reflections of 1 theatre’s, and even one individual’s, style—seemed fairly totally different when positioned in a nationwide context.
Consideration-getting strategies just like the Depend—and, later, accountability initiatives corresponding to “We See You White American Theater,” which printed an intensive assertion calling for the American theatre trade to handle racial imbalance, in addition to publishing hiring metrics on Instagram—pushed the sphere towards change. In 2023, the Lillys introduced at its annual awards that, for the primary time, New York theatres had achieved what the Lillys referred to as “parity,” with the town’s playwriting lineups roughly paralleling the gender and racial distribution of the nation at giant. Was this victory? The Lillys started to consider disbanding; maybe its work was executed.
So when the brand new Playwrights season hit inboxes, Jordan referred to as the corporate’s creative director, Adam Greenfield, to ask what had occurred. (Greenfield is a longtime pal of the Lillys; the group really bought its begin at Playwrights, in 2010, again when Greenfield was nonetheless an affiliate creative director, and the group holds its annual awards ceremony on the Playwrights primary stage.) The Lillys advised him that it needed to convene an open assembly about what felt like a severe backsliding, and Greenfield immediately responded.
On the ensuing city corridor, the Tony Award-winning playwright Lisa Kron mentioned, “Adam acknowledged it as a ‘misstep,’ ” and famous that he rapidly supplied the Playwrights theatre for the event. Six days after the Playwrights announcement went public, a capability crowd turned as much as speak about illustration and curation, and to attempt to think about the best way to regain progress already fought for and, if briefly, received. “We’re right here to mark that one thing appears to be amiss,” Kron mentioned from the stage. “It feels emotional to us as a result of this occurred at Playwrights; it occurred underneath Jeremy O. Harris. We really feel these individuals to be our allies—they are our allies.” She went on. “Our problem isn’t with one another however with a system that considers one group central and the others as disposable.”
Within the assembly, Jordan famous that the low representational numbers for ladies are troublesome to sq.. By numerous measures (together with the numbers of ladies graduating from diploma packages within the arts), roughly two-thirds of the sphere’s writers are girls—there may be not, as creative administrators as soon as argued, a pipeline problem. It appeared notably bitter that, whilst theatres made passionate arguments for range and new creative administrators took over from the previous guard, sure habits had been creeping again. Are we seeing a mirrored image of the nation’s more and more misogynist politics? Is there a sort of ethical fatigue at play? “Final 12 months, an all-male, all-white season didn’t exist,” Jordan mentioned. “However this 12 months . . . permission has been granted.”
On the assembly, Greenfield answered some questions from the gang. “What does steadiness imply? Up to now week, I’ve been eager about that subject rather a lot.” Greenfield later wrote to me about his reasoning and about whether or not “misstep” really describes his feeling concerning the season. “On the assembly, I needed to right away acknowledge that I ought to have prioritized girls writers extra in my decision-making. I see that, and I agree that it’s a shortcoming. In my efforts to uphold range and convey vary to different features of the season, whereas staying conscious of funds constraints, I did not make sufficient house for cisgendered and trans girls,” he mentioned. “However I’d by no means name this slate of performs and artists a ‘misstep.’ I deeply love each one of many performs and artists programmed subsequent season.”
Greenfield continued, “One of many many questions this assembly left me stewing over is, are we working from a shared definition? The definition of a ‘balanced’ season was vastly totally different 5 years in the past than it’s at this time, and it is going to be vastly totally different 5 years from now; it evolves alongside a world cultural dialog. Can anybody season maintain good steadiness from each individual’s perspective?”
Rafson, from Basic Stage Firm, wasn’t in attendance, however she advised me later that she was conscious of the paradox of asserting a season with no girls in it whereas additionally strongly believing in inclusivity. “It might be wildly deceptive to say I hadn’t observed, and I really feel assured that my colleagues had been in an analogous place. We all know that it’s a problem when it’s taking place,” she mentioned. Rafson famous a number of elements that contributed to the scenario: the brevity of a three-show season (“It’s so laborious to get a full illustration of your theatre’s pursuits throughout so little work”) and the Basic Stage mission to reëxamine the canon (“I solely have two commissions out proper now. They’re each to feminine writers doing diversifications of classics.”) “Don’t choose me by one season. Choose me by the breadth of labor,” Rafson mentioned. She takes consolation within the openness of the dialog across the problem. At the least, she mentioned, “we won’t fake that that is good and O.Ok.”
On the city corridor, the query of what would possibly occur subsequent nonetheless appeared very a lot up within the air. One individual recommended that creative administrators announce their subsequent seasons early, weighting them extra closely towards girls writers. One commenter levelled criticism on the Lillys for not finding out one other underrepresented group, disabled playwrights; others advocated for ladies writers over fifty. The playwright Chisa Hutchinson requested that the room keep “answer oriented” by reminding these current that ladies purchase the vast majority of theatre tickets. “Present up! Purchase some tickets!” she mentioned.
And there did appear to be a certain quantity of exhilaration, in truth, within the displaying up itself. Within the weeks after the assembly, Jordan mentioned that she was really feeling optimistic: “Our theatre group is so small and is so simply shamed!” She spoke warmly about Greenfield’s response, in addition to Harris’s, who wrote to her instantly expressing his allyship. And—greater than most—Jordan is aware of that this can be a tide that may transfer again within the different course. “There’s not that many theatres, possibly 5 hundred throughout the nation, and, by and enormous, I’d say 99.8% of them don’t need to be assholes,” she mentioned. “They don’t see themselves that approach; they don’t need to be that approach. Earlier than, all we needed to do was present them the mirror; as soon as they seemed within the mirror, they really modified actually rapidly,” Jordan mentioned. “So I simply—I’m extraordinarily hopeful, and I really feel like, if anyone can, we will make this correction of turning the ship.”
Maybe the previous technique will work once more: a public calling out, appeals to the well-meaning in energy, cautious utility of each strain and gratitude. However what’s worrying is how simple it was for essentially the most conscientious amongst us to miss such an enormous swathe of the panorama. It’s true that it’s attainable to program a various season—the Playwrights lineup exhibits an exciting vary of race, gender expression, sexuality, and creative strategy—and but nonetheless virtually ignore half the inhabitants. What’s it that makes girls so invisible? So many are standing proper right here. ♦
