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In theater, women fight to get voices heard

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On Broadway, this has been a banner year for diversity, with the multi-ethnic casts and creators of such shows as the megahit “Hamilton” and the Old Globe-bred “Allegiance” leading the charge.

And yet in New York and across the country, the numbers don’t add up in quite so encouraging a way when it comes to one huge but still underrepresented part of America’s theater brain trust: Women who write plays and musicals.

In San Diego last summer, at the national conference of the Dramatists Guild, the results of a major research project called “The Count” found that of some 2,500 productions sampled nationwide, only about 22 percent were of works by female writers.

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There was at least one small sign of progress: That number was up about 5 percentage points from the findings of a comparable study about a decade earlier.

And for San Diego, a more recent survey from American Theatre magazine offered additional cause for optimism: Four local companies (La Jolla Playhouse, San Diego Rep, Moxie Theatre and Mo`olelo Performing Arts Company) made a national list of theaters whose 2015-16 seasons consist of at least half female-written works.

Looking around at what’s onstage locally right now reveals a variety of female voices: The Playhouse’s world-premiere piece “Indecent” was created by two women (Paula Vogel and Rebecca Taichman); Ion Theatre just opened Pulitzer winner Annie Baker’s “The Aliens,” while Moxie Theatre (a woman-centered company) and InnerMission Productions each just did a play by the rising Madeleine George.

And San Diego Rep (a local pioneer in diversity) is staging “The Oldest Boy” by Sarah Ruhl, who happens to be one of just four women on American Theatre’s list of the 20 most-produced playwrights in America for 2015-16.

But look closer, and the picture can get a bit fuzzier, raising complicated questions about how to measure women’s level of theatrical influence and opportunity, and whether bringing aboard more female artists actually does (or even should be expected to) translate into a greater “women’s perspective” onstage.

For example, both “The Aliens” and “My Mañana Comes,” the Elizabeth Irwin play staged recently by the Rep, are populated entirely by male characters.

And looking much more broadly at the San Diego theater scene, local companies’ top artistic leaders — those in charge of choosing which plays get staged — remain predominantly male.

“We have some women in positions of leadership. I think we definitely could have more,” says Kristianne Kurner, executive artistic director of New Village Arts Theatre in Carlsbad.

“You look at the biggest theaters in town, and you don’t see women in top positions.”

Kurner mentions Lamb’s Players Theatre, where Deborah Gilmour Smyth and Kerry Meads are associate artistic directors, as one exception. The Old Globe, La Jolla Playhouse and San Diego Rep, the county’s other three biggest theaters, all have male artistic directors and managing directors.

“We do have women (leaders) at the smaller theaters,” Kurner adds. But overall, “it’s something we could do better with.”

Still, Kurner rates San Diego as “pretty good” for female theater artists. As far as her own company, “we’re not at 50 percent this year as far as (female) playwrights, but if you look at how many women we work with in terms of directors and actors and designers, we’re way over.”

“I would love to do every season with at last half female playwrights. But it’s a bigger picture for me. It’s also, what female directors are available, and what roles (are offered) for female actors?”

Varied missions

How female artists factor into a theater’s programming is often at least in part a function of its mission.

The Old Globe, San Diego’s flagship theater and one of the most important regional theaters in the country, produces a wide variety of new and classic work and employs many women as directors and in other roles.

The Globe, though, also has deep roots in Shakespeare (who for the record was not and almost certainly never will be female). None of the four plays in the theater’s recently announced summer season, two of them by the Bard, were written by women (although one, the musical “Sense and Sensibility,” was adapted from a Jane Austen novel). But two of the shows will be directed by women.

Of the nine shows in the Globe’s 2015-16 winter season (now in progress), five were at least co-written by women. (One of those, the world-premiere dance musical “In Your Arms,” involved 10 playwrights, three of whom were women; among those was Marsha Norman, a key principal behind “The Count.”)

“I think we’re improving,” says Barry Edelstein, who just marked his third year as Globe artistic director. “We did do an (internal) study, and I think we’re clearly making progress. And trying to get toward that kind of gender equity we all think we ought to have.

“If you want to broaden it and say ‘primary creative artists’ (meaning directors and designers as well as writers) I think we’re making tremendous headway, especially compared with the Globe’s roster historically.

“It’s a vexing struggle. We think it’s important; we want to do it. We’re reading a lot of plays, and talking to a lot of artists,” and letting agents know that “we want to read the greatest plays you’ve got, but if you’ve got great plays by women and people of color, put those at the top of the stack.”

“The truth is that these institutions have an obligation to be more porous and more accessible, and to include the work of as many different voices as there are communities in our city,” adds Edelstein, who is overseeing a major reorganization at the Globe geared toward intensive community engagement. “That’s just how it has to be.”

The Playhouse’s current “Indecent” (a co-production with Yale Rep) has been that relative rarity, a piece both written and directed by women.

The Pulitzer-winning Vogel (“How I Learned to Drive”), who co-conceived the work with director Taichman, says she’s heartened by the fact that the numbers for female playwrights have gone up, if modestly.

“Now we do need to keep the heat on, to make sure we are hearing from all Americans,” Vogel says.

“We really have to stop making it an all-white boys’ club. It’s crucial to the health of our community.”

The Playhouse’s upcoming season includes an even more rare teaming: three women (the Pulitzer-winning playwright Quiara Alegria Hudes, the director Lear deBessonet and the singer-songwriter Erin McKeown) on a new musical, “Miss You Like Hell.”

(“Fun Home,” the 2015 Tony Award winner for best musical, was celebrated for the fact that it likewise was written and composed by women, although it had a male director.)

Playhouse artistic chief Christopher Ashley says of “Miss You Like Hell” (which hits the theater next year): “The fact that three women are creating a piece about a mother and daughter, there’s so much about that that feels exciting and current and fresh and vibrant. So we’re delighted to put those three together.”

As for the larger issue of opportunities for women and other underrepresented artists, Ashley says: “There are absolutely success stories, but in terms of inclusion and equity, there’s so much work to be done that no one ever gets to rest on their laurels and say, ‘Great, we did it!’”

(One recent development at the Playhouse has been the Paula Marie Black Endowment for Women’s Voices in the Art of Theatre, funded by its namesake trustee to provide extra financial support to female artists working at the theater.)

Kilroys in the spotlight

The attention that “Fun Home” and “The Count” have helped bring to the status of women in theater has also been heightened by the Kilroys, a group of L.A.-based playwrights and producers who (by their own description) “are done talking about gender parity and are taking action.”

The most visible part of their mission has been an annually updated list of plays written by women, an effort to combat the oft-heard excuse that there just aren’t enough female-penned plays out there to produce. (The current version has 53 plays just on its “most recommended” list.)

And theaters are starting to pick up on the resource: Moxie Theatre’s recent “Orange Julius” came courtesy of the Kilroys.

“The Count” and the affiliated Lilly Awards for female playwrights also are having an impact.

Carla Nell, co-founder of San Diego’s InnerMission Productions (with Kym Pappas), volunteered for the Lillys last summer, and says, “It just got me really fired up.”

Nell says it’s been “really nice to be able to participate in it and be part of the consciousness that surrounds the issue. I know it’s been a topic, but it’s never been the topic.”

(InnerMission just launched its first-ever full season, dominated by women writers.)

Nell recalls that when she was a student at San Diego State University in the early 2000s, perhaps 80 percent of the students were female, “but all of the shows they were doing had very heavily male casts, and not a lot of opportunity for women.

“You’re learning in school that you have less of a shot than your male counterparts. I mean, it’s being taught in college, for God’s sake.”

When Nell staged a production of Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues” on campus, “a lot of the women were so excited because they got to be in the show,” one with 14 women onstage.

By the time she graduated, Nell says, the school had expressed determination to get more women involved, and sought her advice on what shows should be produced.

“I felt like, wow, we did have an impact, because they did see that the female students had something to offer to the department,” she says. “We sold out three shows. We had 1,500 people in the Don Powell (Theatre), and they initially thought we weren’t going to sell any tickets. And they have been more conscious of that since then.”

Looking at the overall progress made, Delicia Turner Sonnenberg — who co-founded the pioneering Moxie in 2004 and is its longtime artistic director — can’t help but feel encouraged.

“I’m just grateful that attention is being paid,” says Sonnenberg, who insists only half-jokingly that “my mission is to not be needed anymore.”

Beyond a simple numbers game, though, she also stresses the importance of pursuing a nuanced diversity: “Are there older women and younger women onstage? In terms of our mission, it’s not just (about) female playwrights, but different female perspectives.

“I am really an optimist. Change is always slow, but we are progressing. And I feel that in a really positive way.”

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