***Kabuki as we know it was said to have been created in the 17th century by a woman named Okuni. She was a shrine maiden from Izumo who started organizing small performances of songs and dances (the literal meaning of “kabuki”) in the dry riverbed of the Kamo River in Kyoto. Her actors usually came from the lowest classes of Japanese society, including prostitutes, beggars and other social outcasts.Another thing they all had in common was that they were all women. Their plays about historical events, love and our shared human experiences became an instant hit. Soon, Okuni and her troupe were performing for the Kyoto imperial court, which spurred the creation of other all-female troupes around the old capital and beyond. And they all lived happily ever after. Wait, what’s the title of this article again? Oh no…How Kabuki Became a Guy Thing and Helped Popularize the BentoIn 1629, the ruling shogunate flat-out banned all women from performing kabuki. The reason given was something about how kabuki was corrupting public morals. To be fair, a lot of early kabuki plays were provocative and erotic. And because a lot of the performers were prostitutes, there were many instances of sex work behind kabuki productions. But you have to understand that the Japanese government wasn’t really that prudish. In fact, in 1617, it approved the creation of Yoshiwara, a massive red-light district within Edo (old Tokyo) that also, unsurprisingly, had a vibrant kabuki scene.More...https://www.tokyoweekender.com/2022/01/no-women-kabuki-theater-japan/
***Though the playhouses, shut by Puritan zealots earlier in the century, reopened soon after the Catholic Stuarts regained the throne, the old rules forbidding women to appear in them were still in effect. As in Shakespeare's time, all the female roles were played by men."Stage Beauty" observes the collapse of this tradition and the birth of female English acting through the entwined careers of Ned Kynaston (Billy Crudup), the last of the old-school female impersonators, and Maria Hughes (Claire Danes), who starts out as his stage-struck dresser and later becomes his rival.More...https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/movies/upstaged-by-the-king-an-actor-in-drag-straightens-out.html
***“A Raisin in the Sun,” the celebrated play by Lorraine Hansberry, was in tryouts at New Haven’s Shubert Theatre on Jan. 11, 1959, when the 29-year-old playwright shared her thoughts with the producing team about the previous night’s performance. In a two-page, typed memo, she offered detailed notes on the show’s four lead actors and suggested tweaks to various scenes.Her closing lines blend self-doubt and graciousness: “I am not deeply fond of this play but I must say that I think it is getting a worthy production. Love to all of you ….”Two months later, “A Raisin in the Sun” premiered on Broadway, the first play written by a Black woman to do so. The story of a Black family’s experiences amid the segregation of Chicago’s Southside was nominated for four Tony Awards, including best play, and earned Hansberry the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award. Today, it is considered an American classic.Hansberry is one of a cast of dozens of women featured in “Brava! Women Make American Theater,” an exhibition on view at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library through July 22. Drawing on archival materials from the Beinecke’s collections, the show shines a spotlight on women’s contributions to the American stage, sharing the stories of playwrights, producers, directors, actors, costume designers, choreographers, stage managers, and other professionals involved in making theater. It begins in 1787 with “The Contrast” — the first play professionally produced in the United States — and continues through to the present day.“No single story can encapsulate the history and influence of women in American theater,” said Melissa Barton, curator of prose and drama for the Yale Collection of American Literature, who organized the exhibition. “The show presents an array of stories, recognizing that the individuals at the center of them might have had differing perspectives on feminism and what it means to be a woman.More...https://news.yale.edu/2022/02/28/brava-beinecke-shines-spotlight-women-theater
***The report is a wide-ranging collaboration between Sphinx Theatre, University Women in the Arts and December Group in partnership with trade unions Equity and Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, alongside Black Womxn in Theatre, Stage Directors UK, Era 50:50 and Parents and Carers in Performing Arts (Pipa).Parrish, the artistic director of Sphinx, called the taskforce’s gender imbalance “disgraceful”. “They could be seizing the opportunity for new pathways to be set and to represent all of culture and society,” she said, “but they have failed. It’s astonishing a government taskforce could be so behind the curve and we will certainly be pursuing them.”A DCMS spokesperson said: “We are completely committed to ensuring a diverse and inclusive cultural sector and have been speaking with women from a broad range of cultural organisations throughout the pandemic to help understand the impact on the industry.”The report’s findings range from the unfair burden of care falling on female performers – eight out of 10 women are forced to turn down work due to parenting or caring responsibilities – to the lack of female leadership in theatre and imbalances in film, where 16% of working film-makers are female, and 14% of prime-time TV is written by women. In some instances, research shows that little had improved for women in the creative arts over the past decade.More...https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2021/jan/13/uk-report-reveals-disgraceful-gender-inequality-in-the-arts***THE COUNT 3.0An Ongoing Study By The Lillys In Partnership With The Dramatists GuildThe Count 3.0 gathered production data from a diverse sample of 147 not-for-profit theaters nationwide as chosen by The Dramatists Guild regional representatives. The focus is on theaters that produce contemporary work. The Count studies gender, race, and nationality of the creators of plays and musicals. Due to the size of the data set and intersectionality, we could only reliable break. down race into two groups, BIPOC and white. The Count collects national statistics and breaks them down by region and city. Findings are presented in three-year installments, in hopes of creating a dynamic record of change over time.In this third installment and ninth year of this project, it’s clear that, although the American theater has continues to add to the diversity of its playwrights, neither gender nor racial parity has yet been achieved in terms of production. Anecdotally, it appears that women over the age of 50, especially BIPOC women, who led the push for the diversity we now enjoy, do not appear to have directly benefitted. As information on playwrights’ ages is not widely available, we cannot show national statistics. The Lillys has begun a study of the stages of NYC, and will announce our findings in the near future.More...https://the-lillys.org/the-count-3
***“Why is it that there are so few women playwrights? And why is it that the infrequent plays produced by women playwrights rarely attain high rank? The explanation is to be found in two facts: First, the fact that women are likely to have only a definitely limited knowledge of life, and, second, the fact that they are likely also to be more or less deficient in the faculty of construction. The first of these disabilities may tend to disappear if ever the feminist movement shall achieve its ultimate victory; and the second may depart also whenever women submit themselves to the severe discipline which has compelled men to be more or less logical.”—Brander Matthews, “Women Dramatists,” A Book About the Theater (1916)In 2002, I was working as an arts analyst in the theatre program at the New York State Council on the Arts, where, in partnership with Suzanne Bennett, I had recently completed a three-year study on the status of women in theatre which generated a widely read report. Encouraged by my interest in the subject, two visionary directors, Gwynn MacDonald and Mallory Catlett, approached me to fund “The First Hundred Years: The Professional Female Playwright,” a remarkable yearlong citywide staged readings series directed by an eclectic group of directors, complemented by symposia involving a slate of distinguished scholars. I heard for the first time the names Elizabeth Cary, Margaret Cavendish, Joanna Baillie, Elizabeth Inchbald, Hannah Cowley, and many others. This was the beginning of my education about the Other Canon: some good, some great, some successful in their time, some way ahead of their time, all almost erased from history and the repertory.More...https://www.americantheatre.org/2015/09/21/the-other-canon-10-centuries-of-plays-by-women/
