RIGHTING THE WRONGS OF WOMEN PLAYWRIGHTS
A few weeks ago, in the art s section of the New York Times, there was an article about how few plays by women playwrights are produced in both Broadway and in off Broadway theatres. The most disturbing part of the story was that it was women producers who dominate the off Broadway scene that were doing the rejecting. This piece of information may have been fresh news for the Times readership, but it was old news to me. In 1995, after I became deeply involved in writing theater reviews, articles and also in writing plays, I noted the dearth of women playwrights. I approached Ms. with the sexism that was running rampant in the theater world and asked if I could write an article about it. They thought it was a good idea so they commissioned me to do take it on.
First I contacted as many distinguished playwrights as I could. A few who had managed to make to Broadway were loath to make any statements. It reminded me of the early 70’s when women artists feared to acknowledge that being a woman artist might limit their chances to be taken seriously. They were playwrights, not women playwrights. Most were forthcoming about the discrimination they had experienced. The real shocker was for me, the haughty treatment I received from the women directors and assistant directors of the off Broadway venues: the Second Stage, Lincoln Center, the Manhattan Theater Company and the Second Stage to name the ones in New York. I remember walking along upper Broadway with tears of frustration staining my cheeks after leaving an interview with one dismissive female director. Even out of town regional theaters many run by women also had the same attitude. Gender had no part in selecting playwrights to produce. They only cared about quality. It would seem that they agreed with Bernie Jacobs who I also contacted—there just weren’t enough first rate women playwrights despite the fact that Wendy Wasserstein had received a Pulitzer Prize for the Heidi Chronicles and Suzanne Lori Parks and Cheryl West had received many distinguished awards. Jacobs just told his secretary tell me to contact Julia Miles, as she was the only one who concentrated on the work of women playwrights. He wouldn’t even come to the telephone. I was so disheartened. It was the 90’s and the theater world still had not caught up with the art world that at least allowed that there was prejudice toward women artists.
I spent a great deal of time on that article calling women playwrights and theatre directors all over the country, but for some reason the Ms editor did not care for my piece. After so much work I decided not to give up and to continue to try to get the word out about how shoddily women playwrights were being treated by both the men and the women in power. I was therefore very pleased when the editor of the Dramatist Guild Quarterly, the organ of the prestigious Dramatist Guild, home of the most distinguished playwrights (mainly men who made up its board and voting membership), accepted the article. Some lesser-known women playwrights with whom I connected even did a panel discussion there. Now I thought I might get somewhere by alerting the playwrights themselves as to the injustice taking place in their midst. I can’t believe, considering how much of a fight it took to get the art world powers that be—dealers, critics, curators and collectors to admit their sexist evaluation of women artists, how naïve I still was. And it was the early 90’s Susan Faludi’ s book about backlash had still not come out. Feminism was this F world, an evil word, a diminishing word, a word to be swept under the rug. We were in a post feminist world were those strident unattractive old feminists were an embarrassment.
Yet despite all this, I thought I had broken through the wall of silence surrounding the disparagement of women playwrights. Was I wrong! The editor, a young man, was the worst kind of editor with whom to work. He kept finding fault with every strong statement I made, but instead of telling me what he wanted me to say, he insisted that I guess what he had in mind for me to say. I did rewrite after rewrite thinking that any piece about discrimination toward women in the theater was better than none. In the end he had made me suck the juice out of the work to the point where all its zing was gone. At the time, there seemed to be no other vehicle for the article so I let him print it his way vowing never again to have anything to do with this sneaky male chauvinist.
When I article finally came out, it was place in the back of the magazine with no mention of it on the cover. It was so brief, so watered down that I could see it would make absolutely no impact. The Guild had thrown the women members the tiniest bone they could find and succeeded back then to silence them completely. I am glad to see the issue of the lack of women playwrights being produced on and off Broadway once again raised. Perhaps this time there will be more women in the theater world willing to fight harder to rectify all this existing gender prejudice.