Cumulative advantage and women playwrights

At The Summit, a public conversation with prominent DC theatres’ artistic directors convened by Washington Post theatre critic Peter Marks, Ryan Rilette tried to explain why it was more difficult for prominent theatres to stage women playwrights than to stage their male peers. Part of his reply–that there were fewer women “in the pipeline” (meaning a production circuit from major London and New York stages) went viral on social media, inspiring some very funny memes like Daniel Alexander Jones’:

Daniel Alexander Jones’ meme

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It also inspired Elaine Romero to initiate WE EXIST, an open-source, editable list of female and trans* playwrights to which anyone can add herself or another playwright. (see my previous post.)

But I don’t want to make Rilette the bad guy here; his theater, Roundhouse, is committing to gender parity in future seasons, and is part of a group of 44 DC-based theatres who’ll be premiering women playwrights for the Women’s Voices Festival in DC in 2015.

Instead, I want to tease out what’s useful and important in the problem he named.

In print! Trojan Barbie

It was a thrill to see my play finally in book form (Samuel French). That stunning Cassandra on the cover is Nina Kassa.