On Thursday, I put out a survey of Boston's large and mid-size theaters, as to how much new work they're producing, and some info on the demographics of who they're producing and who is directing their shows. The news is not particularly great: 13 world premieres from 12 theaters, 6 plays by local writers. But of course, large and mid-sized theaters aren't the whole story for new work. What's happening with the smaller or "fringe" theaters?
Let's take a look, with the understanding that I'm going to miss some companies. (If I do, let me know and I will correct and expand the list.) I'm saving some small companies like Acme, Gamm, and Image for the greater New England survey, since they're a bit out of town. When companies produce a festival of new short plays, I'm counting that as a single production, rather than eight. I'm not including venues like the BCA or Charlestown Working Theatre who have various resident companies, but aren't necessarily producing plays themselves. Companies that did not produce in 2013 or 2014 (like CentaStage and Gan-e-meed) are not included.
Apollinaire Theatre Company. World Premieres: 0. Total plays: 4. Written by women: 1; by people of color: 1; directed by women: 4, directed by people of color: 1.
Argos Productions. World Premieres: 2. The Haberdasher by Walt McGough, directed by Brett Marks, and Bully Dance By David Valdes Greenwood, directed by Sarah Gazdowicz. Total plays: 2. Written by women: 0; by people of color: 0; directed by women: 1; directed by people of color: 0.
Bad Habit Productions. World Premieres: 1. Diamond in the Sky, adapted and directed by Daniel Morris. (I think this is a premiere, but I'm not sure.) Total plays: 4. Written by women: 1; by people of color: 0; directed by women: 2; directed by people of color: 0.
Boston Actors Theater. World Premieres: 2. Paper City Phoenix by Walt McGough (who has had quite a year), directed by Melanie Garber; Twins by Julian Olf, directed by Anna Trachtman. Total plays: 3. Written by women: 1; by people of color: 0; directed by women: 3; directed by people of color: 0.
Boston Theater Company. World Premieres: 0. Total plays: 1. Written by women: 0; by people of color: 0; directed by women: 0; directed by people of color: 0.
Bridge Rep Theater. World Premieres: 1, not Jenny by MJ Halberstadt. Total plays: 4. Written by women: 0; by people of color: 0; directed by women: 2; directed by people of color: 0.
Flat Earth Theatre. World Premieres: 1. Lovecraft's Unnameable Tales, adapted by Amy Lehrmitt, directed by James Heyward. Total plays: 4. Written by women: 1; by people of color: 0; directed by women: 1; directed by people of color: 0.
Fort Point Theatre Channel. World Premieres: 2. The Archives by Skylar Fox, directed by Tasia Jones. Waiting for Gilgamesh, by Amir Al-Azraki and Charles Dumas, directed by Total plays: 3. Written by women: 1; by people of color: 1; directed by women: 1; directed by people of color: 1.
Fresh Ink Theatre. World Premieres: 3. Handicapping by James McLindon, directed by Tyler Monroe, Outlaw Jean by MJ Kaufman, directed by Caitlin Lowans, and 123 by Lila Rose Kaplan, directed by Shana Gozansky. Total plays: 3. Written by women: 1; by people of color: 0; directed by women: 2; directed by people of color: 0.
Footlights Club . World Premieres: 0. Total plays: 5. Written by women: 0; by people of color: 0; directed by women: 1; directed by people of color: 0.
Gold Dust Orphans. World Premieres: 2. Mildred Fierce and Pornocchio both by Ryan Landry. Total plays: 2. Written by women: 0; by people of color: 0; directed by women: 0; directed by people of color: 0.
Happy Medium Theatre . World Premieres: 0. Total plays: 4. Written by women: 0; by people of color: 0; directed by women: 1; directed by people of color: 0.
Hibernian Hall. World Premieres: 1. To Hell With This Village by Sean Travis Taylor, and Raising David Walker by Peter Snoad, both directed by Vincent Ernest Siders. Total plays: 2. Written by women: 0; by people of color: 1; directed by women: 0; directed by people of color: 2.
Hovey Players. World Premieres: 1. Summer Shorts Festival, by various writers. Total plays: 5. Written by women: 0; by people of color: 0; directed by women: 3; directed by people of color: 1.
Hub Theatre. World Premieres: 0. Total plays: 4. Written by women: 1; by people of color: 0; directed by women: 1; directed by people of color: 0.
Imaginary Beasts. World Premieres: 2. Angela Carter's Hairy Tales and Rumplestiltstkin, both adapted by the Imaginary Beasts. Total plays: 3. Written by women: 1; by people of color: 0; directed by women: 0; directed by people of color: 0.
In Good Company. World Premieres: 2. None but the Best by Patrick Gabridge, directed by Jeff Mosser, and The Golden Door written by Joyce van Dyke, directed by Emily Ranii. Music direction of both by Kay Dunlap. Total plays: 2. Written by women: 1; by people of color: 0; directed by women: 1; directed by people of color: 0.
Liars and Believers. World Premieres: 2. Interference and Icarus Total plays: 2. Written by women: 1; by people of color: 0; directed by women: 0; directed by people of color: 0. This group makes company created work, that often runs for just one night. So I don't know quite how to count it. Same applies to the demographics, but the directors seem to be white, and the company list doesn't seem to include any people of color.
Maiden Phoenix Theatre Company. World Premieres: 0. Total plays: 1. Written by women: 1; people of color: 0; directed by women: 1; directed by people of color: 0.
Mill 6 Theatre Collaborative. World Premieres: 1. The T Plays V, a bunch of short plays written on and about the T. Total plays: 1. Written by women: 1; by people of color: 0; directed by women: 1; directed by people of color: 0.
New Exhibition Room. World Premieres: 1. EEP! Show by the company. Total plays: 1. Written by women: 1; by people of color: 1; directed by women: 1; directed by people of color: 1.
New Urban Theatre Laboratory. World Premieres: 1. The NUTlab Five & Dime festival, by various writers (all women in 2013) Total plays: 1. Written by women: 1; by people of color: 1; directed by women: 1; directed by people of color: 1.
Playwrights Platform. World Premieres: 1. Playwrights Platform Summer Festival. Total plays: 1. Written by women: 1; by people of color: 1; directed by women: 1; directed by people of color: 0.
Project Project. World Premieres: 1. How May I Connect You by the company, co-directed by Jeff Mosser and Vicki Shairer. Total plays: 1. Written by women: 1; by people of color: 0; directed by women: 1; directed by people of color: 0.
Roxbury Repertory Theatre. World Premieres: 1. 6 Playwrights in Search of Stage festival. Total plays: 3. Written by women: 3; by people of color: 1; directed by women: 2; directed by people of color: 2. (The data for these productions is a little fuzzy.)
Simple Machine. World Premieres: 0. Total plays: 1. Written by women: 0; by people of color: 0; directed by women: 1; directed by people of color: 0.
Science Fiction Theatre Company. World Premieres: 1. The Aurora Project by Bella Poynton, directed by Vincent Ularich. Total plays: 2. Written by women: 1; by people of color: 0; directed by women: 0; directed by people of color: 0. (Not sure if this was a world premiere or not--it had a college production at the University of Iowa in 2013, too.)
Sleeping Weazel. World Premieres: 2. Real Realism by Charlotte Meehan, directed by Venessa Gilbert, and The African American History and Its Expressions, a festival of plays, dolls and music--featuring the premiere of The Purple Flower, by Harlem Renaissance writer Marita Bonner, directed by Dominic Taylor. Total plays: 2. Written by women: 1; by people of color: 1; directed by women: 1; directed by people of color: 1.
Stickball Productions. World Premieres: 0. Total plays: 1. Written by women: 0; by people of color: 0; directed by women: 0; directed by people of color: 0.
Theatre@First. World Premieres: 0. Total plays: 4. Written by women: 2; by people of color: 0; directed by women 2; directed by people of color: 0.
Theatre on Fire. World Premieres: 0. Total plays: 3. Written by women: 0; by people of color: 0; directed by women: 0; directed by people of color: 0.
Titanic Theatre Company. World Premieres: 0. Total plays: 1. Written by women: 0; by people of color: 0; directed by women: 0; directed by people of color: 0.
Unreliable Narrator. World Premieres: 1. Human Contact, a collection of five short science-fiction plays. Total Plays: 1. Written by women: 0; by people of color: 0; directed by women 0; directed by people of color: 0.
Vagabond Theatre Group. World Premieres: 1. August and Autumn, by Brian Tuttle, directed by James Peter Sotis. Total plays: 2. Written by women: 0; by people of color: 0; directed by women: 0; directed by people of color: 0.
Vaquero Playground. World Premieres: 1. From Denmark with Love by John J. King, directed by Barlow Adamson. Written by women: 0; by people of color: 0; directed by women: 0; directed by people of color: 0.
Whistler in the Dark. World Premieres: 0. Total plays: 2. Written by women: 2; by people of color: 0; directed by women: 2; directed by people of color: 0.
So that's a total of 36 theater companies (though I'm sure I missed some, so I'll update the post as necessary). Here are the stats:
34 world premieres
32 by local writers
13 were written by women (36%)
6 were written by people of color (mostly festivals) (18%)
Total plays produced by 36 theaters: 88
Percentage that were world premieres: 38%
Total plays written by women: 26. (29%)
Total written by people of color: 8. (9%)
Total directed by women: 34 (39%)
Total directed by people of color: 10. (11%)
In addition to the productions of new plays from the Fringe, there are also many developmental opportunities. Interim Writers does monthly readings, and Vagabond and Fresh Ink and several other small companies offer quite a few readings. Next season, we'll be gaining a new company, Boston Public Works, dedicated to producing new plays by their 10 member writers, so that will boost next year's tally of world premieres by 3. Many of the premieres listed here are written by members of the companies, so those productions don't necessarily equate to open slots, but that's true of some of the slots at larger companies as well.
If you compare the Fringe numbers to those from the large and medium-sized companies, you'll see that local writers get most of their opportunities from the small companies (no surprise), but that the larger companies produce a much higher percentage of new plays by women and people of color. In terms of demographics for overall productions, the Fringe produces a smaller percentage of plays by women and people of color. The demographic stats for directors are pretty similar.
If we add together the stats for all Boston theatres, we arrive at:
47 world premieres in Boston this past season from 48 theaters
38 by local writers (81%)
20 world premieres written by women (43%)
10 world premieres written by people of color (21%)
Overall: 151 plays produced.
60 written by women (40%)
16 written by people of color (11%)
60 directed by women (40%)
15 directed by people of color (10%)
I wish that I'd surveyed the Fringe theater scene with my initial post in 2010, so I don't have exact data to compare, but it's clear that the scene for new work has expanded drastically since 2010, with the emergence of Fresh Ink, Vagabond, Interim, and Argos. Boston Public Works will add a whole bunch of world premieres next eyar. And we'll have to see if Hibernian Hall finds success with Peter Snoad's bunch of new plays (they're staging four of them) and will continue to stage new work in the heart of a traditionally underserved community.
As writers, we can often be discouraged at what feels like an endless stream of rejection, but some of the news from Boston is actually pretty exciting--there is a lot of new work going on here. However, there remains significant room for improvement, in terms of producing more work written by people of color and by women. (Indeed, the numbers for women and people of color are slightly inflated, because I'm counting festivals with a mix of women and men directors as being directed by a woman, and same for people of color.)
My hope is that these numbers give us a chance to engage in an honest discussion about the state of Boston area theatre (and how that relates to the national scene), to better understand some of our strengths and our weaknesses.
In the next week or so, I'll try to put together the stats for professional productions in the rest of New England.
- I also want to point out that Art Hennessey, on his blog, Mirror Up to Life, has some other very interesting posts about Boston theatre data from 2010.
- And here's a post from Ilana Brownstein with a similar accounting of productions and diversity from the 2012-2013 Boston season (with a slightly different universe of companies). A comparison of percentages between the two surveys might be a start towards establishing ideas about current trends.
- Here's a blog from San Francisco, where the blogger is keeping stats on gender for actors, directors, and writers, month-by-month. http://sfbayareaactor.blogspot.com/
6 comments:
If you compare the Fringe numbers to those from the large and medium-sized companies, you'll see that local writers get most of their opportunities from the small companies (no surprise), but that the larger companies produce a much higher percentage of new plays by women and people of color. In terms of demographics for overall productions, the Fringe produces a smaller percentage of plays by women and people of color.
This is an interesting observation. Let me hypothesize that this is because the plays presented by smaller companies are more likely to reflect the individual artistic tastes of the AD and a few select collaborators, while the larger companies have larger communities, and thus, a larger number of interests they have to serve?
There are too many facets to squeeze into a set of comments. I don't expect to exhaust them all.
I think it's more than just AD and literary depts tastes. It's what's being written by who's writing it for who can do it in Boston. Which can and should be a challenge to all of us to think about multi-everything casting, writing, etc. And yes, I think that a big theatre does serve many different audiences. It's more about marketing and who we know in the fringe world than we may think.
Well, I think you're both right. I think that larger theatres program a more diverse set of artists, because they have more obvious, large-scale public accountability--they necessarily serve larger audiences, involve more people in the decision process, have a broader range of funders, and are more closely publicly scrutinized.
At the same time, I think Jeff is right that the Fringe world has the capability of embracing a challenge to be more inclusive of whose stories are being told, and by whom, because the companies are small and more easily able to react and change, should they wish to.
Smaller companies tend to specialize-- it's how they form their artistic stamp. They either have a mission statement (that is often right in the name of their company-- as with Actors' Shakespeare Project-- which does Shakespeare and occasionally puts one non-Shakespeare play on per season) or in presenting work from a given culture or community. Others, really are about the personal tastes of the founding members-- and I think that specialization is good.
Maybe what we need are more specialist companies, alongside the more "generalist" companies? There's an Association for Jewish Theatre, as well as a National Black Theatre Festival to give just two examples. How many companies in Boston are affiliated with those organizations or organizations with a specific mission of advancing a given culture? How many companies exist have complementary missions? How many of them work with the larger theater community by sharing expertise, actors, designers?
Well, I think you're both right.
I don't think Jeff and I were in competition to determine who was more right-- our interpretations of the data you offered, are not mutually exclusive.
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