Also, as a straight male stage manager, I feel like I am in the minority and treated unfairly. Why is it, in all of Sydney, I can only name two, maybe three white, straight, male stage managers. Surely you can see the discrimination.

I also come from an ethnic background (my dad was English, so I’m only half Australian). There seem to be very few ethnic, white, straight, male stage managers. No wonder I can’t get a job higher than Assistant Stage Manager. It’s a real girl’s club. Perhaps I’ll go become a flyman (or should that be flyperson).

http://kjtheatrereviews.blogspot.com/2009/09/women-in-theatre.html

http://collisionprojects.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/female-writers-directors/

http://www.aussietheatre.com.au/index.php

http://www.theage.com.au/news/entertainment/arts/womens-theatre-group-slams-mtc-as-a-boys-club/2009/09/29/1253989911973.html

… by the Australian Women Directors Alliance, whose blog is here:

http://australianwomendirectorsalliance.blogspot.com

http://www.smh.com.au/news/entertainment/arts/armfield-denies-boys-club-accusation/2009/09/29/1253989912789.html?page=-1

Just checked the report summary and the numbers are even worse. According to Sands’ study of 20,000 playwrights and 80,000 scripts (which is drawn from a database of English texts written since 1956) only 32% of playwrights are women. So there are twice as many male writers. But only 26% of scripts are written by women. So males in this particular data set write three times as many scripts as females. These proportions are carried over to production.

That’s in the US. I’m not aware of a similarly rigorous study conducted in Australia.

That’s generally what I was referring to, though my use of the term “talent pool” was ambiguous and may have implied something else. Bad wording on my part. Not that “talent” isn’t a factor, but if you have 700 women and 300 men applying for a course that will take 50, then it’s statistically likely that there’ll be around 35 women and 15 men good enough to get in.

The comment about “traditionally male” and “traditionally female” fields is relevant I think. Is theatre writing and directing, even today, still a (somewhat) “traditionally male” enterprise, as it was in ye olden days? In the US for instance, even today, twice as many scripts are written (or submitted rather) by men compared to women. But that might not be true in Australia. (The PWA stats for instance seem to imply otherwise, at least at a certain developmental level.) The issue is whether there are as many high quality women as men writers/directors in the theatre today. If the answer is yes, then the under representation at the top tier may indicate a bias. If the answer is no, then the imbalance might just be the law of numbers at play, with the occasional outlier.

I’m doing a Writing MA and entry was based on a combination of portfolio, CV, personal “why I want to do this course” essay and academic transcript (which in my case might not have counted for much because I don’t have an Arts undergrad). I’m also doing a non-accredited writing course at NIDA where entry was based on CV, brief personal statement, exercise and interview. I think the fact that selection for these courses were based on a combination of all these factors indicates that it’s a much more subjective and qualitative determination than just, say, a TER mark. So it’s not unlike (but yes, not identical either to) getting into a theatre season. Granted, it’s easier to just go by a number and ranking when talking about a Maths or Accounting course, fields which are inherently numerative and where demonstrably “correct” answers exist.

“As I asked before: is it a sign of discrimination that the Uni course I’m studying is dominated by females? I certainly don’t think so. I think it’s just reflective of the make up of the talent pool.”

I’d argue that it’s not so much the talent pool, but more the people who picked that course (the people more predisposed to study that sort of subject). I’m not sure what you’re studying, but that’s the reason engineering courses, for example, are overwhelmingly populated by males – because it’s a traditionally male field that is only just changing. If you’re studying the humanities, that field has been “traditionally” female for close to a century, which would be why it’s dominated by females.

Also, uni courses are slightly different to a play season – for the vast majority of the former you need a mark to get in (there is no judgment of character/age/experience/etc, unless you are a mature age student – a minority), whereas the later is all about talent/notoriety/age/sex/character/etc because they don’t give you the gig based on a number you earned, but rather on who you are. Perhaps there should be a system in the theatre industry where you earn points and those with the most points (regardless of sex) get the gigs? ;)

Do you have sources to support that claim? For instance the US Sands study quoted in the New York Times article found that there were twice as many works submitted to theatres written by male writers. But that’s in the US.

In one of the other blogs someone contacted PWA and found that the male/female ratio for Playwriting Australia’s National Script workshop (I think it was) was just about 50/50. But that – presumably – was for writers not yet near or at the top level of accomplishment, which – presumably – is where Company B is positioned. I’m happy to be corrected of course.

So I’d truly like to know if your assertion that there are just as many male as female writers and directors, and at the same quality, has a basis in something other than anecdote and personal opinion. I myself don’t know what the answers are, but I did suggest that a possible reason for the imbalance in who gets selected was an imbalance in the talent pool. Because that, to me, is an inherently more plausible explanation than discrimination. As I asked before: is it a sign of discrimination that the Uni course I’m studying is dominated by females? I certainly don’t think so. I think it’s just reflective of the make up of the talent pool.

> In the last 6 months I have pitched to Griffin, Belvoir, STC, Malthouse and Darlinghurst, as well as launching my own theatre company…

See, that’s great. Seriously (without any sarcasm or condescension): Congratulations. You’re operating at a level and with a degree of initiative and drive that I can only (currently) dream of. Keep going like that and you’ll probably make it. I say “probably” only because no one can predict the future.

> – but if I uttered one word about the “issue”, I could kiss goodbye to work

I would like to think you’re wrong, but can’t support that opinion other than with the statement that I’ve never heard anyone (in my limited exposure to the industry) say or do anything that would make me think they’re against outspoken females (or males for that matter). But that doesn’t really count for anything given my limited and biased sample set.

If it’s true however, then that sucks. Any workplace/industry/society should encourage discussion on any issue important to the people who comprise it.

> Perhaps I’m reading it wrong, but your denial of a problem,

I’m not denying the problem per se. It’s just not the issue for me that it is to you for the reasons I explained earlier. But so what? I might care deeply about the plight of the Peruvian mountain goat, but if you don’t, does that affect my ability to speak out and/or do something about the issue? Should I expect you to feel strongly about the Peruvian mountain goat just because I do?

> or the hyper-literal extraction of the issue to be about proportionate-demographic-equality

I was being deliberately reductive, as mentioned in an earlier post. I don’t believe in quotas, and counting numbers of X and Ys (no chromosomal pun intended) is – arguably – implicitly a way of instigating “soft” quotas.

But I do think it’s valid to ask why the question isn’t being broadened to include other demographic dimensions. Why aren’t you up in arms about, say, the lack of … oh, I don’t know … purple-haired midget Christian guitarist writers/directors from the outer west in the season? Because it’s likely that (a) none of these attributes apply to you and/or (b) even if they do, they’re not very important to the definition of your own identity. But there might be a fervently purple-haired midget guitarist in Fairfield right now throwing darts at a picture of Neil Armfield and praying for forgiveness.

> is, oh god…oh no, making me emotional. And we don’t like that in our theatre.

Personally, I think theatre – and all art – must first and foremost evoke emotion. Intellectual wankery and didacticism is all well and good to impress the critics (and, yeah, to give a work a bit of depth and all that… *grumble grumble*), but PASSION is where it’s at. You’re obviously passionate about this issue and your work. (Again, please don’t take this as me being condescending or sarcastic:) Good for you. I admire that.