the day to day of a professional actor in the San Francisco Bay Area

mostly the day to day of a professional actor in the San Francisco Bay Area, but also the home of the Counting Actors Project

Monday, November 5, 2012

Counting Actors October 2012

This project began in June 2011. With the contributions of many theater makers and theater goers,  I now have stats for 198 Bay Area shows!  To learn more about the project, including how to contribute info for shows you're working on or go to see and a a link to a list of prior posts, go here.

15 Shows Counted:
SF Shakes/Midsummer Night's Dream (this Shakespeare on Tour project truncates the play to a 55 minute length and a cast of 5 who play multiple roles.  Female actors play Puck/Egeus as well as several of the Mechanicals)
We Players/Twelfth Night (a site specific project with a female actor playing a male Toby Belch, and several actor/musicians with very small amounts of dialogue)
Ragged Wing/Within the Wheel (a multi-site, installation piece with one 'creator/director' credited here and additional 'site directors' not credited.  Also no credited writer - text was found text combined w/company devised text and no one is credited as 'text' or 'writer' in their program)
Crowded Fire/The Hundred Flowers Project
Cutting Ball/Strindberg Chamber Plays (although this is five one act plays presented over three separate evenings, they are all directed by one director, and use a company of actors for all the plays, so I'm counting it as a single show)
TheatreWorks/33 Variations
Marin Theater Company/Topdog/Underdog
Shotgun/Assassins (directing team on this project includes F director, M music director and M book/lyrics M composer; onstage band not included in count)
Diaspora Productions/And That's What Little Girls are Made of
CentralWorks/Richard the First Trilogy (again, this is three plays presented over three evenings, but by a single writer, director and company of actors, so counting it as one show; also female actor playing a boy/teen in one of the pieces)
Word for Word/Stories from Sonoma Mountain (credited writer is actually a fiction writer - this company presents short stories as plays)
CenterREP/The Underpants
Stanford Continuing Studies & Stanford Summer Theater/Miss Julie (this may have been under the radar for a lot of folks, but it wasn't a student production, but rather a month long Equity contract for all three actors)
CalShakes/Hamlet (this production had a female Rosencranz)
SF Playhouse/Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (the count for this show includes 2 boys who alternate playing the child role in the show)

The Stats:
8 male directors, 8 female directors
14 male writers, 2 female writers
119 total actors, 69 male, 50 female
48 union actors, 71 non-union actors
28 union men, 20 union women
108 local actors, 9 non-local

Thank you so much to the actors, audience members, theater staff and production teams who have contributed to this count.  Specifically this month, I'd like to thank Maria Leigh, Anne Hallinan, Michael Gene Sullivan, Carol S. Lashof, Susan Shay, Phoebe Moyer, Kat Zdan (my birthday twin!), and Karen Thompson Hall.


November info will go up between December 1st and 5th.  As mentioned above, the Counting Actors project is at 198 shows.  When I get to 200 shows logged, I'll be able to compile some bigger picture comparisons, similar to what I did back in March 2012, when the project reached 100 shows.  So send in info for shows running now - more info on what goes in the email is here.

Thanks for talking about and sharing this info with your theater friends and colleagues, in either the real or virtual green room, audition waiting room, or at the closing night party.

No comments:

Post a Comment