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Thursday, August 1, 2013

Counting Actors July 2013

A whopping 17 shows for July, bringing the project to 299 shows, which means that at some point in the coming month I'll be at 300 shows, and do some more in depth analysis of shows 201-300 and compare that to the previous 200 shows.  Stay tuned.

If you want to know more about the project, see previous posts in the series, and learn how you can contribute, go here.

17 shows counted:
Marin Shakespeare/Comedy of Errors, The Spanish Tragedy (a few actors cast in both productions and counted 2x, including 6 interns)
SF Playhouse/Camelot (male director and male music director, male writer book/lyrics and 2nd male writer music, video only female actor not included in this count, child role shared by 2 boys, both included here)
San Jose Rep/Minister's Wife (male director, female music director, writing team man/book 2nd man/lyrics woman/music)
Shady Shakespeare/Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet (Feste and Toby played by women; Feste as a female character, Toby as male, Benvolio, Apothecary and Gregory played as female by women actors)
Aurora/This is How it Goes (female crew member appeared onstage briefly in a non-speaking role and is not counted here)
SF Mime Troupe/Oil and Water (script credit is 2 men & SFMT - so 2 men are credited, but actors and director contributed to the writing during the rehearsal process)
Livermore Shakespeare/The Liar, Taming of the Shrew (1 intern in Liar cast, 4 interns in Shrew cast)
California Shakespeare Theatre/Romeo and Juliet (cutting of script by f director so that show could be done by 7 people.  5 actors double cast and roles of Benvolio and Prince are played by women as male/gender-fluid characters)
Dragon Productions/Becky's New Car (originally scheduled to be directed by a woman, but when she had to leave the production and the company had to scramble to replace her, the new director was male)
Off Broadway West/Betrayal
Central Works/Pitch Perfect
Just Theatre/A Maze
Bay Area Children's Theater/Cat in the Hat (female actors played all gender neutral characters in this piece)
TheatreWorks/The Loudest Man in the World (non-local incl. one union, one non-union and non-union actor is deaf)
Porchlight/Scapino (one female role very small, no dialogue and kind of a stage crew person in a costume)

The Stats:
11 male directors, 9 female directors
20 male writers, 3 female writers
173 total actors
103 male actors, 70 female actors
42 union actors, 133 non-union actors
24 union men, 18 union women
168 local actors, 5 non local actors

Many many thanks to the cast members, audience members, crew and theater artistic staff who contributed to this month's count, including: Karen Altree-Piemme, Vera Sloan, Karen Thomson Hall, Phoebe Moyer, Meredith Hagedorn, Hugo Carbajal, Arie Levine, Cassidy Brown, Paul Cello, Eowyn Mader, Patricia Milton, Rebecca Ennals and Corrie Bennett. 

Please share and talk about these numbers with your friends and colleagues.   And if you're in a show or see a show with performances in August, please go here for info on how to contribute your stats.

The count for August will go up between Sept 1st and 5th. 

2 comments:

  1. Valerie has inspired me to track stats for our Free Shakespeare in the Parklet program, a series of 10 staged readings in July and August. I have a casting goal of 50% men, 50% women, 50% actors of color. At Valerie's encouragement, I'm posting it here. Not totally there yet, but here's how we're doing:

    3 male directors, 3 female directors
    4 male writers (Shakespeare, Marlowe, Middleton, Webster), 0 female writers (1 female adaptor/editor - me!)
    35 total actors – 30 professional, 5 interns
    15 male actors, 15 female actors, 4 female interns, 1 male intern
    12 actors of color – 6 African-American, 3 Latino, 2 South Asian, 1 East Asian (5 AEA, 7 non-AEA)
    13 union actors, 17 non-union actors, (5 interns)
    8 union men, 5 union women
    100% home-grown, local actors!

    Rebecca Ennals
    Artistic Director, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for sharing this Rebecca! For those who want to check out Free Shakespeare in the Parklet, check the schedule here: https://www.facebook.com/events/161277184061267/

      There's roughly 1/week thru the end of August (and I'm in one next week!)

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