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

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Counting Actors, Shows 201-300, Contracts with Weeks

Final post in this series for now will look at those shows that were done using AEA contracts that offer health insurance weeks. 

To see the info on shows 101-200 in this category, click here.  To see the info on shows 1-100 for this category, go here.  There's a definition of health weeks and why they're important in this post.

To read every single post in this series, go here.

To learn more about the project as a whole, and how to submit numbers for the shows you're seeing or working on, please go here.

There were 56 shows (56%) that were on contracts that use health weeks.

Those shows had:
46 male directors, 21 female directors (67%, 33%)
58 male writers, 15 female writers (79%, 21%)
482 total actors
274 male actors, 208 female actors (57%, 43%)
256 union actors, 226 non-union actors (53%, 47%)
The union actors included 157 men and 99 women (61%, 39%)
402 local actors and 80 non-local actors. (83%, 17%)

The companies and shows in this group were:
6th St Playhouse/August: Osage County
ACT/4000 Miles, Stuck Elevator, Christmas Carol, Black Watch, Dead Metaphor, Arcadia
Aurora Theater/This is How it Goes, Our Practical Heaven, Wilder Times, Arsonists
Berkeley Playhouse/Guys and Dolls
Berkeley Rep/Fallaci, TroubleMaker, White Snake, Pericles
CalShakes/American Night, Romeo and Juliet
CenterREP/39 Steps, Pilgrims Shari and Musa in the New World, Status Update, Sweet Charity, Old Wicked Songs, Christmas Carol
CentralWorks/Pitch Perfect, The Grand Inquisitor
Campo Santo & Intersection/The River
Magic/Terminus, The Happy Ones, Se Llama Cristina
Marin Shakespeare Company/The Spanish Tragedy, Comedy of Errors
Mime Troupe/Oil and Water
Marin Theatre Company/The Whipping Man, Waiting for Godot, It's a Wonderful Life (radio play), Beauty Queen of Leenane
San Jose Rep/Next to Normal, The Minister's Wife
SF Playhouse/The MotherF*cker with the Hat, Abigail's Party, Bell Book and Candle, Camelot
San Jose Stage/Persuasion, Red, Reckless, Reefer Madness
Theatre Rhino/Something Cloudy, Something Clear, A Lady and a Woman
100 Shades of Green/The Fourth Messenger
TheatreWorks/The Loudest Man on Earth, The Mountaintop, Somewhere, Being Earnest, Big River
Word for Word & Z Space/You Know When the Men are Gone

Friday, September 20, 2013

Counting Actors, shows 201-300, Contracts without weeks

To compare this data to shows 101-200, go here.  To compare this to shows 1-100 and to learn what 'without weeks' means, go here.

To read every post there is in the '100 shows' group, go here.  You'll see all the posts that look at the Counting Actors project by groups of 100.

This is post 3 of 4 in a series of posts that break down the shows by type of contract used.  The two previous looked at non-union shows, and shows that used the BAPP.  The next post will look at shows that use contracts with health weeks.

There were 10 shows (10%) that used union contracts that don't provide health weeks.

Those 10 shows had:

8 male directors, 3 female directors (73%, 27%)
8 male writers, 3 female writers (73%, 27%)
95 total actors
64 male actors, 31 female actors (67%, 33%)
22 union actors, 73 non union actors (23%, 77%)
Of the union actors, 13 were male, 9 were female. (59%, 41%)
All 95 of these actors were local. (100%)

The companies/shows that used contracts without weeks were:

Crowded Fire/410 [GONE] & The Bereaved
Indra's Net/Copenhagen
Mugwumpin/The Great Big Also
Shotgun/Woyzeck, Shipwreck & By and By
Livermore Shakespeare/Taming of the Shrew & The Liar
Porchlight/Scapino

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Counting Actors, shows 201-300 BAPP only

For a post that looks at this same data from shows 101-200, click here.  For shows 1-100, click here.  That post also includes a definition of the BAPP.

To read every single post in this series, about all 300 shows, click here.

Yesterday's post looked at non-union shows, and the next two posts will look at shows without health weeks, and shows with health weeks, respectively.

There were 6 shows (6%) that used the BAPP.

These 6 shows had:
2 male directors, 4 female directors (33%, 67%)
1 male writer, 5 female writers (17%, 83%)

There were 35 actors in these shows.
19 male actors, 16 female actors (54% , 46%)
16 union actors, 19 non-union actors (46%, 54%)
Of the union actors, 10 were men, and 6 were women. (63%, 37%)
All 35 were local actors

The BAPP companies/shows were:

3 Girls Theatre/3 shorts - the Things We Do for Love & The Couch
Playground & Katie May, Liz Anderson/Manic Pixie Dream Girl
Symmetry/ Language Archive
Tides/Little Foxes
Off Broadway West/Betrayal

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Counting Actors: shows 201-300, non-union only

This post, and the next 3 posts, will look at the show data sorted by the type of union contract or code that they use.  Today is non-union shows, tomorrow will be shows that use the BAPP, then Friday will have shows on Equity contracts without health weeks, and Saturday will have shows on Equity contracts with health weeks.

If all of this is new and confusing for you, then take a look at the posts from the first hundred on non-union, BAPP, contracts without weeks, and contracts with weeks.  All of those include explanations of what those categories mean.

And if you'd like to compare this post to the non-union shows from the 101-200 grouping, take a look here.

As always, to read every post in this series ever, use this link.

So, there were 28 shows (or 28%) in this group that used no union actors.

Those 28 shows had:

11 male directors, 18 female directors (38%, 62%)
27 male writers, 21 female writers (56%, 44%)

210 actors worked on those shows.  All were non-union.
104 male actors, 106 female actors (49.5%, 50.5%)
3 actors were non-local. (1%)

The companies/shows that were in this group are:

3 Girls Theatre/3 Girls Squared
Altarena Playhouse/God of Carnage
BACT/Cat in the Hat
CentralWorks/Medea Hypothesis
Custom Made/Why Torture is Wrong and People Who Love Them & Eurydice
Cutting Ball/Krispy Kritters in the Scarlet Night & The Chairs
DIVAFest/You're Going to Bleed
Douglas Morisson Theater/Eurydice
Dragon Productions/Becky's New Car
Impact/Toil and Trouble & Jukebox Stories & As You Like It
Inferno Theater/Dracula
Just Theater/A Maze
Killing My Lobster/KML does not fear the end
NCTC/Birds of a Feather
Ragged Wing/Time Sensitive
Role Players Ensemble/Expecting Isabel
Theatre of Yugen/A Minor Cycle & Sorya 2013
African American Shakespeare/Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Bigger than a Breadbox/Tis Pity She's a Whore
Butterfield 8/Salome
Shady Shakespeare/Twelfth Night & Romeo and Juliet
Ross Valley Players/Pack of Lies





Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Counting Actors: Writers, gender, & time for shows 201-300

To compare this data with shows 1-100 go here.  With shows 101-200, go here.  To read every post in the hundreds series, go here.

In this post, I'm looking at what some might call the Shakespeare factor.  When I share the general data with folks, sometimes I hear 'well, the reason that the playwright numbers are so skewed is because of classic plays - those are all by male writers.  New plays are much closer to 50/50, right?'

So, I've broken the shows down into classic (which means anything written in 1960 or before) and contemporary (anything written since 1960).

You'll recall from yesterday that shows 201-300 had a writer split of 68% male and 33% female.  That there were 94 male writers, and 44 female writers, a total larger than 100 because of co-authoring situations, one acts by different authors presented on the same bill, and including all the different writers (book, lyrics, composer) who work on musicals.

Shows 201-300 break down into 21 classic shows and 79 contemporary shows.

The classic shows had 24 writers total, breaking down to 23 male writers and 1 female writer (Tides' Theater's production of The Little Foxes by Lillian Hellman) - this is 96% male, 4% female.

The contemporary shows had 114 writers total, breaking down to 71 male writers and 43 female writers, or 62% male and 38% female. 

Within the contemporary category, I also looked at new shows, or shows that had been written since the year 2000.  I found 63 new shows within the contemporary group.

Those 63 new shows had a total of 91 writers, and broke down to 52 male writers, 39 female writers, or 57% male, 43% female.

More data analysis to come!  The next few posts in this series will look at how the shows break down by type of Actors' Equity contract they use.

Again, if you want to review past posts in this series, go here.

Monday, September 16, 2013

Counting Actors: General Stats for shows 201-300

To compare this data to shows 1-100, go here.  To compare this data to shows 101-200, go here.

To back track through ALL of the show data examined in groups of 100, go here.

Shows 201-300 (aka the 3rd hundred) had:

67 male directors, 46 female directors (co-directing situations as well as including music directors for musicals in this group means that the total is greater than 100 directors for 100 shows)

94 male writers, 44 female writers (some shows were co-written, other shows were groups of one-acts by different writers.  All writing team collaborators on a musical - book, lyrics, composer - are included in the writers group.)

This means 59% male directors, 41% female directors.  It's 68% male writers and 32% female writers.

822 actors worked on these 100 shows, for an average cast size of 8.2.  The largest cast show was ACT's Christmas Carol, with a cast of 46 actors. No solo shows in this group, but many 2 person casts.  These actors included 461 men, 361 women (56%, 44%), 294 union members and 528 non-union members (36%, 64%), and 739 locals and 83 non-local actors (90%, 10%).

Of the 294 union members, 180 were men and 114 were women (61%, 39%).  Non-local actors taken as a portion of the union talent means that 72% of the equity jobs went to local talent, 28% to folks from out of town.

In the next week or so, I'll slice this data a few different ways, following the groupings I set with the previous hundreds - I'll split things out by time period, and also by type of union contract.  Again, you can read all of the past posts in this series by going here.


Friday, September 6, 2013

More links, Shakespeare edition

I've recently learned (thanks Elana!) that Alexander Schmidt's Shakespeare Lexicon is online.  This is the two volume set of all the words of Shakespeare, defined, and with citations for where the words appear.  I'm still learning how to navigate it, but oh the possibilities...

And, Rebecca Ennals, AD of the SF Shakespeare Festival, is now blogging! I was particularly excited to read her mid-August post announcing new casting policies for the festival.

And hey, read a little bit about Charlotte Cushman!  I'm learning more about this mid 1800's actor who played both male and female Shakespearean characters. I've added this book to my library cue.

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Lots of links!

First of all, there's the article from the NYTimes about what it's like to audition for Saturday Night Live, in front of Lorne Michaels.  It's in that multiple voice interview style and has voices from throughout the series (Chevy Chase through Dana Carvey, then Molly Shannon, Jimmy Fallon and even current cast folks).  There are links to extended interviews with a few folks, and within all of that, there's footage of Kristin Wiig at the Groundlings, and the original auditions of Dana Carvey, Will Farrell, and Jimmy Fallon.  There's also a video interview with Fred Armisen.  It's a really eye-opener to how comedy looks easy but comes with so much anxiety, and the silence in the videos is excruciating.  Worth checking out.

Vegan side note: if you like eating veggies and even if you don't, you gotta get on Thug Kitchen.  Completely NSFW - lots of foul language and f-bombs, but great recipes and ideas for eating healthy food made from plants, and lots of capping on snack food companies.

Had a big audition last week.  Because there's nothing concrete to remember these accomplishment/milestone moments, I like to reward myself with objects that help me remember these successes.  In this case, it was a trip to the Muji store in SOMA where I found these socks.  Which are awesome.  What can I say, sometimes it's the little things.

I believe I've mentioned the Geena Davis Institute for Gender Representation in Media at USC's Annenberg School of Journalism, yes?  A new report from them on gender inequality in the top 500 films from 2007-2012 tells it like it is.

And finally, this woman just rocks my world with her talent, originality, creativity and refusal to let others shape her image and message.  Here's something from the album that comes out next week, and here's something I just found on youtube this week: her first studio album, unreleased.  The track that starts at 1:43 may be my new 'I just auditioned and now I'm done' celebration.

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Counting Actors August 2013

Here are the 12 shows for August.  The Counting Actors project is now at 310 shows, so as promised last month, I'll be doing some posts looking at data from shows 201-300 throughout September (similar to what I've done with the first 200 shows).

If you want to learn more about the project, read posts from previous months, and learn how to submit statistics yourself, please take a look at this page.

12 shows counted:
Tides/Sweet Bird of Youth
San Francisco Shakespeare Festival/Macbeth(3 female non-speaking actors in this production are company interns)
Marin Theatre Company/Good People
Berkeley Rep/No Man's Land
Marin Shakespeare/All's Well that Ends Well
TheatreFirst/Orlando (title role in this piece changes gender from m to f and is played by a f actor)
TheatreWorks/Other Desert Cities (co-produced w/San Diego's Old Globe)
Cal Shakes/Lady Windemere's Fan (male actor on this production played two f characters - duchess of Berwick and Lady Jedburgh)
SF Playhouse/Grounded
Z Space & Word for Word/In Friendship (evening of interlocking short stories by one author presented theatrically, 2 directors 1 m 1 f)
Monday Afternoon Productions/The Goat or Who is Sylvia?
Wily West/Lawfully Wedded (interlocking short plays by 3 authors, 2 m, 1 f)

The Stats:
8 male directors, 5 female directors
11 male writers, 3 female writers
96 total actors
51 male actors, 45 female actors
46 union actors, 50 non-union actors
23 union men, 23 union women
71 local actors, 9 non local actors

Thank you to those from audience, cast and artistic staff who contributed stats: Phoebe Moyer, Karen Thomson Hall, Sheila Devitt, Scott Ragle, Anne Hallinan and Rebecca Ennals

Please keep talking about what you're reading here, and if you see a show or are working on a show with performances in September, it takes about 5 minutes to share the stats with the project.

A post with September shows will go up between Oct 1 and Oct 5.