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

Friday, October 4, 2013

Counting Actors, September 2013

September's count includes 15 shows, bringing the total shows counted by this project to 327 since it began in June 2011.  If this is your first encounter with the project, go here for an explanation of what's getting counted, links to previous posts in the series, and how to submit your own statistics.

I've been working on how to get visual representation/infographics into each monthly post, but I'm still a little bit stymied.  If anyone reading this has some experience with creating infographics and can help me make a monthly template, please email me at countingactors(at)gmail(dot)com.

Here are the shows for September:
ACT/1776 (this show had a male director and male music director, also 2 male writers - one book/lyrics, one music.  4 union understudies - 3 men, 1 woman, all local - are not included in the count below)
Impact/What Every Girl Should Know
Center REP/Ella (male director, male music director; 5 non-union actor/musicians play speaking parts in Act 1 and Ella's band in Act 2 and were included in this count; music is 'jukebox' of Ella Fitzgerald pop standards so no music writers counted)
Aurora/After the Revolution
Berkeley Rep/Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike
Shady Shakespeare/Complete Works (traditionally cast w/3 men, this production included one female actor in the Juliet/Hamlet track; 3 male writers share writing credit)
Shotgun/Bonnie & Clyde
Rhino/To Sleep and Dream (writer and director are same person)
SJ Rep/One Night with Janis Joplin (writer and director are same person, male music director; music is 'jukebox' of Janis Joplin hits by different writers so no music writers counted)
Killing My Lobster & Playground/The Shakespeare Bug
City Lights/Animals Out of Paper
Magic/Buried Child
Diablo Theatre Company/Shrek the Musical (male director and music director; male writer book/lyrics female writer music; two roles usually played by men cast as women in this production - Pinnochio, Peter Pan)
Renegade Theatre Experiment/Drunken City
Custom Made/Next to Normal (male director and music director; 2 male writers - book/lyrics and composer)

The Stats:
15 male directors, 5 female directors
17 male writers, 3 female writers
116 total actors
69 male, 47 female
53 union, 63 non union
36 union men, 17 union women
91 local actors, 25 non local actors

Once again a huge thank you to those who contributed stats this month - audience members, cast members, directors of shows, artistic staff from theater companies including: Carol Lashof, Karen Thomson Hall, Maryssa Wanlass, Vera Sloan, Phoebe Moyer, Karen Altree-Piemme, Roselyn Hallett, and Lisa Newton.

Please share and talk about what you're reading here.  If you see a show or are working on a show with performances in October, please take a few minutes to email me the stats.  Instructions for that are here.

October results will show up here between Nov 1st and Nov 5th, hopefully with an infographic!