October's count has 10 shows, making the total count for this project 337 shows since June 2011. To get the whole history of the project, links to past posts in this series, and learn how you can contribute, please go here.
Still working on adding visuals/infographics to this project. If anyone has suggestions on how to put that together in a simple way, please email me at countingactors (at) gmail (dot) com.
If you'd like to learn more about similar counting projects taking place around the world, please take a look at this blog post by Laura Shamas of the LA FPI, which shouts out this project, and has a very comprehensive list of resources.
Here are October's shows:
San Jose Rep/Next Fall
San Jose Rep/Crime and Punishment (this is the Rep's school tour, writing team of 1 man and 1 woman)
Central Works/Red Virgin (male director, female music director; male book writer, female music and lyrics writer for 1 original song in piece - same person as the music director; rest of music in piece is traditional/public domain)
Shotgun/Strangers, Babies
Cutting Ball/Sidewinders (writer for this piece used female pronouns until 2012, but in SF Chron interview, uses pronoun s/he and is identified as trans below; one cast member identified in program bio as 'genderqueer' and counted that way below)
Marin Theatre Company/I&You
Playground, Aluminous Collective and Altair Productions/First
Cal Shakes/Winter's Tale(small cast on this project meant lots of doubling - same female actor played Paulina as female and Clown as male; also 2 boys alternate the Mamillius track and 2 girls alternate the Dorcas/2nd lady in waiting track - all 4 are counted below)
SF Playhouse/Bengal Tiger at the Bagdad Zoo
Crowded Fire/The Taming(female cast members played both male and female characters)
The Stats:
5 male directors, 6 female directors
6 male writers, 5 female writers, 1 trans writer
54 total actors
32 male actors, 21 female actors, 1 genderqueer actor
32 union actors, 22 non-union actors
21 union men, 11 union women
51 local actors, 3 non-local actors
Contributions to this month's count came from both cast members and audience members of these shows. Thank you to Rachel Harker, Jessica Lynn Carroll, Patricia Milton, Carol Lashof, Elizabeth Gjeltsen and Maryssa Wanlass. If you're working on a show or see a show with performances in November, please share the stats with the project - it takes less than 5 minutes to write an email.
Please share and talk about what you're reading here, either using social media or when you're sitting around the green room.
I'll share stats for November between Dec 1 and Dec 5.