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

Thursday, June 30, 2011

Introducing Counting Actors

I'm going to be doing this monthly.  Publishing the post between the first and the fifth of the month.

I'm counting actors (directors and writers too).  How many are men, how many are women.  How many are members of Actor's Equity, how many are not.  Who is local, who isn't.

I'm looking at productions with the following criteria:
1) the performance takes place in the 9 county San Francisco Bay Area (that's Marin, Sonoma, Napa, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Solano counties).  Also, the contract for the actors originates locally - so that means no Best of Broadway series, but yes to productions that take place at a local theater company, but the entire production team may come from out of town.
2) the production is not done by a school, or by a theater that calls itself a community theater or an amateur company.
3) the production is a full production, not a staged reading or a developmental showing or some other form of a work in progress.

Here are the questions I'm asking:
1) gender of the director
2) gender of the writer
3) total number of actors
4) total number of male actors
5) total number of female actors
6) total number of union actors
7) total number of non-union actors
8) total number of union male actors
9) total number of union female actors
10) total number of local actors
11) total number of non-local actors

I realize that there are a lot more questions that could be asked (collecting info about designers and crew, ethnicity info, etc.)  But I'm only one person.  I think this is all that I can handle.

But, to that end, if you want to help me count, here's what to do:

1) see shows that fit the criteria above
2) go to the Counting Actors page (link at top right of this page) and copy the questions there into the body of an email.  
3) send the answers to countingactors (at) gmail.com

Tune in tomorrow for the June results.

2 comments:

  1. Love this concept. I look forward to seeing how the data comes together over time!

    ReplyDelete
  2. thanks Jason! new posts between the first and the fifth of every month.

    ReplyDelete