New Home for Counting Actors

As of this month's post, the monthly report from the Counting Actors project moves to the Works by Women San Francisco blog.  March's post is linked below.

Works by Women San Francisco is dedicated to increasing the visibility of women theater artists in the region, through monthly meetup events (which I co-host) and a blog/website full of news, resources, perspective essays and more.  It is a definite site to bookmark, follow and check in on regularly if you are a female theater artist, or want to support theater made by women.

I'm thrilled to be sharing the Counting Actors project there.  Moving a virtual home has some of the same bumps as moving a real one.  We are in process of copying the archive to their site as well as streamlining the process for submitting show statistics.

In the meantime, please continue to submit using countingactors (at) gmail (dot) com, and the questions on this page.

Thank you so much to all who have supported the project so far!!  Here's to continued growth and a larger spotlight on gender representation issues in the region!!

Here's March's post!

Counting Actors January 2014

Eleven shows are included in this month's count, bringing the grand total to 363.  This project dates back to June 2011, and if you'd like to see past posts in the series, learn more about selection criteria for the project and/or how to contribute statistics to the project, please go here.

January's shows
Theatreworks/Silent Sky
Ross Valley Players/Journey's End
ACT/Major Barbara co-production with Theatre Calgary; 4 members of Canadian Equity included in union actor count, two of non-union actors in this production are ACT MFA 'Equity Interns'; understudies not included in this count are 1 male Equity member and 1 female ACT MFA 'Equity Intern'
Berkeley Rep/Man in a Case & Pianist of Willisden Lane Case: co-production with Big Dance Theater.  adapted and directed by credits are for 1 man and 1 woman who are both counted here as writer and director; the woman also credited as choreographer and man also included in the cast; male sound designer and male video designer also onstage during the performance, but not included here.  Pianist: script adapted by director from book by actor. Actor is trained musician, telling her mother's story. 
Alter Theater/The River Bride co-directed by two women
Custom Made/Pain and the Itch
Rhino/Road Show male director and male music director; 2 male writers one credited with book/lyrics and one credited w/music
BACT/Mercy Watson to the Rescue union actor working w/out contract on this show - was cast prior to joining and allowed to work this show, counted as non-Equity actor
Cutting Ball/Ubu Roi
Brisk Weather Productions/Pardon My Invasion! major plot device of this show is female character 'inhabited' by a man's ghost, so female actor plays both male and female

The Stats:
9 male directors, 5 female directors
8 male writers, 5 female writers
75 total actors, 40 men, 35 women
28 union actors, 47 non-union actors
16 union men, 12 union women
59 local actors, 16 non-local actors

Many audience members contributed stats this month, as well as actors from 3 casts, and 1 director! Thank you to Anne Hallinan, Kelly Ground, Evelyn Jean Pine, Dale Albright, Kathryn Wood and Marie Shell for submitting statistics. Again, if you're working on a show or see a show with performances in February, please share stats for that project.  I can also take stats early for shows that may not perform until March or later, and then include those stats with the appropriate month.

If you've read this far, take a few minutes to share these statistics with your theater loving friends, your fellow artists, and/or the artistic staff at your favorite theater company.  Many companies are deep in season planning mode, so it's a great time to share this info.

The February edition of this project will be published between March 1st and March 5th.

Counting Actors December 2013

Nine shows to report on in this edition of Counting Actors.  For information about the project, to read past posts, and/or to learn how to make your own submission, please click here.  Counting Actors started in June 2011, and to date has counted 352 shows.

December's shows:
MTC/Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol (F actors played mostly male characters; non-union f actor counted below replaced union f actor who left production due to injury)
Aurora/Bright New Boise
Shotgun Players/Edward Gant's Amazing Feats of Loneliness (1 male actor played both male and female characters)
San Jose Rep/The Snow Queen (m director, f music director, 2m, 1 f team for book/music/lyrics - 1m,1f book, all 3 lyrics, 2m music.  And, 1 of these two men is also director of show)
Off-Broadway West/The Weir
Golden Thread/Urge for Going
Indra's Net/QED
Custom Made/Peter/Wendy (director and writer/adapter are same person)
SF Playhouse/Storefront Church (male union understudy not included in count)

The Stats:
7 male directors, 3 female directors
9 male writers, 2 female writers
50 total actors,  28 male, 22 female
29 union actors, 21 non-union actors
20 union men, 9 union women
45 local actors, 5 non-local actors

This month's contributors include audience members, cast members and directors of shows.  Thank you to Lizzie Calogero, Elissa Beth Stebbins, Kendra Oberhauser and Evren Odcikin for sharing stats with the project.  If you're working on a show or see a show with performances in January, please share show stats with the project!  Details on how to do that are here.

Please share these stats and use them to start conversations with the actors, directors, writers, artistic staff and other theater participants that you spend time with.  We're heading into the season of season planning, so now more than ever is time to talk about these numbers.

Stats for January 2014 will be posted between Feb 1st and Feb 5th.

Counting Actors, November 2013

Due to booking some last minute industrial work that threw my schedule out of whack, the post for November is a little bit later than usual.

There are 7 shows from the November 2013 round of Counting Actors.  This brings the total count to 344 shows since June 2011.  To see past posts in the project, and get info about how to contribute, please go here.

November's shows:
Center Rep/Don't Dress for Dinner
SF Playhouse/Ideation
NCTC/My Beautiful Laundrette (co-written by 2 male writers)
Berkeley Rep/Tristan&Yseult (director credited as 'adapted & directed' but separate person given writer credit; actors are members of British Equity, but counted as Equity, due to arrangement w/Equity; 1 male actor plays female character of Brangian, Yseult's maid; 4 musicians 1f, 3m not included in count below)
Magic/Arlington  (book/lyrics male, music female; both performers in the show are counted as actors below although one is primarily playing piano)
Symmetry/Carnival Round the Central Figure
Tides/Gruesome Playground Injuries


The Stats:
3 male directors, 4 female directors
7 male writers, 3 female writers
39 total actors
24 male actors, 15 female actors
24 union actors, 15 non union actors
14 union men, 10 union women
29 local actors, 10 non local

Thank you to Patricia Milton and Cat Luedtke who contributed statistics for this month's edition. If you're working on a show or see a show with performances in December, please take a few minutes to share the stats with me via email.

As always, please share and start conversations with others about what you've seen here.

The December post will go up between Jan 1st and Jan 5th. 

Counting Actors, October 2013

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.

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!

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Three novels I read this summer that you should read too

A common thread in all three of these books is that while significant portions of each book take place in the US, none of the protagonists are US born, so each of these books examines American culture from an outsider perspective. Each book stands on its own, but taken together, they add up to a fascinating look at the similarities and differences in the challenges that face contemporary immigrant women.

1) We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo - When we first meet Darling, she's 10 years old and living in Zimbabwe.  The early sections of this book do that thing I love where a child or young person describes what they're observing in the world around them, but that they don't fully comprehend yet as an adult reader, I have more context for the things that the character is describing.  I love that!  Later in the book, Darling comes to the US and lives in Detroit, experiencing her teen years and immigrant assimilation simultaneously.  I found this book incredibly moving, especially the chapter where she describes what it's like to have to speak in English when it's not your first language.

2) The Lullaby of Polish Girls by Dagmara Domincyzk gives us three women - one who immigrated to the US as a child, then went back to Poland for summers; one who came to the US as an adult; and one who didn't leave Poland.  All three lives intertwine as the story moves both back and forth in time, and back and forth between  Brooklyn and Kielce, Poland.  Another great insight into a life that straddles two cultures.   I was fascinated with the Polish custom of using different versions of a child's name.  I'll admit that I still don't understand it completely, but I loved that the author didn't make it easy.  Warning: this book will make you want to eat pierogies!  I was lucky that I already had some in my freezer.

3) Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie - Ifemelu, the protagonist in this book, leaves Nigeria for the US as a college student.  It is a heady look at race relations in the US  (Ifemelu blogs about the experiences and observations of a 'non-American black').   Obinze, Ifemelu's high school boyfriend. is present throughout the book as well.  We see both of these characters in contemporary Lagos and Princeton, as well as in flashbacks to student days.  Again, lots of new perspective and insights in different cultural experiences for me - the hair braiding that takes place at the beginning of the book is a strong example of this.

I really enjoyed reading all three of these novels, and together they made a powerful triptych that gave me a lot to think about in terms of privilege and experience of outsiders in a new culture.  A bonus - these three books describe their non-American locales so strongly and specifically, it was like I took trips to Zimbabwe, Poland and Nigeria!

Shout Out to Kneepads!

In the past few months, I've used my kneepads a ton!

My awesome soft kneepads

1) for the Big Driver shoot

2) when I played a dog for the UWAC 36 Hour Playfestival/SF Safehouse Benefit

3) leant them to a summer camp student

4) during the Foolsfury sponsored Mary Overlie workshop

This doesn't include all of the times that I threw my kneepads into my bag 'just in case' for auditions, readings, etc. where I didn't know what the physical work would entail.

I bought these kneepads probably 5 or more years ago from a nondescript martial arts store on Mission street near the Armory.  They were sold per kneepad and I think they were $5 or $6 each. 

They are soft, so they don't make too big of a lumpy shape under pants, like a harder kneepad might.  They have no logos/words on them, so you're not unconsciously advertising anything when you wear them under light colored clothing.

And, most importantly, they keep my knees safer from bruises, bumps, other injuries, allowing this easy bruising actor to leap into highly physical acting related antics with confidence.

Not bad. Not bad at all.


Yes this is a kneepad selfie

Thanks kneepads!!

On Practicing what you Preach

Recent teaching work has gotten me thinking about how I talk about and model gender parity while wearing my teaching artist hat.

This is still evolving, but here are a few thoughts:

1) if a girl brings in a monologue for a male character, a boy brings in a monologue for a female character - no judgement.  If they've read and understand the circumstances of the monologue and the play it's from, and the language speaks to them - do it & work on it - understand that this may not fly elsewhere, but the boy who brought in Tilly from  Gamma Rays and the girl who brought Charlie from Perks of Being a Wallflower - go! (although technically I said bring in monologues from plays not movies)

2) when I'm assigning scenes or monologues - check myself on writer gender parity.  For a program that ended with students doing 2 and 3 person scenes from published plays, I notice that for 8 scenes, I have 3 female writers, 6 male writers (one of the pieces was co-written by two women).  So I need to do better on this one - continue to educate myself on the women writers out there, so that I can assign, share, promote women writers.

What are other ways that we can bring gender parity to our teaching work?

And, if anyone's got suggestions for plays for teens by women writers, throw those into the comments section too!

Side note: Bay Area folks, if you don't already know about it, I strongly encourage you to check out worksbywomensf.wordpress.com, like Works by Women SF on facebook, and/or join the Works by Women SF group on meetup.com - we've got a few great outings planned to attend shows and support women making theater in the region - it'd be great to see you there, Bay Area.

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. 

Counting Actors June 2013

The project counts 9 shows for the month of June, now up to a total of 281 shows since June 2011 and is now 2 years old!  For more info on the project, including what you can do to contribute a set of stats, please check the Counting Actors Page on this blog.

My apologies for a late post - the goal is to get this info out between the first and fifth of the month, but with the BART strike, my commute to direct summer camp was extra lengthy, and I'm just now catching up!

9 shows counted:
ACT/Arcadia (count for this show does not include 4 understudies, all local, 2M, 2F and 3 union, w/1M non-union)
Impact/Jukebox Stories (this show has no credited director, and 2 credited writers, 1 songs, 1 stories. The writers are also the performers)
Bigger than a Breadbox/Tis Pity She's a Whore (this production both cut and combined characters and changed a male character of Friar into a female Nun)
Cal Shakes/American Night
Crowded Fire/ 410[GONE]
MTC/Beauty Queen of Leenane
NCTC/Birds of a Feather (both genders and species crossed in this production - men played women, women played men, humans played animals of both genders!!)
Cutting Ball/Crispy Critters in the Scarlet Night
San Jose Stage/Reefer Madness (of the two male writers on this production, 1 did lyrics, the other did music and both collaborated on the book)

The stats:
6 male directors, 2 female directors
10 male writers, 1 female writer
67 total actors
38 male actors, 28 female actors
25 union actors, 42 non-union actors
17 union men, 8 union women
59 local actors, 8 non local actors

A huge thanks to the folks who've helped make this project possible for the last two years by sharing stats from shows they've seen or worked on.  From the most recent batch, thank you to Phoebe Moyer, Alisha Ehrlich, Galen Murphy-Hoffman, Ryan Courtney, Karen Thomson Hall, Colin Thomson, Paul Cello and Lily Tung Crystal. 

Please share and talk about this info and this project with your friends and with the community at large - whether it's at half-hour or at a five minute rehearsal break, this info is only worth something if we keep talking about it.

And, if you've got a show with performances in July that hasn't been counted yet, please submit statistics following the instructions on the Counting Actors Page, and help me keep this project going for another year!

Thanks!