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!