Groups such as Venus Theatre, the Riot Grrrls and Baltimore’s Strand Theater Company produce when they can, putting up shows for a couple thousand bucks.” Pressley explores the history of feminist theater companies in the D.C. The artists most dedicated to women’s work toil on the margins, operating on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder. While acknowledging the significance and necessity of this project, in a recent article Washington Post theater critic Nelson Pressley notes “But it’s not as though female-focused theaters haven’t been on the job all along. area theater companies to present theatrical work by women scheduled for Fall 2015.

theater market has been on our feminist theater watch-list ever since the announcement of the Women’s Voices Festival, a wide-spread effort by 60+ D.C.

Similarly, you might infer that there is a shortage of women working as directors, despite the fact that of the 812 responses to a recent survey by Stage Directors UK, 46% were from women.”ĭ.C.

But anyone who has seen Anne Washburn’s Mr Burns, Lucy Kirkwood’s Chimerica and Lucy Prebble’s Enron knows that women are as capable of writing big plays asking big questions as men. While the National’s 2014 annual report touted the fact that the multi-plex theater presented more work by women than men during the previous two-year period, closer analysis of the stats reveals a disturbing trend that will be all-too familiar to women writing plays in America: “big spaces are for men, while the smaller spaces associated with risk are where the work of female playwrights is far more likely to be seen.” Horne continues: “ Reading these figures…you’d be forgiven for believing that maybe women don’t write plays appropriate to large theatre spaces.

This latest article by Ellie Horne explores the producing track record at the National Theater during the past decade under the artistic directorship of Nicholas Hytner. The UK Guardian has done some terrific reporting on gender parity issues in British theater in the last few years. A Stage of Their Own: Why Female Playwrights Are Still Marginalized

Beautiful Chaos by Carey Perloff