Women in Theatre

Director Leticia Cáceras and playwright Angela Betzien working at Belvoir.

Despite the gloomy statistics, female directors and playwrights are defying the odds and breaking new ground in our theatres, writes Elissa Blake.

Director Leticia Cáceras and playwright Angela Betzien are widely regarded as one of the most exciting theatrical pairings in the country. Cáceras’s chilling production of Betzien’s The Dark Room sold out Belvoir’s Downstairs theatre at the end of last year and the play went on to win a Sydney Theatre Award for Best New Australian Work.

In August, they have a new work, Helicopter, opening at the Melbourne Theatre Company and next year, Cáceras is tipped to direct a main stage show in Sydney while Betzien writes another play for Belvoir.

Their success comes at a time when the theatre industry is examining how its female playwrights and directors are faring. According to the statistics published in the Australia Council’s Women in Theatre report released last week, plays written by women account for only 21 per cent of productions mounted by the country’s eight biggest theatre companies. Female directors fared only slightly better, helming 25 per cent of those companies’ staged work.  

With those numbers in mind, there’s room for pessimism, but the theatre-makers contacted by Spectrum believe the industry is in the throes of systemic change and many women making their mark right now have creative solutions to the gender balance issues.

“Working together has really given us strength in numbers,” Cáceras says of her creative partnership with Betzien. “It helps us get our work on and maintains momentum and advocacy. We’ve had excellent commissions in the youth sector  and we haven’t felt excluded, but we know we haven’t received the same recognition as some of our male counterparts.”

Cáceras says that many female theatre-makers are working at the leading edge of theatre practise and using new forms that don’t always fit the main stage model. “Theatre companies need to revamp what they think theatre is so that they don’t keep women’s theatrical language out of the mainstream,” she says.

“I don’t want to hear any more stories about white middle age men not coping with change. It’s boring now. I want to hear the stories of indigenous Australians and new Australians and stories from women. We’re not going into the theatre to see a museum piece, we’re going to have our souls stirred and that won’t happen with the same old stories and voices. Theatre has to evolve.”

Betzien adds that she wants to see the companies take the emphasis off serial development projects and in-house workshops for their female creatives and push them into more productions.

“We have to take risks on edgier work and trust that audiences will cope with more diversity,” says Betzien. “Women playwrights and directors can’t get better if they don’t get opportunities so the whole problem feeds itself.”

Actor, playwright and dramaturg Kate Mulvany also believes women need to band together to make an impact. “I yearn to see our most respected female actors team up with our ignored female writers and directors. And I don't want to see a reworked classic. We have our own stories to tell,” she says. “The audiences, I believe, will lap it up.”

Mulvany as Lady Macbeth, with Dan Spielman (Bell Shakespeare)

Mulvany is currently performing in Bell Shakespeare’s production of Macbeth at the Sydney Opera House. Her award-winning play The Seed is in feature film development and she’s working on play commissions for MTC, Griffin Theatre and Australian Theatre for Young People. She is also adapting Euripides’ Medea for Belvoir and the Australian Theatre for Young People, with director Anne-Louise Sarks.  

Mulvany recalls an all-female play she wrote for Bell Shakespeare’s Mind’s Eye project. It was directed by Shannon Murphy, commissioned by Marion Potts and performed by Sandy Gore, Deborah Kennedy, Alison Bell, Hayley McElhinney, Vanessa Downing, Maggie Blinco and Judi Farr.

“It was only a reading, but the turn-out was huge, because it piqued people's interest. They got to see those actresses they've loved for so many years take on a fresh Australian story under the care of theatre's newest female talent,” Mulvany says.

“I believe if you commission any writer to write a play for Jacki Weaver or Cate Blanchett or Judy Davis or Robyn Nevin - everyone would leap at the chance, artists and audiences alike.” 

Empowerment on and off stage has been a problem in theatre for decades. For playwright Rita Kalnejais, the thought of being on stage in her underwear again led her to stop acting and start writing.

“I was in a bikini or in my underpants on stage so many times. I’m sort of stunned by it now. It never occurred to me to ask the director if we could try something different because that’s how the role was written,” says Kalnejais.

“I feel much more empowered as a writer,” she says, though she acknowledges her acting background has made it easier to talk to the theatre companies about her writing. “I still find it terrifying to talk about my ideas but I’ve experienced nothing but encouragement. But having said that, gender imbalance does exist in society and the arts tend to mirror that.”

Kalnejais, who is under commission at Belvoir and developing a children’s show for the Sydney Theatre Company, believes male and female theatre makers develop at different rates and that those differences should be catered for.

“Men feel what they have to say is [itals] worthy [itals], and what gets them off is worthy much earlier because they have that sense of entitlement. Good on them. Women take more time and they’re maybe more private. It takes a different kind of courage for women to make theatre.”

Playwright Rita Kalnejais working on Babyteeth at Belvoir. (photo by Heidrun Lohr)

Playwright Lally Katz (photo by Brett Boardman)

Lally Katz, whose play Neighbourhood Watch played at Belvoir last year, says she has benefitted from a lot of mentoring - mostly from men, she adds - and has never given her gender a thought.

“That’s how it [itals] should [itals] be for women. You make theatre because that’s what your passionate about regardless of gender. But the statistics speak differently,” she says. “I’ve been lucky. I’m 34 and I’ve had successes and failures. But if I’d been a young man, perhaps my career would have taken off more, who knows?”

Katz says the statistics would have to improve simply by creating more slots for new writers in our theatre programming.

“We have to nurture new voices. The companies need to put writers and directors together and develop relationships over years,” she says. “None of this has to be a war. Women just want more room. I’m sure we can be positive and work on this together.”

Almost every theatre company contacted by Spectrum for this story said they were actively monitoring gender issues and had practical steps to address imbalance in place. Belvoir, Griffin and the STC say they consider gender balance in every programming meeting.

All three companies have women in resident artist programs, either as writers or directors and female playwrights under commission. Their doors are open to female directors to pitch productions and they are taking steps to see and read as much of the work being produced by women in Sydney as possible.

None advocate quota systems or back affirmative action. Instead, the buzzword is “mindfulness”.

Belvoir’s artistic director Ralph Myers says the Women in Theatre report is a wake up call for vigilance.

“This report is critical because the best way to make artistic directors stay equitable in their programming is to embarrass them,” he says. “As difficult as that is for me on a year-to-year basis to make everything balance, I think we will look back on this period and see that something fundamentally changed. I believe we are turning the corner.”

At the STC, where they’ve had female leadership for over 10 years, first with Robyn Nevin and now Cate Blanchett as co-artistic director with Andrew Upton, the gender bias favours women at the development level if not on the main stage. Emerging female directors and playwrights are working across the company in residency programs, workshops, readings and in assistant director roles. New directors are gaining entry-level gigs in the STC’s Next Stage and Education programs and the company is making an effort to make sure those who do have a main stage debut, get a second shot.

“Professional development and creating pathways into the industry is something we talk about all the time,” says STC literary manager Polly Rowe. “It is true that a whole generation of women has been passed over so we can’t let these issues slip. You have to keep working at development. Some artists do get fast-tracked but we think slow investment is better for a long term career.”

Director Imara Savage is the current Richard Wherrett Fellow at STC. She graduated from NIDA in 2009 just as a furore erupted over a Belvoir season in which only one main stage production was assigned to a woman - director Lee Lewis.

“I’m not sure if it’s because of that moment, or if the companies already had steps in place, but I have been incredibly supported and mentored by both men and women in the main stage companies,” says Savage.

“But at the same time, I don’t deny that there is inequality. But I think it is dangerous to talk about inequality in the theatre as though it’s separate to the rest of society or history. These are cultural forces that have been at play, forever,” she says.

“In the theatre of the Ancient Greeks, men were the curators of Dionysian festivals and men have been the playwrights for thousands of years. Women are playing a game of catch-up to define ourselves in positions of writer or director or artistic director, which are relatively new to us. We’re not catching up on being talented, or creative, we’re catching up to the idea that not only are these positions available to us but that we are [itals] entitled [itals] to them. That is something men don’t have to think about.”

One of the more strident critics of the industry is playwright Van Badham, now developing her new play, The Bull, The Moon and the Coronet of Stars. She maintains that unless there are systems in place to monitor gender diversity, all industries will default to traditional positions that privilege men and exclude women. “We live in a patriarchal culture and we’re still imbibing constant messages about women as a homogenous generalisation rather than individuals with their own talents and experiences,” she says.

“In an artistic sense, this becomes hugely problematic because if women are seen as homogenous, then why would you have any artistic expectations of them at all? Why would you think a woman was capable of engaging in the ancient discourse of artistic practice when your whole life you’ve been exposed to media images of women being pretty and that their sole narrative prerogative is pursuing men?”

One thing that will never change – and which skews the statistics - is the fact that the classical cannon is loaded with plays by Shakespeare, Ibsen, Chekhov, Miller, Beckett and Brecht, the “dead white males”. Even in a list of contemporary greats, women fare only slightly better among lionised writers such as Harold Pinter, David Hare, Neil Labute, or our own David Williamson. The weight of history is against women when it comes to getting a play on stage.

“We simply do not need to continually support the 'estates' of dead male writers. They’ll keep. They’re fine,” says Mulvany. “Instead, we need to embrace the talent we have right here under our noses. Our audiences deserve it as much as our artists.”

According to PlayWriting Australia figures, even if you take the dead white male factor out of the equation and look at the number of Australian plays staged - around 15-20 per cent of all productions - women are still under-represented. Forty per cent of Australian plays staged in 2010 were written by women, and of those only 12 per cent were performed on a main stage. The majority are performed in the independent sector or by youth companies.

PlayWriting Australia’s artistic director Chris Mead says a lot of playwrights are rightly angry but believes that things are looking up.

“It is still bizarre that the figures are so low,” he says. “But everyone I talk to is working towards change. The companies do want to clean up their act but we need to look at it over a three year period.”

Myers says women have directed around 50 per cent of productions over the past two years and that the company’s the most successful productions have all been by female writers.

“That hasn’t been due to affirmative action. It just happens that I am really excited by the work of female playwrights at the moment,” Myers says. “I feel like I don’t even need to worry about gender issues because all the writers I’m desperate to produce are women.”

After the critical and box office success of plays by Katz (Neighbourhood Watch), Kaljenais (Babyteeth), Betzien (The Dark Room) and Roslyn Oades (I’m Your Man), Myers rejects the idea that it’s risky to program a new play by a woman.

“I don’t think audiences care about the gender of the playwright. Nor do I. It’s no more or less risky than programming the work of a man,” he says.

The artistic director at Griffin Theatre, Sam Strong, believes it’s important to make programming decisions totally transparent. “We want to debunk the myth that the real pitching goes on in the bar on opening nights. That’s not true,” he says. “Women can get on the phone, check out the website or make an appointment to talk to us. The pathways are transparent and it’s much better than trying to have a conversation in the bar.”

One of the steps taken at Griffin was to broaden the decision-making process to include the company’s resident artists. “They will be at the programming table. This year we have five female playwrights, one female dramaturg and one female director on that committee.”

At the Ensemble Theatre, artistic director Sandra Bates says she never thinks about gender. “My whole energy goes into what’s best for the audience. It’s patronising to say you have to have quotas. That’s saying women aren’t as important as men, which is nonsense. From our point of view, it’s an even playing field. I’m just not sure where these wonderful young female playwrights are. Why haven’t they sent their plays to us?”

In the independent sector, women are better represented. The New Theatre in Newtown has a high ratio of women in its Spare Room season with writers such as Melita Rowston, Katie Pollock and Elise Hearst, and directors Lucinda Gleeson and Paige Rattray. Across town, directors such as Kim Hardwick, Kate Gaul and Cristabel Sved are taking projects to the Darlinghurst Theatre Company.

One thing is certain: nothing will change without conscious effort.

Rowe adds what many are saying: “It isn’t just gender. It’s diversity in general in the theatre. Without diversity it is just plain old discrimination. If theatre wants to sustain itself it has to address this in a meaningful way.”

This story was first published in The Sydney Morning Herald on May 19, 2012