The State of Plays

The State of Plays for Australian, Female and Local Playwrights in Perth

Recently there has been some public debate in the Eastern states press about perceived gender inequity in theatre programming. The statistics, such as are available, are bleak for Australian women playwrights in the major theatre companies. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that in the 2011 season, only 4% of plays programmed nationally were by women.

In January 2011 the Australian Writers’ Guild sent a letter to the Australia Council and the Major Performing Arts theatre companies requesting mandatory reporting on gender equity. So far, the response has been positive and I hope that over time, consideration and reporting of gender issues will lead to change. The position of the Writers’ Guild is that theatres must give audiences Australian plays that reflect the diversity of voices that make up who we are. Australian voices are important because they speak with us about our environment, our issues and our lives. As women make up half the population, it is important that their voices are part of that dialogue.

The national statistics led me to look at our own situation here in Perth. I couldn’t believe that the representation of women playwrights was so low in the theatre I had seen here over the last five years. So I did some research on the plays programmed by Black Swan, Perth Theatre Co and Deckchair since 2006, and found some surprising results.

I will qualify my “findings” by first stating that I am not a statistician, or even particularly good with maths. So I apologise in advance for any mistakes, and ask you to look at the forest rather than the trees. I have deliberately focussed my research on the three adult mainstream theatre companies because their programming choices are not influenced by demands of a particular artistic profile, as are those of Yirra Yaakin, Barking Gecko and Spare Parts. I did not include works where no writer was credited. Where there was a translated work, I chose to classify according to the gender and origin of the original writer except where the translation was a significant interpretive departure from the original (for example, Eamon Flack’s Antigone).

Firstly, the good news for local writers is that Perth has a very good record for producing Australian work. Of the 87 plays I looked at produced between 2006 and 2011, 51 of them are Australian. At 59%, this is well over half, and shows a strong commitment to hearing Australian voices.

The record with producing women is not quite as good, although isn’t as bad as other research suggests. Overall, 28% of all plays programmed are by women: just over a quarter. The record gets slightly better when looking only at Australian plays. Of these, exactly a third are written by women. This is an encouraging result and it’s probably as good as can be hoped for, considering the opinions displayed in the latest debate about the relative merit or otherwise of women playwrights. (Tom Wright, the Associate Director at the Sydney Theatre Company, was quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald saying that there are no talented women playwrights who aren’t being programmed, and that any “problems” in Australian playwriting were of quality rather than gender.)

A closer examination of the Perth statistics reveals a bit of a surprise. Although a third of all Australian plays are written by women, the ratio changes when one compares writers from the eastern states with locals. When looking only at works by writers living in the eastern states, women writers are in the majority: 53% of all plays by eastern staters are by women. Given the isolation of our state, the relative centralisation of the theatre industry in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, and the small population of Perth, it is not surprising that there are more works from the eastern states than from Perth. But the ratio is actually close to half. 41% of all Australian plays produced are by locally-based writers. The most interesting statistic to me, as a local woman playwright, is that in the years between 2006 and 2011, only one was written by a woman. That was Marmalade and Egg by Mel Cantwell in 2006 for the Perth Theatre Company.

So to summarise, around a quarter of all plays programmed are by women. This ratio is roughly the same when looking only at plays by overseas writers or plays by Australian writers. However, it changes dramatically when looking at the origin of Australian writers. Of eastern states plays, half are by women. Of local plays, just 5%. One example, five years ago, written by a woman whose chief artistic profile since then has been as a director.

I can think of a few reasons to account for this statistical blip, which relate to my own personal experience and that of other women playwrights I know. But I acknowledge that there are a million reasons why one play is programmed over another and I can’t begin to account for what they are here. However I would like to point out that the lack of representation of women playwrights in our main theatres is not because there aren’t any. Lois Achimovich, Hellie Turner, Lucy Eyre, Suzanne Inglebrecht, Shirley van Sanden, Tiffany Barton and myself (to name a few) have been very active over the last six years, producing plays, winning competitions, receiving funding and getting commissions. But we haven’t been programmed by the main companies. I am not trying to suggest that there is any systemic or even conscious sexism. I am demonstrating that if you are a local writer, you are statistically more likely to be programmed if you are a man.

You are particularly likely to be programmed if you are Reg Cribb. His record of six plays in Perth in the last six years is only equalled by Shakespeare himself, and so it should be. Reg is a nationally recognised playwright who is supported by his local industry. However, even if we discount Reg (because he would be programmed anyway), and Alan Becher (because he programmed himself), there are nine other local male playwrights who have achieved what local women playwrights have not.

While the reasons behind this may be obscure, the consequences for audiences and playwrights are less so. Audiences are not seeing local work that reflects our diversity on its most basic level: the work is almost exclusively from a male perspective. Consequences for the playwrights are more serious. A playwright’s work is only completed with the programming of their work. With programming comes financial reward, opportunities for further work, and artistic growth. Without it, we have poverty, obscurity, artistic regression and finally, a withdrawal from the job altogether.

If we take it as given that local voices are important, and that women’s voices are important, then the voices of local women playwrights need to be encouraged. The statistics show that it is difficult to be programmed anywhere, and it is natural and right that artists look to their local industry in the first instance. If women’s voices are not supported there, then there is a very real danger that they will be lost completely.