Not There Yet

The debate about the under-representation of women playwrights (and directors) on our better-funded stages continues.

This debate is an important one—for all of us, female and male, who care about access and equality. And it's also important that it doesn't end up focused solely on emerging writers and the establishment of training or mentoring programmes.

Because the problem for women writers and directors is not lack of training. It’s lack of opportunity, specifically the lack of certain kinds of opportunity.

Women writers and directors, at least in Sydney, are active and well-represented in community contexts and youth theatres, in co-ops and unfunded fringe ventures. But how do we/they move from back rooms and basements to better funded and supported productions? Not for a second suggesting that the only worthwhile contexts in which to make and present work are mainstage, but being able to work across the whole theatre ecology is important if you want to develop and sustain a viable career.

A Queensland colleague alerted us to this essay, Not There Yet by the American playwright Marsha Norman.

'Discussing the status of women in the theatre feels a little like debating global warming. I mean, why are we still having this discussion? According to a report issued seven years ago by the New York State Council on the Arts, 83 percent of produced plays are written by men—a statistic that, by all indications, remains unchanged. Nobody doubts that the North Pole is melting, either—we see it on the news. These are both looming disasters produced by lazy behavior that nobody bothered to stop. End of discussion. What we have to do in both cases is commit to change before it is too late.'

Click here to read the rest of this excellent piece.

MILO and FORTUNE - out they go!

Currency Press playscripts of Ned Manning's MILO and Hilary Bell's FORTUNE are selling cheap, a mere $2 a copy if you buy in bulk (teachers take note!).

To purchase, please Email Hilary Bell.

FORTUNE
Cold Bath Creek, 1861. 11-year-old Chang is a giant, and the property of a brutal souvenir portrait photographer on the goldfields. Kathleen, an ex-convict, lures Chang from this miserable existence with promises of a better life, but she too exploits him, touring him as a freak. Driven to desperate measures by Kathleen's jealous lover, Duck, Chang is forced to discover his own superior strength. The tale is in counterpoint with the story of Iris, an anglophilic Chinese hotelier, and her Chinese-operatic descent into madness.
· 2 acts
· 3 males
· 2 females

MILO
As Australia moves into a new millennium, two couples in their thirties wrestle with their changing relationships and their relationship with the Land.
Milo, a well-meaning if misguided dreamer, battles to cope with reality whilst his partner Di, a committed social reformer, battles with the conflicting demands of relationship and career. Toby, a fourth generation farmer, struggles with the life in the 21st century whilst his wife, Peg, contemplates her future as a mother and wife.
The play examines the evolving relationship in Australia between the City and the Bush and explodes a few inherent myths.
2 acts
2 males
2 females

Brand Spanking New + short plays

Vanessa and Verity have both taken part - along with a positive embarrassment of new, established and emerging writers in the New Theatre's Brand Spanking New season of short plays. We met some great people, we thrashed our plays around a bit, we had fun. One of the things that was the most fun was simply the task to write something within a short period of time, to have it cast, produced, seen, enjoyed, to have learned from it and then...to move on.

We can get so stuck in the muddy muddy endless process of writing and rewriting and trying to sell a play over such a long period of time because let's face it, opportunities have shrunk over the last ten years. Well, they've shrunk and expanded. The independent scene is quite wild really with a plethora of work being self-produced, or co-produced with teams of new, young, energetic producers. And it's great - a tussle of striving minds and generosities of spirit and attitude all in the interest of making art. But main-stage opportunities have definitely decreased. There are only a very few playwrights in Australia who might write a play a year, learn from that and write another one the year after. Which is what you have to do to practice and practice and practice your craft.

This isn't meant to be a whinge. It's just meant to be a noting. Nothing can change until the macro situation of theatre companies being forced to rely on box office for such an enormous percentage of their budget changes. And that's a policy struggle and also a societal one, because the majority of the Australian population don't feel it to be a priority.

Until that happens adventurous new work - or work that doesn't rake in a big box office, which means work that is unaccompanied by a brand of some kind whether that is the brand of the actor or the writer - will be discriminated against in favour of work that, while hopefully is excellent, also contributes to the bottom line. (Tho' we know that fortunately there are exceptions to this from time to time...)

In the meantime - in, on and out. It was great!

The Seven Needs

In 2007 we wrote 7 short scripts in response to psychologist Abraham Maslow's 'hierarchy of human needs'. The Seven Needs, which was produced by the Griffin Theatre Company as part of their 2007 season, has just been published by Currency Press in the anthology Short Circuit. Find out more here.

The Debate Moves South ...

Here at 7-ON we love hearing about other coalitions and groups of artists 'doing it for themselves'. Check out the Australian Women Directors' Alliance, a recently formed non-profit coalition of professional women directors and theatre makers. There's some interesting, probing and provocative discussion on their blog about the participation and artistic practices of female directors, playwrights and performance-makers—and their under-representation on Melbourne's better-funded stages.

You can contact the AWDA here, or find them on Facebook.

The Belvoir thing

There’s a lot going round on the blogosphere with regard to the latest Belvoir season.

It’s hard weighing into this one, isn’t it?

You don’t want to whinge; you don’t want to self-promote; you don’t want to cast aspersions on the work of your male peers, whom you admire as people and writers. You don’t really want to get stuck into a theatre company either, because whatever you may think of decisions made, the people who have been appointed to those positions have a perfect right to run the company the way they want to during the time they are employed to do so.

But … it WAS a moment when we saw the line up of blokes and the one woman on the ABC TV report …

For the record here is a list of female writers for the stage in Australia. We don’t know if any of them are currently in contact with Belvoir, or had any discussions with Belvoir in relation to the 2010 season.

As far as we know in terms of new work by Australian female playwrights only Alana Valentine, Jenny Kemp, Robyn Archer, Katherine Thomson, Beatrix Christian, Christine Evans, Leah Purcell (with Scott Rankin), Melissa Reeves, Linda Aronson, Val Levkowicz, Dallas Winmar, Jane Harrison, Kate Mulvaney and Julie Janson have had a mainstage gig at Belvoir Upstairs since 1985.

That’s 14 in 24 years.

As compared to 52 for men (not counting ‘company’ productions but counting both writers where a duo was concerned, as we have done for women writers). It’s possible that other Australian mainstage companies have similar track records.

We hope not.

The list below is also by no means exhaustive – it’s just those playwrights who happen to be female whose work those of us seconded to write this post know well enough to honour and who we’re certain are still writing. If we’ve missed anyone, apologies. It’ll be because we haven’t read or seen your work or because we think (possibly erroneously) you’re currently engaged in a more sensible way of making a living. But sing out if we’ve missed you! Give us a chance to make good.

We’ll start with 7-ON because that’s our tribe but there’s no particular order of merit or relevance implied.

Donna Abela, Vanessa Bates, Hilary Bell, Noëlle Janaczewska, Verity Laughton, Catherine Zimdahl, Alana Valentine, Suzie Miller, Catherine Fargher, Julie Janson, Louise Fox, Debra Oswald, Sue Smith, Leah Purcell, Elaine Acworth, Jan Cornall, Elizabeth Coleman, Beatrix Christian, Robyn Archer, Kate Smith, Ros Horin, Katherine Thomson, Linda Aronson, Van Badham, Melissa Reeves, Dallas Winmar, Catherine Fitzgerald, Rosalba Clemente, Sandra Shotlander, Angela Betzien, Delia Fetter, Karin Mainwaring, Merlinda Bobis, Jane Harrison, Mary Rachel Brown, Nicki Bloom, Patricia Cornelius, Kate Mulvaney, Jenny Kemp, Christine Evans, Heather Nimmo, Claire Heywood, Lally Katz, Tobsha Learner, Andrea Lemon, Maryanne Lynch, Val Levcowicz, Peta Murray, Hannie Rayson, Catherine Ryan, Kylie Trounson, Alma de Groen, Belinda Bradley, Angela Costi, Jane Bodie, Sally Richardson, Alison Lyssa, Chi Vu, Joanna Murray Smith, Suzanne Spunner, Jackie Smith, Andrea James, Margaret Cameron, Fiona Sprott.

Setting aside the new work by Australian male writers – because we can’t reduce this to an inter-gender competition with our male peers - is anyone seriously going to assert that not one of those women could not have written a better play than Englishwoman Polly Stenham’s adolescent-gothic That Face? (Actually, it’s quite interesting that the only female sensibility in the whole season is an adolescent one.)

There have been comments made on other blogs with regard to the number of (terrific) women on the board and in management at Belvoir). All this means - in the context of the 2010 season anyway - is that there are a great many extremely able women supporting and facilitating the creativity of a group of men.

Someone else produced statistics about the number of indigenous works programmed at Belvoir as an argument against any decision to seek a gender balance in terms of central creative roles. On the contrary, the programming of works by indigenous writers simply indicates – in the case of female writers - not that the fact that ‘things just ended up that way’ is because of limited material at a level of excellence available to go into the programming mix, but that the company has consistently been making very deliberate choices with regard to programming. And anyway, ‘things just ending up that way’ is a pretty crass definition of leadership.

We don’t think anyone is suggesting that this moment in time for Belvoir is result of any ill will. Or that it isn’t a difficult job supporting new Australian writing of any kind in an industry where the box office exercises a huge influence.

But where do we go from here? Not sure. An act of unconsciousness is a kind of betrayal. It requires either a mea culpa or an act of reparation on the part of the betrayer. Perhaps Belvoir could just say sorry and resolve to do better. Or perhaps each of those men involved in programming the 2010 season could resolve to champion at least one female Australian playwright next chance they got.

That’d be something.

AWGIES

Seven playwrights all too busy to make regular posts on their collective blog. It's true! We do try, but it gets away from us from time to time.

But ... we did want to say that we're pleased and proud to announce that Noëlle Janaczewska won the 2009 Radio AWGIE for her non-fiction script, There's Something About Eels ...

And both Vanessa and I have been intending to post the odd comment from our current hero, Edward Albee, from the Inscription workshop that we did with him, and we haven't. Life feels too fast. It's ten p.m. right now, I have family coming and going and I'm way behind on the current draft of the current piece I'm attempting to craft, but maybe one thing that Edward said might work for everyone who drops by this site from time to time.

He said right at the beginning of the two week workshop that he would be looking at our plays in the light of " How each of us has succeeded to intention and whether that intention was worthwhile in the first place." I've been seeing a lot of theatre over the last month or so and it's been great to simply take that definition into each occasion with me. It doesn't matter if the show in question is my schtick or not, it doesn't matter if I had a good time or not, it simply matters if the people concerned succeeded according to their own intention and - the tougher judgment, and I don't see how you get away from subjectivity here - whether or not that intention was worthwhile in the first place.
Verity