A new nationwide campaign – backed by the arts councils of England, Wales and Scotland – is urging producers, directors and writers to strive for equal gender portrayal in theatre. I wish I knew exactly what that meant.
On one hand, the campaign seems to be interested in parity of opportunity – that equal gender portrayal involves the pursuit of a more equal number of roles available for women on stage (with a side interest in “other roles” off-stage). On the other, there’s an interest in representations of gender: the kinds of men and women being portrayed. Quantitative versus qualitative, if you will.
There are, of course, difficulties in addressing both. The relative absence of roles for women (or men) in a particular work, body of work, season of work or venue’s programming is not de facto evidence of inequality or sexism. There are a range of sound political, aesthetic and even pragmatic reasons why this might be the case, whether you’re staging The Vagina Monologues or Blackwatch. That said, we do have a theatrical culture which is dominated by men on and off-stage: there’s a persistent, though not universal, assumption that the dramatic everyman is a dude. However, a headcount is far too blunt a tool to fully describe (or dismantle) that cultural trope, and the attitudes, money and conventions which sustain it.
Similarly, I’m looking for more detail in the desire to see “a broad and fairly balanced representation of men and women in drama.” What constitutes balanced representation? Is it a ratio of stereotypes to individuals? Do we have to balance visions of masculinity from the 30s with manliness from the 80s? Do feminist texts need to be “balanced” with plays which present retrogressive images of women?
I’m made also little anxious by the bluntness of the plan – quoted in The Stage – for a website with a list of “productions by, featuring or about women.” Raising awareness and visibility of women-authored work in a male-dominated industry is a productive strategy: it draws attention to a body of work without robbing those within it of the diversity of their skills, lives and work. But it’s an activity that may have very little to do with “balance.”
More than anything, I’m a little anxious about titling the campaign 50/50, because it directs attention away from the more complex conversation about the representation of gender (and how and why it might take place, and in whose hands those representations rest) towards a more simplistic account of theatre making. And even if those involved in the project are having those more involved conversations – and there’s no reason to think they shouldn’t, or aren’t – then it’s still the public image of an unthinking gesture towards equality that may trigger knee-jerk rejection (and reactionary tabloidism).
None of the above is an argument that we shouldn’t think, talk and act on this issue – just the recognition that “equality” and “balance” are strikingly different concepts.
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