This afternoon.
Abbey Theatre, Dublin
Supporters of Waking The Feminists at the national theatre to urge the board to offer “equal advancement for women artists and economic parity for all in the theatre”.
Peacock out of picture.
Top pic via The Abbey Theatre
Thanks Spaghetti Hoop
Update:
The public meeting
From top: Tara Harrington, Kate O’Toole and Kate Beaufoy; on stage in the main theatre; Abbey Theatre artistic director Fiach Mac Chongail.
(Leah Farrell/RollingNews.ie)
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Might help to know who is responsible for selecting the plays. Is it a board? Committee? Who’s on it?
At least whenever whoever is responsible for selection is forced to select plays just because they were written by a woman we can say that the theatre is truly without prejudice
Fiach McConghail, the creative director of the abbey,
FFS let them sleep . . .
It may have been better to have two new plays written by women and added to the list…..Encourage new talent too :)
If the talent is there.
That should totally be your catchphrase.
:)
Indeed. Generally speaking, women are talentless chumps. There’s only a vanishingly slim chance that there are two women currently alive who have written a play that could bear comparison with a play written by any random man.
Art generates from the penis, as does humour. That’s why women are not funny, can’t do music, read pink covered novels and must never have their pathetic plays (which are probably about, like, periods and other women stuff) inflicted on the serious theatre – going public.
your comment does not pass the bechdel test.
I hear your Pain
Jane
bit heavy-handed, that.
I’ve seen variations of this question asked several times but I’ve yet to see it answered:
How many plays by women were considered/eligible/submitted compared to those by men? How did the ratio match up with the final ratio of plays chosen?
The Abbey does not (ever, to my knowledge) produce plays submitted to them uninvited. Instead they work with commissioned writers who they invite to submit work for consideration. But of course that only covers new work. A significant proportion of the programme (as you would expect) includes much older plays which are being revived. In that instance they are neither submitted nor commissioned, but simply chosen by the Abbey from the huge canon of existing plays. No existing play by a woman was chosen.
Yes they do and have always done, that’s why people, send play in. Recent examples are Drum Belly and Queitly.
Fiach McConghail did a Q&A on that last week and answered all questions honestly.
Worth a read
On Twitter I should have said
Thanks for the replies. And was the selection committee composed entirely of men? If yes then that is a problem.
why is it a problem?
You don’t see why? Your tone seems argumentative. I actually asked my initial question from a position of fairly acute scepticism, so don’t think I’m some foaming-at-the-mouth militant here.
Well this is what Fiach M said about the selection process during that rather unfortunate Twitter discussion last week: “@fmacconghail: All my new play choices are based on the quality of the play, form and theme. It’s my call and I’m pleased with the plays I picked”
Well, as long as he’s happy that’s the main thing
:-)
I don’t know the answer to this either but the numbers in this particular instance were not that relevant; they were newsy numbers and seized upon as an opportunity to attract attention to a quite important issue: not enough women are represented in theatre arts. The knock on effect of this is that likely not enough women are submitting any longer and quite a few people there today made that point. Women who stopped writing plays for production in the face of lots of no’s and shut doors. I’d say fewer women submitted plays alright, but this is probably because fewer are encouraged to by the current system.
…that was a reply to Yea, Ok’s post at 1.51pm.
Waking the feminists, like waking a troop of angry badgers, only more hairy
They’ll have us robbed of our facial cream next !
Fierce amount of ‘friend zone’ lads in there.
all with the same hair stylist too it would seem
Of course. They’re only pretending to be concerned about gender equality because they think it will help them get laid. | bet you’re a real hit with the ladies.
Who’d want to be a hit with those ‘ladies’. I’d quicker ride a brillo pad.
I can hear many hearts breaking over that revelation.
I meant in general. And your use of inverted commas around the word ‘ladies’ has me even more convinced. You should do one of those ‘how to pick up women’ classes that are popular with people who are definitely not emotional disaster zones.
Sorry, I didn’t mean my friend zone comment to upset you, or the use of commas. I understand you’re hurt. You should go to one of your many close female friends and talk to them about it.
I’ll be in the kitchen… eh, cleaning pots.
Ok. I clearly can’t compete with your epic manly manliness. It’s too much.
If they spent less time sleeping and more time writing plays they’d be in with a chance.
“…………..equal advancement of women artists and economic parity for all……..”. Good god. Does anyone actually proofread this guff?
submit your play with your CAO number.. that way it is a pure meritocracy.. I suspect though that like in TV and Film the result will be the same. Men are better at it!
Try reading this, on the gender impact of blind auditions for orchestras: http://www.nber.org/papers/w5903
Huh, there sure are a lot of white people in those photos.
Not too concerned about racial balance I take it?
Are non whites 50% of the population?
Ah, that’s the magic number, is it?
Until they make up 50% of the population, your fedora will remain unworn?
It is, yeah. And I gave you that fedora back. I mean, you clearly understand women better than everyone here so I figured you deserved it.
But your shiny white armour will be incomplete without it :(
Then again, you’ll be all the way up there on your high horse so perhaps it will go unnoticed.
“But your shiny white armour”
Ah. You’re one of those Nice Guys. My condolences.
Cool, dude! You’re using all the right terminology!
You’ll impress those feminists you stalk online one of these days! Keep uploading those right-on screenshots to your tumblr!
You can do it champ!
Thanks, man. Btw, they told me to tell you they’re sorry for not replying to all your messages on Tinder but, sure, they’re all feminists so fk dose b1chez, roi?
Killer material bro! You’ve learned it almost verbatim!
You’ll be a great ally for some ladies some day!
On tumblr!
Tumblr must be quality.
You’ll love it!
This wasn’t an invite event. It was ticketed, so the ‘racial balance’ for the event couldn’t possibly be controlled. The racial balance in the industry certainly can be, and currently there are very few non-white women in the arts in Ireland but that will change as the first generation Irish of African and Asian descent come through the education system and start producing art!
“the ‘racial balance’ for the event couldn’t possibly be controlled. The racial balance in the industry certainly can be”
Controlled by whom?
The ‘DISAPPEARED’ poster is a bit… odd. Like she realized there was a bit of an implication Gerry had them all shot in a bog and had to add the second bit, which then scans all wrong.
T’wouldn’t happen at the Everyman
The Abbey recieve 3 times as many plays by men as women.
If you were to look at music released to date, you could either conclude that men have made a stronger contribution or that men enjoyed a privilege. But when you look on the streets, pubs and small venues, you’ll see it’s men performing by majority. How do you explain something like that?
I wonder what Jane Ruffino thinks