Not All Women, Just More Women.

Carly Churchill, 'Top Girls'

It’s an old story, one that is never short of articles, campaigns and conversations protesting about it.  I am positive that people are well aware of it, with at the very least, an inkling that things ought to be different, and yet the issue remains.  So, if you don’t mind, I would like to continue the rant. 
 

The under-representation of women in theatre.  Now, we are definitely seeing progress, with Vicky Featherstone at the Royal Court Theatre, Josie Rourke at the Donmar Warehouse and Lucy Prebble, Lucy Kirkwood and Laura Wade on the writing scene.  Also, we hear of productions of Shakespeare's plays with all-female casts, particularly at the Edinburgh Fringe, and the Bush Theatre’s production of ‘Josephine and I’ fills the ‘one-woman-monologue’ spot.  But turn your attention to the majority of the productions in London at the moment and you'll see that they are written by men, directed by men and performed by men.

The argument goes that it is because our love for theatre and its continuation stems from Shakespeare’s time, a time when women were not allowed to grace the stage, let alone write or direct anything for it.  We are simply suffering the (long) hangover of this convention.  Likewise, even when we remember theatre’s roots in Ancient Greece, as far as history can tell us, it was largely performed by men, for men.  It seems to be an entire tradition that we are attempting to overcome which, I understand, is proving a bit of a struggle.  It’s like asking the British to stop drinking tea, to stop queuing, to stop wearing socks with sandals.  The difference is, though, that we are proud of those things, they define who we are and differentiate us from other cultures.  So does that mean that suppressing the female voice in theatre is also something we should be proud of?  

I might be taking that a bit far.  But you can see my point, because when Caryl Churchill stormed through the doors of the Royal Court with her 1982 play, ‘Top Girls’, where was the sudden realisation that women had been truly missing from theatre for all that time?  When we consider that theatre’s function is to discuss, comment and argue with the world, whatever its present state, we can see that there is a massive issue in cutting out a considerable portion of that world’s population and, henceforth, perspective.  With this in mind, I don’t think that we’re asking for much.  We’re not asking for a complete overhaul of the way British Theatre runs, kicking male artistic directors out onto the streets and writing only for female audiences.  The point of feminism, the right sort of feminism, is equality.  Therefore, I’m not suggesting ‘all women’ and nothing else, just more women, can be recognised to share their perspective of the world.

We can only hope that things continue to get better.  There is definitely a whole generation bubbling under the surface who bring more to theatre than just gender equality: we’re also seeing racial equality, embracing sexuality and abolishing boundaries between any kind of class system or upbringing.  On this note, we also need to ask, where are the plays for the older generation?  None of us are getting much younger, and at last count, the oldest person alive is a 115 year old Japanese woman.  Without suggesting that we bring her onto the British stage, I know that the older an actor gets, the less likely they are to have their work noticed.

And yet, to clear all of our differences, to make theatre truly a place of equality and pull Britain along with it, I can’t help but wonder whether theatre would have anything left to discuss.  What would we make theatre about?  What would be our resounding complaint?  Well, knowing us, we’d fill the National Theatre with a box office smash about the weather.  Will it rain or won’t it?  The tension is killing me already.

In the meantime, I recently discovered an online magazine called 'The Quail Pipe' which is just wonderful, especially for the feminist mind.  I recommend taking a look.