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Twin Cities theater professionals are pointing out the 

As soon as I posted the season announcement news to Facebook, a flurry of comments showed up from women theater directors.

Indeed, the 2012-2013 season is overwhelmingly white and male.

In addition to featuring a season of plays almost entirely written and directed by men, the Guthrie will also be hosting two productions by Propeller Theatre Company, which features traditional, all-male productions of Shakespeare plays.

Of the 12 productions slated for the Guthrie's two large stages, the Wurtele thrust and the McGuire proscenium, not one of them was written by a woman. And only one of them ("Nice Fish") is being 

directed by a woman (along with Mark Rylance).

In addition, the men involved in writing and staging these plays are all white - the most diverse among them is Carlo Goldoni, an Italian playwright from the 1700s.

The Guthrie's third stage, the Dowling Studio, has yet to be fully programmed for the coming season, but at this point it does include one play co-written by a woman. It's an adaptation of Homer's "Iliad."

Leah Cooper, who is both a theater director and the head of the Minnesota Theater Alliance, says it's insulting and degrading to see so little regard for representation by the state's largest performing arts institution.

While Guthrie Artistic Director Joe Dowling was not available to respond over the phone to these complaints, he did send me a written response:

This is certainly a restrained tone compared to the enthusiasm he showed yesterday about a season he called "so varied and immediate."

The truth is that the Guthrie is hardly alone when it comes to booking seasons that are predominantly written and directed by white men.

the disproportionate power of men in the theater. 

It includes numerous studies finding that plays staged in major cities are ovewhelmingly written by men - usually somewhere between 70 percent and 80 percent of them. Even though women make up far more than 20-30 percent of the working playwrights.

articles, by Pulitzer- and Tony-winning playwright Marsha Norman,

Norman writes, "Women buy 70 percent of theatre tickets sold, and make up 60 percent of the audience." But despite their collective buying power, they continue to be offered plays predominantly written and directed by men.

Arts and Culture

State of the Arts Blog

Marianne Combs

Author

Local theater professionals say the Guthrie's upcoming season is a tragedy, lacking work by women or people of color.

Where’s the diversity in the Guthrie’s new season?

Go Deeper.

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