Gender Bias in Theater

Virginia Wall Gruenert

Virginia Wall Gruenert is passionate about gender equality in the theatre arts.  That’s why, as Artistic Director of Off The Wall Productions, she promotes plays that are written and directed by women, and which include women in the technical roles as well as in the acting roles.

As an author, director and actress, Virginia is personally aware of this bias.  This bias reaches to all arms of theater production, whether it’s physical gender bias against female artists, or general gender bias against women producers, directors, playwrights, or stage technicians.

And there’s research to validate Virginia’s stance.  In a yearlong research project completed by Emily Glassberg Sands, the findings validated that there is indeed discrimination against female playwrights, which lends itself to the disproportion between the numbers of shows produced by men versus women. (full article)

In fact, based on information on 20,000 playwrights, the number of male playwrights outnumbers the women by two to one.  Ms. Sands completed a second study where the exact same script was sent to artistic directors and managers for review, with the only difference being the name of the writer.  Half had men’s names, half had women’s names.  The results?  You guessed it – the scripts with women’s names were rated significantly lower in terms of quality, potential earnings in audience response.

There are two astonishing outcomes from Ms. Sands study.  First, it was the female directors who were harsher in their ratings of the women’s scripts.  Second, the plays written by women averaged 16 percent more ticket sales and 18 percent more profit.  A third finding by Ms. Sands is that plays that feature women, and likely written by a woman, are less likely to be produced, which is surprising when you consider the higher average ticket sales and profit.  Read more about Ms. Sands study in the article Rethinking the Gender Bias in Theater, by Patricia Cohen.

So kudos to Virginia for promoting equality within the theatre arts.  But don’t think that Virginia will unfairly discriminate against men.  Her goal is to promote equality and deliver shows that will “knock you over the head.”  In fact, if asked about the inclusion of men, Virginia’s statement is “We don’t want to exclude the guys…we love the guys.”

You can read about Virginia’s personal and professional experiences in the article Playwright promotes women’s empowerment through theater by Laurie Smith of the Point Park News Service.

Virginia Wall Gruenert is Artistic Director at Off The Wall Productions, whose mission is to enrich, enliven, educate, amaze and entertain our audiences in their Pittsburgh Theater, Off The Wall Theater, in Carnegie, PA.