Showing posts with label sexism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sexism. Show all posts

Friday, June 14, 2013

ACTION ALERT: Shame on LINCOLN CENTER THEATRE


Lincoln Center Theater announces a 2013-14 ALL MALE season!
1) "Domesticated" - a new play by Bruce Norris 
2) A new Broadway production of “Macbeth” starring Ethan Hawke. (Yes, we really need another "new" production of "Macbeth"!
3) James Lapine’s adaptation of Moss Hart’s autobiography “Act One,” 
4) A new play by Anthony Giardina about a political doyenne in Washington, D.C.
In the good news:
“Domesticated” will be directed by Anna D. Shapiro
To offset sexism LCT will no doubt feature female playwrights in their LCT3 program, which aims to develop new talent in the 112-seat Claire Tow Theater.
Lincoln Center Theatre has a history of producing seasons of plays by MEN.  
GIRLCOTT Lincoln Center Theatre NOW!
Write to arttistic Director, ANDRÉ BISHOP
Fe-mail: abishop@lct.org (CC a copy to info@lct.org and info@ggontour.com)

Snail Mail:
Lincoln Center Theater 
150 West 65th Street
New York, NY 10023

Call Administrative Offices: 212.362.7600

Tell Andre Bishop and Lincoln Center Theatre that you will not purchase a ticket to one of their productions until they include a play by a woman on their main stages.


Tuesday, April 9, 2013

GIRLCOTT ALERT - THE ALLEY THEATRE, HOUSTON ANNOUNCES SEXIST SEASON!


Last season it was the Guthrie Theatre and the Actors Theatre of Louisville (as well as hundreds of others).

This season it's THE ALLEY THEATRE.  The HOUSTON PRESS just announced that THE ALLEY THEATRE's next mainstage season is 9 plays by WHITE MEN.


“…the Alley Theatre's 2013-14 season announced today will be dominated by American plays and give female actors a special chance to shine, according to Alley Artistic Director Gregory Boyd.”

SOURCE: Houston Press Blog

GUERRILLA GIRLS ON TOUR!  CALLS FOR A GIRLCOTT OF THE ALLEY THEATRE

WRITE, TWEET, FeMAIL and FAX Artistic Director, Gregory Boyd, and tell him you are Girlcotting The Alley and will not buy a ticket until he includes a play by a woman on the main stage.

FAX THE ALLEY THEATRE:  713 222-6542

CALL THE ALLEY THEATRE: 713 228-9341 TWEET: @alleytheatre @GuerrillaGsOT  #girlcott

FeMAIL:  Gregory Boyd gboyd@alleytheatre.org

CC PR Associate Lauren Pelletier laurenp@alleytheatre.org

ALLEY THEATRE'S PRESS RELEASE:

FOR RELEASE
April 6, 2013

MEDIA CONTACT:
Rodi Franco, Director of Communications, (rodif@alleytheatre.org), 713.315.3352
Lauren Pelletier, Public Relations Associate, (laurenp@alleytheatre.org) 713.315.3364

Highlighting Alley Theatre’s Upcoming Season: The Good Woman of Setzuan by Bertolt Brecht, Never the Sinner by John Logan,Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz, Venus in Fur by David Ives, Freud’s Last Session by Mark St. Germain, and Good People by David Lindsay-Abaire
-Also featured are Alan Ayckbourn’s Communicating Doors, Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman’s You Can’t Take It With You.
-This summer, Agatha Christie’s The Hollow will be produced as the ExxonMobil Summer Chills production.
HOUSTON, Texas – Gregory Boyd, Artistic Director of the Tony Award-winning Alley Theatre, announces its thrilling new season of plays created by playwrights that include a Pulitzer-Prize winning comedy, a new play that was the Outer Critics Circle’s Outstanding, New Play winner, the first play by a Tony Award winner, a 2011 Tony Award nominee for Best Play, plus an ingenious comedy from acclaimed, award-winning playwright Alan Ayckbourn and an intriguing epic by Bertolt Brecht.
Kicking off the Alley Theatre’s 67th season is perhaps the greatest American comedy ever written, Kaufman and Hart’s You Can’t Take It With You on the Hubbard Stage and the new sexy, provocative comedy Venus in Fur by David Ives on the Neuhaus Stage.
The season continues on the Hubbard Stage with a riveting new play by Pulitzer Prize nominee Jon Robin Baitz, Other Desert Cities, and a fascinating new play on the Neuhaus Stage where professor and author C.S. Lewis visits psychoanalyst Dr. Sigmund Freud in Freud’s Last Session by Mark St. Germain. Returning to the Alley are Tony winner John Logan, with the play that launched his career, Never the Sinner on the Hubbard Stage and award-winning acclaimed playwright Alan Ayckbourn, with his ingenious comic tour de force where Back to the Future meets Hitchcock in Communicating Doors.
The final show of the season on the Hubbard Stage is the 2011 Tony Award nominated Good People by David Lindsay-Abaire and the final show on the Neuhaus Stage is Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Woman of Setzuan.
This summer’s ExxonMobil Summer Chills production is Agatha Christie’s The Hollow. This is the first time the Alley will produce this play. Season ticket buyers can purchase tickets now with their season package. Tickets to the public will go on sale in May.
Also available now to season ticket buyers are tickets to Houston’s holiday favorite, A Christmas Carol on the Alley’s Hubbard Stage. Adapted and created by Artistic Director (and Alley Artistic Associate) Michael Wilson, the production incorporates elaborate scenic, costume, and lighting design and features a cast of over 15.
The Alley’s subscription season includes five plays on the Hubbard Stage and three plays on Neuhaus Stage, all produced in the Alley’s two-theatre complex at 615 Texas Avenue in downtown Houston.
Casting for this summer’s ExxonMobil Summer Chills production and plays in the 2013-2014 season will be announced at a later date.
ALLEY THEATRE’S 2013-2014 SEASON INCLUDES:Please note: play titles and dates are subject to change.
You Can’t Take It With YouBy Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman
Hubbard Stage
September 20 to October 20, 2013
This Pulitzer Prize-winning classic by the team of Kaufman and Hart (The Man Who Came to Dinner, 2009) is perhaps the greatest American comedy ever written. Alice Sycamore must introduce her fiancé’s straitlaced family to her rather more eccentric family. When the wildly different families meet, the worlds of the wealthy, uptight Kirbys and the off-kilter Sycamores collide. At first the Sycamores seem mad, but it is not long before we realize that if they are mad, the rest of the world is madder. Kaufman and Hart’s hilarious You Can’t Take It With You features the Alley Resident Company of Actors. Recommended for general audiences.
Venus in FurBy David Ives
Neuhaus Stage
October 18 to November 17, 2013
Theatrical mastermind David Ives’ sexy, provocative comedy, Venus in Fur, is an electrifying game of cat and mouse between a young actress and a demanding playwright-director that blurs the lines between fantasy and reality, seduction and power, love and sex. "Role-playing takes on a whole new meaning" (New York Post) in this "don’t miss" play The Wall Street Journal says is "deadly serious, madly funny … you won't see a funnier play this season, or a smarter one."Recommended for mature audiences.
Other Desert CitiesBy Jon Robin Baitz
Hubbard Stage
January 10 to February 2, 2014
A riveting new play by Pulitzer Prize nominee and creator of TV's hit drama Brothers & Sisters, Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities was named the Outstanding Play by the Outer Critics Circle and called "the best new play on Broadway" by The New York Times. After a six-year absence, Brooke Wyeth returns home to Palm Springs to celebrate Christmas with her parents, brother and aunt. The warm desert air turns chilly when news of her upcoming memoir threatens to revive the most painful chapter of the family’s history. The New York Daily News calls this dysfunctional family drama "a winner … funny and fierce, invigorating and intelligent." Recommended for mature audiences.
Freud’s Last SessionBy Mark St. Germain
Neuhaus Stage
January 24 to February 23, 2014
Freud’s Last Session centers on legendary psychoanalyst Dr. Sigmund Freud, who invites a little-known professor C.S. Lewis, (who later wrote the children’s classic The Chronicles of Narnia), to his home in London. Lewis, expecting to be called on the carpet for satirizing Freud in a recent book, soon realizes Freud has a much more significant agenda. On the day England enters World War II, Freud and Lewis clash on the existence of God, love, sex, and the meaning of life. "The humor is plentiful" (The New York Times) in this "thrilling" (Variety) tête-à-tête. Recommended for general audiences.
Never the Sinner: The Murder Trial of the CenturyBy John Logan
Hubbard Stage
February 21 to March 16, 2014
Playwright John Logan – who received three Academy Award nominations and wrote the recent James Bond film Skyfall, and won the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critic Circle and Drama League awards for his play Red (Alley production, 2012) – returns to the Alley with the play that launched his career. Never the Sinner is about two boys who commit a murder – not for gain, or out of passion – just to do it, just to experience the thrill. Based on the infamous 1924 trial of Leopold and Loeb, Never the Sinner is their story, and the story of one of the most famous American lawyers and civil libertarians, Clarence Darrow. In the case of a lifetime, Darrow is called in to defend the monstrous and try to win freedom for the depraved. Recommended for mature audiences.
Communicating Doors
By Alan Ayckbourn
Hubbard Stage
April 4 to April 27, 2014
Award-winning playwright Alan Ayckbourn (House & Garden, 2002) returns to the Alley in this ingenious comic tour de force where Back to the Future meets Hitchcock. In 2024 Phoebe, a "private personal services consultant," finds herself with an elderly client in a posh hotel room – she opens the wrong door and finds herself running for her life. Soon she is confronting her own past by way of a woman named Ruella, and the two join forces to prevent a murder, while Phoebe's gradual friendship with that remarkable woman changes the future for both of them. Eleven plays penned by Alan Ayckbourn have been produced by the Alley, including the American premiere of Henceforward in 1987. Alan Ayckbourn has been inducted into the American Theatre’s Hall of Fame, received the 2010 Critics’ Circle Award for Services to the Arts, became the first British playwright to receive both Olivier and Tony Special Lifetime Achievement Awards and was knighted in 1997 for services to the theatre. Recommended for adults due to language.
Good People
By David Lindsay-Abaire
Hubbard Stage
May 16 to June 8, 2014
Nominated for a 2011 Tony Award for Best Play, Good People is a funny, tough and tender story about the insurmountable class divide. When Margie Walsh loses her job at a South Boston dollar store, she reaches out to old flame Mike, a neighborhood boy who escaped and became a successful doctor. Margie's attempt to hit Mike up for a job takes on a surprising twist when she realizes the power a secret from Mike's past holds. From Pulitzer Prize winner David Lindsay-Abaire, Good People looks at the extraordinary consequences of choosing to hold on to the past or leaving it behind. "Thoroughly absorbing ... Good People is good stuff" (Variety) and one of the finest new American plays. Recommended for mature audiences.
The Good Woman of SetzuanBy Bertolt Brecht
Neuhaus Stage
May 30 to June 29, 2014
Can we practice goodness and create a world to sustain it? In Brecht’s comic, intriguing epic play, this question is raised by one of his most entertaining characters, Shen Teh, the good-hearted, penniless, prostitute who is forced to disguise herself as a savvy businessman named Shui Ta to master the ruthlessness needed to be a "good person" in a brutal world. Recommended for mature audiences.
SUMMER PRODUCTION
ExxonMobil Summer ChillsAgatha Christie’s The HollowBy Agatha Christie
Hubbard Stage
July 5 to August 4, 2013
A weekend gathering at The Hollow family estate of Lady Lucy and Sir Henry Angkatell explodes in the murder of one of their guests, physician John Cristow. When the good doctor is found shot, almost everyone is suspect with opportunity and motive including his dim but loyal wife, his current mistress, and his ex-mistress, who lives on a neighboring estate. Don’t miss this classic Christie whodunit filled with brilliantly eccentric characters. Recommended for general audiences.
HOLIDAY PRODUCTIONS:
Houston's Holiday FavoriteA Christmas Carol - A Ghost Story of ChristmasBy Charles Dickens
Adapted and Originally Directed by Michael Wilson
Directed by James Black
Hubbard Stage
November 15 – December 29, 2013




Thursday, October 4, 2012

We Came! We Saw! We Threw Bananas! WE WERE THEATRE!

Check out Aphra Behn's guest blog post on the Women and Hollywood blog:

http://blogs.indiewire.com/womenandhollywood/guest-post-we-came-we-saw-we-threw-bananas-we-were-theatre

PHOTOS of WE ARE THEATRE by Miriam Berkley

Dana Berger performs "Who’s The Man" by Mary Steelsmith 
 

Alysia Reiner performs "Chopping Cabbage" by Sophia Romma  


Yvette X performs her own "Bridge to Baraka" 


Drae Campbell in "A Rejection in Full" by Mila Golubuv


Gael Schaefer performs "She" by Caridad Svich


Honor Molloy performs her own work "Not Published, Not Produced" 


Annie-Sage Whitehurst performs "I Am Estonia" by Jyl Lynn Felman 
 

Sarah M. Duncan performs her own "PSA"




Taifa Harris performs Theresa Rebeck's "Why Can't We Do That In The Theatre?"


Guerrilla Girl On Tour Anne Sexton as Machoswine in "Oh, the joys of being a woman playwright"


WE ARE THEATRE CURTAIN CALL 



Sunday, September 23, 2012

ACTION CALL - BLITZ THE ROUNDABOUT THEATRE!


WE ARE THEATRE ACTION CALL:
BLITZ THE ROUNDABOUT!

The Roundabout Theatre has announced their 2012/2013 mainstage season - a season that contains ZERO plays by women and ZERO female directors. Artistic Director Todd Haimes recently wrote on the Roundabout blog: It is very exciting to put together a season with such variety...and consistently offers the audience the kind of enduring themes and stories that have come to define Roundabout.

INUNDATE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR TODD HAIMES WITH messages, faxes, stickers and tweets telling him what you think about his ALL WHITE MALE MAINSTAGE SEASON

CALL (212) 719-9393 ext 311
FAX (212) 869-8817
AND/OR info@roundabouttheatre.org

STICKER THE TOILET STALLS: Be a volunteer USHER (aka undercover WE ARE THEATRE agent) for the Roundabout
call their VOLUNTEER HOTLINE:
(212) 719-9393, ext. 523
DOWNLOAD STICKERS HERE:


TWEET IT NOW! mention the Roundabout @RTC_NYC and We Are Theatre @OccupyBroadway

Tomorrow night at 7PM women will occupy The Cherry Lane.  We will write, direct, act, design, promote, manage and produce theatre.  We are theatre. 

See you there or watch it live http://www.livestream.com/ggontour


Tuesday, September 18, 2012

5 days to the end of discrimination in theatre!

FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY
Guerrilla Girls On Tour! will come out of the jungle, go into the Cherry Lane Theatre and stand up for gender equality.

WE ARE THEATRE
An evening of kick ass plays by Tiffany Antone, Brooke Berman, Kate Bornstein, Lynne S. Brandon, EllaRose Chary, Paula Cizmar, Sarah Duncan, Jyl Lyyn Felman, Lauren Ferebee, Dominique Fishback, Mila Golubov, Elizabeth Hess, Yvette Heyliger, Velina Hasu Houston, Penny Jackson, Erato A. Kremmyda, Andrea Lepcio, Marianne McDonald, Irina Merkina, Honor Molloy, Brighde Mullins , Vince Peterson, Sophia Romma, Laura Shamas, Mary Steelsmith, Caridad Svich, Kathleen Warnock, Sheilah Rae, Theresa Rebeck, Thelma Virata de Castro, Shay Youngblood and Guerrilla Girls On Tour!

WHEN: September 24, 2012 @ 7PM WHERE: The Cherry Lane Theatre 38
Commerce Street, New York City 
WHAT: A theatrical Happening that will cause more plays by women to Happen 

TICKETS: $20 general admission, $12 students and seniors. - for half price tickets use the code WAT 10
FOR TICKETS CLICK HERE: https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/916365
OR HERE:  http://www.broadwaybox.com/shows/we_are_theatre_nyc_tickets.aspx

WATCH LIVE – WE ARE THEATRE WILL BE STREAMED LIVE: http://www.livestream.com/ggontour

DRESS: ANYTHING YELLOW 

DONATE: to the cause: http://www.indiegogo.com/WeAreTheatre

MEDIA REQUESTS: Contact Meredith Rich at meredithrich@earthlink.net


WE ARE THEATRE PRODUCERS: Guerrilla Girls On Tour! with 50/50 in 2020, the Women's Initiative members of the Dramatists Guild and the Belladonna Series

WE ARE THEATRE CO-SPONSORS:  Women's Project Theatre, LA Female Playwrights Initiative, WET Productions, The Feminist Spectator, The Shirley Chisholm Project of Brooklyn Women's Activism, Project Girl Performance Collective, Hollaback!, Hedgebrook, LIVE GIRLS Theatre, Judith Shakespeare, Bella Abzug Leadership Institute, New Perspectives Theatre Company, The Queens Company, The Negro Ensemble Company, Guerrilla Girls Broad Band, Little Black Dress INK, Looking for Lilith, Women at Work Festival, The Bella Abzug Leadership Institute and Agent 160 Theatre.






Monday, October 3, 2011

Pan Am


A view of the new TV series Pan Am – by guest blogger Liz C. Chassey

It seems that the TV industry is just as willing as ever to disregard women’s history for the sake of ratings. The most recent offender is ABC’s new show Pan Am. Despite the show’s accurate costumes and sets it neglects to include an accurate account of women in the airline industry in the 1960s.

Real flight attendants in the real 1960s faced sexual discrimination on a regular basis. The job of a flight attendant was touted as a way for young women to see the world but the job duties included fluffing the pillows and lighting the cigars of male passengers, often while wearing skimpy outfits.

Stewardesses were constantly subjected to physical inspections i.e. weighed and measured to ensure that they remained within a certain weight range. If one of them was found to be over the weight limit they were expected to steadily lose weight or be fired writes Kathleen Morgan Barry in Femininity in Flight: A History of Flight Attendants.[1] She also recounts that many flight attendants felt they were clones of each other and were expected to fit the model of the perfect woman at all times. In addition, stewardesses would be fired if they got married or were found to be secretly married.

As Gail Collins writes in her book When Everything Changed,[2] when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which was formed in order to defend people who faced discrimination at work, first opened office the staff expected to be fighting racial discrimination. However, stewardesses were the first to come knocking. The airlines fought the push for equality in courts and in Congress with logical fallacies such as “businessmen would be discouraged from flying if the women handing them their coffee and checking their seatbelts were not young and attractive,” writes Collins. However, the flight attendants fought harder. They struggled to prove that not only young, attractive women could be flight attendants; men could do the job, as well. They strove to remove the word “stewardess” from the airlines’ vocabulary. Finally, in 1973, a bit of progress was made; a court decision eliminated the rules on appearance.

The Pilot of Pan Am, which aired on Sunday, September 25 at 10 pm, does not do justice to the struggles of the flight attendants during the women’s movement. There are certainly moments of promise; at the beginning, one of the principle characters is shown being weighed and inspected as real 1960s stewardesses were. However, no more than a mousy “Is that necessary?” is said in protest by anyone on the show. Another stewardess leaves the office of what is presumed to be a counter-culture protest group to fly last minute. But as soon as she boards the plane, she fits herself nicely into the role that is expected of her.

Perhaps the biggest let down of Pan Am is the avoidance of the sexual discrimination that real 60s stewardesses faced. The pilot’s end shot is the four principal stewardesses walking through an airport in the same outfit with the same walk and the same empty smile. One of them looks back at a small girl and smiles at her as if to say, “this can be you someday.” Yes, little one, someday you will have to fight fiercely for rights that should be innate in an equal work place.

Will future episodes of Pan Am include respect for women’s history, the women’s movement, and women in general? TV does not need another show founded on sexism.


[1] Barry, Kathleen Morgan. Femininity in Flight: a History of Flight Attendants. Duke University Press, 2007.

[2] Collins, Gail. When Everything Changed. New York: Back Bay Books, 2010.