urban excavations

[Selection from June 2024 report, published June 11, 2024 on the Women Count report series page.]

I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: WOMEN COUNT VII

The Women Count project collects and publishes analyses of New York City Off Broadway production credits to assess gender parity in theater hiring decisions. The project has published a report series since 2014 designed to illuminate whose plays are being produced, who is directing them, and who is being hired for off-stage roles in those productions in New York’s theaters beyond Broadway. The goal of the report series has always been to change the conversation from anecdotes to action plans to support advocacy efforts on behalf of women and nonbinary playwrights, performers, and off-stage theater workers.

Women Count VII, the seventh report in the series, covers 24 companies, five seasons spanning the period before and after the pandemic shutdown, and 431 productions. (Note that thirteen productions across the current five report seasons were co-productions involving two different study companies. This project grants full credit for production staff in each study company, i.e. replicates those records for each co-producing company. There were 418 unique productions during the five study seasons in the present report.)

The universe of theater companies covered by the Women Count report series has been adjusted over the years to drop companies that have stopped producing, such as The Pearl, and to add others, such as Second Stage, Irish Repertory, Theater for a New Audience, and the sporadic production record of companies such as LAByrinth. The lens of analysis has been expanded in recent seasons to include coding individuals identifying as non-binary, and project reports now provide numbers and percentages for “female and non-binary” workers in study reporting categories.

Tables summarize information by season, with most tables providing company-by-company detail focusing on gender hiring breakdowns in multiple roles, with total hires following by a calculation of the percent of those hires that are female or nonbinary. Off and Off-Off Broadway production trends range from areas in which female and nonbinary credits are dominant, areas where parity is being approached, and many other areas where parity is far from the norm. This report does not analyze why hiring decision have been made. Rather, the reports in this series document the status of these hiring decisions to inform the field as it considers ways to promote gender parity and opportunity. Data are assembled from production playbills, season announcements, theater web sites, published production reviews, on-line databases, and professional networks.

• “New” play productions – plays that premiered within five years of the study production — range from a low of 69 percent in 2018/19 to a high of 82 percent “new” plays in 2021/22
• Female or nonbinary individuals comprised less than 50 percent of credited playwrights in four of the five report seasons. In contrast, almost 60 percent of playwrights in the 2021/22 “pandemic return” partial season were female or nonbinary.
• Female or nonbinary director credits for the five report seasons hovered just above or just below 50 percent, growing to 58 percent in 2023/24.
• Set designer credits for female or nonbinary designers ranged from 31 percent in 2018/19 to 45 percent in 2021/22.
• Lighting designers among study productions are increasingly female and nonbinary, increasing from 37 percent of lighting credits in 2018/19 to almost 60 percent in the most recent three report seasons.
• Costume designers are primarily female and nonbinary, ranging from 75 percent in 2019/20 to 82 percent in 2021/22.
• Sound designer credits for female or nonbinary designers ranged from 25 percent to 42 percent in the five study seasons.
• Female and nonbinary projection and video designer credits had been rising to parity in recent seasons but declined dramatically to 13 percent in the most recent study season.
• Female and nonbinary choreography credits range from a low of 23 percent in 2021/22 to a high of 59 percent in 2023/24.
• Female and nonbinary individuals comprised far below 50 percent of credited composers during the study seasons. Females (no nonbinary credits were coded) comprised a wide range of lyricists during the study seasons, ranging from a low of 8 percent in 2023/24 to a high of 46 percent in 2022/23. Female and nonbinary conductor/music director credits range from a low of 27 percent in 2021/22 to a high of 41 percent in 2022/23.
• Female or nonbinary production stage manager credits ranged from a low 61 percent in 2021/22 to high of 84 percent in 2023/24. Stage managers and assistant stage managers ranged between a low of 68 percent and high of 84 percent.

The Women Count report series has become part of the national conversation on gender parity in theater. In 2019, the Women Count project joined the Counting Together initiative comprised of national and regional data projects, initially coordinated by Todd London (Dramatists Guild) and Luis Castro (American Theatre Wing). The Counting Together initiative’s evolving mission, inspired by ongoing evidence of systemic exclusion in the theater reported in multiple data projects, is to convene the member groups regularly to report findings collectively and to identify pathways to greater equity and inclusion through narratives in their multiple data reports. In February 2022 the initiative received two inaugural Anthem Awards in the areas of DEI community engagement and awareness. Women Count is also a proud Network Partner of the RISE (Representation, Inclusion & Support for Employment) initiative, a program of Maestra Music Inc., formally launched in May 2023.

[full report here]