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March 2017

No matter how successful I become as a playwright, my mother would be thrilled to hear me tell her that I'd just lost 20 pounds, gotten married and become a lawyer.

Every March we revisit the issues surrounding gender and what it means to be a woman and equality and feminism vs humanism. Recently I have been thinking a lot about what it means to be a woman in the theatre. How is the creative journey of a playwright, a director, an actress, a designer, a stage manager different if they are women. Are we so evolved in the arts that the gender question is moot? Is the barometer calibrated to measure creativity/craft and blind to gender? Then why do we see so few successful female directors and playwrights? 

The tide is definitely turning. There is change afoot. And it is very very exciting to witness and participate in this change. However, it is important to acknowledge that there is a degree of lop sidedness here that needs to be addressed and subsequently corrected. So that a successful playwright doesn't feel that her self esteem rests in her weight and her identity can only be complete when she marries a man!

Almost as if to prove the point, this month we have quite a few plays led by women directors - read all about it in Coming Up. Check out opportunities for workshops, talks, etc scheduled this month. Priyanka joins The Script family with her review of 7/7/07 and Noah shares his experience at the Anuvad festival in Silchar, Assam as a resident performing artist.

Happy reading!