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.
Click here to read the full report.
For more information, visit https://www.risetheatre.org/ or create a profile for the RISE Theatre Directory and join the community.
