Last year, the Irish Film Board (IFB) announced various initiatives aimed at furthering its “Six Point Gender Plan,” which ultimately aims to achieve 50/50 gender parity in funding by the end of this year. Now, it seems, Irish Theater is also making strides towards gender equality throughout the dramatic arts.
The Irish Times has announced that ten of the country’s most affluent theaters, festivals, and companies have a signed a gender equality policy that specifically targets the underrepresentation of women throughout Irish theater production. The policy will be unveiled by Minister for Culture Josepha Madigan on Monday.
So far, participating theaters include Dublin’s Abbey and The Gate Theatre, the Druid Theatre in Galway, and Cork’s Everyman Palace Theatre. The Dublin Theatre Festival, the Cork Midsummer Festival, and Trinity College Dublin’s Academy for Dramatic Art, as well as various theater companies, also intend to implement some level of policy.
Each participating organization has their own tailored policy with different commitments. Measures may include “a commitment the boards of the organization will have a 50-50 gender split, ‘gender-blind readings for plays,’ ‘unconscious bias training for all staff,’ and a commitment to achieving ‘gender balance in programming within a five-year period.'” “Gender-blind casting,” in particular, would ensure that organizations consider more women for roles traditionally performed by men.
This movement towards gender equality predominantly stems from research commissioned by Waking the Feminists, a 2015 grassroots campaign formed in response to the lack of female presence across the Abby’s 2016 centenary lineup. The celebration entitled Waking the Nation had only one female playwright and two directors involved in its ten shows.
Dr. Brenda Donohue’s research concluded that, throughout Irish theater, “women were underrepresented in every role… except costume design.” Women held only 37 percent of directing positions, 28 percent of writing positions, and a mere 9 percent of sound design jobs. In fact, “to achieve parity in all roles, women face a gap of 8-41 percent points.”
Waking the Feminists Campaign Director Lian Bell views these new policies as a significant step towards closing this gap, as they will begin to “embed gender equality as an ethos into all of those organizations.” The policies also instill a deeper level of accountability. “All of it is a work in progress; it is not like, ‘That’s it, we can dust our hands and it is finished,’” she said. “All these policies have to be kept on the table, and live; they cannot go on a shelf and say we that we have done that.”
Following this policy implementation, theater fans and critics alike will be watching Dublin Theater Festival’s lineup very closely. The festival, which features Oscar nominee and Oscar Wilde Award recipient Ruth Negga in “Hamlet” as the titular role, begins in September.
