Love's Labors Lost: Statistics and power analysis for indie theatre

November 14, 2012

Statistics and power analysis for indie theatre

One of the most important tools when it comes to anti-racist organizing is a power analysis. In plain English, a power analysis help us figure out who's really calling the shots in an institution or system.

In Understanding and Dismantling Racism, Joseph Barndt explains that there are five levels of an institution.

Personnel: people who work or volunteer for the institution; people who are authorized to speak, act, and implement programs in the institution's name; people who act as gatekeepers for the constituency and the general public
Programs, products, and services: what an institution provides for its constituency (food, clothing, technical services, entertainment, worship services, etc.); designed to attract, nurture, and retain members or customers or clients
Constituency and community: people served by an institution; people who belong to or patronize an institution; people for whom decisions and actions of the institution are taken
Organizational structure: where the power of the institution is (board of directors, managers, etc.); where decisions are made, budgets are decided, people are hired and fired, programs are approved, boundaries are set, etc.; where structures of structures of accountability are designed and implemented
Mission, purpose, and identity: what an institution is for and why it exists; defined by constitution, by-laws, mission statement, belief system, worldview, history, and tradition

*Note: If you can't go to an Undoing Racism workshop, you should really pick up this book and read every word.

Most of our efforts at inclusion and diversity focus on the top three layers while the bottom two rarely get any attention. The bottom two are also the hardest to change. This explains why, despite the reality of an increasingly diverse population of artists and audiences, we still see a theatrical landscape dominated by white people, men, and middle- to upper-class people. If we're serious about changing this reality, we have to take a look at what's going on at the deeper levels of an institution.

But the first step is getting a picture of what's going on.

Gwydion Suilebhan has a very interesting statistical breakdown of this year's DC playwrights demographics. I really like this sort of thing because it starkly reveals exactly what we're dealing with. Regardless of our intentions or our efforts, it doesn't change the fact that only 4% of playwrights getting produced in DC are women of color.

That post got me thinking about how to figure out where women and people of color fit into the organizational structure of the indie theatre scene. How many women and people of color are reflected in each level of an organization? My prediction is that there will be a very noticeable difference between representation in the top three layers and representation in the bottom two layers.

Whatever the results, I know that it has nothing to do with outright discrimination or deliberate attempts to exclude women and people of color. What I think those numbers would reflect our deeply ingrained (and thus harder to change) assumptions about how women and people of color fit into our notions about power and leadership.

Doing an industry-wide statistical analysis is sort of beyond my ability. However, it would be interesting to hear from people making theatre right now who is represented in each layer of their organizations. So, in concrete terms, I'd like to know:

How many people are in your organization? How many of those people are women? People of color? Women of color?
How many personnel does your organization have? How many of those people are women? People of color? Women of color?
How many people provide your organization's products, programs, and services? How many are women? People of color? Women of color?
How many people are in your organization's constituency (members, subscribers, etc.)? How many are women? People of color? Women of color?
How many people make decisions at the organizational and structural level? How many are women? People of color? Women of color?
How many people make decisions about your organization's mission, purpose, and identity? How many are women? People of color? Women of color?

I'd like to hear from you about that.

1 comment:

Claudia Alick12/05/2012 6:15 PM
Math. I like it! break it down.
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Words, Words, Words

. . . a lot of it [fostering rather than smothering students' playwriting] has to do with finding a way to construct a dialogue about ongoing work that empowers the writer. A lot of it has to do with making sure there's a diversity of voices around you. A lot of it has to do with thinking of the writing program as a brain trust for writers, not as some infantilization in which the dramaturg gets the power. And basically trying to find a place where everyone's aesthetic in the room grows larger rather than smaller. There are many ways to do that. It's really not a hard thing to do.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

Here is what seems to me an elementary truth that must precede any other: namely, that the theater, an independent and autonomous art, must, in order to revive or simply to live, realize what differentiates it from text, pure speech, literature, and all other fixed and written means.
--Antonin Artaud, letter, 9/15/1931

I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all I need for an act of theatre to be engaged.
--Peter Brook, The Empty Space

My work is characterized by one thing above all --- invention. In theatre we imagine the world, we do not record it, we are not documentary makers. I hold all social realism and journalistic theatre in contempt. It is a sordid habit. And the social realists have the impertinence to pretend they are 'telling the truth…'
--Howard Barker, interview

Women and writers of color are still seen as threats because, in essence, when a woman or writer of color is defining a play world, there's another definition of what our society is, and that's very threatening.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

Through this experience [working on " . . . and last week it was a mountain"] I learned the importance of the life and the dynamics under the words, and began to see the power of working from the silent space within - the emotions, the images, the experience and the feelings - rather than relying on the words.
--Sande Shurin, Transformational Acting: A Step Beyond

How does it happen that . . . the Occidental theater does not see theater under any other aspect than as a theater of dialogue?
--Antonin Artaud, Theater and Its Double

All conventions are imaginable, but they depend on the absence of rigid forms.
--Peter Brook, The Open Door

I never 'say' anything in my work. I invent a world. Let others decide what is being 'said'. Nor do I claim to tell the truth or enlighten people. We are suffocated by writers who want to enlighten us with their truths. For me, the theatre is beautiful because it is a secret, and secrets seduce us, we all want to share secrets. That is also its politics, if it has any politics at all. And modern democracies hate secrets, they want everything transparent. Obviously the critics collaborate in this desire to expose everything to the light of day, they are the police force, after all.
--Howard Barker, interview

I think that form is content . . . I've always been more interested . . . in the formal devices and the structure rather than in the subject matter . . . I really am a follower of Viktor Shklovsky, who said that in some ways the subject matter doesn't even matter. It's whether or not we see the subject matter anew that matters.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

I am well aware that the language of gestures and postures, dance and music, is less capable of analyzing a character, revealing a man's thoughts, or elucidating states of consciousness clearly and precisely, than is verbal language, but who ever said the theater was created to analyze a character, to resolve conflicts of love and duty, to wrestle with all the problems of a typical and psychological nature that monopolize our contemporary stage?
--Antonin Artaud, Theater and Its Double

The mediocre artist prefers not to take risks, which is why he is conventional.
--Peter Brook, The Open Door

"Transcendence became my life theme. I wanted to be lifted beyond everyday circumstances and everyday reality."
--Sande Shurin, Transformational Acting: A Step Beyond

I actually think of writing for the stage as not writing . . . It's about structuring, about gaps between the language that are really filled in by the collaborators and the process. It's all about indirection rather than a direct statement . . . It's like a three-dimensional chess game in a way. If I say this, will the director go in this direction? If I say this, will the actor respond? And one of the delights of the process is actually not having your intention fulfilled, but finding out at times that other people's interpretation or intention is actually more interesting than you originally thought of.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

The person who has an idea of what this language is will be able to understand us. We write only for him. --Antonin Artaud, letter, 9/28/1932