The Gender Debate: five.point.one
five.point.one is an independent theatre company working in Adelaide. Established in 2009, the ensemble based company present South Australian premiere texts, with two productions a year since their inception. In 2009 alongside their two play season, the company also presented an open reading of a new work by Caleb Lewis, and next month they will open their seventh production: Polly Stenham’s That Face.
The company currently has six core members: Matt Crook, Elleni Karaginnidis, Scott Marcus, Corey McMahon, Kate Roxby and Brad Williams.
McMahon has acted as director on all productions for the company to date, with the exception of 2010 Fringe show In Remembrance (of) A Small Death, two short plays by Anna Barnes and directed by Delia Olam, in production which had an entirely female cast and creative team. Curious about the gender make-up of five.point.one over the past three years, McMahon asked me to take a look.
McMahon has directed six of the seven productions; Cassandra Backler has designed for six of seven; five productions credited a lighting designer, and Ben Flett filled the role on four of these; two productions credit a sound designer or a composer. Lewis’ Rust and Bone, and Daniel Keene’s The Share had fully male casts; while the Barnes’ double had a fully female cast. In total, the company has presented eleven female roles and fourteen male roles, to scripts by four male playwrights and three female playwrights.
In total, 32 people have been credited in creative or acting roles over the seven productions in 52 positions.
This can be broken down into fourteen women filling twenty-three positions, and eighteen men filling thirty positions.
With only six percentage points separating the number of individuals, and seven percentage points separating the number of roles each gender fills, women that are employed by the company are employed to an equal extent as the men: the inequality lies before they reach the company stage.
In saying this though, the inequality is very slight. An imbalance in directors stems from McMahon taking on that role as one of the six enemble members.
It is pleasing to see the company statement says “We believe all good theatre must start with good writing and five.point.one places the playwright at the forefront of the creative process”, and in seven productions, three plays have had a female playwright and four have had a male, as it is in script production our female playwrights can find them selves chronically underrepresented.
Overall, I am very pleased with the current gender balance in five.point.one’s seasons to date. It is great to see something much closer to equality happening on our young, independent stages. I’m excited to see how the company continues to develop.
o everyone who has supported me and my blog and my other writing this year: thank you. This year has been truly magnificent, and getting so much respect for my writing has played no small part in that. When I decided to not pursue my Honours degree I knew I was making the right choice; I could have never grasped just how right that choice was. To everyone who has read, commented, subscribed, or talked to me about something I’ve written, you blow my mind. To the companies and artists in particular who have taken me on as part of the community, in my strange hybrid of administrator / writer / reviewer / blogger / fan, I am eternally grateful.
spent Friday at the very interesting National Multicultural Arts Symposium at Nexus Multicultural Arts, subtitled Diversity: Theory and Action. Which was filled with some very interesting discussions (and some not so interesting, but there you go), and that deserves its own blog post, but which lead to some odd feelings when I went to see five.point.one’s production of Daniel Keene’s The Share. After a day of talks about how we need to encourage a more diverse arts base in Australia, I sat down to watch a play written by white Australian male, directed by a white Australian male, and staring three white Australian males. I don’t know if I would’ve even noticed before, and I certainly am not criticizing the casting or anything, but it did drive the point home how very homogenous the arts are in this country.
