“As an Angeleno and a lover of theatre, I think Los Angeles audiences deserve an equitable showing of the playwrights working in the U.S. right now.”
In October playwright Jeremy O Harris announced that he would begin the process of removing his Tony nominated work ‘Slave Play’ from a forthcoming run in Los Angeles at the Mark Taper Forum, operated by the Center Theatre Group, over the lack of representation of female playwrights.
“It was a shock to realize that this season was programmed with only 1 woman across all theatres,” Harris wrote in an email shared on Twitter. “As an Angeleno and a lover of theatre I think Los Angeles audiences deserve and equitable showing of the playwrights working in the US right now.”
In response to the overwhelming criticism, Center Theatre Group, which oversees the Mark Taper Forum released a brief statement on Twitter acknowledging the “frustration, disappointment, and even anger in the scarcity of women’s voices in the upcoming seasons. The theatre group followed up with a Facebook post stating the entire 2022-23 season will feature plays written by women-identifying or nonbinary playwrights, the majority of whom would be BIPOC artists.
Soon after Center Theatre Group Facebook post, Harris announced his decision on Twitter to allow “Slave Play” to remain in the Taper lineup. “So after 1½ weeks of Zooms and phone calls [with] artistic staff at as well as my team on ‘Slave Play,’ L.A. community members, multiple female mentors,” Harris wrote, “I’m excited to say that will stay on the season for 2022. This came after multiple commitments listed below.”
Here is the CTG letter in its entirety:
To our artists, audience, colleagues, and partners,
We want to have a conversation with you.
We recently announced Center Theatre Group’s first Taper and Douglas seasons after a two-year Pandemic shutdown. We acknowledge that our 21/22 season was heavily imbalanced when it came to gender. Women-identified voices are needed on our stages in every season. As an organization that is actively working toward being anti-racist and inclusive, we take responsibility for the lack of intersectionality of social identities and experiences on our stages.
We have been reminded by our community this past week about the great need for transparency. We are an organization in the midst of pandemic recovery and at the start of an Artistic Leadership transition; this is a moment of great change and communication is incredibly important. The 22/23 season planning process began over a year ago, and we had already been working hard to make sure our programming was of the highest artistic caliber and has been informed by our commitment to center BIPOC voices and give more production slots to women-identifying and nonbinary playwrights.
As the season is shaping up, we are excited about our plan to schedule the full Taper 22/23 season next year with entirely women-identifying or non-binary playwrights and to also have it be a BIPOC-majority season. We are focusing our Douglas 22/23 season on majority women-identifying or nonbinary and BIPOC playwrights. We will continue our commitment to uplifting/building gender and racial equity within our production directors and artistic teams.
In addition to the work that will appear on our stages, our expanded New Play Development programs also further our commitment to gender and racial equity. We have been preparing to announce a new chapter for our Not a Moment, But a Movement initiative in which we will be commissioning six new plays by Black women-identifying or nonbinary playwrights. This adds to our other current developmental programs including the current writers cohort which is comprised of 10 women-identifying, majority BIPOC playwrights, and 11 of our 16 current commissions are with women-identifying playwrights, 11 are also BIPOC playwrights.
In the spirit of this commitment to transparency, we have shared these in-the-works plans with members of our community, including Jeremy O. Harris. Jeremy has faith in the necessary measures we are taking and as a result of these conversations, Slave Play remains the opening production of our upcoming Taper season.
Moving forward, a new Artistic Director(s) will program our future seasons. We are seeking leadership that shares our values and commitments to change.
We are grateful to the women-identified playwrights and other members of our community who made it clear that we need to better communicate our planning intentions. We look forward to continuing this conversation with you. We are unwavering in our commitment to cutting-edge art and diversity of all perspectives, and the best possible experience on our stages.
The Artistic Team can be reached at this email: [email protected].
Sincerely,
Luis Alfaro
Lindsay Allbaugh
Tyrone Davis
Neel Keller
Kelley Kirkpatrick
We acknowledge that terms and language like “women-identifying” and “nonbinary” are in a constant state of redefinition and evolution, and the language we use may change over time.