Inspiration and Beginning Steps

            Theatre has been a large part of many lives for many years. It is one of the greatest passions that I have. From on stage to behind the scenes, the theatre has given me a sense of purpose, as I know it has four countless others. I am extremely thankful to the Drama program at Rock Canyon High School for giving me the chance and opportunities to explore this passion through working on countless shows, both in acting and tech. Much like myself, countless people have been captured by the theatre industry and spend much time watching, reading, and participating in plays. In fact, Theatre is one of the largest aspects of American culture and life. Because of the prevalence of theatre in everyday life, the effect that it can have on people is astronomical - whether someone has realized it or not. This is why it is important to be aware of the ideas and concepts that are being illustrated and improved in plays. 

 

            Another thing, beyond theatre that I am passionate about is women's empowerment and equality. It is no secret that throughout the decades, women have been marginalized and mistreated. Both in the media and in everyday life, women are sexualized and mistreated. Throughout the brainstorming process of my research, I knew that I wanted to do something related to theatre, due to my passion in that field, but I also wanted to do something that would have a positive impact on life moving forward. There has been an abundance of research efforts going into looking at how women are portrayed in the media and in film. Additionally, there has been a significant amount of research on women in literature. However, the amount of research on how women are portrayed in plays, specifically an accumulation of plays written by different genders and playwrights, as well as how it has changed over time is extremely limited. This is where the gap in my research lies. In solving any problem, the first step is understanding where the problem is being created, and whether it is worsening getting better, or remaining the same. Because of this, throughout my research, I will be looking at 22 dramatic plays, and examining how male and female playwrights have portrayed women from the 1910s to 2010s. I will code and analyze each play for different stereotypes and the general portrayal of women, and compare the date at the end to conclude the differences between male and female playwrights' portrayal of women, and the change over time, as well as how, and if, it is significant. 

 

            To select the plays I will be analyzing, I first completed many broad and general searches of American playwrights. Then for each playwright, I selected every single one of their plays that was on within 5 years of its release. In order to narrow down how many plays I selected for each playwright, I only chose full-length plays that were on Broadway within 5 years of the date it was written, as this is a general indicator of success for a play and infers that it was seen by many people. Additionally, I also limited the plays I selected by not including any musicals. Then in a Google spreadsheet,  I included all of the plays that fit this criteria, along with the year it was written, the playwright, the gender of the playwright, the title of the play, and the genre of the play. In total, I had 135 on my spreadsheet. Figure A is a sample of what the spreadsheet looked like. Genders were notated by W for women and M for male. Genres are noted by C for comedy, D for drama, D/C for dramatic comedy, and T for tragedy. If the genre is not given it is because it was not clear. After combining all of the plays, based on the number of dramatic plays vs comedic plays, I narrowed my selections further by only looking at dramatic plays. For the sake of the research tragedies and dramatic comedies are included in the dramatic selections. Then, using a random number generator, I selected two plays per decade, one written by a man, and one written by a woman. I went by decade and randomly selected the plays. Once one playwright was selected, I eliminated any play written by that playwright from being chosen again, so that any similarities found are not confounding with being written by the same playwright. I continued this process, until two different playwrights, one of each gender were chosen up until the 2010s. Here are the final plays I will be looking into:

 

            “Three of Hearts” by Martha Morton (1915), “Beyond the Horizon” by Eugene O’Neill (1918), “Gringo” by Sophie Treadwell (1922),  “Street Scene” by Elmer Rice (1928), “Alison’s House” by Susan Glaspell (1930), “Our Town” by Thorton Wilder (1938), “And Then There Were None” by Agatha Christie (1948), “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller (1949), “Orpheus Descending” by Tennessee Williams (1957), “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry (1959), “Toys in the Attic” by Lillian Hellman (1960), “Tiny Alice” by Edward Albee (1964), “The Gingerbread Lady” by Neil Simon (1970), “Crimes of the Heart” by Beth Henley (1978), “Night Mother” by Marsha Norman (1982), “Fences” by August Wilson (1985), “Six Degrees of Separation” by John Guare (1990), “The Sister Rosensweig” by Wendy Wasserstein (1992), “Well” by Lisa Kron (2004), “Reasons to be Pretty” by Neil LaBute (2008), “China Doll” by David Mamet (2015), and “Sweat” by Lynn Nottage (2015). 

 

Currently, I am working on getting access to these plays, and then the next step with be to begin my data collection.