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Vamps, Vixens and Feminists: The Elephant in the Room

posted by Women & Hollywood
Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 11:48am CDT

This week in London the Sphinx Theatre Company, a feminist theatre company, organized a conference Vamps, Vixens and Feminists: The Elephant in the Room to look at gender and age discrimination in the arts. They seem to have gotten some high profile people to participate and I hope to have a first hand report on the conference in the next day of so.

The point is that there actually was a conference that addressed these issues. I’m wondering if any next steps came out of the conversation.

Here are some quotes:

Hundreds of women, from actors to directors to writers, gathered at the National Theatre to hear depressing statistics reeled off: 17% of playwrights are women; 38% of stage roles are for women; 35% of TV roles are for women; of the top 250 films last year only 9% were directed by women.

The actor and director Janet Suzman rounded on the predominantly male critics who hold so much power in theatre. “It’s a very, very male club. On the whole it’s boys,” she said. “And they look up at women characters on the stage for the spark of sex that’s going to make their evening less tedious for them.”

I would love to organize this type of conference here in the US. Come up with real solutions and work to implement them. Who’s with me and who can we get to fund it? Het in touch if you are interested.

Leading ladies kept out of the limelight (The Guardian)

* note to Guardian- this story was pretty lame- maybe you should have sent a female reporter.