Diversity

Local community theatre announced their season.  There are approximately 90 roles for men and 45 roles for women, not counting musical ensembles.

I thought this felt deeply fucked up.  But, not to be hypocritical, I checked the season of script readings I put together and discovered that it's come out nearly even so far.  This wasn't even a conscious choice, though it may be a side-effect of purposely searching for plays written by women.  They're extremely biased against scripts for performers of colour, but I live in a city that's 97% white.  It's still a problem, but I'd rather do that than colourblind casting in favour of white actors.

I checked another local theatre, even numbers male to female.  I looked up the closest regional theatre, a state away, and discover they're not quite twice as many men to women, more like 1.7.  I looked up the best regional theatre near me, another state away in a major metropolitan area and they represent an even gender split as well as featuring one play each representing African Americans, Asian Americans and Hispanic/Latino Americans performers and audiences.  Of course, they have the local diversity to support that environment and the ability to draw nationally, but it's nice to see.