A creative and critical investigation into women in theatre

对戏剧界女性的创造性和批判性调查

• 批准号: 2603642
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Surrey
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2021 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2603642
• 关键词: creative; critical; investigation; into; women

The idea for this research project has developed out of a year-long mixed methods research project into women in theatre I conducted with Sphinx Theatre Company, the UK's leading women's theatre company, and the University of Cambridge from 2018 - 2019. The quantitative and qualitative findings from this study were published in February 2020 in The Guardian newspaper1. The study revealed continuing inequality for women in theatre and has been recently highlighted by The Guardian newspaper as leading the way and leading to arts organisation changes, with The Guardian stating: "Earlier this year, research conducted by the playwright Jennifer Tuckett and the Sphinx theatre company suggested theatre's gender gap had grown in key areas compared with eight years ago, when the Guardian conducted an in-depth study of the issue. Specific strategies have been adopted by some organisations to address the disparity" 2 (Weigand, 2020). The Arts Council of England also called this research "hugely important" and has used this research to inform policy changes. At present, the UK government is using this research to inform their plans to rebuild the arts post pandemic. As an award winning writer with a background in the UK, Australia and America, where I have won major awards including one of the UK's leading playwriting awards, the Old Vic New Voices Theatre 503 Award, whilst completing my Masters in Playwriting at Yale, and had productions at the Old Vic Theatre, Theatre 503 and Birmingham Repertory Theatre amongst others, this research project seeks to build on my qualitative and quantitative research by investigating the new area for me, which I have never researched before, of how playwriting can be used to help with gender equality by female playwrights and others in theatre. During recent research in Australia, I found the need for this investigation indicated by academics Lally with Miller (2012), Miller (2014), Hayes (2018) and Haining and Heim (2019), amongst others, who have highlighted issues of the stage, and particularly the mainstage, being traditionally a male space and raised questions about the need for further investigation into how female playwrights can help reconceptualise this place, for example highlighting that the male story is often seen as the norm/universal whilst a story with a female protagonist is often seen as women's niche. In the UK, Vicky Featherstone, the Artistic Director of the Royal Court Theatre in London, one of the world's leading new writing theatres, has also asked where are the female versions of work like King Lear or Death of a Salesman (Aston, 2017; Hutchison, 2015). I am also currently the Literary Director of Sphinx Theatre where I have designed the UK's first new writing programme for female playwrights in partnership with 15 leading theatres and funded by Arts Council England, which has also highlighted this issue.Moreover, much research on the pandemic has also found gender inequality is likely to increase post-pandemic, making this research even more urgent to undertake. For example, Adams-Prassl et al. (2020) have found that less educated workers and women are the two hardest hit groups by the pandemic and that urgent action needs to be taken. Similar conclusions have been reached by UN Women amongst other studies.My thesis will thus attempt to address the urgent issue of gender inequality in theatre via exploration of the possibilities of the cycle play, how it has been used in the past to give voice to unheard or under-represented voices, and how it could be used by female playwrights to give voice to underheard or under-represented female voices and help contribute to gender equality.

这个研究项目的想法已经发展出一个为期一年的混合方法研究项目，我与斯芬克斯戏剧公司，英国领先的女性戏剧公司和剑桥大学从2018年至2019年进行了戏剧中的女性。这项研究的定量和定性结果于2020年2月发表在《卫报》1上。这项研究揭示了女性在剧院中的持续不平等，最近被《卫报》强调为引领潮流并导致艺术组织变革，《卫报》指出：今年早些时候，剧作家詹妮弗·塔克特和狮身人面像剧院公司进行的研究表明，与八年前相比，剧院在关键领域的性别差距有所扩大，当时《卫报》对这一问题进行了深入研究。一些组织采取了具体的战略来解决这种差距”2（Weigand，2020年）。英格兰艺术理事会也称这项研究“非常重要”，并利用这项研究来告知政策变化。目前，英国政府正在利用这项研究为他们在大流行后重建艺术的计划提供信息。作为一名获奖作家，我在英国，澳大利亚和美国的背景，在那里我赢得了主要奖项，包括英国领先的剧本创作奖之一，老维克新声剧院503奖，同时完成我在耶鲁大学的剧本创作硕士学位，并在老维克剧院，剧院503和伯明翰剧目剧院等制作，这个研究项目旨在通过调查我以前从未研究过的新领域，即如何利用剧本创作来帮助女剧作家和戏剧界的其他人实现性别平等，来建立我的定性和定量研究。在澳大利亚最近的研究中，我发现学者Lally与米勒（2012年），米勒（2014年），海耶斯（2018年）和海宁和海姆（2019年）等都强调了舞台的问题，特别是主舞台，作为传统上的男性空间，并提出了需要进一步调查女性剧作家如何帮助重新概念化这个地方的问题，例如，强调男性故事通常被视为规范/普遍，而女性主角的故事通常被视为女性的利基。在英国，伦敦皇家宫廷剧院（世界领先的新写作剧院之一）的艺术总监Vicky费瑟斯通也问过，像《李尔王》或《推销员之死》这样的作品的女性版本在哪里（阿斯顿，2017;和记黄埔，2015）。我目前也是斯芬克斯剧院的文学总监，在那里我与15家领先的剧院合作设计了英国第一个新的女剧作家写作计划，并得到了英格兰艺术理事会的资助，该委员会也强调了这一问题。此外，许多关于疫情的研究也发现，性别不平等可能在疫情后加剧，这使得这项研究更加迫切。例如，Adams-Prassl等人（2020年）发现，受教育程度较低的工人和妇女是受疫情影响最严重的两个群体，需要采取紧急行动。联合国妇女署在其他研究中也得出了类似的结论。因此，我的论文将试图通过探索周期剧的可能性，解决戏剧中性别不平等的紧迫问题，它在过去是如何被用来表达未被听到或代表性不足的声音，以及女性剧作家如何利用它来表达被忽视或代表性不足的女性的声音，并帮助促进性别平等。