Addressing Theatre’s Gender Parity Problem

Date: June 15, 2018

How Parity Productions is helping female creatives get ahead

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This ongoing gender imbalance is what inspired Villar-Hauser to found the nonprofit Parity Productions. “We’re a theatrical company, we develop new work, and we have a hiring practice of at least 50% women and/or transgender artists,” she explains. Parity’s current show, She Calls Me Firefly, a coproduction with New Perspectives Theatre Company, easily exceeds that target, with women in all major creative positions, including Villar-Hauser in the director’s chair. Its central character happens to be a man, but that’s just fine. Parity’s focus is on backstage creatives and this is the story that the female playwright, Teresa Lotz, wanted to tell.

Born and raised in London, Villar-Hauser became an impresario out of necessity in the ’80s when, at age 23, she so longed to direct Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night that she self-produced it on the West End (a feat, she stresses, that would be impossible to replicate today). After coming to New York and running the now-closed Greenwich Street Theatre for 17 years, she decided she wanted to concentrate on directing. There was just one problem: Despite her impressive résumé, none of the men in charge were interested in hiring her. “Hang on a minute — how do you get a job around here?” she remembers wondering. Suddenly she was acutely aware of the dearth of professional mentoring for female creatives in theatre. “Of course the chaps got it, but we didn’t.” So she founded Parity Productions, her answer to that old boys’ network.

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Lotz was actually working as an administrator for Villar-Hauser when she handed her boss She Calls Me Firefly. “I remember Teresa asked, ‘Would you read my play? I’ve only written one,'” the director recalls. Villar-Hauser says she was immediately captivated by the “incredible story” of Ken, a troubled young man whose traumatic past may threaten his relationship with a loving boyfriend. From that first draft, through rewrites, multiple workshops and now a full production, Lotz and her script have benefited from the kind of support Villar-Hauser feels women in theatre have historically been denied. That’s a hole Parity Productions aims to help fill: Female and transgender playwrights are encouraged to submit scripts for production consideration and the organization also awards two commissions annually.

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TDF MEMBERS: At press time, discount tickets were available for She Calls Me Firefly. Go here to browse our current offers.

Regina Robbins is a writer, director, native New Yorker and Jeopardy! champion. She has worked with several NYC-based theatre companies and is currently a Core Company Member with Everyday Inferno Theatre.

Top image: Emily Batsford and Sean Hudock in She Calls Me Firefly. Photos by John Quilty.