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Chicago Storefront SummitGender Equity Task Force

Statistics ProjectPurpose of project:

to create a snapshot of recent gender equality conditions inthe Chicago theatre community by collecting and analyzing local data.

Background

: Time Out Chicago generously provided raw data (production title,producing entity, venue, dates, and sometimes other information such asplaywright) for every production on their calendar for every year since 2005. TonyAdams (Halcyon Theatre) and Margo Gray (Prologue Theatre Co.) have put togetherpreliminary guidelines for coding data so that volunteers can help with the first stepof the project: collecting statistics on the gender of playwrights.

The future:

Eventually the task force hopes to gather statistics on theater budgetsize, gender of directors and designers, gender of artistic and administrative staff,and other demographics.

The plan:

To help with this step of the project, please read the guidelines below. Asmultiple people will be working on this project simultaneously, please try to adhereto these steps to ensure we’re not duplicating efforts.1.Each production has its own line in the database. Find a record that hasn’tyet been coded (meaning the “Playwright Gender” and “Other” cells areblank). That’s a good place to start.2.Check out the first column: “Title.” Lots of the authors have been smushedinto the same column as the title. Do us a favor and copy and paste theauthor’s name into the “Author” column. If there’s no author, hop on Googleand see if you can find out.a.If you can tell the piece was ensemble created/devised, say so in theAuthor column:b.If you find an author (or authors), enter their names.c.If you can’t find anything, leave the cell blank3.If you’re sure of the gender of the author, great! Enter the appropriate codefor the playwright’s gender (see chart below).4.If you’re not certain of the author’s gender, try to find out. Google the

Prepared by M. Gray 3.15.10

playwright and/or name of the play, look for reviews or biographies, or hop onFacebook for clues. If you find some evidence that convinces you of theplaywright’s gender, super. Enter the appropriate code for the playwright’sgender (see chart below).5.If you can’t figure out the playwright’s gender via internet sleuthing, that’sokay.See the chart belowfor the appropriate code.6.Some special cases require a little help to code correctly. Festivals, forexample, don’t lend themselves well to this way of playwright coding.See the “Other Considerations” chart belowfor examples of entries that need specialcodes. If you spot something strange or dubious about any entry, use the “?”code in the special column and then explain the issue.7.Move on to the next record.

CODING CHARTSPlaywright Gender

(to code in the “PlaywrightGender” column):1.Female (including multiple authors, all female)2.Male (including multiple authors, all male)3.Mixed authorship (majority male)4.Mixed authorship (majority female)5.Mixed authorship (equal gender split)6.Author gender unknown/not apparent7.Devised/no author listed8.Trans or other gender

Other Considerations

(to code in the “Other” column):DUPDuplicate (title, dates, venue, andproducing company match)ONEOne-night engagement (these will becounted differently in the statistics)FESTA festival of plays not listed individually(these will be counted differently in thestatistics or broken out by play)READA staged reading or reading series