Roughly 15 or so years ago, the Jeff Committee called in a trio of cis-male set/light/sound designers to give members an overview of their work. As the presentation wound down, the men took questions. The question I remember (because as a then-member of the committee, I asked it) was whether women were represented to any significant degree among designers and if not, why not. The answer—a slightly awkward and quite vague “Well, not really . . . because there just aren’t”—was as dismal as it was memorable.
“I tend to stalk the creative team announcements in Performink, and it’s pretty obnoxious,” she says. “The creative teams are mostly guys. And it seems like it’s almost always the theaters with the biggest budgets that aren’t hiring women. It’s like they’re saying ‘we don’t trust you with the money.’”
Women designers also have had to fight to be heard in the first place. “We used to joke that people couldn’t hear you above your vagina,” says Karczewski. Weber puts it slightly differently. “When I was first starting, it was like nobody heard my ideas until they were repeated by a man,” she recalls.
Spamalot runs through 11/3 at the Mercury Theater, 3745 N. Southport, mercurytheaterchicago.com. Redtwist Theatre’s Keely and Du runs 10/13-11/10 at Redtwist Theatre, 1044 W. Bryn Mawr, redtwist.org Intrinsic Theatre’s Keely and Du runs 11/2-11/24 at the Frontier, 1106 W. Thorndale, intrinsictheatrecompany.com
