WAM Hosts “Writing Gender” Workshop

by Talya Kingston, Associate Artistic Director of WAM Theatre

On Saturday August 4th a group of playwrights and dramaturgs from across Western Massachusetts gathered at the WAM Theatre office for a workshop on Writing Gender.  Before any lines of dialogue, a play script almost always has a list of characters and these characters are almost always defined by gender.  What does it mean to first and foremost identify our characters by their gender (male/man/boy, female/woman/girl, trans-man, trans-woman, gender fluid, non-binary, etc.)?  How does this unintentionally reinforce traditional gender stereotyping? Because, as one participant commented, “even when we’re actively trying not to play into male and female roles, we’re always acting in relation to them.”

This gathering was hosted by WAM Theatre in collaboration with LMDA (Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas) and attended by dramaturgs from Chester Theatre Company, Barrington Stage Company, Williamstown Theatre Festival and WAM Theatre, and playwrights from Berkshire Voices and Northampton Playwrights Lab. Most of us didn’t know each other so we began with a drink and introductions as well as questions that we had surrounding the idea of writing gendered characters in plays, and even gender itself.

Big questions were raised and written on the white board as a reminder throughout the workshop that this was about exploration rather than easy answers: “What am I assuming that I don’t know I’m assuming?”  “What does it mean to define a character as a man?  Traits?  Cultural background?” “How do I empower through my writing?”  “How do we listen given all the triggers?” and “How do we attempt to be both specific and inclusive knowing the limitations of language itself?”

We worked our way through three different writing exercises including one led by local playwright Maizy Scarpa that asked us to take a character from a play we are currently working on and think about their gendered characteristics before making some radical shifts and seeing what this did to the situations and relationships they found themselves in – were they even viable characters any more?

Another, more fantastical, writing exercise (attributed to María Irene Fornés) asked us to explore the idea of transition through objects.  Transition, of course, is present in all drama and most commonly referred to as a story or character arc, for this exercise we striped this idea down. The inherent properties and qualities of, say a pencil, might seem static, but what would it take to transform it into a guitar?  Can we allow that same freedom to the people who populate the plays we write? 

Sharing these stories led to a conversation about the use of gendered pronouns, as many of us had personified our objects by moving them from “it” to “he” or “she”.  Playwright Stephanie Carlson, who had recently returned from performing in a play in Finland, commented that the Finnish language does not distinguish gender in nouns or personal pronouns.  Maizy spoke about a short play that she wrote for the 24hour Play Festival (Co-produced by WAM and UAlbany in 2016) that caused some confusion because one character was referred to by multiple different pronouns through the play.  This character, a clown, existed outside gender binaries and confused the actors and director trying make quick decisions in rehearsal.  At first Maizy attributed this to fatigue from writing a play quickly over the course of one night, but after consideration she decided that actually it had been deliberate and, in her words, “I think of clown as its own gender!”

We hope to carry these questions into another convening at WAM Theatre next summer, this time with directors around the theme of CASTING GENDER.  Watch this space!