by Gina L. Grandi, Artistic Director
A lot is afoot with The Bechdel Group! We're coming to you fresh off our March reading - one of our most engaging to date. Mari, our Digital Communications Director, and I spent a weekend with some of our favorite Bechdel actors recording episodes of our podcast - keep an eye on this blog for links to the audio of some of the 10 minute plays from our 24 Hour Writing Challenges. And last night's board meeting included talks of benefit galas, staged readings, and the kind of tedious paperwork that makes a theater company official. The April Reading! We're just a few weeks away from our monthly reading! Mark your calendars for Monday, April 24th. We'll be at The Back Room at Jimmy's No. 43 (43 E. 7th Street in the East Village) from 6-9pm. Come hear and discuss selections from Brenda Foley’s Fallen Wings and Marcus Scott's Tumbleweed. Fallen Wings tells the story of a woman who comfortably resides on the sidelines of life and is forced to confront her capacity for resilience as she embarks on a road trip to discover the truth behind a childhood friend's murder. Following an interracial family living in a townhouse within the Morningside Park area of NYC's Upper West Side over the course of a weekend, Tumbleweed is a slice of life drama about a young girl whose natural hair and blooming womanhood causes controversy in the household. Call for Submissions! We're currently reading for our Fall 2017 Workshop Series. Have a script you've been working on? Does it meet our submission guidelines? Submit! We'll be reading until June 15th. News That is Sad Well, it's sad for us, but not for her. Our co-founder Alexa Fitzpatrick has left New York for new and fabulous opportunities, and has stepped down (in an official capacity) from The Bechdel Group. If you'd like to keep up with her or send her a loving message, you can find her on Twitter at @alexa81611. Some Statistics! (For those who like numbers) Did you know that since The Bechdel Group's first reading in June, 2014, we've
Want more? We'll be brining them to you. Happy April, everyone. See you soon!
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by Gina L. Grandi, Artistic Director
Happy ... spring? It's snowing outside as I write this, so I'm not sure where we are, season-wise. Our Winter/Spring Season has been amazing thus far. In January, we had the long-awaited rescheduling of October's reading, and were able to hear and discuss some very fabulous work by Lavinia Roberts and Brooke Berman. With Lavinia's short screenplay The Will we discussed tropes of horror storytelling, and what writing for women as a woman means within this genre. Brooke's play Hurricane tells the story of now 40 year old former punk bandmates "navigating motherhood, friendship, and the changing landscape of a neighborhood once known for its Bohemia, now known for affluent, Liberal, Prius-driving hipsters." In February, we held our always-fabulous bi-annual 24 Hour Writing Challenge. This round, we asked the writers to create (in just 24 hours) 10 page scripts that in some way incorporate the theme, idea, or word of "love" - but without including romance. Stories ranged from characters rebelling against their playwright to a quitting addict to sisters attending a cat's funeral. Keep an eye on this page: we'll be featuring some of our 10 minute scripts on our Podcast. In the meantime, prepare yourself for our March 27th Reading, because we have some amazing new work to show you. Yusef Miller's 'TASHA re-imagines Antigone within the context of Black Lives Matter, and Callan Stout's you do not look asks us to think on trauma, survival, and knowledge as we travel the streets with Gerda, a young woman from the Czech Republic selling encyclopedias door to door. There will be a lot for the 'audience' to do this month - so we hope to see you there. by Patricia Veconi, Board member of The Bechdel Group
I’m guessing that a lot of my fellow playwrights out there have made resolutions – or maybe just set some goals – about script submissions in the new year. While I consider myself to be a new playwright, (or maybe, more accurately, a part-time playwright…or maybe just an enthusiastic playwright hobbyist?), I’ve learned a few things over the last two years that I’ve been writing and submitting my work to festivals, theatres, reading groups and competitions. I hope you find these observations helpful as you plug your work in 2017. First of all, it helps to remember that you are part of a big, big community and most of the people you meet (usually electronically) are fellow artists who will be supportive, encouraging and kind. They will share the opportunities and resources they have heard about and you should do the same. Join or subscribe to a playwright’s service group: There are quite a few out there and they provide lists of opportunities and various resources and links to all kinds of helpful stuff. Some of them will charge for a subscription, but others are free. You will also find a fair amount of overlap among them, so don’t feel like you need to be checking five different lists every day. Organize your writing so it’s easy to download quickly and you can spend more time writing than submitting: You’ll need those plays to be in pdf files with separate versions that are blind. Keep a current copy of your bio and resume handy, too, along with a jpeg of your bio picture. Write for yourself, but plan ahead, too: Most 10-minute submissions really do insist that your script be only 10 pages long and use only 2-4 actors. For one-acts, a maximum run-time of 40 minutes with 2-6 actors is typical. These aren’t hard and fast guidelines, of course, but if you want to submit often, you may want to keep them in mind as you are writing. Keep a spreadsheet of all your submissions: It’s very easy to set up and keep current – and you’ll thank yourself when you can’t remember whether or not you submitted to that festival in Iowa last year. Don’t submit if your work isn’t appropriate and relevant! This should go without saying, but really, read what the opportunity is carefully. If they want something that speaks to the LGBTQ community or the African diaspora or experiences on the Staten Island Ferry and your script doesn’t, then move on. Lastly, let it go: You won’t hear back from about 90% of the companies you submit to. It’s not personal, they’re just busy people. But when you do hear back, it will be pleasant or even downright encouraging and kind. It will make you feel validated. ALWAYS thank those people and let them know how much it means to you to get feedback and that you appreciate their having considered your work. Happy writing this year! by Gina L. Grandi, artistic director
Unfortunately, our roundup today starts with not-great news: due to outside circumstances, we've had to cancel our October 24th reading. But! Those of you who have been looking forward to Brooke Berman’s Hurricane and Lavinia Roberts’ The Will (in other words, all of us) never fear – we’ll be featuring both in our Spring Series. Stay tuned! Speaking of the Spring Reading Series, as of today, we have well over 100 scripts submitted for the consideration – a seasonal record! We’re pretty excited to finish reading all the submissions, and we’ll be letting you know what’s on the calendar for the new year in December. In the meantime, we’ll be back at Jimmy’s on December 12th (mark your calendars!) for our final Fall reading. We’ll be hearing and discussing selections from Kristine M. Reyes’ Eggs on Ice and John Barrow’s Lillian Paula Carson. We’re thrilled to be working with these two playwrights, and can’t wait for you to hear their work. Happy October! See you all soon. by Alexa Fitzpatrick, executive director
As the executive director of the Bechdel Group, you’d think that everything I write would be female driven, test passing, lady power, right? Not the case. Last month three of us took over the show. We made a pact that we were going to have Bechdel approved scripts ready to go for the August reading. (August being a month that’s harder to get a crowd as people slowly get their heads back into go mode.) I had an idea and I knew it was going to be great. All about this guy who has this kid who follows him around. Oh, the kid is a guy, too, but only fifteen. A boy. And then it’s also about the main guy’s interaction with his father, a guy, whose medical practice he’s taking over. And his brother is a super hot, world-class athlete. And then there’s his best friend, also a guy. Are you noticing the Bechdelian problem? It started innocently enough. I have this friend on whom I have always had a monster crush and I wanted to write something for him. But the sausage fest spun out of control and eventually my five primary characters were all male. Yeah, even my blog about the script is about men and my crushing on one of them. Romance is a big part of our lives, but it’s not the only part and it shouldn’t be the only part in our scripts… even when that’s what our scripts are about… still, every time I sat down to write, for some reason my brain went blank on everything else. I couldn’t see how to pull myself out of it, so I tried to write myself in. I threw in a couple of quirky and cool female side characters and awkwardly wedged in a scene about yoga. The women started talking about Ashtangas, but then those crafty lady characters started to go off about the hot yoga instructor, (still attractive, even with a man bun – no offense to my follicly gifted brothers). I cut them off. “Stop betraying me,” I yelled at my computer screen. “I created you!” I know that, as a woman, I talk about lots of other stuff. Why can’t I think of any of those other topics?!? I struggled and tossed and turned and cast the play and printed the pages and showed up at the reading and hoped someone in the group could help me make sense of what I was going through. The reading happened and all of the actors were great (especially the one who got handed the script at the last moment without even the warning that they were coming to act – Gib, I’m looking at you) and I got some great suggestions and some fun feedback, but nothing that jumped out at me in the moment. Someone said it would be more interesting if the kid were a girl. Interesting, but then does that get creepy with a forty year old man being followed around by a fifteen year-old girl? I’m not trying to channel Nabokov. Inside I was panicking. I’m a fake. I run a group that’s all about strong roles for women and I’m struggling to write them. Why is this so much harder than I thought. Back to the feedback: what if the kid is female? Well, okay, then what if the main character is also female? That’s a start. The ideas marinated and the characters got dressed and I sat down at the computer again. The only two things I kept from the original script were the idea of a kid following around and sabotaging the main character and a surprise 40th birthday party gone wrong. I started writing and it started to fall into place. Suddenly my script went from five strong male leads and five female support characters to four female leads and one male lead with potential for lots of other rotating male and female supporting roles. Suddenly I was the main character in my story instead of a supporting character dancing around on the sidelines. Whoa! I went back through my past scripts and realized that, of the six screenplays I’ve completed, everyone single one has a male protagonist. I also noticed that every single one has a spunky female sidekick whom I would love to play because on some level or another she’s based on me (even my kung fu for hire script set in 16th century China, which is most likely the reason I got rewritten out of it). I’m also pretty sure that every one of those scripts would be more interesting if they were rewritten from that woman’s perspective. Two other fun stats of the old versus the new: 37% of the lines were spoken by female characters in the first script; in the second script it was 87%. Which is especially interesting to me as it relates to the second fact. Both complete scripts had casts (main to under-fives) that were split equally down the middle with five men and five women in the first and eight men and eight women in the second. I had an equal number of women there, I just wasn’t giving them anything to do. Is it possible that all this time I was just waiting for permission to write about me and, when I finally got that permission through this group, I turned into the deer in headlights with no idea where to go? And what does it says about me psychologically that I am always writing myself as a supporting character instead of a lead? These are the questions that we are trying to address with this group. Being women shouldn’t mean that we have to sit on the sidelines of our own stories and I, for one, am about to do some major POV rewrites. #beyourmaincharacter by Gina L. Grandi, artistic director
You may not be aware that I am the tri-state expert on young adult dystopian romance trilogies. Now you know. Books and trilogies along the Hunger Games lines tend to be classified as young adult, due to young adult protagonists, but that classification can feel arbitrary. I mean, who doesn’t like a good dystopian adventure? There are a slew of books that aren’t technically or necessarily dystopian, but somehow have that same feel to them, that appeal to the Hunger Games crowd. Today, I bring you one of these, for the readers and young readers out there who appreciate a strong female protagonist. Rae Carson’s Girl of Fire and Thorns series has three books: The Girl of Fire and Thorns, The Crown of Embers, and The Bitter Kingdom. The premise: princess Elisa is a godstone bearer, a chosen one. She is married off on her 16th birthday to a neighboring king, whose country is falling apart. There’s politics. There’s magic. There’s kidnapping and scheming and travel. This is not a dystopian series, technically. It does have that flavor, as it takes place in an alternate world, similar to our own but with significant differences. It could be in the past, it could be in the future. Let me tell you why this series is one of my favorites. 1. The third book doesn’t suck. I call this The Mockingjay Problem – weak/terrible/disappointing third installments of an otherwise delightful series. Characters behave totally out of character. Love triangles are wrapped up in annoyingly convenient ways. Everything feels a little flat. Sometimes it feels like the author was rushed. Sometimes it feels like there just wasn’t enough story to last for three books. For whatever reason, it’s a common issue. The Mazerunner series. The Selection series. The Uglies series. The Divergent series. All, in my opinion, rushed, flawed, disappointing third books. The third book in this series, The Bitter Kingdom, brings all kinds of new information and situations, after a second installment cliffhanger. It’s real story, not just a stretching out of what we’ve heard before. Questions and relationships are resolved, and satisfyingly so. 2. Elisa is a great. Elisa is a strong protagonist. She’s not beautiful; she’s heavy and not traditionally attractive. The author does have her lose a significant amount of weight in the first book (as a result of a month long march across the desert), which makes sense in the circumstances, but feels like an unnecessary nod to beauty norms. While I could do without Elisa’s sense of self-worth and confidence having a weight correlation, I do like that she never becomes traditionally beautiful, and never ‘thin’ or ‘slender’. What she does become is muscular, and strong. She takes enormous pride in her ability to walk for days on end and for being able to defend herself. She is clever and shrewd, studies strategy and politics, and is the one who pretty much saves everyone’s butts, in both action sequences and political maneuvering. She is not perfect, either. As queen, she struggles, and makes decisions she later regrets. But she’s capable and doesn’t need saving. When she does lean on someone – be it a friend or a love interest – it feels real, not a girl-needs-help trope. Much of this story is Elisa’s journey to trust her own abilities and instincts. 3. There are a whole lot of strong women, and Elisa has actual relationships with them. Almost all the powerful rulers in this series are women. I love that, when she becomes queen, Elisa’s gender is never an issue. Her age, experience, and personality are all questioned at some time, but not her gender. This feels like a big deal – other writers, I think, would fall quickly into that plot device, and Elisa would have to battle the patriarchy. This world has no issue with strong women. This world relies on strong women. It’s not even a question. While there is a (heteronormative) romance contingent to this series, Elisa’s relationships with the women in her life feel like the most important relationships in the book. From her sister to her nurse/guardian to her best friend/lady-in-waiting, she discusses politics, power, strategy – every aspect of her life. They speak about relationships and love, but these women are more than a sounding board to forward the romance. They are integral to the plot. They have personalities, strengths, and flaws. They are well-rounded, and Elisa’s relationship with them is complex and layered. The Bechdel Test is passed, no problem. 4. Elisa is a woman of color. And it’s made clear that the majority of the main characters are. We can surmise from the names and language (Elisa’s full name is Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza, other characters include Ximena, Humberto, Conde Treviño, and Cosmé; Elisa’s home country is Orovalle and the country she comes to rule is Joya d'Arena) that this fictional world has Latin roots. Elisa is described as being dark skinned, dark eyed, and black haired, and this is described as the norm. All around, this is a good read, and Elisa is the kind of character I wish there were more of. So if you’re a fan of alternate/dystopian worlds, strong women characters, books with magic that don’t feel like fantasy novels, this is your series. On Monday night the Bechdel Board (3/4s of us - we miss Gina!) took over the August reading and we had a blast! Patti Veconi's The Bridal Shower had us laughing at the complications and definitions of family. Alexa Fitzpatrick's The Best Medicine answered the question: what would life be like if our inner child were a real person who followed us around? Suzanne Willett took us through time in Boston from the bombing of the marathon all the way back to the 1970s segregation.
Summer is over, but we've got lots coming up on our Fall Reading Season: Monday, September 26th: Bara Swain’s Providence Suzanne Egan's Homestyle Monday, October 24th: Lavinia Roberts’ The Will Brooke Berman’s Hurricane Monday, December 12th: Kristine M. Reyes’ Eggs on Ice John Barrow’s Lillian Paula Carson And don't forget that our next podcast will be posted the second week of the month. Paris Crayton III's Baby Lottery was created for our July 24-hour playwriting contest. We loved it and we think you will, too! The reading period for our Spring Season is still open – all scripts received between now and November 15th will be considered. Please read our submission guidelines carefully! We'll see you in Jimmy's back room! Alexa by Alexa Fitzpatrick, executive director
It’s a complicated question and one I’ve found myself pondering recently as I sit in comedy clubs waiting for my chance to perform. To pass the test you need a conversation between two women that’s not about a man. I would argue that good stand up comedy is a conversation between the comedian and the audience. How they respond determines where you go next. As a female comedian, this is something to think about. Are your jokes pitched at the men in your audience or the women? With whom are you having your conversation? And then the follow up, what is your conversation about? (Sorry guys, you can’t technically pass this test, but the big questions of to whom you are speaking and what you are saying are still pretty important.) It’s a tricky balance when you’re starting out. Open mics tend to be predominantly male and it’s easy to default to the easy laugh from the guys. I’m guilty of it. I have a joke about driving a friend to the airport and then I go on to say, “I’ve decided that airport rides are the blowjobs of friendship because you don’t really mind, with the right person it can be fun but eventually if it isn’t reciprocated you’re probably going to revaluate that relationship.” It always gets a laugh from the guys. Even after watching me do an hour long set about tending bar, living in a ski town and waiting on celebrities, that’s the joke men most often quote back to me. I can’t begin to count the number of men in my life who have offered me (or asked me for) a ride to the airport (mostly in jest) after hearing that joke. I asked some female friends what about the joke makes them laugh and they pointed to the idea of reciprocation and the truth in the one-sidedness of some men’s approach to that activity. It seems that, with an audience, more than one conversation can be going on at the same time. Anais Nin said, “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” I think the comedy corollary might be, “We don’t hear jokes as they are written, we hear them as we are listening.” But then, how can we be sure what conversation is happening? Maya Angelou said, “When people tell you who they are, believe them.” So, if stand up comedy is, at its highest form, a conversation between an artist and an audience, it seems the most interesting conversations involve the artist telling the audience about who they are. Sure, it’s a persona, but it’s the character you’re choosing to play for the span of your comedy career. It’s the character you find the most interesting and entertaining. (Otherwise, why are you wasting our time?) Rodney Dangerfield was the master of persona. He could walk on stage and say, “I get no respect” and get a laugh. He was the underdog and we rooted for him because he was being honest with us about his character. He was telling us who he was. Did Rodney Dangerfield, towards the end of his career, really get no respect? I’m guessing when he walked into restaurants and comedy clubs people knew exactly who he was and treated him quite well. His no-respect shtick was about representing how he felt as the everyman who can’t quite measure up. His success (counter to his persona) showed the world that there’s no reason for self-pity if you have the right attitude. (He's a guy, he's the subject of his jokes, and he's talking primarily to other guys, so he doesn't pass...but he's still amazing, especially from a persona perspective.) So, what about Amy Schummer? (I promise I’m not going to write every one of my posts about her, but she fits this one, too.) She's definitely talking to the women, but about how she likes to have sex “like a man.” It surprises all of us when a young fan tweets about spending the night with her and she gets upset. You just spent an hour at the Apollo telling me that you have sex with anyone in any position, you listed all the potential positions available to you, why on earth are you insulted when a young fan repeats that back to you? He felt like he knew her in that context because that is how she introduced herself to him through her act. When she told him how to treat her character, he believed her. It can even get dangerous. Years ago, I remember hearing a female comic who was auditioning at The Comedy Magic Club in LA say, “I moved to LA because I wanted my life to be like the movies. I just wasn’t expecting it to be The Accused.” The audience gave a nervous chuckle and all looked at each other uncomfortably. Did she just tell us that she’s been gang raped? That was the punch line - are we supposed to laugh? And, for those of us in the audience who have never been raped, maybe it’s not such a big deal, a self-identified victim of rape just told me it’s okay to laugh at it. By setting it up as a joke, she told me that rape is an okay way to treat her. Did that entire thought process consciously happen in the minds of any of the patrons of The Comedy Magic Club that night? I hope not. But on a subconscious level: if the end result is funny to the comedian, maybe the experience wasn’t that big a deal. And, hearing a joke like this one time, we might see it as an anomaly, only relevant to this one woman, but what happens when women everywhere start telling jokes about rape being funny? I heard a young woman recently comment that she’s 18 now (set up), so good luck statutory raping her (first punch line), but good news: you can still regular rape her (second punch line). She’s a super cute girl. I hope nobody ever hears her joke for a suggestion. Unfortunately, on some level, even though she is "joking," she is also telling people (men) how to treat her (and women like her). I’ve also heard male comedians say to women in the audience who weren’t paying enough attention to them, “I hope you get raped.” Wait, what? That’s not even in the form of set up and punch. Some of the men in the audience laugh (some are horrified) and most of the women get uncomfortable, even the women who aren’t being targeted. You just told me that you are the kind of person who thinks rape is a fair punishment for not paying attention to you. I don't like you so much anymore. Even in the non-extreme, we’ve come to a place where comedy is largely about sex. Humans are sexual creatures and, on some level, having been a taboo topic for so long it feels like the last frontier. Sure, men make us crazy, we make them crazy…men and women are different. “Let me tell you about my wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend/this dude I met…” I’m not denying the value of any of that, but it's starting to feel too easy. I miss the days when Ellen Degeneres cracked us up by talking about shampoo. They say to talk about what you know. As a woman, I am an expert on many subjects. Some might even say that, as a single woman, men clearly don’t fall under my area of expertise. It’s time to find some new topics and to take some responsibility for the ideas that I am putting forth. So, is it important to pass the Bechdel Test in stand up comedy? It’s kind of a trick question that depends on who you are and who you want to be. Certainly many people succeed without it, just like many $100 million summer blockbusters are considered huge successes even though their female characters’ primarily responsibility is to get into trouble so they can be saved by the male hero. But, even more than the movies, stand up is personal and the question should always be asked, to whom are you speaking and what do you have to say to them? As I create a persona and tell the world how to treat me (and other women like me), I know people are going to hear what they are more clearly than what I say, but, for me, the Bechdel Test feels like a good framework for starting that conversation. UPDATE: I just got selected to be in SOLOCOM at The PIT and the challenge is to write 45 new minutes of stand up about being a woman and the state of womanhood. I'm going to do my best to make it pass. You'll get more info, but the show is November 17th at 8:45 pm. by Gina L. Grandi, Artistic Director
Let’s get academic for a minute, shall we? Girls represent a marginalized population in this largely patriarchal society (Abrams, 2002), and gender expectations and ‘norms’ are internalized from a young age. Socialization plays a significant role in the way gender stereotypes manifest in young women. It’s impossible not to grow up without internalizing systematic misogyny. Hillary Clinton is criticized for her outfits and for ‘not smiling enough’. News coverage of the male athletes in Rio focuses on athletic prowess, while commentators discuss the age, marital status, and appearance of female athletes. The number of films that pass the Bechdel Test remains astonishingly low. This evidence isn’t merely anecdotal. Studies have found links between the way in which girls define gender roles and gender identity and the way gender impacts identity formation (Corby, Hodges, & Perry, 2007). One study reported that girls who learned about feminism and are exposed to the notion of endorsing gender equality early in their lives were more likely to be motivated in math and science (Leaper, Farkas, & Brown, 2012). While another found that girls with “higher levels of internalized sexualization” tended to have lower grades and perform lower on standardized tests (McKenney & Bigler, 2016, p. 34). It’s not enough to merely be aware of these issues. Researchers have reported finding dissonance when working with adolescent girls, in that study participants would question, speak against, or acknowledge the limitations of cultural expectations and assumptions, while, at the same time, perpetuating these stereotypes when discussing their own desires, expectations, and ideals (Edell, 2010; Thomas, 2015; Walton & Fisette, 2013). It is difficult to shift thinking and behavior. It is difficult to break out of patterns. So what do we do? I think part of the answer is to do more listening. When we talk with the young women and girls in our life, to what degree do we let them speak honestly? How often do we let them explore their options and come to their own decisions? How often do we truly honor their voices, instead of dismissing ideas and concerns with ‘you’ll understand when you’re older’? For the last month and a half I’ve been working with a group of adolescent girls to create an original performance. They have talked a great deal about questions they wish they could ask and those things they’re not allowed to say. “We know we’re supposed to listen to our own voices and have confidence in ourselves,” they have said. “But we’re conditioned not to.” They speak of the well-meaning influences in their lives, their desire not to disappoint parents, the realities of the school system. They have questions and opinions, and, according to them, not many are interested in hearing them. “We know who we want to be,” one of them said, “but someone else always holds the key.” All of this is a fancy way of saying: let’s listen more. When we talk to girls and young women, let’s let them do the talking. Is there a girl or young woman in your life? Does she have a space to ask questions, real questions, about life, school, and her future? Does she have someone in her life she can voice her opinions to without judgment, without worrying that her thoughts or questions might disappoint or worry? What kind of opportunities can you give her to talk, to question, to explore? How can you ensure she has opportunities to see herself represented on stage, in film, on television, in media? How can you help to provide that space? As a society, we’ve got a long way to go. At home, we can talk about that. Want to do some more reading? Let me recommend some of the works cited above: Abrams, L. S. (2002). Rethinking girls 'at-risk': gender, race, and class intersections and adolescent development. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 6(2), 47-64 18p. Corby, B. C., Hodges, E. V. E., & Perry, D. G. (2007). Gender Identity and Adjustment in Black, Hispanic, and White Preadolescents. Developmental psychology, 43(1), 261-266. Edell, D. (2013). “Say It How It Is”: Urban Teenage Girls Challenge and Perpetuate Stereotypes Through Writing and Performing Theatre. Youth Theatre Journal, 27(1), 51. Leaper, C. c. u. e., Farkas, T. t. g. c., & Brown, C. c. b. u. e. (2012). Adolescent Girls' Experiences and Gender-Related Beliefs in Relation to Their Motivation in Math/Science and English. Journal of Youth & Adolescence, 41(3), 268-282. doi:10.1007/s10964-011-9693-z McKenney, S. J., & Bigler, R. S. (2016). High Heels, Low Grades: Internalized Sexualization and Academic Orientation Among Adolescent Girls. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 26(1), 30-36. doi:10.1111/jora.12179 Thomas, E. (2015). The Dance of Cultural Identity: Exploring Race and Gender with Adolescent Girls. American Journal of Dance Therapy, 37(2), 176-196. doi:10.1007/s10465-015-9203-z Walton, T. A., & Fisette, J. L. (2013). "Who Are You?": Exploring Adolescent Girls' Process of Identification. Sociology of Sport Journal, 30(2), 197-222.
by M.J. Moneymaker, Board Member of The Bechdel Group
It's time for another podcast reading from our 24 Hour Writing Challenges. This reading of "Get Leo" by Janani Sreenivasan is a short play about celebrity casting. It's a bit fitting with recent current events about Hollywood's casting choices for their 'blockbuster' films, more specifically, "The Great Wall." Actors are speaking up, asking producers and investors to do better than perpetuate stereotypes. More specifically, Constance Wu, had me cheering from the sidelines on Twitter with her tweet: "Can we all at least agree that hero-bias & "but it's really hard to finance" are no longer excuses for racism? TRY". At The Bechdel Group, we take our mission statement to 'challenge the portrayal of women in film and on stage' to heart and that includes casting, even if it's only audio. Have fun listening.
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