This Quote o’ the Month is from the comments thread to an excellent piece of analysis at Chandrasutra regarding the James Frey controversy.
It’s also a relatively tangled nest of quotes for my series. Enjoy the complexity!
This comment, left by Andre…

Yes!

And do you know, the guy who wrote the stage play that became Stage Beauty came to talk to our playwrighting class and mentioned her. He told this anecdote about how she’d submitted W;t for some contest and was rejected by the judge because, as a lowly (female) kindergarten teacher rather than a (probably male) grad student, she was less likely to write more plays and therefore less deserving of patronage and acclaim. Stage-Beauty guy had no problem with this rubric, of course.

Motherfucker. Stage Beauty blew dead wharf rats, too.

Regarding Anna Deavere Smith: she just spoke at my university’s MLK Day comemoration, and what an amazing writer and performer!’

From the 18th Century: Joanna Baillie, Alicia LeFanu, ??
From the Irish Renaisance of the early 20th century: Maud Gonne and Lady Augusta Gregory …

However, there’s at least two more situations ripe for patriarchy-blaming here:
1. Although Julie Andrews originated and received many awards for the role of Eliza on Broadway, she wasn’t cast in the film version because she didn’t look like a Hollywood ingenue.

2.To add further insult to injury, Audrey Hepburn didn’t do vocals in “My Fair Lady.” The uncredited voice belongs to Marni Nixon, who also sang Natalie Woods’ songs in “West Side Story.”

So what did Julie do after not being cast in “My Fair Fair Lady”? Well, she got the lead in “Mary Poppins” in which, I guess, she didn’t need to be a glamour-puss, and the rest is history:
“Ironically, Julie Andrews was awarded a Best Actress Academy Award for her role in Disney’s competing film Mary Poppins, and Hepburn failed to receive a nomination for her part. ”

Weirdly, Marni Nixon and Julie Andrews share a striking physical resemblance.

http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=3082

The late, lamented Wendy Wasserstein. Paula Vogel is an awesome playwright, although I don’t know how mainstream she is. I know that her plays have been produced all over the country. How I Learned to Drive is incredible. Mary Zimmerman is another playwright who’s kinda famous; she wrote Metamorphoses, an adaptation of Ovid’s work. Suzan Lori-Parks is incredible; so’s Rebecca Gilman. There’s also Eve Ensler, Shay Youngblood, Anna Deavere Smith, Alice Tuan, Ntozake Shange, Alice Childress, Maria Irene Fornes, and Caryl Churchill now. Lillian Hellman, Lorraine Hansberry, Jean Kerr, Tina Howe, Beth Henley, in the recent past. And Maurine Dallas Watkins, who wrote Chicago.

Oh, and Aphra Behn.

Lewis John Carlino’s Cages:Snowangel is a phenomenal part, but she is a prostitute, which is a patriarchal bummer.

Alan Bennett writes well for women, especially in his Talking Heads series. Most of his work does a lot of implicit patriarchy-blaming, too.

I’m finding it hard to think of too many others, and yes, where are the mainstream women playwrights?

This reminds me of being in drama school and being great friends with one of the instructors, who I regularly drove home as it was only a few blocks out of my way home to hubby. We talked of many things, and he was witty and snarky and while sexist it didn’t bother me too much. We both liked SF, and I lent him a Hugo and Nebula award-winning Lois McMaster Bujold novel. When he gave it back, he didn’t say “thanks but I don’t like her writing” - he said “yup, women can’t write science fiction”. I never liked him quite so much after that.

This is the entrenched privilege women are up against. If a woman fails, it is considered proof of something about women as a class rather than just that person’s capabilities. A man who fails to achieve a goal isn’t considered to represent an entire gender in the same way.

LMYC - when I asked for examples of writers with a better track record than Shakespeare on women’s roles, I certainly wasn’t excluding non-mainstream writers. So if you know of any who improve on Shakespeare, please share.

In my experience most non-mainstream is just as bad. And in part because even non-mainstream, although to a lesser extent, is stil dominated by men.

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