More men than women design for the theatre. The higher the financial stakes, the fewer the women. The longer a woman has designed, the more likely she has noticed a double standard. This suggests that either women encounter less gender stereotyping today, or the younger women haven't worked their way up high enough to hit a glass ceiling.
SUB: Nontraditional Women's Work: Scenery
The bulk of a show's budget goes to scenery. Some designers theorize that explains why women design scenery for only a fraction of big-budget shows. They figure producers trust men more to handle money prudently. Quite a few young women are choosing scenic design, and the graduate schools welcome them. When they complete their studies, they assist male designers and/or work Off-Broadway or elsewhere in the U.S. The question remains: Will they ever earn the big bucks on Broadway?
Marjorie Bradley Kellogg fears that the dearth of women working in her field on Broadway today "looks worse than 10 years ago. The glass ceiling becomes a problem at mid-career. They're happy to have you work at the lesser-paying jobs, as assistants. And lots of women work in the regionals. Producers feel more comfortable giving the big-money jobs to the guys. Yet many women set designers prove how responsible they are by making their money go much further. That attitude about men and money doesn't wreck your career; it just limits your access to certain work. You're not supposed to say these things! The problems are at the hiring level, not at the process level. The stagehands are wonderful to women designers."
Heidi Ettinger also concedes that the playing field isn't "altogether level," but explains this as partly a function of the stereotype that women lack mechanical skills. She finds this prejudice especially prevalent with regard to "designing musicals, which are complicated mechanically. They believe women are less skillful at figuring out mechanical problems or handling hard materials, steel, and heavy-duty construction." She finds hope in the larger number of women "doing art direction and production design in film and TV. Theatre still remains a game of middle-aged or older producers, whereas in film that's not the case. Theatre producers tend to be conservative, less willing to take a financial risk on a woman. This is a uniquely American prejudice. In Europe and Japan, far more women design sets. Maybe we have a more macho society. It doesn't make sense."
Adrianne Lobel recalls, "Marjorie Kellogg used to pin me against the wall at Ming Cho Lee's Christmas parties and tell me I'd have to watch all my male friends become successful, but gender just isn't an issue any more. And the field is much bigger than Broadway. A lot of women design sets in England. There's opera and European theatre too. Maybe I would have gotten along faster in the commercial arena if I'd been a man," she concedes, "but then I wouldn't have done the fascinating things I've done in Europe. I just didn't let my gender hinder me."
SUB: Pioneer Projection Designer
Wendall K. Harrington, projections designer, has beaten the odds by inventing her own field. She explains, "Because of my name, most people assume I'm a man. I had no competition. There was no guy who could come in and do it. Yet I don't make as much money as a scene designer would. I've been fighting for parity with the lighting designer, and I've been getting it. Sometimes I get parity with the set designer. Part of being a woman is, you've got to get along. I hope later generations will not feel it is as necessary to 'go along' to get along. I've never encountered prejudice about the artistic issues. It's the technical issues where there's prejudice, the 'Don't worry, little woman; I'll handle this for you.' " Harrington agrees that producers' economic concerns fuel gender barriers on Broadway: "Regionals probably use more women than Broadway because the fees are so small."
SUB: Pioneering in Lighting
Tharon Musser explains, "Lighting design was a woman's field" and recounts how Jean Rosenthal invented it and Rosenthal and Peggy Clark, along with Abe Feder, developed it. Long ago, "The set designer told the electrician what lights he wanted. It was pretty much turn them on, turn them off." Then Rosenthal, a stage manager for Martha Graham, converted lighting into an art. Musser remembers how "Jean was brought a bill for things she had not ordered on one show she was designing, because the electrician assumed she would be fired and had ordered what he wanted. But lighting design was women's work. There was just no money there, and women could live with that better than men. Lighting is still the bottom of the barrel." Musser laments the prejudice against women set designers, noting that, though Kellogg's "father and grandfather taught her about hammers and saws," nobody expects a woman to know how to do construction. Musser speculates, "Lighting takes enormous patience and organization. Women are more prone to that than men."
Beverly Emmons explains the greater commercial success of women in lighting--compared to set design--as a matter of "tradition: It's because of Jean." Emmons studied with Rosenthal and Musser, as well as with Tom Skelton. She has never experienced discrimination from theatre people, but notes, "It was glaringly obvious in '86-88 when I dealt with the architects for Lincoln Center Institute's Clark Studio Theatre," where she serves as artistic director. "I speak theatre language, action words: 'Do it now!' or, 'When is it going to happen?!' The corporate culture found such language threatening. Nobody else was using any verbs. I was treated as the batty lady and gossiped about as dangerous, loose cannon, that kind of stuff. I was supposed to succumb to their strategy of 'Oh, why are you being so unpleasant?' I've never been treated that way in the theatre.
"In places where I have felt there might be a gender difficulty," Emmons continues, "like working in Italy, I've used the strategy of coming in as advisor to a famous lighting man--at La Scala--or proved I knew what I was doing and then chose to apparently collaborate with the electricians--'I'll help you, and together we'll figure this out'--and then they'll do anything for you." Emmons figures women have succeeded more in lighting than in scenery design "because when men learn they can't make money, they go elsewhere. The jobs which become women's jobs are those paying less. Men get out of those fields. Scenic designers traditionally get paid double what lighting designers do. Also there's a business mix you have to handle. You need to make producers feel you care about the business side. Women aren't so good at making those guys understand they care about the money." Natasha Katz believes theatre in general "is weighted against women. I think there are as many women lighting designers as men, but less than 10 years ago, there were Arden Fingerhut, Tharon, Peggy Clark, Marilyn Rennegal, Jennifer Tipton on Broadway. Those who hire think electricity and big equipment for scenery and lighting is stuff men deal with. In scenic design especially, but also lighting as it gets more technically oriented, that's why there are fewer women on Broadway. Women from the day we're born work harder professionally than men because of overall gender discrimination. You know you have to work 150% to make it. I have a three-year-old daughter who wants to be Superman next Halloween. That's the symbol of power--not Superwoman.
"I guess women don't become scenic designers because that has to do with hammers and nails and what's considered man's work. What attracts women to lighting design? Color, and being the final person who pulls everything together, and diplomacy, and interpreting, and showing a part of myself in my lighting. You can feel like an artist. But the fewer the role models, the fewer women will go into a field. You spend a lot of time away from home. When I was younger, I spent more than half the year away. The traveling can be hard. If you have meetings all day in New York, you land in L.A. in the middle of the night and drive to your hotel in the middle of nowhere. That's unnerving. You can get stranded at an airport overnight in a city you don't know. I just went to Denver for 'Beauty and the Beast' and had to ride past warehouses late at night."
Peggy Eisenhauer finds gender irrelevant to her career success. "I'm working with a director now who loves working with women. Some people come to any experience with a gender issue or hang-up. It's related to the backgrounds of the producer, the director, or maybe one of the other designers. But theatre traditionally is less patriarchal than other businesses." She cites how Rosenthal and Clark paved the way for women like her and insists lighting is not less technical than scene design: "I deal with a lot of nuts and bolts."
Eisenhauer's take on her career in part comes from the mentoring she received from lighting designer Jules Fisher, now her business partner. She also has designed a lot for pop stars, who have appreciated "the feminine sensitivity creatively. When I worked for Whitney Houston, she'd never had a woman designer and felt connected to the work we contributed. Someone on many of my shows has realized their entire audience isn't going to be male and therefore has wanted a woman on the team."
SUB: Costume Design: Women Who Don't Sew Veteran Patricia Zipprodt suggests the playing field's differential for women involves "what they felt they could pay us. Also, women have to work harder and be more patient. The fact costume designers are mostly not straight men--or there are very few--has contributed to keeping our wages low. Costume design is regarded as feminine, the last of the medieval handicrafts. High tech has expanded what's available to scenery and lighting, but costumes have to fit. There's no way to do a hem other than by hand in order to avoid it showing under the lights."
Jane Greenwood laughs at the idea that the playing field might be level for costume designers. "Not exactly. There are men's clubs in every walk of life. Yet women set designers have a more difficult time. Because women are supposed to sew, costumes provide the obvious cross-over to design. The costume designer makes less than the lighting designer per hour. Maybe the men get the flashier jobs. So often the costume designer is treated like a dress-maker, yet it's nothing to do with sewing!"
Tony-Leslie James, who has come to the field more recently than Zipprodt and Greenwood, has found costume design a welcoming career for women. Yet she acknowledges she's "one of the few lucky ones who's been hired consistently." James believes an increase in women producing or directing would likewise raise the number of women designing on Broadway, and cites Margo Lyon as the producer who first hired her to work there. She also notes that four women produce her soap, "As the World Turns."
SUB: Sound Design: Women Keep Out?
If U.S. sexism is abating, then why do we find the newest design field--sound--dominated by men? No female sound designers work on Broadway, and only a handful do elsewhere. Janet Kalas notes, "Men more often than women go into technical fields. The technology changes regularly, so it's a lot about keeping up with that. I'm fascinated by the technology. I went into it at a time women were encouraged to do what they wanted. That's changed. I was a teenager in the '70s and graduated from college in 1981. Then women didn't want to be told they couldn't do something, and we defied traditional roles. I also grew up without a father, so I saw my mom raise four kids by herself. I still carry that attitude, women can do anything. Today women aren't as encouraged to pursue technical fields. I'm disappointed to see few women in the universities looking at such fields as an option. So the playing field is slanted. The people on that field are men. My peers are men."
Kalas explains that her specialty evolved from "the ranks of audio technicians, who became sound designers by default." That's how she got her break as well, after she went to Baltimore's Center Stage as a sound technician, and they asked her to design their next show. Like the other designers with whom Back Stage spoke, she adores her work: "I love to make a house sound beautiful. Even before we put in the effects. By positioning speakers, you can focus them. You need to know how wide the speaker's spread is, to know its throws, like lighting. You can add reverb to speakers. There's a bunch of technology to play with." Yet Kalas reports problems. "Some crew chiefs argue with me. I find more resistance with the crews than with members of the design team or the director. The resistance slows me down."
Lobel tells a different tale about male crews. "If you're good at what you do, you can have a great time with the shop guys or stage crew. They'll bend over backwards for you because you're a pretty little woman. They'll do things for you they might not do for a man. But if they smell you don't know what you're doing, you're in trouble."
Harrington counters, "The boys may cover for the boys in a way they won't cover for the girls. Even now, on every show I start all over proving myself to them. A lot of that is about being a woman. Stagehands in particular are 'guy' guys, yet they must take orders from me. You learn to flutter your eyelashes."
Musser agrees she's had to prove herself to stagehands, but adds her gender has sometimes proven advantageous. "The guys aren't as willing to knock you down, like asking for details that aren't really needed to see if you know, testing you." Fellow lighting designer Emmons likewise reports, "There is a gender thing that works for women: I'm here on the ground; the guys are the ones who're doing it. They can rise to the occasion of helping out the little lady. A man telling them what to do becomes a sort of class thing. Whereas, nobody expects a lady to go up the ladder." Emmons reflects and adds, "The only time I've had any problem with crew is when the chief--rarely--has been an incompetent bully who discovers right away I'm going to find him out, so he runs away."
SUB: On the Home Front
Another matter which might give women pause before they venture into a design career involves the effect of such a step on their families. Many women designers do not have children, but those who do have focused hard on managing both to mother and to matter in their fields. Marjorie Kellogg, who does not have kids, notes designers "live close to the bone in most cases," whereas the need for child care way beyond nine to five costs a lot. Adrianne Lobel also thinks it would be tough for her to have kids and continue to work as a set designer. Eisenhauer "can only imagine the stress and anxiety it must take to need to be in two places at once." Patricia Zipprodt concurs: "I would not have known how to raise children and be a designer. I figured out I would need twice as much money as I was making. You have to hire someone to replace you completely."
Natasha Katz says she doesn't talk about her kids much and never brings them to her job, yet "my husband can bring them to his job. He's sound designer Dan Moses Schreier." Jane Greenwood, who has two children, says, "It's very difficult. My husband is also a designer, Ben Edwards. There were always dramas. One of my daughters broke her arm, and we were both out of town, and the housekeeper was sitting at St. Vincent's Hospital waiting to reach one of us to get permission to set the arm. I realized we needed to provide a health-care proxy." In her program bio Heidi Ettinger mentions her three sons and the consequent exhaustion. Tony-Leslie James, mother of two and wife of designer David Higham, has managed because of her soap opera. "It provides a large income, it's five days a week, and I don't have to travel out of town. The most difficult time is when I have to be in the theatre for tech week. Then we drop off our children and I don't see them till the next morning. Week before last I was in tech and previews, and then last week David was in tech. It requires an extraordinarily supportive partner."
Beverly Emmons, who advised Katz and her husband before they started a family, says, "During their early years, when women normally have babies, you're not at home, except for pit stops. You can't be there for somebody's birthday. If you suddenly have to work all night, you must. It's hard to have a family under those circumstances. The actors only work a max of 10 or 12 hours, but the lighting designer is there for an 8 am crew call, works until midnight, then sometimes the director wants a quick meeting, and then you're back for crew call at 8 the next morning. To get to be a premier designer, you need to do 10 years of that, and for women that's the prime baby-making years. You must become a designer because that's the only thing you want."
SUB: Progress Report
Women designers disagree about whether women encounter more or fewer obstacles now than in earlier decades. Kellogg believes, "The playing field is a little more level than it was." Harrington hopes, "In another 15 years gender will have become a non-issue. Women now have an easier time breaking in than when I began. I used to be the person in the room with the most experience, but I was a 30-year-old woman, and that didn't make for a high comfort level in the over-50 guys. Now it's 20 years later, a lot of those guys are gone, and you have a younger, more accepting generation of men who are not necessarily threatened by women with technical knowledge. Now you actually find women stagehands."
Ettinger believes the courage Disney showed in hiring Julie Taymor to direct and design masks, puppets, and costumes for "The Lion King" will benefit Ettinger; Disney will likely produce a "Hunchback of Notre Dame," which "would open in Berlin in about a year. If they do, I'll design it," she reports. Yet Ettinger also notes no improvement "in commercial theatre. There, it's basically the same as when I started. There aren't more women designing on Broadway, although in the not-for-profit theatre there are far more." Musser reports that in lighting, "over the years, things have improved. It used to be like going into a hardware store: The owner didn't believe a woman knew what she was doing. But that was an older generation. Now, reputation, not gender, determines pay."
Not surprisingly, Tharon Musser offers the same advice to young designers of either gender: "It's about perseverance and determination. It takes a lot of luck to get the first break, and after that it has to do with talent." Janet Kalas says, "Work with a designer; there's nothing like hands-on. Try to run some shows." Emmons elaborates, "Get into a theatre and do it. Light every production at school. Go to Off-Off-Broadway theatres and do it for nothing unless you find they're paying others, and then you have to say they must pay you too. Work with small dance companies. And then the jobs will find you. Gender has very little to do with it. You could argue that mediocre men make it when a woman has to be fabulous, but mostly it's gender neutral." Katz advises, "You must understand the technical aspects of lighting. You must understand the equipment. I learned when I started that's for the electricians and I should just do beautiful work, but those days are over." Eisenhauer says, "Use everything: your smile, what you wear best, every asset you have."
James stresses determination: "Never give up. It can be difficult when you're doing workshops for a $500 fee with a $200 budget, and you end up using your $500 fee to supplement your budget, but that's what you have to do. Stick to it." Greenwood agrees: "Go and do it! Whoever you are, man or woman, you must have the talent, and then you must want to do it more than anything else and stick with it. It's not easy." Zipprodt cautions against naivetƒ about the difficulties which make it "not easy." She warns, "Think twice. You really have to feel compelled to do it. It will require of you endurance and dedication, particularly the first five to 10 years after school. And now kids have these MFAs and that debt on their hands. They must start working at good-paying jobs. Yet there's no way to get that good a job when you start. It must take private money or a spouse's support at first."
Harrington offers the most female strategy--the chocolate-chip theory of success: "It's important to bring cookies to your tech table. You make friends with food. People will come talk to you so they can get a cookie. Once they talk to you, they're willing to help you out. But don't eat the cookies on your table. Give them away. Otherwise you'll weigh 600 pounds."
ENDIT