The Lilly's Hosted a Town Hall ...

Because "Parity" Isn't A Thing You Do Once

On Monday, June 30, The Lilly’s, an incredible organization founded by Julia Jordan, Marsha Norman and Theresa Rebeck to advocate for gender parity in the American theater, hosted a Town Hall at Playwrights Horizons in order to discuss the recent 2025-26 season announcement, a season that excluded female writers and directors. Julia Jordan brought us together, and she and Lisa Kron expertly moderated over an hour of discussion with Adam Greenfield, Artistic Director of that theater.

Jordan is a whiz for stats. I don’t think I appreciated the power of numbers until I watched her preside over The Count, a multi-year study that tracked data on who exactly was getting produced, broken down into race and gender statistics. I could go on and on about The Count but honestly, go look at the website – it’s fucking impressive. And so Monday’s meeting opened with a recitation of some of these stats and the truth about programming seasons that exclude so many of us. I think we, as a society, have to push past the idea that inclusivity and “merit” are mutually exclusive.

Jordan wrote, “Just over a year ago, on the stage of Playwrights Horizons, the birthplace and longtime home of the Lilly Awards, we celebrated the fact that for the very first time, gender and racial parity had been reached on our leading stages.

This year, Playwrights Horizons and Williamstown Theater Festival have both announced virtually all male seasons. The Roundabout will produce one female playwright on their second stage. Female directors are faring no better than playwrights. We are bracing for further season announcements.

While the aforementioned seasons are racially diverse, in the past organizations have often chosen to champion either race or gender, believing the inclusion of one excuses the exclusion of the other. This behavior has had the most markedly harsh effect on the careers of female artists of color, as the statistics have made crystal, and abundantly, clear.

MAGA Republicans have taken over the NEA and the Kennedy Center with the expressed intention of rolling back the positive gains we have won over these past two decades. We must hold tightly to our own community’s ethics, and the unique, and very recent, success we have had in spreading opportunity and resources amongst our artists. It has borne much of the most important, enjoyable and financially lucrative theater of the past decades.”

And so we gathered to voice our concerns, and Adam listened. I hadn’t planned to write about it or even take notes, but I was so moved by Theresa Rebeck’s statement and playwright Chisa Hutchinson’s reminder that we, as audiences, hold economic power to support or not support any given theater based on what they program. The thing is, parity (whether we’re talking race, gender, ableism, etc) isn’t something you do once and move on from! The commitment to inclusivity must be ongoing. Even now. Especially now.

Lillian Hellman in whose honor The Lilly's were named and Lorraine Hansberry whose statue now stands in Chicago's Navy Pier. They are watching!

Here is TR’s statement as a whole:

THERESA REBECK:

I’m sorry that I cannot be there with you all tonight to talk about the importance of programming the work of women writers and directors in our major non profit theaters.

I’m even more sorry that we find ourselves again at a moment where this conversation has been deemed necessary by so many members of the New York theatre community.

The reason these discussions began to take place twenty years ago was because so many important artists and voices were being silenced. Too many women playwrights were not seeing their work produced, while the work of our male peers was being produced and celebrated.

But convincing the largely male leadership that excluding the voices of women writers and directors was unfair, bad for business, and also just dumb–was challenging to say the least.

At the time, there were a lot of narrow, defensive, icky ideas about plays by and about women. Women’s plays were not universal. Women are not heroic figures. Women don’t write good plays–we write good novels but not good plays. (I cannot tell you how many men in power told me that one.) They wanted to produce more plays by women but where are the plays by women?. Where are the women playwrights?

I was standing right in front of them.

Other fun things they said: Women, actresses, are IN the plays written by men. Why isn’t that enough for you? It actually wasn’t enough–for me, at least—because I’m a playwright, not an actress. Also it was always clear that men in our community were very often not writing about women or women’s lives because we were invisible to them.

Here’s another fun one: Theresa, have you asked women producers why they don’t produce more plays by women? Women and their plays and their female producers can go over there and have their little productions and the men can stay over here, on Broadway, where all the money is. Why isn’t that enough for you?

When a prominent male playwright tried that one on me, I did have to ask him: Are we not fellow travelers? Are we not colleagues? Are we not all storytellers, telling the story of humanity from different points of view?

Things have changed since then. But let me tell you, twenty years is not very long ago. It’s not long at all. There’s that old saying, one step forward, two steps back. Well, we don’t want to take two steps back. We worked hard to get here. We will not go back.

Twenty years ago, it was a lot of work getting leadership to acknowledge that in fact the American theater needed to open its eyes and ears to the needs of the audiences and the rising talents of so many different artists. Our point has always been: This will make our work, and our community stronger. The act of storytelling does not belong to one gender or race. Excellence does not accrue to one type of storyteller over another. Our stages belong to everyone. Our art is better, and truth be told, our business is better, when we are all in it, together.

We are at a crisis moment in American history. We need all hands on deck. Telling women to step aside and be quiet is not just unkind. It is dire in its lack of wisdom.

—-------

And a few thoughts from playwright and professor Winter Miller on how to course correct. Miller addressed her comments directly to Greenfield, acknowledging her great affection for him alongside a call to action:

“Many of us feel the season should be changed immediately. We want equity now, which you can do by elimination or expansion.

No one wants contracts pulled from your writers, you need to honor your commitment to them. So to even out the season, you need to hire three women-identified playwrights to achieve gender parity. Expand your season to nine plays.

If you cry poverty! Impossible! You have two new choices:

1. Create a 2025-2027 season that includes the addition of three women identified writers plus two more spots for women-identified writers. Spread all of these plays out that you’ve contracted over two seasons and exhibit gender parity.

2. Keep the 2026 season as is and make 26/27 an entirely female-identified season.

The error you made in choosing this season is painful and insulting. I trusted you. I want to see you earn back our trust. Show us your plan for the next five years and commit to establishing a longer-term plan for a changing ecosystem.

You have a gorgeous opportunity to show other people how to make a mistake and recover. How to make good. And when you do it, we can turn to other theaters, Roundabout, Williamstown and oh man, so many others, THIS is how you fix it. Do better. Be a poster-theater… Level a playing field that has always been disheveled…”

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For more information on the work of Winter Miller, Theresa Rebeck, Julia Jordan, Chisa Hutchinson or the incredible work of The Lilly’s, follow them on IG and/or their personal websites. See their work! Our work! It matters!

Love,
Brooke