Women in Tech Theatre- Classic. Innovative. Here to Thrive
Contributing writer: Morgan Nydam, Lone Star High
Love what is old, and make it shine with purpose again. Not only has the old come back to use in the thrifting trends of pinterest and Tik Tok, but old stories are getting breathed with new life like Disney’s Cinderella and Hamilton. The musical Hadestown by Anaïs Mitchell , is a retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Euridice, with a Great Depression/ Post-apocolyptic design style showcased incredibly by Rachel Hauck’s beautifully weathered set.
Hauck is a Broadway set designer with nine awards for set design, but her Tony win in 2019 from her work in the musical Hadestown, is what caught my attention – for Hadestown she worked in just about the same style I’ve strived to learn since my first time designing in the seventh grade. To coordinate the looks and different weathering patterns of a fictional world while keeping each separately desolate, especially in a show like Hadestown with such deep themes in the pollution and the industry system, takes incredible talent and extensive design experience. In an area such as set design where less than a third of credited designers are women, those like Hauck who excell in these traditionally masculine environments are a shining example towards female technicians choosing to focus in any area of design work.
Since I joined my High School’s theatre department in 2017 I have seen, show after show, the number of female designers rise in numbers. Not only in the next generation of designers has the gender gap begun to close, a report of women’s hiring in Off-Broadway productions by The League of Professional Theatre Women detailed at least a 7% increase of female designers in nearly all areas of design from 2014 to 2018. While these areas have seen an increase in recent years but are greatly male dominated, in the area of stage management women were reported to hold 70% of positions.
If the show’s directors and designers are the brains of the operation, the stage manager is the heart. She provides the life-force behind the production’s momentum, keeping schedules, laying the foundation for a smooth production, and most notably assembling the director’s choices in the thickest and densest scripts you’ll ever lay your eyes on. The job of the stage manager requires superior time management and organizational ability, skills which are most frequently instilled and observed in women. I have both read and heard it said in conversation that women are more frequently chosen as stage managers due to their natural ability to “mother” the cast, micromanaging details, and sternly setting deadlines. I, along with many others involved or observing theater, find very much wrong with statements such as these that tie the respect of female professionals with a maternal role. Making a blanket statement about complex responsibilities that play a part in every profession severely discounts the achievement and skill of the individual, who could have excelled for many reasons, in any case of gender assumptions. Female stage managers have held the majority of positions in their field, Production Stage Managers and Assistant Stage Managers, for the last several years – silently holding up the worlds of Broadway and Off-Broadway into the new decade.
By taking that step forward into this predominately closed, and tight knit industry – making the ancient tradition of theatre shine with wide involvement – women like Rachel Hauck are opening up the industry for a future of more representation. While these leaps may not have any statistical difference on the demographics of designers for a number of years, this Women’s History Month I’d like to dedicate this article to the women in design who are making the future possible for an even wider variety of talents.
Works Cited
Editors, American Theatre. “LPTW’s New Count: Gender Parity Up Slightly Off-Broadway.” AMERICAN THEATRE, 15 Nov. 2018, www.americantheatre.org/2018/11/15/lptws-new-count-gender-parity-up-slightly-off-broadway/#:~:text=Production%20stage%20managers%2C%20stage%20managers,study%20year%2C%20reflecting%20national%20trends.
Hauck, Rachel. “Rachel Hauck Scenic Design.” RACHEL HAUCK, www.rachelhauckdesign.com/about.
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