Chicago Storefront Summit

Gender Equity Task Force

Statistics Project

Purpose of project: to create a snapshot of recent gender equality conditions in

the Chicago theatre community by collecting and analyzing local data.

Background: Time Out Chicago generously provided raw data (production title,
producing entity, venue, dates, and sometimes other information such as
playwright) for every production on their calendar for every year since 2005. Tony
Adams (Halcyon Theatre) and Margo Gray (Prologue Theatre Co.) have put together
preliminary guidelines for coding data so that volunteers can help with the first step
of the project: collecting statistics on the gender of playwrights.

The future: Eventually the task force hopes to gather statistics on theater budget
size, gender of directors and designers, gender of artistic and administrative staff,
and other demographics.

The plan: To help with this step of the project, please read the guidelines below. As
multiple people will be working on this project simultaneously, please try to adhere
to these steps to ensure we’re not duplicating efforts.

1. Each production has its own line in the database. Find a record that hasn’t
yet been coded (meaning the “Playwright Gender” and “Other” cells are
blank). That’s a good place to start.

2. Check out the first column: “Title.” Lots of the authors have been smushed
into the same column as the title. Do us a favor and copy and paste the
author’s name into the “Author” column. If there’s no author, hop on Google
and see if you can find out.
a. If you can tell the piece was ensemble created/devised, say so in the
Author column:

b. If you find an author (or authors), enter their names.

c. If you can’t find anything, leave the cell blank

3. If you’re sure of the gender of the author, great! Enter the appropriate code
for the playwright’s gender (see chart below).

4. If you’re not certain of the author’s gender, try to find out. Google the

Prepared by M. Gray 3.15.10

 playwright and/or name of the play, look for reviews or biographies, or hop on
Facebook for clues. If you find some evidence that convinces you of the
playwright’s gender, super. Enter the appropriate code for the playwright’s
gender (see chart below).

5. If you can’t figure out the playwright’s gender via internet sleuthing, that’s
okay. See the chart below for the appropriate code.

6. Some special cases require a little help to code correctly. Festivals, for
example, don’t lend themselves well to this way of playwright coding. See the
“Other Considerations” chart below for examples of entries that need special
codes. If you spot something strange or dubious about any entry, use the “?”
code in the special column and then explain the issue.

7. Move on to the next record.

CODING CHARTS

Playwright Gender (to code in the “Playwright

Gender” column):

1. Female (including multiple authors, all female)

2. Male (including multiple authors, all male)

3. Mixed authorship (majority male)

4. Mixed authorship (majority female)

5. Mixed authorship (equal gender split)

6. Author gender unknown/not apparent

7. Devised/no author listed

8. Trans or other gender

Other Considerations (to code in the “Other” column):

DUP Duplicate (title, dates, venue, and

producing company match)

ONE One-night engagement (these will be

counted differently in the statistics)

FEST A festival of plays not listed individually

(these will be counted differently in the
statistics or broken out by play)

READ A staged reading or reading series

TOUR A touring show

REMOUNT A remount of a show that exists

elsewhere on the list (title and producing
company match)

? There’s something else strange about

the record that you want someone to
take a look at. Feel free to elaborate on
the issue.

Prepared by M. Gray 3.15.10