Saskatchewan Women Playwrights

Abstract

Each of these two “particularities,” being a woman playwright and being a Saskatchewan playwright, has separate consequences. Playwright itself carries a certain weight of particularity, because the playwright is the initiator of the work in the theatre but often has the least control of the final product. Saskatchewan women playwrights here identify and respond to some of their difficulties. Theirs are difficulties which face all playwrights in Saskatchewan, not just women: isolation, few theatres and fewer which produce new work, lack of informed critical attention for the work when it does get produced. The difficulties for women playwrights are probably not unique to those in Saskatchewan: a conscious or unconscious gender bias operating in artistic directors (and readers), and the perceived gender bias of audiences; the relative scarcity of women directors for collaboration; strong women’s roles being seen as negative; and the dearth of plays written by women to serve as models or jumping-off places.