Day 14

Hi, everyone! Another poem. (Oh, no, the woman thinks she's a poet...run away! Fast!) A little background on this one. In theatre, there are more women actors than there are men, but there are fewer roles for women, and most of them are for young women. Plays, like movies, are more often about men. As for women playwrights, they make up only a small fraction of the plays that are produced, no where near their proportion in the population. It could be just because women don't like to write plays, I suppose...except, studies show that plays written by women have only a fraction of the chance of getting read as those written by men (which is only a small probability to begin with). Women are often told that this is because women write plays about women, which no one wants to see.

The interesting fact of the matter is that plays written by women on average do better at the box office (perhaps because the majority of ticket buyers are themselves women?). They make the theatres more money, but in spite of this, the runs are substantially shorter than the plays written by men. This cannot be explained by rational economic theory, by enlightened self-interest, or by market forces. It can only be one thing...I'll leave you to figure out what that is. So, without any further ado, a poem about women and plays.

I SAW A PLAY
(to the tune of A Day in the Life)

I saw a play today oh boy
It had a woman in a starring role.
And though the role was rather small,
She got to play it all.
And so the show was closed on opening night.

I saw a play today oh boy
A woman wrote the story of her life
And though the story was a hit
She didn’t have a wife
And so they closed the show so she could clean.

I saw a play today oh boy
It had no women in the show at all
And though the tickets sold were few
They kept it running long
Because it was the kind of show they want to do!