“Are We Not Fellow Travelers?” Equity and Representation on New York Stages

On a Friday afternoon in late June, the theatre advocacy group the Lillys sent out a call to action. Spurred by season announcements from Playwrights Horizons and Williamstown Theatre Festival that featured a remarkedly small number of female playwrights, the Lillys invited theatre artists from all disciplines to a town hall. Held at Playwrights Horizons itself on 30 June, the goal of this town hall was not to critique any specific theatre company, but rather to offer the community a space to ask questions, voice concerns, and offer solutions. If female and non-binary playwrights are being produced less frequently than male writers, how can we bring about change? How do theatres avoid falling into (or remaining in) inequitable producing cycles? And why aren’t more stories by women already onstage?

It’s always a surprise to me when theatre companies fail to produce works by female playwrights. The best class I took in college was a 300-level English course called Sister Acts: Black Feminist/Womanist Theatre. We dove into the works of playwrights like Danai Gurira, debbie tucker green, and Ntozake Shange, into diaspora storytelling and protest plays. It was in this class that I first read some of my favorite plays and writers. 

I still have most of my notes, lovingly dragged from dorm to house to basement storage to apartments one and two. On the first page of my notebook, I have a quote written down (unattributed, but likely from my excellent professor, Rashida Shaw McMahon). “Use theatre to speak on personal experiences arising from social conditions.”

This sums up the kinds of plays I’m attracted to. Plays that move collaborators, audiences, and community members towards social change. Plays that feel relevant and relatable and, most importantly, true. Sometimes I want to see myself on stage, to see the people I know, and moreover, I want that experience for other audience members. Equal to that desire, I want this kind of representation behind the scenes, for the people writing and directing the plays. Certainly, no playwright should be expected to exclusively “write what they know,” but unique and diverse viewpoints often make for more impactful art, and often plays written by women and non-binary writers take more risks, break further from the “well-made play” mold, and work to broaden social awareness and empathy.

On 24 June, Playwrights Horizons announced their spring 2026 season, which joins their two previously announced fall 2025 shows. This announcement was met with immediate outcry: while the full season is racially diverse and features two non-binary writers, only one of the seven featured playwrights, Jen Tullock, is a woman. On the theatre’s Instagram post sharing their 2025-2026 writer lineup, the top comment reads “if only women were allowed to write plays,” followed by a (slightly amusing) broken heart emoji.

In a moment when thoughtful, intersectional, and socially conscious art is more necessary than ever, it’s disheartening to see nonprofit theatres announce seasons that appear somewhat homogenous.

Not every prominent New York nonprofit theatre has announced their 2025-2026 season yet, but Playwrights Horizons is not the only organization to largely eclipse women in their programming. Classic Stage Company’s upcoming season features a lineup of entirely white male writers and directors. Of the five upcoming productions at Roundabout Theatre Company, only one play, on one of their smaller, Off-Broadway stages, is by a female playwright (Alex Lin), and all are directed by men. Manhattan Theatre Club’s two productions by female playwrights (Ngozi Anyanwu and Martyna Majok) are in their Off-Broadway space (both Roundabout and MTC produce work on and Off-Broadway). Outside of the city, new works incubator Williamstown Theatre Festival’s 2025 summer productions, curated this year by Jeremy O. Harris, are largely by men. There are a few outliers; both Signature Theatre Company (where I am on staff) and Vineyard Theatre have programmed exclusively female writers, although the two produce fewer shows than some of their fellow theatres. 

If these male-centric season announcements feel particularly alarming, it is because they come at a time when theatre could be backsliding into a less equitable or safe industry. In February, President Trump named himself chairman of the Kennedy Center and replaced the Center’s president with one of his own supporters. Soon after, the Center cancelled a production of Finn, a children’s musical with LGBTQ+ themes; a performance by the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington, DC; Jonathan Spector’s vaccine debate play Eureka Day; and more, citing financial reasons. Commercial theatre also shows signs of a shifting industry: Recently, producer Scott Rudin, an alleged bully, announced his return to Broadway with a production of Samuel D. Hunter’s Little Bear Ridge Road. On a larger scale, in May, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) rapidly terminated or rescinded grants for arts organizations that fell outside of the current administration’s updated “grantmaking policy priorities.” While it is unclear how extensively the cuts to NEA funding will impact New York and regional theatre, it’s likely that they will dramatically reduce people's access to art.

In a moment when thoughtful, intersectional, and socially conscious art is more necessary than ever, it’s disheartening to see nonprofit theatres announce seasons that appear somewhat homogenous. This is especially true because it seems like these trends are mirrored to varying degrees across the country; while Washington, DC’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and Los Angeles’s Geffen Playhouse showcase gender parity in their season announcements, many other prominent regional theatres in DC, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Chicago are primarily producing men in the upcoming year. 

I’m wary of making broad statements about trends in season planning before every Off-Broadway theatre has announced their full programming. I also wouldn’t condemn Playwrights Horizons, especially because they’ve done such an excellent job producing works by a wide variety of writers in the past. Yet it is Playwrights Horizons in particular that’s been a catalyst for conversation surrounding gender parity in theatre. As the initial email from former Lillys executive director Julia Jordan noted, “While the seasons [at Playwrights Horizons and Williamstown] 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” and invited the theatre community to a town hall at Playwrights Horizons on 30 June.

Founded by Jordan, Marsha Norman, and Theresa Rebeck in 2010, the Lillys were created to champion women in theatre. One of the organization’s greatest achievements has been the launch of the Count, alongside the Dramatist’s Guild, which offers detailed analysis of the gender and racial breakdown of theatrical productions across a given year. The Lillys also founded the Lorraine Hansberry Initiative and the Hansberry-Lilly Fellowship, aimed at supporting female and non-binary playwrights of color, and the Obie Award-winning 3Views on Theater, a digital publication dedicated to diversifying and rethinking theatre criticism.

I’m also on the team at 3Views (which now operates independently of the Lillys), and I attended the town hall as both a representative of the group and as an early-career arts administrator. I’m endlessly curious about how different theatres curate their seasons, how much it is guided by an artistic director’s vision versus the combined insights of an artistic or marketing team, and how much veto power the board gets. While the town hall may not have fully scratched my literary management itch, it provided data and keen discourse about the state of parity in theatre, and insightful recommendations for how to continue to promote diverse voices in theatre.

Led by Jordan and playwright Lisa Kron, the town hall kicked off with an acknowledgement that the group had gathered to, in Kron’s words, “mark that something is amiss.” Jordan, who has led the Count, shared that in 2023, New York theatres achieved “parity,” with gender and racial makeups that aligned with those of the country. She emphasized that although the data for the 2025-2026 Off-Broadway season is still preliminary, as some theatres have yet to announce their full seasons, early numbers indicate that works by white men are favored. On Broadway, of the twenty-seven shows in the upcoming season that have been announced as of this writing, only eight feature female writers. Within these eight productions, five musicals feature female authors, and three plays, Art, Becky Shaw, and Liberation, are by women.

With a reminder to ground concerns in statistics, Kron next opened the floor to the gathered community. Some speakers asked questions, or shared hopes, fears, and frustrations, and many offered specific steps towards equitable programming. Listening to the conversation, I found myself most moved by solution-oriented comments about changing existing language and practices.

On the simplest level, individual theatres can make a commitment to staging 2026-2027 seasons that are more inclusive. It is likely too difficult on a logistical and financial level for theatres to announce those seasons now, but they can put a framework in place. Playwrights Horizons can publicly promise to feature more female playwrights next year or, as writer Winter Miller suggested, stage a season exclusively made up of women and non-binary playwrights. Manhattan Theatre Club and Roundabout can plan seasons that showcase women of color on their Broadway stages in addition to their small theatres. It’s possible these theatres already have plans like this in place—a commissioned play can spend years in development before it is ready to be shared with an audience.

As theatre companies begin to plan seasons that are further out, it’s also important to expand or challenge the idea of parity. As director Khristián Méndez Aguirre pointed out, striving for parity often implies striving for 50 percent white women, 50 percent women of color, which centers whiteness. A 50/50 split may not accurately represent a community, and, as actor Christine Bruno flagged, it’s essential to think intersectionally. Theatres should take care to not pigeonhole or silo their playwrights, dropping them into specific demographic groups. To me, it becomes less of an issue of just gender and racial parity, and more a question of equity, because to achieve parity you must create and extend opportunities where they have been historically denied.

How can theatres, artistic directors, and producers go beyond equal representation to actively create and promote opportunities for marginalized groups? Writer and director Monet Hurst-Mendoza encouraged the use of resources like the Kilroys List and Maestra Music to discover new playwrights, directors, and composers. Similarly, playwright Christina Anderson encouraged theatre organizations to reexamine who is in the room making choices on what to develop. This starts at the top, with artistic directors, many of whom, Anderson noted, have been hired by the same two or three agencies. Anderson also shared that when she has applied for these positions, she felt that hiring agencies centered whiteness. Therefore, theatre companies should strive to be more proactive and mindful in how they recruit and hire people.

Change is often neither fast nor easy, especially in the face of a government that has shown no willingness to support inclusion and access in the arts. But even if it’s challenging, it’s worth it.

Likewise, when considering script submissions, literary or artistic departments can expand and diversify their pools of readers and offer those script readers opportunities to share their opinions in meetings, rather than just by filling out response forms. There’s an opportunity to change submission processes too; playwright Ankita Raturi suggested veering away from requiring personal statements so that applicants can prioritize their work over compelling, shiny ways to talk about themselves.

Many of these ideas require institutional changes that take time, financial support, or approval from a board. So what can we do as individuals in the immediate future? Playwright Chisa Hutchinson suggested putting your money where your mouth is, uplifting the groups that already support women; Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC); and non-binary artists. This can include supporting organizations like National Black Theatre, Breaking the Binary, Sol Project, and WP Theatre. Or when theatres that are less centered around a specific group program playwrights and directors who aren’t white men, show up! In both instances, this can mean donating to the theatre and including a specific message of support, buying tickets or season memberships, or simply promoting productions on social media. We can both encourage male-dominated institutions to do better and celebrate the places that have already done the work.

Similarly, we can examine the kinds of theatre that young artists are being exposed to. Playwright Arelene Hutton proposed looking at the college level to see what kinds of plays are being taught and programmed. I was lucky to have Professor Shaw McMahon guiding my theatre education towards diaspora playwrights—for theatremakers whose alma maters are perhaps preoccupied with the classics, advocate for expanding the canon.

Many at the town hall acknowledged that change is often neither fast nor easy, especially in the face of a government that has shown no willingness to support inclusion and access in the arts. But even if it’s challenging, it’s worth it. Theatre should not just be entertaining; it should be educational. As playwright Leah Nanako Winkler put it, programming work from women, especially those who speak out in support of more equitable practices, “will be rewarding and absolutely beautiful.”

Like in my college notebook, there’s a specific quote that stands out to me from the scribbles I wrote down during the town hall. Neena Beber shared a statement from Theresa Rebeck (who was unable to attend). Rebeck emphasized the need for solidarity, asking, “are we not fellow travelers?” The way forward is community. It is a collective reaffirmation of intersectional art. And ultimately, the theatre industry and its audiences will be better for it.