Special Thanks from Valerie Weak
Thank you to Martha Richards and WomenArts for commissioning this second report. Your advocacy is tireless and your expertise is profound. Your extensive efforts in the field of gender parity advocacy over time is truly inspirational.
Thank you as well to Christine Young and the Works by Women San Francisco blog for continuing to provide a home and distribution platform for the monthly blog posts for over five years. This infrastructure is greatly appreciated.
Thank you to the folks who have shared show statistics over the years. Many folks contributed a single show, but there were a few regular contributors who gave show statistics month after month after month, most notably Matt Weimer and Karen Thomson Hall. The depth and breadth of this report is because of the contributors, who ensured I had shows from all corners of our nine-county region.
The Bay Area is so fortunate to have a variety of folks advocating for gender parity via various groups and platforms. I thank the Yeah I Said Feminist Facebook Salon, the instigators of the upcoming Bay Area Womens’ Theater Festival (March-May 2020), the Gender Parity committee at Theatre Bay Area, and the Bay Area Liaison Committee of Actors’ Equity, especially Kelly Ground and Brian Herndon, for providing additional insight related to contracts used in the region.
Thanks always to Kevin.
And finally, thanks to all who’ve used the data collected via this project to make change and promote gender parity. I’ve heard from students who’ve cited the previous report as part of a thesis paper, professors who’ve put the report in their syllabus, development staff who use it when applying for funding, artistic leaders who keep a copy of the key graphic sheet on the wall in their office, and a board member who brought the report to a board meeting which led to a playwright parity pledge in season planning at the organization.
Thank you all.