Roles for Philadelphia actresses

Single moms, maids and prostitutes:
Pity the Philadelphia actress

JIM RUTTER

This month Philadelphia theatergoers have the opportunity to see four different plays where a woman not only plays the lead role but occupies the stage for the entire performance, essentially carrying the play: Amaryllis’s Molly Sweeney (Pamela Sabaugh), Theatre Exile’s Mr. Marmalade (Amanda Schoonover), Villanova’s Mother Courage and Her Children (Joanna Rotté and Kristen O’Rourke), and Act 2 Playhouse’s Hate Mail (Charlotte Northeast).

But from what I’ve heard, these offerings represent anything but business as usual. Actors, directors and company heads of both genders all seem to agree on one point: Theater may be booming in Philadelphia, but roles for female actors remain in short supply.

How come? The usual excuses are trotted out: Philadelphia has more male artistic directors (true, notwithstanding such notable exceptions as the Wilma, Philadelphia Theatre Co., People’s Light, Prince Music Theater, 1812, and the Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival), more male playwrights (somewhat true, at least historically), and also, because of the Western world’s still-unraveling social conditions, female parts still don’t occupy roles that stray too far from outmoded cultural norms. Suffice it to say, of the Barrymore Award nominees for best actresses last year, five played historical figures (other actors and singers, no less), one played a single mom struggling to find a good boyfriend, two played maids, and two portrayed prostitutes.

But no matter what the reason, what would happen if the theater professionals I’ve talked to are right?

Where are these women now?

Fewer roles for women would make it that much harder for recent graduates to stay in Philadelphia. Of the two best actresses to graduate from Villanova’s master’s program last year—Marcie Bramucci and Jessica Dal Canton—I’ve yet to see the former appear in anything in Philadelphia, and the latter now appears only in a bit part in The Seven Year Itch at the Montgomery Theatre. After graduating from Bryn Mawr, Maggie Siff burned a meteoric path through Philadelphia stages that included, within just a few short years, several Barrymore nominations, two wins and the single best Fringe Festival production I’ve ever seen (in Endgame). But now she’s moved on to a role on a cable television program (Mad Men, on AMC).

In a city brimming with colleges and performing arts schools, there’s definitely no shortage of teaching jobs for actresses. But a few actresses from the University of Delaware’s highly regarded Professional Theatre Training Program recently asked me if Philadelphia would provide them enough acting work to make a living. Only a handful of stalwart examples (Mary Martello, Grace Gonglewski) leaped to my mind.

David Mamet’s improbable solution

In the theater, as in many endeavors, it’s not always the best talents that possess the necessary staying power to persevere through lean years of temping, waitressing or answering the phones at an office while one’s hard-developed stagecraft goes underutilized. Like the playwright John Guare said of actors in his Six Degrees of Separation, too often their “part time jobs become their full time life.”

Aside from listening to David Mamet, who advises undercasted actors to start their own companies where they can then “feature” themselves, how could the Philadelphia theater community fix this alleged disparity without constraining anyone’s creativity? (Union rules supposedly forced Andrew Lloyd Webber to put a second female soloist in his Evita.) Let’s hope this month’s offerings represent the beginning of a solution.



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