S2E0: Happy Birthday, Women & Theatre!
In this bonus episode, Hayley and Amy celebrate Women & Theatre’s first birthday by reflecting back on lessons learned in the first year of the project and sharing some big dreams for the future. Scroll down for episode notes and transcript!
Episode Notes
Hosts: Hayley Goldenberg and Amy Andrews
Music: Chloe Geller
Episode Resources:
Did you miss an interview? Between podcast seasons, take the time to catch up on the first year of Women & Theatre by reading our blog posts and listening to Season 1 episodes! Enjoy!
Thanks for listening!
Who do you want to hear from next on the Women & Theatre Podcast? Nominate someone here.
The Women & Theatre Podcast is created and produced by Hayley Goldenberg and Amy Andrews. Please like, comment, subscribe, follow us on Instagram and Facebook, and consider making a donation to support our work. Thank you for listening!
Episode Transcript
(Music)
Hayley: Hello, beautiful people, and welcome to the Women & Theatre Podcast! We're your hosts, Hayley Goldenberg…
Amy: …and Amy Andrews. Grab a cup of coffee and join us as we explore the experiences of women and nonbinary people in the theatre industry.
Hayley: On the pod, we interview people from different backgrounds with varying levels of industry experience and professional roles.
Amy: Our goal is to build community, identify the unique benefits that women and nonbinary folks bring to theatrical spaces, and pool our collective wisdom to break down the barriers we continue to face.
(Music)
Hayley: Hello, beautiful people! We are so excited to be coming to you today with a very, very special episode, because we are celebrating one year of Women & Theatre!
Amy: (sings) Happy birthday to us!
Hayley: (sings) Happy birthday to us… (both laugh) I'm so excited to be speaking with you today, Amy. I've got a glass of rosé in hand. I'm ready to celebrate.
Amy: I am so thrilled to be celebrating our birthday together and to be reflecting on this beautiful and amazing community that we are building.
Hayley: I feel like we should have a cake right now. Like, I wanna blow out the candles.
Amy: There should be a cake. Yeah, we'll work on that.
Hayley: So I just wanna get us started by asking you: What are your biggest takeaways from the first year of Women & Theatre?
Amy: Wow. My biggest takeaways are that the women and gender-expansive folks that we have spoken to in this first year of the Women & Theatre Project are all so freaking phenomenal - and like, each in their own special way. Coming into this project, I had an inkling that women and gender-expansive folks in theatre had a lot to say and a lot of really cool ideas and innovative ideas and interesting perspectives that are maybe not heard as often in the industry. And it has been such a joy to just see that come to life in our blog posts and in our podcast interviews.
It's been so delightful, on a personal level, to get to know all these fabulous people in our industry and make these connections that I hope will be part of building a truly long-lasting community that supports one another and lifts up one another and all of that. I'm just, I'm so proud of all that we've done in this first year, and I cannot wait to see where we take it from here. What about you? What are your big takeaways?
Hayley: Yeah, I think for me, for an industry that has always presented itself as so gatekeep-y, I've been pleasantly surprised and delighted by how warm everybody is and how willing some of my personal theatre heroes have been to sit down with us and have really open and honest dialogues about what is happening in the industry right now, what their experiences have been. The vulnerability and bravery has been really beautiful to see, especially in an industry where I feel that a lot of people feel scared to open up or to say what they truly think about things for fear of backlash. It's been really cool to see the bravery and vulnerability.
So those are some takeaways for me. I think another big takeaway has been just that everyone's journey to success, at every step of success on their ladder or their journey, is so different. Every path is different. A lot of us find comfort in this idea that there is a checklist, or like a rubric, or a specific path to becoming Sondheim or something, I dunno. But there really isn't, and for me personally, just knowing that following my values and following the people who share desires to make the space more equitable is gonna be the best path for me to take, personally. And like, it might take longer to find my people or it might take a different curve than I expected. But I will eventually land in a place where I have people in my community that share the same values as I do, and that that's really important to me.
Amy: I agree with you. It's been really cool to hear about all of the different winding roads that people have taken and are still taking in their careers in theatre. And to me, it feels really freeing to hear that. Like, it's scary, ‘cause you have to create your path, but it's also, like, you get to create your own path! You get to be in the theatre industry as the person who you are in the way that you want to be in the industry. What a joy!
Hayley: And that that makes you valuable. What a joy. And also - you showing up as yourself, that is your brand. That is the thing that's also gonna sell you. A lot of young people who go through theatre school are taught this idea that you have to conform to what the industry is. And I feel like the more that I talk to people and the more that I build these networks and connections with people, the more that I realize that who you are is the thing that sets you apart, is the thing that's gonna make you successful.
And just in my personal experience, building relationships with people that are starting with my values of like, “Hey, I'm a person who wants to prioritize women and nonbinary folks in theatre, and I want to create more equitable spaces. And then we can talk about my art from there” - I feel like I've built deeper and more beautiful relationships with people from that value-first thinking.
Amy: Yeah. I think that makes all the sense in the world. So Hayley, what are your hopes and dreams for the future of Women & Theatre? Where do you want us to go from here?
Hayley: I have a lot of dreams for the future of Women & Theatre. I ideally want this to be a space where we can serve our community more. We just did our very first community discussion, which was very exciting, to get some women and nonbinary folks in a room together to talk about producibility, and that was really, really cool.
I'm hoping to reach more people, is one thing. I'm hoping to support our community in more tangible ways moving forward. And I'm also really excited about getting us in the room to make some art together for a good cause. How can we galvanize our artistic abilities towards actually making the space better in more tangible ways, with money, with resources? That's something that I'm really excited about moving forward.
I'm also excited about potentially, like, expanding our team. We're a two-person operation right now, and as beautiful and wonderful as that is, it would be so wonderful to have a team of people working to make Women & Theatre run and to get us out there in some of these ways. Those are a lot of big ideas, nothing that we have concrete plans for, but those are excitements that I have about the potential of this community. How about you, Amy?
Amy: Yeah, well, in terms of concrete plans that we do have that I would love to share with our community… We do have plans for Season 2 of the Women & Theatre Podcast, which is set to launch in March.
Hayley: So exciting!
Amy: And I'm very excited about it.
Hayley: I'm so excited about these guests, we have some really cool guests lined up.
Amy: We have so many cool guests lined up. Oh my God. I mean, I fall in love with every one of our guests, as you know.
Hayley: And so do I, honestly.
Amy: Yeah. And I look forward to falling in love with a whole new batch of guests. It's gonna be beautiful.
As you mentioned, we just had our first community discussion. We had Nico Juber talking about kickstarting your show as a self-producer, and it was a really terrific presentation and discussion and I was really thrilled with how that went. We also are planning some hybrid—virtual and potentially in-person—community meetups, which I'm really psyched about. So those are things that we have talked about and have concrete plans for.
In terms of big dreams for the future, I feel like this first year of the Women & Theatre Project was kind of a proof of concept kind of thing.
Hayley: Mm-hmm, yeah.
Amy: Like, can we do this? What would this look like? Can we make this sustainable? And, you know, there are a lot of things that we're still figuring out, but I think that the overwhelming answer to this question is yes. We can do this and we should do this, and it's important and it's valuable. And so I'm excited now that we’ve proved that this is a thing that can be a community, I'm excited to continue exploring and figuring out where exactly our place is in the industry.
We've been talking a lot about potential partnerships with other advocacy organizations in the space, and I'm really excited to see how we can combine forces. ‘Cause I really do believe that to build a more equitable industry, which is what we're talking about, it takes all of us. It takes a lot of different perspectives coming to the table. And we're really excited to be part of this conversation.
Hayley: Not just two cis white women.
Amy: Amen! Amen. And we also have valuable things to bring to the table. So I'm excited to have those conversations and to start figuring out how we can join forces with other advocacy organizations and other individuals in the space to really start making some tangible changes that we wanna see in the industry.
Hayley: Yeah. We've learned a lot by pooling our collective wisdom and by having these conversations. I'm really excited about what tangible action we can take from the collective wisdom that we've started to hold onto and learn from. I'm very excited about that, yeah. I would love to know from you, Amy, are there specific ideas that have come out of our conversations that have opened up your mind in a new way or made you excited about the future of this business?
Amy: Oh my gosh. So many! I could literally talk to you for an hour about all of the amazing lessons that I have learned and ideas that have come out of these interviews. I think the thing that stands out is that we've talked to all these people who are in different roles in the industry, at different levels of their career, from different backgrounds, and each person that we've spoken to has something valuable to bring to the conversation about how we make the theatre industry a more equitable space. And what I take away from it is - we need all of us. We need all the perspectives we can get, all the diversity, all the different ideas.
It makes me proud and happy to reflect on the folks we've talked to and the ideas that have come out of this community so far. And I'm so excited to welcome more people into this community and to bring even more ideas and perspectives to the table and see the real changes that we can make as a result of coming together.
Of course, the Women & Theatre Project would not be what it is today without all of our amazing interviewees who have volunteered their time and opened their hearts to us and shared with us their stories and experiences and thoughts about womanhood and the theatre industry. And so we want to send out a really, really big, giant thank you to everyone who has participated in the Women & Theatre Project.
Hayley: We truly could not be more grateful for your vulnerability, your bravery, and your brilliant thoughts and your willingness to spend a little bit of time with us chatting about everything Women & Theatre. So, we would like to acknowledge everyone personally by name. That list of people is:
Marissa Davis
Julia Sonya Koyfman
Chloe Geller
Sarah Sneesby
Nia Harvey
Katryna Marttala
Michole Biancosino
Isabel Gúzman
Zina Goldrich
Vanessa Morosco
Makena Metz
Nico Juber
Jenna Kepnes
Dana Iannuzzi
Jade Litaker
Isidora Kecman
Kathryn Markey
Sheila Head
Kate Cannova,
Hannah Coffman
Courtney Seyl
Gayle Seay
Amina Alexander
Valerie Lau-Kee
Jen Wineman
Marija Danyluk
Angela Howell
Kate Wetherhead
Lynne Shankel
Emily Kristen Morris
Tidtaya Sinutoke and Isabella Dawis
Marlo Hunter
Elyssa Samsel and Kate Anderson
Rachel Covey
Kayla Davion
Amy: Thank you all so much! We appreciate you. We love you. Thank you for being part of this community.
Hayley: And all of the Women & Theatre interviewees who have yet to be published as well.
Amy: Stay tuned for Season 2! And all of our listeners and our readers and our supporters of this project from its inception: We couldn't do this without you either, and we are so very appreciative of your support.
Hayley: Yeah. And I just wanna say thank you to you, Amy, for being my partner on this journey as we figure out how to do this project. It's a really bold move, as people who are earlier on in our careers, to step out and to be like, “We're gonna give you our opinion, and we're gonna ask people: What are your opinions on womanhood? What are your opinions on how to make this space a better space for us?” And I couldn't ask for a better partner in this journey than you. So thank you.
Amy: Oh, I'm gonna cry ‘cause I feel exactly the same way. Thank you to you, too, Hayley. This is a partnership that has started strong, and we've both been through a lot, together and individually.
Hayley: Personally, yeah.
Amy: Yeah. And it is such a joy - it makes me so happy to show up for these interviews, to show up for project meetings with you. And it's just - I'm so happy we're doing this. I can't wait to see where it goes. I'm proud of us.
Hayley: Me too. What a way to end the interview. Love you, Amy. Love you, listeners.
Amy: Love you, listeners, so much!
Hayley: See you in Season 2!
Amy: See you in Season 2! Happy birthday, Women & Theatre!
Hayley: Happy birthday, Women & Theatre!
Amy: Happy birthday!
Hayley: Woo woo woo! Okay. Bye, everyone.
Amy: Bye!
(Music)
Hayley: Thank you for listening to the Women & Theatre Podcast. We’re your hosts, Hayley Goldenberg…
Amy: And Amy Andrews. If you like what you heard, subscribe and give us a 5-star review wherever you listen.
Hayley: You can also follow us on social @womenandtheatreproject to make sure you never miss an episode.
Amy: The music for this show is written by talented Women & Theatre community member Chloe Geller.
Hayley: Thanks for listening, everyone. See you next time!
Amy: Bye!
