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| Co-Artistic Director Pamela Reckamp, Founder/Co-Artistic Director Kim Furlow and Managing Director Sara Hughes |
Dramatic License Productions is a small professional theatre group that operates out of an 85-seat theatre in the ARTropolis arts district in Chesterfield Mall. The company was founded in late 2009 by St. Louis veteran actress Kim Furlow to offer additional directing, acting and design opportunities to local artists and to bridge the gap in professional theatre offerings west of I-270. DLP staged its first production, Doubt, A Parable downtown in August, 2009. They moved to Chesterfield early in 2010, where they now present five to seven theatre and cabaret performances annually.
Nearly two months ago, DLP announced a major change in its artistic mission to concentrate on the production of plays and musical presentations for, by, and about women. I caught up with Kim Furlow via email to pose a couple of questions about this new direction.
Chuck: The decision to feature plays by and about women represents a significant shift in the artistic focus at Dramatic License. What made you decide to make this move at this point in the company's development?
Kim: Board member Pamela Reckamp, production manager (now managing director) Sara Hughes and I all sat down one evening after our final theatre production of the 2014 season and discussed the fact that our most recent audience survey showed a trend that follows the national one: 68% of all DLP audiences are women. Up to 70% of women nationwide purchase theatre tickets according to a 2013 study by Theatre Communications Group, NYC.
We thought, "How can we increase patronage and serve the largest portion of our audience-women? We had produced a kids' show that bombed, and at least two productions appealing probably mostly to men, which also didn't sell well. We have seen only a slight uptick in attendance since launching the company in late 2009. The highest grossing DLP productions in five seasons were "The Great American Trailer Park Musical", "Steel Magnolias", and "Boeing Boeing" (one comedy, one dramedy and one ribald musical.) 98% of survey respondents were women.
Pam also conducted informal research among 10 local small professional theatre companies to gauge the number of available women roles between 2013-14 vs. the number of men's roles. The findings were pretty astonishing although unfortunately akin to what's happening across the nation: Most plays produced are written by male playwrights and most roles in St. Louis go to men, despite the fact that the number of women showing up at auditions is significantly larger than the number of men. In fact, out of 10 companies casting in 2013-14, we found that 63% of all roles went to men, and a piddly 37% went to women.
The Orange Girls had a successful five-year run producing plays by, for and about women. We hope to pick up where they left off.
DLP isn't necessarily going to produce plays exclusively about women's "issues" but rather stories that resonate with women. They might feature a strong (or weak) leading female character, a particular issue pertaining to women in our past or present, or a particular story written by a female playwright like Beth Henley. Will we exclude male roles, male playwrights or stories that appeal to men? No! We think men will leave the theatre with keen insight not only into women's "issues" but also into their hearts, their desires, their history, their hopes, and their feelings about the opposite sex, among other things. They may just change their minds about how they view women. If we can spark thought and discussion among either of the sexes from our productions, we're doing our jobs and have accomplished our goal.
Chuck: Dramatic License also produces a cabaret series. Will that share the emphasis on women as well? And if so, what form will that take?
Kim: In the interest of providing what our audiences have come to know and expect from DLP: high-quality musical presentations by the areas best vocalists and musicians, we will continue to present an annual Valentine Cabaret (cancelled in 2015 due to maintenance to our theater space) and the popular Holiday Musical Revue Dec. 11-13. This season we've added a June cabaret which will include music by both male and female composers but about themes that resonate with women such as motherhood, marriage, career, the opposite sex and more. More on this show will be announced later.
The first show of Dramatic License Production’ sixth season—the first one under its new artistic mission—is The Odd Couple (Female Version), Neil Simon’s 1985 rewrite of his hit comedy from two decades earlier. In this version Felix and Oscar become Florence and Olive, with the sex of other characters changed accordingly. The Pigeon sisters, for example, became the Costazuela brothers, Manolo and Jesus. The show opens on April 24 and runs through May 10. For more information: dramaticlicenseproductions.org.
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