Wishing to know who gets hired to design in U.S. regional theatres, lighting designer Porsche McGovern completed a project about designers in the League of Regional Theatres (LORT), and published the results of her study in an article on HowlRound.com.
The graph below shows the male to female ratio of scenic, lighting, costume, and sound designers in 61 of the then 74 LORT Theatres that responded to McGovern, confirming 2,223 of the 2,677 productions. In her graph, McGovern did not include any tour, event, gala, Theatre for Youth Audiences show, or production that was presented rather than produced. Only lead designers were included, and if there were cases of co-designers, then they each got partial credit (0.5).
See McGovern's statistical chart below and read more about her study on HowlRound.com. Share your thoughts on the study results in the comments section below if you're as surprised as we are.
McGovern is happy to share results from specific theatres if you work at a particular one or if you wish to see the raw data about multimedia/projection designers, which she did not include in the results as it was incomplete. Email her at [email protected] from your institutional email. Share your thoughts in the comments section below.