"What is it with women playwrights?"

Seriously, dude? While some of us are trying to have an earnest discussion about the under-representation of female playwrights, Jim Rutter of Philadelphia decides that the reason he didn't like Marisa Wegrzyn's Psalms of a Questionable Nature is that it was written by a chick. Dude even manages to blame his ex-girlfriends.

I had my own reservations about the script in its Chicago premiere this summer, but never would I have thought to blame it on the playwright's ovaries.

(h/t Marisa herself)

Comments

[Brian Golden]

Jim Rutter's review of Psalms of a Questionable Nature was absurdly misogynist. I sent a letter to the editor of the Broad Street Review which I have pasted below. If anyone feels as I do, that this "criticism" deserves suspension, I encourage you to communicate with the BSR yourself, or join my letter as a co-signer.

Those of us that care about gender equity can not let this level of rudeness and woman-hating go unnoticed.

Dear Broad Street Review –

Your publication should be embarrassed at the content of Jim Rutter’s review of Nice People Theatre’s Psalms of a Questionable Nature. Rutter didn’t like the script. He really didn’t like the script. OK, we get it. But Mr. Rutter’s review went well beyond informing his audience what he did and didn’t like about what he’d seen.

After beginning his piece with the question, “What is it with women playwrights?”, he spends the entire article ripping this playwright apart, before concluding the piece with the idea that, perhaps, male artistic directors don’t produce plays by women because women write like his ex-girlfriends used to argue. Can such rhetoric be seen as anything other than misogynist?

Additionally, Mr. Rutter writes, “Wegrzyn needs medication for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.” Instead of merely suggesting that the play skips around too fast from topic to topic, Mr. Rutter makes a diagnosis of the playwright’s mental/medical condition, based on seeing 75 minutes of her work. This is pure rudeness. It is offensive to this playwright, and to people who actually do suffer ADHD, and know that its symptoms are worse than writing a play that doesn’t please an arrogant critic.

Give me a break. Philadelphia theatre patrons deserve better.

Brian Golden
Artistic Director, Theatre Seven of Chicago

[Brian Golden]

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[Meg]

1. The Broad Street Review is utter swill. This kind of a review is totally normal from them.

2. I am glad I'm not the only one who read that and thought, "Hello, misogyny!"

3. I met this guy the other night, but I didn't hear him when he said his name. I now bitterly regret the missed opportunity to ask him what the hell his problem is.