March 8, 2018

Happy birthday to you!

We at Scenekunstbruket and Showbox will continue to keep gender equality high on the agenda, among other things by paying attention to how gender is also portrayed on stage.

Last year, Scenekunstbruket joined the Balansekunst, an association of more than 50 music and cultural organizations working for a gender-equal and diverse music and cultural life. In collaboration with them, and with Kulturtanken, we hosted the seminar "Gender in the Performing Arts" during Showbox last year.

To do this, we went through all Showbox programs from 2005 up to and including 2017 and counted the number of women and men behind the scenes (script, direction, idea, dramaturgy) and among the performers (actors and dancers). And it's even! In total, there are 53.6% women behind the scenes and 50.2% on stage in these years.

This by no means means means that we have reached our goal, and we at Scenekunstbruket and Showbox will continue to keep gender equality high on the agenda, among other things by paying attention to how gender and identity are also portrayed on stage. That's why we're part of the EU project PUSH, where one of the themes we've been working on is "gender and identity". Gender equality has also been relevant in the other two themes: overprotection and migration.

Goodbye Kitty - Rebekka/Huy. Photographer: Chrisander Brun. The production played at Showbox 2017.