IS THE THEATER SEXIST? TWO VIEWS : NO : Males Can and Do Write Dimensional Females

Quite simply, I don’t see sexism on the stage today. I’m 29, Los Angeles-born and bred. I take responsibility for my career. I open my own doors (but don’t take out the garbage). I watch. I read. I meet a lot of people. I see a lot of plays. In the past year, I’ve been to the theater 136 times, at least--my date book may be missing a few last-minute entries.

Yes, there is the occasional insult. When the nubile, demiclad assistants started gyrating at “David Copperfield,” I felt a pang of feminist indignation. However, a magic show is not really theater. What to say about Mickey Rooney’s recent antics in “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”? Don’t know. Didn’t see it. I hate that kind of bosomy-lady, leering stuff. Sexist for sure. But this, like the magic show, is not exactly new theater. Burlesque is old--and old hat.

Does women playing prostitutes equate with sexism? Sometimes. But it depends on the vehicle. The neighborly Rosa in “Camaralenta” is not a fluffy bit of window dressing. Nor is she exploited--or an exploiter. And there’s certainly no judgment levied against the easy ladies of the Kit Kat Club in “Cabaret.” Hookers serve only as a flashy backdrop to a far more sinister specter, the encroachment of Nazism.

When there is evil, it is most often represented by men. Yes, there are adulteresses (“The Real Thing,” “Serenading Louie,” “How the Other Half Loves,” “House of Blue Leaves” and “Wild Honey”). There are even murderesses (“Loot,” “L’Amante Anglaise,” “Aunt Dan and Lemon,” “Heart-stopper” and “Arsenic and Old Lace”). So what? I may be naive, but I don’t think the fact that these are wicked women has anything to do with the fact that they’re women. They are bad people , who just happen to be female.

And they’re offset by a slew of wonderful female characters: heroines (the teacher/astronaut in “Defying Gravity”), martyrs (“Hannah Senesh”); mothers (“Roza,” “Raisin in the Sun” and “La Victima”); career women (“Soph,” Cold Sweat” and “Checkmates”)--and women who stand up for themselves in a relationship (“The Immigrant,” “Mail, “Almost Perfect,” “Tamer of Horses,” “The Woods” and “Savage in Limbo”).

As noted, not all the women characters are admirable. Somewhere between the saint and sinner is the often vital, usually interesting contemporary female: the lunching ladies in “Three Postcards,” the dancer-heroine in “Burn This,” tattletale Jessie in “The Stick Wife,” the spy in “Alpha,” the resilient waitresses in “Waiting” and the bomb-fearing Luke in “Foolin’ Around With Infinity.”

Naturally, women also share society’s ills: drug addiction (“Tom and Viv”), racism (the Afrikaner matron in “The Film Society”), promiscuity (the randy Caddy in “June Second”) and political corruption (the greedy mayor in “Anyone Can Whistle”).

At their worst, these are shaded characters and characterizations. The majority of modern female roles are not typed--and limited--by gender. For that, you’d have to look at the older plays: “The Importance of Being Earnest,” “Most Happy Fella,” “Picnic,” “Come Back, Little Sheba,” “Glass Menagerie,” “Sweet Bird of Youth,” “Hedda Gabler” and “On Your Toes.”

The characters are cliches, stereotypes: often one-dimensional, man-starved, money-starved, power-starved. No, they’re not proud symbols of their sex. But again, these are plays, written in another time, about another time. Seeing Lola submit to Doc’s abuses (“Sheba”) or Kate being emotionally and physically devalued (“Shrew”) is painful--and should be. It’s not all right for women to be victims: trapped, subservient, or even there to just look pretty. And it almost never happens in new plays, whether or not they’re written by women.

Of course, most plays--past and present--are the products of male writers. That’s an accepted, if regrettable, fact. Beyond that given, however, men can and do write dimensionally and compassionately. Traditional sex roles are not repeated by rote.

When, as in Steve Metcalfe’s “Strange Snow,” a spinster flowers under a man’s attention (fixing her hair, wearing a dress, contact lenses), it’s not a condescending portrait. There is nothing shameful or bimbotic about her transformation. The playwright is not sexist; he loves Martha.

Even a non-role model like Vicki (the not-so-disguised Vicki Morgan) in “Alfred and Victoria” is given dignity by playwright Donald Freed. Sure, Vicki is used. But she’s also a user; she plays the game. And it’s her choice.

Choices, changes, career, family, self-identity, pride, power, domination, submission, struggle and success: These are real elements of all our lives. Where else are you going to see it shown? Movies and television make the obligatory stabs (between lip-liner, great coifs, jewels and designer threads) at showing strong, true, modern women--but it’s mostly lip service, calculated and cosmetic. They are cosmetic mediums, of course. Theater has always stood for more.

And happily, yes, there are more women playwrights today, many of whom are also directing. It’s a long list--and getting longer: JoAnne Akalaitis, Jane Anderson, Doris Baizley, Caryl Churchill, Darrah Cloud, Anne Commire, Barbara Damashek, Maria Irene Fornes, Beth Henley, Vi Higginsen, Joan Holden, Tina Howe, Cherylene Lee, Suzanne Lummis, Marsha Norman, Joyce Carol Oates, Sybille Pearson, Judy Romberger, Mimi Seton, Ntozake Shange, Adele Edling Shank, Karen Sunde, Jane Wagner, Wendy Wasserstein, Gina Wendkos, Wakako Yamauchi.

But it’s more than that. Men are writing, directing and producing socially conscientious, humanistic work, too. When the inspector in “Loot” says dismissingly, “My wife’s a woman. Intelligence doesn’t enter into it,” that’s playwright Joe Orton making fun. He knows better. We all do. The other night at the Taper, people booed that line. Society in general may be slow in catching up to equality, but theater prides itself on being modern, vibrant and sensitive. That’s it: Sensitivity. Respect. Class.

And, oh yes, intelligence does enter into it. The people who are putting on plays today know that all too well.