While not surprising, these results also indicate a potential correlation between the number of female characters in the cast list and the amount of music and dialogue featuring women. Musicals that include more female characters are also more likely to include instances where these characters speak to each other, specifically about topics other than men.
Over the last five years 73% of my students have identified as female, while only about 38% of the roles available are written as female. When these students are in such tough competition, this can discourage collaboration and could potentially lead to increased animosity between students. How can we possibly provide a comprehensive educational experience for these students when we discourage them from utilizing such a fundamental learning tool?
When the average interaction between female characters is 7.4 times throughout an entire full length musical, what kind of example are we setting for these growing young women? What substance are they really experiencing? Especially when on average, only 3.7 of those instances are cases where they discuss something other than men. Furthermore, what does this say about the way society views these women? What are we saying about their worth when they are only allowed to tell 36% of a story?
As an educator and female identifying musical theatre artist myself, this work is personal. These results reflect a deficiency of opportunities for women actors to be featured in modern mainstream high school musicals. The female characters are generally found to have fewer lines than the male characters, however they are more often featured in musical numbers. These findings reflect a need for more frequent representation of women in the world of musical theatre. As a community we need to ask ourselves, what can we do to nurture the learning of these young women, and how can we communicate that their worth is so much greater than the main character’s love interest? Children are information sponges, but they pay more attention to everything we don’t say. It’s important for us to remember what Sondhiem tells us at the end of Into the Woods: Children will listen.