Interview: Women in Theatre- Spotlight on the Lilly Awards Foundation and Daisy Prince!

Tonight, November 10, The Lilly Awards Foundation with the Broadway at Birdland Series will soon present The Lilly Awards Broadway Cabaret: An evening of showstoppers written by women and performed by Broadway's Best to benefit The Lilly Awards Foundation whose mission is to promote gender parity at all levels of theatrical production, and develop and celebrate the work of women in the theater. The evening will be directed by Daisy Prince, musical direction by Georgia Stitt and co-produced by Amanda Green and Georgia Stitt.

Guest performers will include Brooks Ashmanskas, David Beach, Heidi Blickenstaff, Jenn Colella, Gretchen Cryer, Jason Danieley, Katrina Rose Dideriksen, Nancy Ford, Matt Gallagher, Adam Guettel, Caitlin Kinnunen, Sydney Lucas, Debra Monk, Kathleen Elizabeth Monteleone, Cass Morgan, Jim Newman, Keala Settle, Douglas Sills, Dale Soules, Elizabeth Stanley, Maria Thayer, Jessica Vosk, Adrienne Warren, Kate Wetherhead, and The Broadway Boys, with special appearances by Jason Robert Brown, Carol Hall, Steven Pasquale, and Valerie Vigoda. The evening will be directed by Daisy Prince, musical direction by Georgia Stitt and co-produced by Amanda Green and Georgia Stitt.

Below, Prince shares with BroadwayWorld her history with the organization, what to expect from the concert and more!

How did you become involved with the Lilly Awards Foundation?

I became involved with the Lilly Awards Foundation last Spring when Georgia Stitt, who is on the Board, asked if I would direct an evening of song that she was putting together. The informal cabaret was at The West Bank Cafe's Laurie Beechman Theater after the awards had been handed out across the street at Playwrights Horizons. The cabaret was conceived as a celebration of women writers in Musical Theater. I thought it was a fabulous idea and jumped on board.

What/who are you most looking forward to in this year's cabaret?

I am particularly enthusiastic about the diversity of work represented in this concert. We have included songs by women composers and lyricists from the 1950s to the present. The audience will hear songs that are well known and have become a part of the fabric of American Musical Theater and some very exciting and innovative new material. Most special, I think, is the participation of many of the women writers whose work we will be celebrating. A good number of the writers will be joining us for the evening to introduce and/or perform their work. The characters in the material we have chosen reflect a wide variety of life experience and therefor we have performers of all ages included in the program. It should be a very exciting evening.

Have you seen strides being made in gender parity in the industry in recent years?

I am not among the most equipped to comment on the advancements, or lack of advancements, in gender parity in the theatre. Julia Jordan, Emily Glassberg Sands and Marsha Norman are among the most qualified to speak about the bias against women theater artists. They have been part of a concerted effort to quantify the number of women working in every aspect of live theater across the country. These statistics are available, and the results very revealing. As with every other profession shattering the glass ceiling requires overwhelming support and consistently successful initiatives. The Lilly Awards Foundation provides this support and encourages a community of women to, as Marsha Norman said at the 2014 awards, "play on the girls team." I believe my favorite expletive was in there, but I don't exactly remember. It has been eons since these discussions began and by all rights the landscape, for working women in general and working women in the theater, should look entirely different. It does not.

Who are some women in the industry that you admire/have influenced you and your work?

There are so many women in the theater whose work I admire, too many to name, so I will pick the woman in the industry who was by far the most influential to me. Meeting and studying with Paula Vogel at Brown University was a life changer. She saw something substantial in me, probably the result of my unbridled enthusiasm for everything she had to say, and asked me to direct a staged reading for one of her graduate playwrights. I thought this was a terrible idea for personal and, in my mind, entirely obvious reasons. Paula disagreed. After that initial, wildly over staged, staged reading she somehow convinced Bonnie Metzgar to entrust me with a play she had written. I was hooked. Paula had helped me redefine myself and my aspirations. She introduced me to a world of theater I had not known. She demanded I take myself and what I did more seriously. She inspired me and encouraged me to figure out what the hell I had to say and how the hell I wanted to say it. She is a great writer, a great teacher, a great champion of emerging theater artists; a life changer.

What does it mean to you to be a part of this kind of organization?

I have no official affiliation with this organization, but I stand with all of the women who choose to make a life in the theater and say a big THANK YOU for all of the work The Lilly's are doing on our behalf.

The Lilly Awards Broadway Cabaret is Monday, November 10th beginning at 7:00 p.m. at Birdland, located at 315 W. 44th Street in NYC.

The Lilly Awards Foundation Inc. is a 501c3 non-profit organization whose mission is to promote gender parity at all levels of theatrical production, as well as develop, celebrate and advocate for the work of women in the theater. To those ends, the Lilly Awards Foundation produces a yearly awards ceremony called The Lilly Awards which recognizes outstanding contributions to the theater made by women writers, composers, directors and designers; designs and initiates programs to raise awareness of gender bias within the hiring and producing practices of theaters; endeavors to change the artistic choices of theaters and residency programs nationally; and conducts a Count (expected to be released this fall) which will determine how many women writers and artists are being hired and produced by American theaters of all sizes.