Responding to online criticism of the gender balance of Druid’s 2017 programme, Artistic Director of Druid, Garry Hynes, has issued the following statement:

I fully accept and continue to affirm my responsibility as an artistic leader, to work towards gender equality in Druid and in the wider theatre profession. That does not mean I believe that it is logical to expect that any one programme at any one time can have exact gender parity, much less any one speciality in any one progamme.
The Druid programme for 2017 includes two productions which have run on from 2016. The two new productions were in development since 2015 and early 2016. Real change will not be immediate nor can it be a simple matter of ticking individual boxes; it is not simple statistics. What matters is our commitment to real and sustainable change and the work we put in to making that change happen. Druid is doing this in every way it can including:
- commissioning new plays by women
- achieving gender balance across our panels
- producing plays which, although written by men, address honestly the situation of women in our society and present strong, interesting roles for women

Making a real difference takes time – quick wins alone are not the answer. As Lucy Kerbel says in All Change Please: A Practical Guide to Achieving Gender Equality in Theatre: ‘We should give ourselves permission to see change as a string of separate, achievable actions we can pursue, rather than one single Herculean task.’

2nd March 2017