Hi, and welcome!
At a guess, you are reading this blog post because you’ve heard about the women and non-binary musical theatre bookwriter Wikithon I’m co-organising, and want to know why I’m doing it.
Great question! My husband asked me exactly the same thing, but added “and why are you doing it on a Monday so I have to leave work early to pick up the kids from gymnastics?”.
I’m doing it because REPRESENTATION MATTERS.
Wikipedia is still one of the main places that people go for independent, reliable information – and it’s a place where anyone with the right skills can contribute biographies of notable people, without any industry gatekeeping.
By creating and updating the pages of women and non-binary musical theatre bookwriters we’re making them visible to everyone, on the world’s free encyclopaedia.
The idea came from a moment of outrage. I was browsing a Wikipedia article about a show that someone had mentioned to me. I clicked on the name of the female bookwriter to find out more, and discovered that the link didn’t take me to a page about her. It redirected me to her husband’s page. That’s right… her husband’s page….
A little more poking around online (on the Dramatists Guild website this time) revealed that she’s an award-winning author and librettist with 6 musicals under her belt plus five novels, theatre commissions and plenty of other work independent of her musical theatre composing partner, who also happens to be her husband.
So this particular bookwriter is first on the shortlist to update.
Three other musical theatre creatives are helping to organise this Wikithon afternoon – Kate Marlais, Meg McGrady and Sarah Middleton – and Mercury Musical Developments are kindly hosting it as a member-organised event (join them, they are great!)
Hopefully that’s answered your questions, though I’m sure some will remain.
Like… is this a new niche hobby? Is this open access activism? Is this a novel and extremely tempting form of procrastination?
It’s all of these things.
It’s also a place where bookwriting nerds can come together with their laptops around a big table with free donuts and beverages to do something about the things that are enraging us.
Which is where we’re all at our happiest anyway, aren’t we?