Chapter 3: Great Roles For Women?

Chapter 3: Great Roles for Women?

“A great role can only emerge when female characters are endowed with the same complexity and powerful status that is awarded to male characters. But it is almost impossible to demonstrate female strength when the context is heterosexual romance.”

- Grace Barnes, pg. 64

*NINE**, the musical* by Maury Yeston

Nine is a musical, initially created and written by Maury Yeston as a class-project in Lehman Engel's BMI Music Theatre Workshop in 1973. It was later developed with a book by Mario Fratti, and then again with a book by Arthur Kopit, music and lyrics by Maury Yeston. The story is based also on Federico Fellini's semi-autobiographical 1963 film 8½. It focuses on film director Guido Contini, who is dreading his imminent 40th birthday and facing a midlife crisis, which is blocking his creative impulses and entangling him in a web of romantic difficulties in early-1960s Venice.

The original Broadway production opened in 1982 and ran for 729 performances, starring Raul Julia. The musical won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and has enjoyed a number of revivals.

“With so many plots of musicals revolving around men, female performers were thrilled when this show, with a cast of twenty-one women and one man, premiered on Broadway in 1982. And at first glance they had a right to be.”

Read the 1982 Times Article about NINE

"But a closer inspection of Nine reveals that the 21 women are only ever seen in relation to Guido, the leading man. It is his journey we go on, not theirs.”