“WomenR” will be streamed once a week from Felicia Day’s Twitch account. Image: Frederic J. Brown/AFP
The Amazon-owned streaming platform Twitch is intent on promoting more diversity with a new show, “WomenR,” which launched on Monday, Sept. 28. The goal of the series is to present the experience of women working in different sectors of the entertainment industry. Guests will talk about their professional lives and the problems they have encountered in largely male-dominated working environments.
Eight episodes are planned
“Visibility equals possibility for me,” points out Felicia Day, the actress behind the project, to The Hollywood Reporter, “so you never know when you’ll stumble upon someone who really inspires you to take a leap in designing a board game or becoming a voiceover artist — it’s so important to be exposed to it, because often ideas don’t occur to us as people unless we sense the possibility of it.”
Actress Felicia Day (“Supernatural”) plays host to women guests from a range of horizons, professional streamers, games creators, showrunners, designers and voice-over actresses. The first show, which aired on Sept. 28, focused on the experiences of women pro-streamers. The first season of WomenR, which takes the form of a virtual panel, will run for a total of eight episodes. “Hopefully, you guys will like the show enough so that we can do more after that,” said Day at the beginning of the first episode which is still available on line.
The panel will engage in “frank and funny discussions” about women’s experiences in their professional fields. “This is an opportunity for me to not only highlight, but also learn from other women in different areas, and hopefully inspire other people to pursue careers in those areas”, explains Felicia Day, who intends to shake up certain sectors where sexist clichés still prevail. “I’ve seen a big shift into having more diverse storytelling, but I feel like the clichés still abound, and a lot of the people who are gatekeepers are very much locked into reinforcing clichés because they’re comfortable for audiences.”
“We want to show that we don’t always have to be secondary characters… For me, just the idea of a board game designer being a woman is exciting, and it’s exciting to introduce that to all viewers, whatever gender they are, to realize that they are enjoying the fruits of a very brilliant woman’s labor…. It almost normalizes the idea that gender doesn’t matter, it’s really about the creativity that resonates with you.” NVG
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