The outrage began before Manhattan Theater Club had unveiled its full 2015-16 season. Seven of its planned eight plays had been announced, all of them written by white men. The Internet was not amused.  On Tuesday, Paula Vogel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, criticized the theater’s artistic director, Lynne Meadow, on Twitter: “For a woman in theatre who attended Bryn Mawr, where is your sisterhood?” she asked. Others, like the playwright Kristoffer Diaz, dryly referred to the company’s stated mission of producing work “as broad and diverse as New York itself.”  “Would love to discuss strategies for approaching this goal,” Mr. Diaz said on Twitter on Wednesday.  The season, announced piecemeal since December, includes Sam Shepard’s “Fool for Love,” David Lindsay-Abaire’s “Ripcord,” Richard Greenberg’s “Our Mother’s Brief Affair,” John Patrick Shanley’s “Prodigal Son,” Nick Payne’s “Incognito,” Nick Jones’s “Important Hats of the Twentieth Century” and Florian Zeller’s “The Father.” But anger about the choices didn’t bubble up until this week, after American Theatre magazine noted the roster in a straightforward post on its website.  Ms. Meadow, whose company produces on Broadway and off, rearranged her vacation schedule to address the controversy in an interview, saying she was “very upset to think of the artistic community being upset.”  “I don’t deny the fact that this season is anomalous in terms of the percentages of diversity on our stages,” she added. “It’s just how the season came together.”  The playwright Zakiyyah Alexander — a member of the Kilroys, an activist group of female playwrights and producers that releases an annual list of recommended plays by women — noted in an interview that her own vociferous objections to the lineup had nothing to do with the quality of the work.  “These are really respected artists,” she said. “It’s not their fault that they have been put in the position to only be surrounded by white male playwrights.”  The season won’t consist solely of plays by men, as it turns out. After two days of percolating online discussion about her programming choices, on Thursday Ms. Meadow took the unusual step of announcing a production to The New York Times before all contracts had been signed.  “The Ruins of Civilization,” a futuristic world premiere by the British writer Penelope Skinner (“The Village Bike”), will run in spring 2016, with tentative plans to have Lila Neugebauer direct.  “Penny feels very strongly, as did we, about having a woman direct the play,” Ms. Meadow said.  That would bring the total number of female directors in the season — another sore point on social media — to two. Ms. Meadow, who is directing Mr. Greenberg’s play, is the other.  In the past decade, Manhattan Theater Club has had three seasons with zero female playwrights, but five, including 2014-15, in which at least half of the plays had a female author.  Over the last four seasons, Ms. Meadow said, 43 percent of playwrights and directors at the company were women and minorities. Of its 49 commissions in the past four years, she said, 28 went to women and minorities.  Even so, all of the plays in the coming season are written by white playwrights, which led Ms. Vogel, in an interview, to invoke segregation-era public facilities. “Would you drink from a water fountain that says ‘white’ above it because you can?” she asked.  Ms. Alexander suggested that Manhattan Theater Club’s inclusion of women and minorities in recent years had been a factor in the outcry.  “I think if they had not done that, there would be less criticism right now,” she said. “We’re sort of watching someone go back in time that was slowly moving forward.”  Correction: August 20, 2015 An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of a member of an activist group of female playwrights. She is Zakiyyah Alexander, not Zakiyyaah.  A version of this article appears in print on August 22, 2015, on page C4 of the New York edition with the headline: Amid Internet Outcry, Theater Adds to Lineup . Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
The company’s announcement of productions solely by white male playwrights led to protests on social media, followed by a change.