There is a sad irony in hearing that a play about repairing relationships and rescuing people from racist ideologies through listening was shut down at a New Jersey high school less than 10 minutes into its performance, with silencing standing in opposition the act of hearing. The play’s title? Rift, or White Lies.

Currently in production at Luna Stage in West Orange NJ, playwright Gabriel Jason Dean’s Rift is the story of two half-brothers’ encounters while one is incarcerated, and their meetings after a long silence resulting from the convicted brother’s embrace of white supremacy. It is a strongly autobiographical story, echoing that of Dean and his own half-brother, who, as Dean explains in a playwright’s note, was sentenced to life in prison plus 40 years for murder and other felony charges in 2000.

The presentation at Montclair High was only to be of one scene of the play, its third, accompanied by discussion of the issues within it. Luna Stage artistic director Ari Laura Kreith, who commissioned and directed the production, said that the company approached several schools about bringing students to the show, but the offer to bring the show to Montclair High was a unique offer, as the school doesn’t typically have the funds to arrange school buses for field trips; the company also solicited outside funds to cover their expenses for taking the two-actor play to Montclair. Montclair High accepted Luna Stage’s opportunity, with a local news outlet reporting that it was targeted for students in the school’s Center for Social Justice program (CSJ) and the Civics and Government institute (CGI).

In an email chain with Montclair educators in advance of the school presentation, Kreith included a detailed synopsis of the play, as well as a content note regarding the scene which included: “White supremacy, physical violence (including a discussion of violence and staged injuries—no physical violence takes place on stage), mention of sexual violence (discussion/not staged), prison, discussion/examples of racism and sexism.”

Kreith was on hand for the Montclair presentation of Rift’s scene three, and verbally provided the same notice previously given to teachers in writing for the assembled students and teachers. Recalling the day, Kreith said, “I introduced the whole piece as being about a character who had become a white supremacist while in prison, and that the other character has choosen not to speak to his brother for 12 year and then resumes contact.”

Referencing Dean, who was interviewed with her, Kreith continued, “I talked about you in 2020 and your sense that maybe the moral thing to do was not to shut your brother out, but to attempt to re-engage and try to see what could be accomplished by listening and talking. I definitely talked about how he became a white supremacist in prison that the piece was about your journey to try and to shift that.”

Despite the advance cautions, Kreith describes a series of rapid events unfolding in the span of perhaps ten minutes once the scene began by her account, the timing corroborated by the participating actors. An email request to Jeffrey Freeman, the school’s principal, for an interview received no response.

Very quickly after the start, Kreith says that someone came to get her saying the performance needed to stop and bringing her straight to the principal. According to Kreith, one teacher believed that the actors had spoken the n-word from the stage and raised an alarm, though the play does not contain the epithet. When the teacher spoke with Kreith and Freeman and was assured they had misheard, they seemed satisfied.

Nonetheless, when Kreith returned to the auditorium, she almost immediately witnessed a different faculty member getting on to the stage in order to stop the show. Matt Monaco, playing the character referenced in the script as the “inside brother,” recalled the moment saying, “Blake [Stadnik, playing the outside brother] and I are in the middle of the scene. It’s getting to the point where we are starting to get into a deep conversation about James Baldwin. The scene ends in a type of catharsis. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get there. But we were working our way towards that and the teacher jumped on the stage and is filled with some passion and concern. She says, ‘I’m sorry, we need to stop.’ Blake and I exited the theater out into the hallway.”

Stadnik described the moment adding a personal detail, saying “I’m actually legally blind. When I’m on stage, really, the only person I have any semblance of seeing is Matt. So I’m very focused on him. But you can kind of feel when the audience is there with you. You could tell that there were several students – I mean, many actually more than several – who were sitting forward, engaging. When it was stopped, I was just confused. I wanted to make sure that because I can’t see it, I wanted to make sure everyone was okay, because we are dealing with some intense topics. And if anyone has experienced these sorts of things in real life, I wanted to make sure that they weren’t having any sort of traumatic event.”

Monaco concurred with his impression of the student response, saying, “I was feeling quite moved and touched by the active listening. I’ve performed for high school students before and this was a completely different experience. They were engaged. And I even looked at some of them, eye to eye. They were in it.”

Monaco said that the teacher who had mounted the stage continued to speak after the actors had exited into the hallway, but that only partially hearing what was being said, and prompted by a student who came into the hallway to express upset over what had happened, he felt compelled to return to the stage.

“I was driven to walk out there,” he describes, “and just apologize for any confusion or concern that may have entered the room. I apologized to her. I said, ‘I’m sorry for barging in here. I just want to tell everybody what this play’s about, where this was going.’ I couldn’t leave that way. I had to go back out there and explain what this what this play is about and where we were headed before we were silenced.”

Kreith said at that point she and the actors were told they must leave and did so. It’s her understanding that conversation may have continued in the auditorium, but she and the actors were not privy to it.

Subsequent to the presentation and its abrupt cutoff, Luna Stage has offered complimentary tickets to any Montclair High students wishing to see the entirety of Rift, and she says that several have begun to take her up on her offer. The two actors, Kreith and Dean, in conversation, were clearly struggling with the experience.

Kreith immediately attributed the problems to a lack of communication. She believes that while the email chain arranging the presentation included a number of teachers, not all of those who brought their students on Monday were part of that communication.  Kreith suggested that the cutoff came from “a moment of panic.” They agreed that what has happened must be an opportunity, as the presentation intended, to open up communication both on the topic of the play and for opportunities like their presentation to remain available at the high school.

After listening to the actors and director recount the experience, Dean, who was not present at the school and relied on various reports, including one on a local news site, said his perspective on the incident had changed.

“I’ve moved from my anger to having sympathy for this person. This person who’s an educator who is –in the time that we’re living in, in the in the in the world that we’re living in – struggling with what kinds of conversations can I am I allowed to have with these kids? The idea of suddenly having to contend with white supremacy, childhood abuse, trauma – all of that puts that body in a place of fear puts, that body in a constricted place, rather than an embracing place. So I can understand that. But at the same time, if we could have gotten to the end of the scene, perhaps some catharsis could have occurred.” Both Dean and Kreith were emphatic that what transpired should not provoke a situation where teachers or administrators are demonized or penalized, only that something positive come out of a difficult moment.

The Luna Stage cohort has, to date, not been told exactly why the performance was stopped, but what is evident from their retelling is that while the school admirably chose to bring in work that raised important issues, it appears to have not properly contextualized that work in advance for students and teachers, resulting in misunderstanding and silencing. The school now has a responsibility for transparently addressing what occurred and making certain that the shutting down of ideas, on the page or in performance, doesn’t become an accepted part of their pedagogy. Better internal communication between the administration and teachers is essential.

Nonetheless, even in truncated form, Rift made a connection that showed the students were more than mature enough to handle the content. Kreith shared one email she received from a student, which read in part, “I saw part of the performance yesterday while in school and was very disappointed when it was abruptly stopped. I feel like the play reflects the reality of the world we live in, I thought the actors were great, and overall I really enjoyed the part of the performance we got to see. A group of us would like to see the show Sunday at 3:00pm. I don’t know exactly how many people yet, but I thought I would just reach out to make sure there are seats available. Apologies on behalf of my teachers for cutting your performance short and thank you for allowing us the opportunity to see what we missed.”

While his half-brother may not know about the incident at Montclair High, he is fully embracing of the play. Dean related, “He sent the guys an opening night message, to say, thank you, thank you for this work.”

As for his brother’s white supremacist beliefs, Dean says, “He has moved away from it. He’s moved away from the ideology, and he’s moved away specifically from acts of violence in prison. The rift that existed between us has been mended as a result of this project, of writing this play. The play leaves us with ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow,’ but he knows about it and has been changed by it as have I.”

“There is more than one way to burn a book,” wrote Ray Bradbury, in an afterword to his novel Fahrenheit 451. “And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”

It is no small irony, consequently, that Bradbury’s classic tale of book burning, written in the wake of Germany’s affinity for book burnings leading up to and during World War II, finds itself banned at times in the present day. Book challenges and resulting book bans may not send a plume of smoke into the sky, but the goal is the same: to make it difficult for people to be exposed to certain ideas, to control what they may learn and think. Another classic of thought control, George Orwell’s 1984, often finds itself alongside Bradbury’s novel where such censorship takes root. Both appear on PEN America’s dataset of some 5,800 books banned in US schools between July 2021 and June 2023.

There are multiple compendiums of banned books in schools that have been developed by different organizations. In addition to the expansive list from PEN America, The Washington Post studied trends within book challenges numbering roughly 1,000, drawn from 150 school districts during the 2021-22 year, publishing their results in a multistory report on December 23. Days earlier, on December 20, the Orlando Sentinel listed 673 books removed from classrooms in Orange County, Florida this year alone, primarily due to new Florida laws which require school media specialists to remove books with pornography or so-called “sexual conduct.”

The 673 books from Orange County described many of the same trends as those summarized by the Post and PEN: young adult books, books with LGBTQIA+ content, books by authors of color. Among the authors whose works were placed into review were Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood, Gordon Parks, Ovid, Marcel Proust, William Styron, Kurt Vonnegut and Alice Walker; among the perhaps more unexpected titles are Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.

It’s impossible to know what books are in Orange County schools but presumably the number and range is considerable. US News says the district serves over 200,000 students and has 91 middle schools and 60 high schools. That said, it’s not unreasonable to expect that the source of the challenges matches the profile ascertained by the Post in its study, which revealed that 60% of the book challenges came from only 11 people. 

Within the 657 books detailed by the Orlando Sentinel, it’s worth noting that a small number of plays were placed under review. They are, in alphabetical order by author:

Four Plays by Aristophanes

Dance Nation by Clare Barron

The History Boys by Alan Bennett

The Bridges of Madison County by Marsha Norman and Jason Robert Brown

The House of Bernarda Alba by Federico Garcia Lorca

The Collected Plays by Lillian Hellman

M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang

The Beauty Queen of Leeanne by Martin McDonagh

Sweat by Lynn Nottage

Equus by Peter Shaffer

The Food Chain byNicky Silver

That’s right: in Orange County, Florida, students currently can’t read three Tony Award winners for Best Play, as well as a major work by a Pulitzer prize-winner, let alone a collection of plays by one of the earliest major dramatists in world history. There is no indication as to the specific reason why these books have been withdrawn or what universe of books these were drawn from. Is the list so short because the district hasn’t provided schools with a representative sampling of play texts or because the individuals lodging complaints simply haven’t focused their attention in that direction?

Curiously the significantly longer PEN list for 2022-23 doesn’t show any dramatic works, suggesting something in their methodology may be at play, though prose works by writers who are strongly affiliated with theatre can be found, including Alan Cumming, Tim Federle, Lupita Nyong’o, and Adam Rapp; a manga edition of Hamlet also appears. If for some reason PEN has extracted dramatic works intentionally, then they have done the field a great disservice, since the challenging or banning of any text must be brought into the light.

The presence of play texts in school classrooms and libraries is essential, because even in districts where drama has escaped the censors’ eyes, there simply are too few production opportunities for students to be exposed to the breadth of dramatic literature. Incidents of production censorship make the news intermittently, but my own workshops reveal how many titles are refused for production by school officials, and yet more aren’t even proposed by teachers who fear blowback for even suggesting them.

In the wake of the Orlando Sentinel article David Henry Hwang wrote on the social media platform Threads, “Proud to have my play banned in Florida! When the MButterfly movie was banned in China in the 1990s, this led to everyone there wanting to see it. Remains to be seen how Floridians react.”

Nothing would be more gratifying than to find that bans only increase the popularity of the works under fire, sending students to public libraries and bookstores to seek out the forbidden fruit. If that were the case, we’d see authors clamoring to be banned. But once a book is banned, even if the ban generates attention, time passes and attention eventually fades, while the book remains unavailable as part of an educational experience, whether in a classroom or in a school library.

As expansive and valuable as all three reports are, those from PEN and the Washington Post are surely not fully representative of the full extent of book challenges and bans across the country, since they rely on various forms of public records releases, external submissions in response to requests, and direct discovery through interviews. As with so many such cases, they still must be looked at as the tip of the iceberg and, when it comes to dramatic works, as largely insufficient, except to highlight the degree to which a relatively small activist group of narrow-minded people want to dictate what literature can be accessed by young people who are inquisitive, broad-minded and in search of thoughts and stories beyond those that have passed some manner of purity test invented by unqualified individuals on censorious crusades.

As the Sentinel and the Post note, challenges don’t always result in bans and some works may yet be restored to school shelves. That’s why the only response is to support the books and the opportunity for expansive learning – and to watch for where theatre is being silenced, be it in performances, or just as text on shelves in schools.

On November 13, following close to three hours of public comment by more than 60 individual speakers, each allotted up to three minutes to speak – the vast majority of whom vigorously supported the drama students and questioned the process by which decisions were being made in the Sherman school system – and more than two hours of closed session, the board of the Sherman TX Independent School District voted unanimously that the original script and cast of the musical Oklahoma! should be allowed to proceed at the high school.

This follows a week and half in which the school’s administration initially informed parents and then students that no student would be allowed to perform any role where a character’s gender that did not align with the gender the cast member were assigned at birth. While this affected as many as 20 students according to statements at the meeting, the decision was widely interpreted at being focused specifically at Max Hightower, a trans male student who had had been cast as the secondary character of Ali Hakim, a role from which he was now being removed.

That decision, announced on Friday November 4, was followed on Monday, November 7 with a statement that the school was now reviewing the text of Oklahoma!, one of the most popular musicals in US high schools for more than a half-century, for material which was inappropriate for high school performance.

On November 11, late on a Friday afternoon, the school announced that there was an alternate Oklahoma! script that would be performed, one which would be acceptable for all ages. That was in fact a cut-down one-hour version of the musical which was intended for pre-high school performances and audiences with short attention spans. A statement to this website from Concord Theatricals , which licenses Oklahoma! for performance, confirmed that the district had applied for the rights to the alternate version, but did not say that such rights had been granted.

Coming after more than five hours of meeting time that went well past 10 pm, the following resolution was adopted by the school board by unanimous decision: “As the board has not adopted a board policy regarding the casting of students in theater productions or performances, I move that the board direct the superintendent to reinstate the original script of the musical Oklahoma at Sherman High School and cast that was assigned as of November 2, 2023.”

School board president Brand Morgan then went on to read a statement on behalf of the school board as follows, “We want to apologize to our students, parents or community regarding the circumstances that they’ve had to go through to this date. We understand that our decision does not erase the impact this had on our community. But we hope that we will enforce to everyone, particularly our students, we do embrace all of our board goals to including addressing the diverse needs of our students and empowering them for success in diverse and a complex world. The board is committed to uphold its ethical duties to including being continuously guided by what is best for all students in our district.”

The more than five dozen speakers at the meeting ranged in age from high schoolers to grandparents, and included speakers who identified themselves as lifelong Sherman residents, residents who had moved away and returned later in life, students matriculated at Austin College in Sherman, parents and siblings of current students and more. Several speakers identified themselves as gay, queer and trans.

The Austin College students each spoke to their personal experiences, but all shared and reiterated the same concluding statement when it came their turn: “I demand that the school board upholds its self-reported goals V & VI by supporting LGBTQ students. I demand the school board allow Sherman High School to perform ‘Oklahoma!’ and all future shows in its original form with students cast in roles they earn. I demand the board maintains SISD theatre department as a welcoming and inclusive space.”

A number of speakers cited statistics about rates of suicidal ideation and suicide among gay and trans young people and charged the school administration and board with ignoring such concerns. One speaker bluntly asked, regarding the school’s gender policies, “Are you telling me that instead of writing biographies in playbills you would rather be writing obituaries?”  

One Austin College student who spoke at the board meeting, identifying themselves as a trans male, stated that theatre is a safe space but that Sherman itself is not. They went on to say that by standing up at the meeting, “I am risking coming out to my entire homophobic family because this is a hill I will die on.”

This does not, however, mean that all discussion on the matter of future productions and casting is necessarily over. One school board member asked for additional conversation on the matters raised at the meeting, stating, “I would like to request a special called meeting Friday at noon of this week here at the central office boardroom to continue this discussion with the board and with legal counsel.” Board president Morgan said that such discussion would be scheduled within 72 hours.

No announcement has yet been made regarding the performance dates for Oklahoma!, originally scheduled for next month.

The Pick-a-Little, Talk-a-Little Ladies of River City, Iowa ain’t got nuthin’ on the district administrators and school board of Sherman, Texas.

Don’t remember the Pick-a-Little Ladies? They’re the gossipy gaggle of book banning biddies who take time out of their perpetual puncturing of their neighbors’ foibles to rail against the presence of classic works by Chaucer, Rabelais and (horrors) Balzac in the local library.

The Sherman Independent School District honchos are the hypersensitive monitors of morals who have found shocking sexuality and impermissible profanity in the beloved 1943 classic Oklahoma!, widely acknowledged as a turning point in the development of modern musical theatre.

Oklahoma! has been performed tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of times around the world on stages large and small, professional, amateur and academic. It was the most popular musical on high school stages in the 1960s and 70s and the second most popular in the 1980s and 90s, demonstrating that thousands of teachers, principals, superintendents and school boards have found it to be a wholly acceptable, even ideal, show for their students across decades.

One key difference in the two aforementioned groups: the Pick-a-Little Ladies aren’t real, but instead are characters in another beloved musical, The Music Man, created by Meredith Willson to puncture the hypocrisy of small-town, small-minded self-appointed arbiters of what is right and wrong. The Sherman ISD folks are alive and well imposing their ridiculous regulations on what was heretofore an unassailable standard of the American theatrical repertoire.

When we last left the Sherman ISD crew, they had announced that the already-cast high school production of Oklahoma!, slated for performance in December, was being recast, specifically targeting any student who had a role of the opposite gender from their own. This edict came down in order to displace Max Hightower, a trans boy who had been cast in the secondary role of the traveling peddler Ali Hakim. It seems that the Sherman ISD leaders couldn’t countenance a trans boy acting a role in a comical love triangle, so they invented new rules to stigmatize every gay, trans, non-binary, and queer student under their thumbs, even managing to displace some of the straight kids as well.

But one week after their ham-handed actions raised an outcry from local students, parents and, increasingly, the media, the Sherman ISD brain trust announced late Friday afternoon that they had found a solution to this problem of their own creation. Declaring the script and score of Oklahoma! that has delighted generations on stage and film to have been intended for “older audiences,” they patted themselves on the back for moving forward with an alternate Oklahoma!, “a musical that showcases each student’s talents while also being age appropriate, with no concerns over content, stage production/props, and casting. By utilizing a new version that’s age appropriate, sex will not be considered when casting the new production. Students will be able to play any part, regardless of whether the sex of the character aligns with the sex of the student assigned at birth.” 

How did they achieve such a magical transformation of such trash as one of the important musicals in the history of the form? In a move that would have made the Pick-a-Little Ladies proud, they have opted produce the Oklahoma! Youth Edition, a version of the show so cut down that in contrast to the original, which according to the licensing house Concord Theatricals runs more than two hours, the young people of Sherman will be required to only be on stage for an hour. Yes, the Oklahoma! Youth Edition might be more appropriately called Highlights from Oklahoma! (Minus All the Not Very Naughty Bits).

Taking a closer look at the Concord website, one can easily find that this truncated Oklahoma! being produced at a high school wasn’t designed for high schools. The site states, “In this adaptation for pre-high school students, the content has been edited to better suit younger attention spans.” There’s even one character from the show who has entirely disappeared, as the number of male principals has dropped from 6 to 5. Without immediate access to the Youth script, one can surmise that the missing man could well be the ill-natured (and perpetually ostracized) Jud Fry, that fly in the ointment in the otherwise placid settler community.

What’s evident is that in their rush to eradicate anything that goes against their desire to keep Sherman safe only for cisgendered heterosexuals, they have decided to infantilize the entire student body by giving them the opportunity to perform and see not Oklahoma! but Oklahoma!-lite, a skeletal script reworked to take an impressionable pre-teen from song to song without the slightest spectre of sensuality, and to be sure, it’s pretty slight in most Oklahoma! productions to begin with, sublimated into song and dance.

Heaping a dollop of self-congratulation on themselves in yesterday’s statement, the Sherman ISD spin doctors “thank our community for the care and patience they have shown as we have navigated these difficult circumstances.” There was nothing difficult until these folks decided to make it so and they haven’t demonstrated the slightest care for a significant number of their students, least of all Max Hightower, who found love, acceptance and understanding everywhere except from the Sherman ISD leadership.

As for patience, segments of the community shouted that they can say no from the moment the decision came down one week earlier. The outcry forced the cadre that exerts their will over Sherman students to bumble into another decision which only reinforces their fear of high schoolers encountering anything that doesn’t advance the America seen in such sitcoms as Leave It To Beaver and Father Knows Best. That happens to the be the very same era in which the film of Oklahoma! was a box office hit. 

With a Board of Education meeting looming in Sherman on Monday evening and the board itself thinking it has tied up everything quite neatly, they are likely to learn during public comments that their alarm over a masterpiece of musical theatre and their disdain for children they’re supposed to be building into smart, compassionate adults has fallen flat. They would do well to listen to the wise words of the character of Aunt Eller in Oklahoma!, mildly profane but also utterly humane, who seeks to quell a community conflict with this lyric, which along with the entire script and score won a Pulitzer Prize in 1944, a declaration that all people are created equal, with equal rights:

I’d like to teach you all a little sayin’
And learn the words by heart the way you should
I don’t say I’m no better than anybody else,
But I’ll be damned if I ain’t jist as good!

Update, November 11, 5 pm: In response to questions regarding the situation with Oklahoma! at Sherman High School, the licensing house Concord Theatricals provided the following statement, reproduced in its entirety:

“Equity, diversity, inclusion and freedom of speech are key tenets for Concord Theatricals as champions of authors and artists. We encourage all producing organizations to consider diversity and inclusion in their casting choices. 

Concord Theatricals supports our licensees and all who work on their productions, so long as they adhere to their contractual agreement and do not enact unauthorized content changes.

Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! is a classic title that has been performed in its entirety thousands of times across the U.S. since it debuted 80 years ago, including in High Schools. Concord Theatricals additionally offers a popular 60-minute Youth Edition designed especially for young performers; we can confirm that Sherman has now applied for this version.”

UPDATE: For the resolution of this situation following a school board meeting, posted on November 14, click here.

Background of lead image photographed at the Museum of Broadway’s Oklahoma! exhibit in New York.

“It was brought to the District’s attention that the current production contained mature adult themes, profane language, and sexual content,” reads the communication from Sherman High School in Sherman, Texas. “Unfortunately, all aspects of the production need to be reviewed, including content, stage production/props, and casting to ensure that the production is appropriate for the high school stage.”

The scurrilous, sensual, and shocking show in question? Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! The date of this communication? November 6, 2023.

It would be easy to simply find this ludicrous. Oklahoma! is, after all, widely considered to be the first musical of the modern era, a landmark of marrying song and story. It was a long-running smash that was seen as representing the best of America in its original run, which overlapped with World War II; there are many stories of military inductees seeing the show just before they were sent over to the war in Europe, or as the first thing they did when the returned stateside. Oklahoma! as Americana may gloss over the subject of how the territory was opened to white settlers by banishing the indigenous residents, but it’s worth noting that the musical was faithfully based on a play by Lynn Riggs, a member of the Cherokee nation.

The widescreen movie in 1955 starred Shirley Jones and Eddie Albert among others, and has been played and replayed on television, home video and streaming seemingly ever since. There have been multiple Broadway revivals and it’s popular outside the US as well; over two decades ago, a production at London’s National Theatre made a star of an unknown Australian named Hugh Jackman.

Oh, and Oklahoma! was the single most popular musical in US high school theatre nationally in the 1960s and 1970s, before falling into the second position in the 1980s and 1990s. That’s the salacious tract that Sherman, Texas officials feel they need to clean up for public consumption. Presumably they will next be coming for that cesspool of sin, Annie. Mind you, Sherman High has produced Oklahoma! at least twice before, the most recent production coming less than 10 years ago.

Looking deeper into the school’s statement comes this peculiar language: “There is no policy on how students are assigned to roles. As it relates to this particular production, the sex of the role as identified in the script will be used when casting. Because the nature and subject matter of productions vary, the District is not inclined to apply this criteria to all future productions.”

What’s that about precisely? It’s about the fact that last week, the powers-that-be at Sherman decided that students must be cast according to the gender which they were identified by at birth, and in the case of the trans male student cast as Ali Hakim, that meant Max Hightower was being removed from his role with zero clarity as to whether he would receive any other role, as most assuredly wouldn’t get one according to his gender identity. This despite the fact that Oklahoma! has been open to cross-gender casting for a number of years, as well as multi-racial casting, so it is not trapped in the limitations of the era in which it was first produced by rigid rights holders.

Philip Hightower, Max’s dad, retells the story of how this casting edict was shared with parents, saying that he received a call last Friday from the school principal, explaining the new policy that was being imposed. After this brief call, Hightower immediately tried reaching Max’s guidance counselor, so the student might have some immediate support when informed of the decision. Reaching a different counselor, as Max’s was unavailable, Hightower asked for a copy of the new policy. Hightower says the counselor seemed completely flustered and had no idea where to find such a thing.

“I do want to stress this,” says Hightower, “because I think it really shows the current state of education, especially in Texas. This guy wanted to empathize with me, like really on a personal level. He would start all these sentences about caring and never finishing. The one that sticks out the most is he said, ‘You know, man to man,” and there was a long pause. ‘Father to father.’ He never finished. They’re terrified. They’re terrified of this situation, they don’t know what to do.”

Hightower said that on getting home from work, he expected to find a profoundly upset Max. But that wasn’t the case.

“I realized I should have thought better because I know Max,” said Hightower. “Max is a fighter, The first thing he said to me when I came in was something along the lines of, ‘Can you believe this shit?’ I said, ‘Max, what do you want me to do?’ I told him, I’d reached out to the local news. And he said, “I want to fight.”

While initially, going into the weekend, local media was slow to pick up on the story, but after Hightower and his wife posted their accounts of the situation on social media, they were met first with a groundswell of local support, and then local outlets began to do interviews. As of Tuesday afternoon November 7, The New York Times was on the case.

But does Hightower think the decision can be altered?

“No,” he flatly declares. “You don’t know these people. These people here have the majority and they know it. And they don’t care. I mean, we’ve seen it every day.”

Brett Boessen, parent of another Sherman high student, his daughter Lucy, who was cast in the play, says the recent actions have given him a new perspective on what’s happening in his community.

“This one decision,” said Boessen, “more than any other decision that I’ve seen, that the school has made in the past year or two, has got me really thinking that school board elections are important. There are some people on the board right now who need to be removed when the next election happens in the spring. This just is not a way to protect and nurture students in the school system. It sends absolutely the wrong message to students about how the school board thinks about them and everything else.”

Boessen, who was speaking as a parent but happens to be the chair of the Communication, Media, and Theater Department at Austin College, was also skeptical of what might be done.

“I would hope that the parents would be upset about this in sufficient enough numbers to be able to make some kind of change,” said Boessen. “But I’ll be honest, I think a lot of people have real fears right now. Maybe some of them are unfounded. But maybe some of them are realistic about the kind of pushback and reprisal that people make on social media, but then through social media in the real world might have against people who speak out and who say something about these kinds of policies. So I’m not holding my breath that the community will stand up and say, ‘Absolutely not, this is this is wrong, get this fixed right away.’ I don’t know that that will happen. Even if there is a kind of majority sentiment, I think a lot of it is probably silent.”

As if the motivations of the school administration and board were not self-evident in their attempts to suppress and deny trans identity, it’s worth noting that the Sherman school district has adopted a program called “Stand in the Gap.” It is described on the Sherman Independent School District website in detail, but the following stands out:

For this year, we’re going a step further and asking our church congregations and community to “Stand In The Gap” for us. Stand in the gap between the challenges of this world and our staff and students through prayer.

The gap is ostensibly the place where families and communities have “failed,” taking in loco parentis far beyond its intent to a place of superseding the parental role. This alignment of church and state, as opposed to separation, suggests that Sherman has taken a theological approach to education, going on to outri ght ask for prayers for staff and students. Even though one of their tenets is “protection from harm,” such protection is being decided selectively, presumably something that can be lain at the feet of the school superintendent, Dr. Tyson Bennett, who signed the Stand in the Gap policy. They appear not to be concerned about protecting trans and queer students, or students who just want to find a good part in a show.

There are some dark elements of Oklahoma! that director Daniel Fish emphasized in his radical reworking of the show for a production that played to acclaim in New York and London, and on national tour. But high schools aren’t pursuing that interpretation. Someone has suggested to Sherman High officials that such darkness must be rooted out, such as the wanton Ado Annie, who perhaps kisses a few too many men, or the scantily clad women tacked up in Jud Fry’s shed. In keeping with the time period in which it was written, Oklahoma! is decidedly chaste, if not completely sanitized.

In their statement, Sherman High suggests a production will go forward, after these troubling elements have been addressed. But they should be reminded that they can’t simply alter the work to suit their tastes, and of course they’ve really brought these elements up as a smokescreen to distract from their retrograde attitudes about student identity.

Will a production happen, delayed by a few weeks? That remains to be seen, and there’s a school board meeting at the beginning of next week, but according to Phillip Hightower, a significant number of cast members have already quit the production. So Sherman may not only clean up Oklahoma!, but eradicate their school musical. Perhaps that’s what they really want. But that’s not what’s best for their students. That’s why voices in Sherman, when it comes to transphobia and censorship, contrary to Ado Annie’s plaintive cry, must say “No!”

For an update on this post, read “Oklahoma! Santized for Your Protection” posted on November 11. Click here.

For the resolution of this situation following a school board meeting, posted on November 14, click here.

The irony is almost too neat: a college student plans a program of songs from musicals that have faced censorship – and with less than two days’ notice, her university informs her she has to take it off-campus.  That’s the situation that confronted Friends University student Caitlyn Fox earlier this month as she was in final preparations for “The Shows They Don’t Want Us to Produce: A Study of Censorship Throughout the History of Musical Theatre.”

The performance was Fox’s senior recital, part of the academic program for musical theatre students at Friends, “a Christian University of Quaker heritage” in Wichita, Kansas, according to the school’s website. Fox is also a student in the honors program at Friends, and the recital would then inform her still-to-be-written honors thesis, on the same topic.

The performance was scheduled for 6 pm on Saturday February 12 in the campus’s Riney Fine Arts Center. However, an email from the school’s president of academic affairs and dean of the faculty, Dr. Kenneth Stolzfus, sent at 11 pm on Thursday, February 10, informed Fox that, “We have received significant complaints from staff members and donors…People who have worked at and/or supported the university for a long time are considering withdrawing their support if we move forward with having the recital at Friends.”

As a result, wrote Stolzfus, to both Fox and her father, Russell Fox, who is a political science professor and head of the honors program, “We can’t host the recital on campus. I think the best option at this point is to move the performance to an off-campus location and to not require Friends staff members to be involved in the performance.”

There had not been any announcement of the recital’s contents, so complaints were presumably prompted solely by the topic/title, which had been announced, consistent with all other student arts events according to Fox, on the school’s Facebook page. The very idea of a program of songs from shows that had at one time or another faced censorship was sufficient to provoke some manner of outcry and for Stolzfus to favor anonymous voices over the academic work of a student. He wrote to Fox that part of the issue was that the Facebook announcement, “gave the appearance that the university is sponsoring the event.”

The program, according to Fox, included “Aquarius” from Hair, “Maybe This Time” from Cabaret, “Unworthy of Your Love” from Assassins, “The Dark I Know Well from Spring Awakening, and “Gethsemane” from Jesus Christ Superstar. She thought the most risqué songs in the program were probably “Schadenfreude” from Avenue Q and “My Unfortunate Erection” from The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Potentially more button-pushing songs such as “Sodomy” and “Totally Fucked” were not included. Her academic advisors were aware of her plans, as she had reviewed the program and why she had chosen certain songs.

Stolzfus himself was also apprised. Fox said she met with him on Monday, February 7, just three days before he pulled the rug out from under her.

“I had met with him to just go over some final things before the presentation,” she explained. “He asked me if I had my disclaimer. I told him yes. I sent him my entire script for the show, including all of the information that I was going to mention and he told me good luck with my performance and that he hoped it went well.”

Fox said she had previously met with Stolzfus in June 2021 to outline the project for him, thinking it might be rejected. She described being pleasantly surprised in that meeting that he was, in her words, “incredibly supportive of the project. He told me that I 100% had university support, as long as I wrote a disclaimer – as long as we made it very aware that I would be covering more mature topics, as long as I made it abundantly clear that I was not doing this to shock and offend and I was doing this project for educational purposes.”

Arts Integrity reached out to Friends University through the school’s public relations and communications manager Laura Fuller, via a contact page on the university website, with advance questions and requesting an interview with Fuller or Stolzfus. There was no response.

With the help of members of the theatre faculty, Fox did secure an off-campus location 24 hours before the designated time, performing instead at Plymouth Congregational Church in Wichita. There were some expenses with the move which became Fox’s responsibility, rather than the school’s. She said the result of the turmoil was that it may have in fact generated a larger audience for the program, which featured Fox and five of her classmates.

Fox’s interest in the topic was born of an incident at the Wichita high school she attended – even before she was a student there. She said that a production of Jason Robert Brown’s 13, circa 2009, had been shut down a month into rehearsals because of complaints over two boys kissing.

Fox said, “I grew up in this environment, going to high school, hearing these stories about what happened to the fellow students. Then I went on to college, to Friends, which being a religious institution, we’ve always had to toe the line between what we were allowed to do and what we weren’t. That just continued to fuel my interest in researching more and more about these kinds of situations, where schools or universities or wherever have censored material. I really wanted to talk about why I don’t think that’s okay, why I think that’s detrimental to arts education.”

The Friends University website, while referencing faith, does not suggest a doctrinaire approach to education that would specifically foreshadow censorious behavior by the school. “As searchers and learners, we support curiosity and research, and assign great value to diversity of experience,” reads the information on the site’s About page. “As people who value such diversity and openness, we approach new situations and people with good will and humility.”

In the absence of any response from the university – a Wichita Eagle article on February 12 did not quote Stolzfus beyond his email and Laura Fuller said she couldn’t comment on student academic issues – the student body and the arts community at large are left with the distinct impression that student progress and academic freedom proved less important to Stolzfus and Friends than the voices of unnamed donors and staff.

In his email, Stolzfus attempted to make a distinction between “a delicate balance between promoting academic freedom and entering into territory that alienates and offends other members of the community.” Fox says that given the limited circle of people who knew her program in advance, there is no way that donors could have known what would be performed, yet Solzfus acknowledges their influence and supposed alienation.

Speaking five days after the off campus recital, Fox says, “This entire situation – though it was incredibly stressful, and not at all how I expected my senior recital and senior thesis to go – it’s why I wanted to do this project in the first place. I also think it says a lot about, unfortunately, where arts education is, where we value more about the people who can threaten to pull funding over the content and the artistic expression that we could be exploring as students in our arts education.”

Fox still has to write her thesis on theatre censorship and now, thanks to the school’s actions, she will be part of her own study. The university might well just give her the highest marks already, because thanks to their actions, she has already shown that censorship is ever-present, even when a student merely sets out to examine it.

Given the disastrous reduction in live theatre that has marked the pandemic since March of 2020, one might assume that incidences of high school shows canceled over content concerns would have been curtailed as well. But as lockdowns have been lifted and as theatre educators have devised creative means to produce safely, production shutdowns have followed. However, the reason for the cancelations that have risen to public awareness is not typical of what has come before.

Over the past decade, when school theatre productions have been shut down, it is typically because of parents or community members who object to the content of the shows, with particular sensitivity to the representation of LGBTQ lives (Rent, The Laramie Project), the slightest hint of sexual activity (Almost, Maine), violence (Sweeney Todd), or the occasional profanity. The object has ostensibly been to “protect” the students – those in the show, their classmates, and even their younger siblings from engaging in such topics. The intent has been suppression of subjects and themes, all of which the students are most assuredly aware.

What of the recent cancelations?

In late February, McCaskey High School in the Lancaster PA school district canceled the spring production of Hairspray because of students who were troubled by language they found offensive regarding Black and Hispanic characters and people with disabilities. An email from a group of students to their principal was forwarded on to the superintendent, who made the decision to cancel the show.

In March, The Chadwick School, a private school in Palos Verdes Peninsula CA, shut down a planned production of the school edition of Avenue Q. A message from the administration to parents said that while “the musical had the full support of the administration…elements of our community felt uncomfortable, based on principle, with some of the tone, timing and content of the show.” The message went on to say, “The original work has been praised for its irreverent and provocative approach to themes such as race and sexuality,” but that while “theater is an effective forum to explore important topics such as these, we also believe it is important to respect the perspectives of the individuals who raised concerns.”

This week, the Hunterdon Central Regional High School canceled plans to produce South Pacific because staff and students were concerned about the show’s treatment of race. According to NJ.com, citing the district superintendent, “the district believed [South Pacific] was ‘important and relevant,” but also that “the district was aware the musical featured stereotyped characters and dialogue, and originally intended to offer a concert version that ‘significantly reduced the dialogue’.” There is no indication whether or not Concord Theatricals, which licenses the Rodgers & Hammerstein catalogue, had approved of the concert-style cutting of the show.

While the specifics at The Chadwick School are somewhat vague in the administration’s statement, and it’s unclear where the objections originated, at McCaskey and Hunterdon the source is apparent: it’s students who wanted to see the shows shut down or replaced, specifically because they felt that portrayals and dialogue were insensitive and offensive to often marginalized communities. These incidents echo what transpired at Ithaca High School in 2018, when students pushed for the shut down of a production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame after a white student was cast in a role that had been played in prominent professional productions by a BIPOC actor.

In the wake of the heightened awareness surrounding discussions of race engendered by the Black Lives Matter movement, and perhaps influenced by the advocacy of such groups as We See You White American Theatre and the Broadway Advocacy Coalition, it should not be surprising that high school students are not simply aware of, but motivated by, such concerns. Given that the racial reckoning of the past couple of years mirrors the societal upheaval around civil rights and, on its heels, youth culture in the 1960s, activism by high school students is far from surprising, especially when one considers the greater sophistication of teens in comparison with those over 50 years ago.

When the Ithaca students spoke out in 2018, their efforts yielded death threats over their fight for representation, spurred on by right-wing sites like The Daily Caller. This week, Fox News, already deeply engaged in spreading the canard of cancel culture in relation to Dr. Seuss and the Warner Brothers characters Speedy Gonzales and Pepe le Pew, have embraced the South Pacific situation as merely another example of what they decry, namely the ostensible disappearing of material that they consumed in the days before distinct communities (women, BIPOC, disability) communities were afforded a voice to express the offense given by certain portrayals and the increasing willingness of both individuals and corporations to avoid slurs.

Adults of a certain age may not even understand where the offense lies in the Dr. Seuss books withdrawn, or appreciate how an aggressively romantic skunk might echo sexual harassment or worse. Some of that comes from being brought up in an era with different mores or only remembering the barest outlines of material they consumed decades ago. They may further be confused by the weaponization of these stories being treated as examples of yet more “political correctness,” another catch-all term, like “cancel culture,” both applied to denigrate present-day sensitivity to and concern about works which once punched down at certain people with impunity.

There is no question that given only a cursory glance, the suspension of certain high school productions looks like censorship – it is, in the case of public schools at least, government officials ending a form of expression. When it rises to that level, it is very difficult to countenance, even when done in order to avoid perpetuating harm through uncritical representations of misogyny, racial bias and the like.

So the first question to be asked of the faculty and administration is, “What was the rationale for selecting this show?” “How were its dialogue and themes considered in light of present-day viewpoints on how some works may have grown dated?” “Does this material still say what it intended back in its original era?” While some of these questions may seem absurd with such modern material as Avenue Q or Hairspray, it’s worth remembering that both are around 20 years old. South Pacific is considerably older.

The next question is whether, in recognizing what some may view as problematic material, any effort was made to contextualize it for students and even the larger community. Some may object to the use of the n-word in certain texts, but does that mean the works of August Wilson shouldn’t be studied or performed in a high school setting? How, and by whom, students are led to understand certain material can have a significant impact or the repertoire open to schools. While Wilson’s estate will not permit the alteration of his texts, that is not always the case for all works in high school settings. If a handful of words render a work ostensibly unperformable, the author(s) or their estate(s) may grant dispensation for certain changes.

That it was the student version of Avenue Q that raised objections in California is interesting in that the text and lyrics had already been altered to render it more fit by some for school performances. Perhaps it is due for another review. Yet at the same time, it may reach a point where the bowdlerization of the material renders it so unrecognizable that it becomes a different work altogether. The degree to which that does or does not occur is entirely at the discretion of its creators.

It is important to note that unlike some high school shows that were shuttered specifically to suppress ideas like racial, gender and sexual equality, the decision in Lancaster over Hairspray was not shrouded in short, blunt statements. Instead, the superintendent, Dr. Damaris Rau, wrote a blog post fully explaining her decision. She wrote in part:

I also believe context matters. Our country has gone through some horrific events, including the murder of George Floyd. I know many of our students participated in the social justice marches this summer. We know mental health issues of adolescents have grown and intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic. The language and portrayals in the show risked further discomfort—and potentially trauma—for students facing the harsh reality of racism in our country. In addition, many families bring their younger children to see our musical.

In light of this current environment, the calls for social justice, and the written concerns of the students, I believe this is the best decision at this time.

In emails with Arts Integrity, Dr. Rau elaborated that in addition to specific dialogue in the show, the students had expressed concern that Hairspray is a white savior narrative. She went on to talk about the in-school training around implicit bias, equity, and diversity, which began two years ago.

The objections to South Pacific may prove most surprising because it was written specifically to decry racism – witness “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught.” But in its portray of Bloody Mary and Liat weren’t they also deploying stereotypes that have become more and more obvious as racial awareness has evolved over the past 70 plus years? Those who believe vintage anti-racism texts can’t possibly become problematic need only look to another musical from roughly the same era, Finian’s Rainbow, which used blackface in order to fight racism.

Nothing herein should be considered to advocate for the alteration of texts to avoid any and all offense; we will not benefit from the homogenization of culture. The state of copyrighted texts is the sole purview of creators or their estates, and even if changes are authorized individually or enshrined globally, it is vital that the original versions are retained and preserved, since we should never be comfortable with the permanent erasure of history. But if the Seuss estate decides that it’s works no longer are fit for purpose and withdrawn from commercial circulation, that is their absolute right and represents an understanding of societal change, not cancelation but consideration.

Consideration of texts for school theatre is essential as well. Just because educators have always loved a show from their youth doesn’t necessarily make it the best choice for today or for their target audience. By the same token, a flight to safety will not serve either, because theatre is indeed a place where hard issues should be on the table, but only when properly contextualized for those putting on the performance and those who are intended to see it.

It serves no one to have shows shut down. Before a show is announced or auditions held, work must be chosen in the very best interest of the students, with the goal of a fair and equal society, work which does not demean but educates and even lifts up. When it comes to how works of prior eras are perceived today by their students, even teachers may have to be carefully taught.

Taking extreme care during the pandemic, particularly when New York was the first and hardest hit in the earliest days, my journeys beyond my apartment and the immediate surroundings put significant limitations on my truest hobby: photography. Because I remained in Manhattan for all but two brief excursions beyond its borders (one lasting only a few hours, the other overnight), my range of locations and subjects was necessarily narrow.

But I was compelled to take pictures whenever I could do so safely, and while the majority of my time was spent in Riverside Park and Central Park, I did venture onto the subway and to a few other neighborhoods occasionally for a change of pace. Photography offers me two great diversions: the first is the sport of actually spotting and capturing an image, the second is the surprising relaxation I find when I concentrate on optimizing the photos for public consumption.

So on a site that I began in order to express myself in writing, I now want to offer up only images, which may be familiar to those who are friends or followers on Facebook and, to a lesser degree, to those who follow me on Instagram, where I try to not repeat too much from FB. In the earliest months of the pandemic, I photographed a lot of dogs while the dog runs were closed, posting more than 100 of them on social media, but I have refrained from including them here.

Here’s to a 2021 where we can live without the threat of widespread disease and travel more freely to see those we love wherever they may be – and to capture images, whether mental or digital, wherever we go.

All photos © Howard Sherman

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All photos © Howard Sherman

“So friends, this is the way we were in our growing up and in our marrying and in our doctoring and in our living and in our dying.”

Pull out a copy of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town and, depending upon the vintage of the edition, if it’s old enough, you can find that line. That’s how it read in the 1938 hardback edition, which was drawn from the original rehearsal manuscript. But at this moment, with theatres dark, with people fearing illness and falling ill, the ultimately excised “doctoring” as a key element in our lives holds unfortunate resonance.

While we cannot presently take refuge in theatres, people have done so for countless years, and in America, since 1938, Our Town has proven to be one of the most enduring of works. Contrary to many people’s misapprehension of it as a valentine to a bygone era, the play is a deep meditation on mortality. It starts dropping hints about its true concerns, beyond baseball games and ice cream soda-fueled romance, virtually from the start, when we’re introduced to one character by immediately learning about when he will die. 

That character happens to be Doc Gibbs, who so far as the play tells us, is the only medical professional in the fictional town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, where the story is set. He practiced in an era before personal protective equipment was standard issue, before private health insurance and Obamacare – and he ministered to everyone equally. The play begins with him having just delivered twins in the less affluent part of Grover’s Corners that the audience never sees.

The mundane, commonplace events of the play’s first two acts give way in the third to a metatheatrical and metaphysical exploration of what comes after earthly life. However, it is explicitly non-denominational and non-religious, ultimately designed not to have us contemplate what comes next, but rather how much we must appreciate what we have in life, even if it seems inconsequential, and perhaps at this moment, frightening.

For those who have never encountered the play, Emily, the play’s female lead, is lost to a medical crisis. She realizes only when it is too late what she has been forced to leave behind. As we shelter in place, as we quarantine, as our medical professionals work tirelessly and selflessly without all of the resources they need, it’s hard not to think about Our Town, which speaks so directly to the futility of regret and the value and interconnectedness of every aspect of life.

It also speaks to community, with the lives of the people of a small town inextricably interwoven, through education, through prayer, through dining, through sports, through singing. There’s not, we’re told, much culture in the town, but there’s great appreciation for the natural world, for the weather, for that which we often take for granted. Wilder constantly has his characters looking to the skies. Even children contemplate their place in the universe.

For those already chafing at the strictures of an invisible scourge, we long to return to our daily lives as they have been, consumed with getting back to work, to school, to income, to not fearing the proximity of others. When we do, and we will, but not without pain and loss, perhaps we will have a newfound pleasure in clocks ticking, food, coffee, sunflowers, and new ironed dresses, to recount Emily’s memories, as well as in live performance and greeting friends and strangers alike. Wilder had to imagine passings and an afterlife to get us to contemplate these things.

Now, more than ever, we are all Emily Webb. Biology is writing the story from which we must learn. As a character says in Our Town, “My, wasn’t life awful – and wonderful.”

My book, “Another Day’s Begun: Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in the 21^st Century,” will be published in February 2021 by Methuen Drama.

The communication announcing the cancelation of a production of the musical The 25^thAnnual Putnam County Spelling Bee at Hyattsville Middle School in Maryland could not have been more terse.

Unfortunately we have decided to cancel the Spring Musical dates of May 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th.

Additionally, we will hold a parent meeting after spring break, Tuesday April 23^rdat 4:30pm in Mrs. Gee’s Room to address next steps and to answer any of your questions, comments, or concerns.

The letter was signed by Genese Gee-Schmidtke, the Hyattsville Middle School Theatre Arts Director. The signature included the tagline, presumably common to all of her communications, which reads, “Respect Art, Create Art, Live art…Do good!”

Inquiries regarding the cancelation to the office of Dr. Monica Goldson, who holds the title of Interim CEO at Prince George’s County Public Schools (in lieu of the more typical title of Superintendent), which includes Hyattsville, received the following reply:

Thank you for contacting me concerning the cancellation of the play at Hyattsville Middle School. Staff spoke with the Principal and listed below is what actually took place.

Teachers expressed concern given the extended use of profanity in the play even though it was play was identified as PG13 appropriate. The supervisor for Performing Arts, was then requested to review content during which time it was decided that the play should be cancelled since copyright laws did not permit the change in language when she reached out to the company.  It was then deemed more appropriate for high school and not middle school.

A letter will be crafted and sent home to the school community this week.

In addition, we will work with the central office Creative and Visual Performing Arts team to create a process for approval of plays prior to students practicing and preparing to ensure this does not happen again.

The 25^thAnnual Putnam County Spelling Bee is the comic recreation of a student spelling bee. It ran on Broadway from May 2005 to January 2008 and received a Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for Rachel Sheinkin, as well as a Tony for Dan Fogler who played one of the student competitors. It has widely been produced since, however for school productions, the lyrics of one song, “My Unfortunate Erection,” have been revised to “My Unfortunate Distraction” to remove the obvious sexual connotation.

According to news reports, the Hyattsville production has been in rehearsal for months, and as Gee-Schmidtke’s brief communication indicates, the cancelation came over spring break, with the performances scheduled for the weekend following the return from break. Presumably, Gee-Schmidtke did not cancel her own show, but rather was communicating the decision of others above her in the school or district hierarchy.

With the material most obviously problematic already revised and implemented for the Hyattsville production, precisely what concerns remained? A report from WJLA TV references a statement from the communications office for the district, saying that a review of the script yielded, in WJLA’s characterization, “concerns surrounding profane language, sexual innuendo, and several lines in the play that could potentially be viewed as racist.” Coverage of the Tuesday meeting in The Washington Post characterized school officials as citing “a number of concerns — with racial humor, sexual innuendo and what one described as some ‘cuss words’.”

Arts Integrity has written to the CEO and the Hyattsville principal, as well as the communications office asking for those specific examples. As of publication time, the only response received, from Raven Hill in the district communication office, read, “I will follow up with you later today.” This post will be updated with that response upon receipt.

It has been widely rumored online that the main concern about the show pertains to the characters of the two gay dads of one of the student characters. Schools spokesperson Hill was quoted by the Post as saying, “I know that there was a rumor and a concern, but we’re not seeking to remove gay characters, nor was the play canceled because of gay characters.”

James McGonnigal, an area resident who does not have a child who is a student at the school, but attended the meeting, characterized the conversation in the meeting in an e-mail with Arts Integrity, writing:

The meeting last night was not only filled with contradictions to the statement made earlier in the day about reasons for the production’s cancellation. The meeting began with Principal Thorne reading the county’s prepared statement and followed with questions and replies. During the questioning from parents and community members, the Principal and County representatives first attempted to blame MTI for not allowing the changes being requested.

McGonnigal went on to write:

There was more discussion of the list of requested changes, this time from Ms. Gee – the director of the show. One parent asked for that list to be shared and they said it would take a few days to compile it. And then I asked if the director could confirm that the inclusion of gay parents was not on the list of requested changes. After replying “Well, there were several requested changes made and we just want to make sure that we’re offering a show that’s appropriate for all ages.” When I asked again, “Can you confirm that the inclusion of gay parents was not a concern brought to MTI,” she replied “No, I cannot confirm that.”

McGonnigal has set up an online petition in support of the play going forward.

In a video recording of the start of the meeting, the school principal, Thornton Boone, reads a prepared statement which includes making a distinction between MTI school edition scripts, which he says are prepared for high schools, and Broadway Junior editions, which he cites as being for elementary and middle schools, noting that there is no Broadway Junior edition of Spelling Bee. He proceeds to say, “Based on this information, it is recommended that this production not be presented by Hyattsville Middle School.” He then outlines the intention to develop a plan for the future approval of shows for the 2019-2020 school year and proceeds to cite the school’s adherence to policies against discrimination and harassment.

Boone goes on to recount a conversation between MTI and Ms. Gee-Schmidtke in which she was ostensibly told that any changes to the script would be in violation of copyright. He goes on to state that LGBTQ content was not the reason for the cancelation, and announces that in a June performance, students will present excerpts from prior school productions, including Into The Woods, Fame, Once on This Island, Romeo and Juliet and Annie.

The impression that no changes to the Spelling Bee text are permitted, even when properly requested, is rebutted by WJLA’s report, which also cites McGonnigal:

“There are a handful of ‘damns’ or ‘Jesus Christs’ that are in there, that could easily be cut out, I don’t think with any complaint from the licensing agency,” said Jamie McGonnigal, who says he is very familiar with ‘The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee’.

ABC 7 reached out to the licensing agency, Music Theatre International, and a spokesperson confirmed that they have accommodated similar requests in the past.

If gay dads aren’t the issue, if mild curse words can be altered with permission, what remains a problem with Spelling Bee? Again, the school district isn’t being specific. The most likely point of contention may well be a brief scene when one of the student spellers utters, “Jesus, can’t you come up with a harder word than that?” and Jesus appears to that student in a one-page scene in which he explains that spelling bees aren’t something he much concerns himself with.

If it is the depiction of Jesus which is a problem under the PGCPS guidelines, then presumably that is not a matter that would be any different in the high school than the middle school. Is this the “extended use of profanity” alluded to in an e-mail from Goldson to the Justine Christianson, president of the school’s PTSO? Are we to parse the language carefully to distinguish profane from what is often seen as its synonym, obscene?

There may be a solution at hand, namely that the show proceeds, despite losing days of rehearsal, with a “mature content warning” appended in materials promoting the show, as if anyone in the community isn’t now aware of such reservations on the part of the administration after major press coverage. The school and the district will reportedly issue their decision by tomorrow. But what’s worth noting is that the solution didn’t come from anywhere in the school hierarchy. Rather, it was proposed by a student at yesterday’s meeting.

It seems that Hyattsville Middle School’s leadership, and the district leadership, has an awful lot of work to do very quickly if they are to dispel both rumors and establish the clear facts about any censorious intent. They need to be transparent about what changes they’re requesting and to eliminate any sense that gay parents aren’t a problem and that their reasoning isn’t in any way arbitrary or that they have failed to seek genuine solutions.

But it also seems clear that in both this decision and their plans to implement a review process, which would likely only serve to reduce the variety of work available for performance at the school, they should listen to their students and include them in that process going forward. Because, with teachers often silenced in such cases, it seems the students may have the most creative ideas about how to solve problems, and get on with the show.

Update, April 24, 12 noon: Actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson, well-known for his role on the comedy Modern Family, wrote the following on Twitter shortly after 11 am this morning.

As one of the original “Gay Dads” in Spelling Bee & a hopeful future Gay Dad I am so annoyed by this. Pull it together Maryland Middle School. I’m sure there are gay students in your school. Think about how this is impacting them. What a disappointment.

He subsequently added:

The arts are so vital to our school system. They teach kids compassion, trust and team work. The arts build bridges between kids with different backgrounds and economical upbringings and they have always been a safe space for LGBTQ youth. The arts are NOT about discrimination.

Update, April 24, 4:30 pm: A letter from Principal Thornton Boone to the school community has announced that Spelling Bee will go on, however it is delayed by two weeks to make up for lost rehearsal time and with one less performance than originally scheduled. The students participating in the show will be required to have signed permission slips from their parents and students at the area elementary schools will not be invited to performances, which will be noted as being rated PG-13, adopting the movie rating nomenclature.

The letter repeats much of what Mr. Boone said at yesterday’s meeting regarding the show, including concerns about “profane language, racial jokes and sexual innuendo/content and its appropriateness for our young performers.” It reiterates that “the theatre licensing agency declined our requests to alter the musical, which led to our original decision to cancel the upcoming performances.”

While the letter states that, “There are no plans to remove the characters or references from the production,” it also states that on Friday this week, during two one-hour sessions, the school’s CPA Coordinator will be available “for any parent to review the script and suggest changes.”

Because the school has not provided the list of its original request for changes ostensibly made to MTI, which it claims were denied, it is impossible to ascertain what was actually asked of the company and through it, the authors of the show. In addition, if the school stands by the claim that no changes may be made, why is it providing parents with a platform to suggest changes, when it has no certainty that such suggestions may be acted upon. The school does not have the unilateral right to make changes, which it previously acknowledged, so what exactly is the plan of action going forward? As noted in the WJLA TV coverage, MTI has previously accommodated requests for changes, so why does Hyattsville paint them as intransigent, then suggest changes may be forthcoming?

While it is a positive step that the production appears to be happening with its LGBTQ content intact, Hyattsville Middle School and Prince George’s County Public School District remains opaque in both their specific concerns and verifiable efforts to resolve them with the licensing house. Mr. Boone writes, “We understand the anger, confusion and frustration over this matter.” If that is indeed the case, then perhaps he and his colleagues can do better in their communication now by fully documenting their actions, from beginning to end, instead of trying to placate everyone without getting to the root of the issues that have played out so publicly.