I am tired.

I am tired of reading posts about “my rights” to a hobby that includes automatic rifles. You like guns, fine. But accept the fact that guns are dangerous and require strict regulations.

I am a teacher. I am tired because my job is hard. Don’t get me wrong, I love this gig, but it is hard work. It is emotionally draining, mentally challenging, and physically demanding. I am talking about a normal day here folks, and this past week was NOT NORMAL.

On top of all I do, I must also include drills where we hide in the theatre from a shooter. I must take time out of our day to discuss my students’ fears and concerns about their safety in our little town. I must plot with them strategies for when a shooter actually gets inside the theatre, what do we throw at them? I must remind them that if the fire alarm goes off to let me get to the door first to make sure there is no shooter out in the hall.

This last bothers me because normally I stay behind to look for stragglers and to shut doors. I must take time from my work to plan safety routes, and to devise strategies for my students for any given circumstance. What if someone is in the bathroom down the hall? What if it is lunchtime, which way should they run? What does gunfire sound like? What should I do first?

I can’t describe to you the silence that followed some comments about what to do if I, the teacher, do not return to the safe zone: “You shut the locked door and you stay quiet.” Yes, you forget about me and take care of each other, would you promise me that please?

The kids are terrified. Yesterday was even worse than Thursday, because of a threatening Snapchat, we were on alert. The phone lines were flooded with concerned parents, the halls had security and police patrolling. But you know what broke my heart? Sitting in my office working on my computer while I listened to our music teacher, a truly lovely man, kindly talking to his beginning level choir class, showing these young and frightened children how to cross the music hall to the band room as it is safer than the choir room.

As a teacher, I am privy to the emotional and mental health assessment of every student in my classroom. I am seeing more and more students suffering from debilitating anxiety and the label PTSD appears more and more often. THIS IS NOT OKAY.  It angers me that the rest of our country is so quick to judge kids without really understanding their motivations. Theatre teaches us to develop empathy, if only to understand our character and put on a better performance. I wish everyone was required to study theatre in school, if only to help them gain compassion – not just for others, but for themselves as well. Our country would be so much healthier for it.

Thank you so much, adults. On top of your own issues that plague my students thus making learning a difficult task already, you now have introduced terror into their daily classroom routine. Because of your inability to grow up and be responsible, unselfish and willing to sacrifice for others we are now living in this messed up, full of rage and extremely polarized country where children died because they attended school.

Rachel Harry received the 2017 Tony Award for Excellence in Theatre Education. She has taught theatre for 30 years at Hood River Valley High School in Oregon, and she also teaches at Columbia Gorge Community College. Much of this essay began as a Facebook post on February 17, 2018, following the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. It is reposted here by permission.

Donald Trump (Photo by Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons)

If I were given to cynicism, and if I thought I could get away with it, this week I would have submitted the same column as the one published on March 24 of last year. Why? Because we return to the same topic: President Trump and his antagonism of the arts.

The president has, for the second time in his presidency, submitted a budget to the US Congress eliminating funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Never mind that the new budget will balloon the national debt above and beyond the long-term damage done to the US by the tax cut passed in December – a plan that rewards the ultra-rich while penalising the rest of the country.

No, the president and his henchmen still want to make a statement against creativity, arts and scholarship. It would be a meaningless save in the context of the budget itself. But it’s catnip to those perceived as his core supporters.

Underlying Trump’s effort to wipe out the NEA, NEH and CPB is the fact he failed to do so last year. He’s hardly the first politician to use these entities as a political punching bag; they have long been convenient targets for the right who see them as pursuits limited to those who are politically on the left.

Certainly if the right, which always proclaims the value of free markets and self-sufficiency, wanted to prove that the arts don’t need federal support, they might have produced a conservative version of Sesame Street for commercial TV. Or perhaps we would have a wildly successful theatre company dedicated to works based on the writings of Ayn Rand and her acolytes. But as we know, that’s not the case.

Oh, sorry, but maybe I am getting cynical. It’s hard to stay fully positive when, in the 35th year of my career in the arts, I realise the NEA has been under some form of attack almost annually since at least 1990 – fully three-quarters of my professional life. Trumpism may have us on ever more heightened alert, but there’s never really been a moment when we could truly relax regarding this issue. If our community did, we were losing ground.

Nowadays, I get calls to action to defend funding for these tiny slices of the federal budget via e-mail, Twitter, Facebook and occasionally still from the post office. But I can recall the era when mail, phone calls and faxes – remember those? – were the organising tools of choice to face down these perennial assaults, whether they came from within the Oval Office or under the Capitol dome.

There’s no question that the efforts to minimise or eliminate these agencies have had an effect, since funding today is less than it was 25 years ago. Even with relatively steady funding of late, the net effect is to reduce the federal impact, since costs rise while the available monies remain the same. Should we hit a period of inflation, the impact would prove even greater, even if the numbers on the ledger remain the same.

All these efforts to wear down the agencies’ advocates must take its toll on the detractors too, right? But instead, each side plays its designated role, battling to, more or less, a draw.

Not to diminish the importance of the funding situation, but this exercise in political gamesmanship is almost like some vintage cartoon series, with antagonists fighting in endless variations on the same theme, only to take up their enmity again in the next instalment.

But fight we must. The identity of the wolf at the door may vary, but the goal is the same. The arts, the humanities and the public broadcasting outlets and their supporters cannot let the government wipe an entire professional discipline from its attention and funding programme.

This year, the battle even faces a new twist, since the changes in the tax code have reduced the tax benefits of charitable deductions for many citizens and the impact of that policy won’t be fully known until donations are tallied at the end of 2018.

And so we organise to hold back those who would overrun us. We make the case for our value spiritually, creatively and economically, as inventively, persuasively and as loudly as possible.

While some political pundits have already suggested the president’s budget is dead on arrival and Congress will assemble something at least marginally more saleable – to each other and to the public – we can’t take the risk that this is the year when our interests might get bargained away.

Yet again, to the barricades (to be very clear, not a wall). And to the phones, the computers and maybe even the fax machines.

If you’re under 50, you likely aren’t familiar with the work of comedian Bill Dana. His most famous creation, a character seen on an array of television shows in the 1960s – Jose Jimenez – has been largely forgotten, especially since Dana stopped playing the character (save for one exception) in 1970. But the Jimenez character was a comedy phenomenon, appearing on Dana’s comedy albums in addition to his many sitcom and variety show appearances. Fans of the movie The Right Stuff may remember one of the Mercury astronauts repeating his catchphrase – “My name Jose Jimenez” – while in the flight capsule, a detail straight out of Tom Wolfe’s non-fiction book, prompted by sketches in which Jimenez was a reluctant astronaut.

Dana stopped performing the character 47 years before he passed away in 2017, because of lobbying from Hispanic groups who found the slow-talking, slow-witted Jimenez to be a deeply offensive stereotype. Jose Jimenez would be joined in oblivion a year later by the commercial pitchman Frito Bandito, consigned to the same fate as Jimenez for the same reason: being a negative stereotype, in this case a rootin’-tootin’ shoot ‘em up villain with a taste for Frito-Lays’ corn chip snack and a theme song that included the refrain, “I love Frito Corn Chips, I love them I do/I love Frito Corn Chips I’ll get them from you”. The Frito Bandito was as genuinely threatening as the Hamburglar and as authentic as Eli Wallach’s character in The Magnificent Seven, which is to say not at all.

The now rarely seen or heard Speedy Gonzalez

It would take much longer, until 2002, but when the Cartoon Network acquired the rights to the Warner Brothers cartoon family, they withdrew the Speedy Gonzalez cartoons from TV for yet again the same reason, stereotyping. For trivia fans it’s worth noting that both Speedy and the Frito Bandito were voiced by the famed Mel Blanc. Speedy, for those unfamiliar with him, was regularly portrayed as an anomaly in his Latinx community, with the rest of the rodent characters portrayed as slow talking and slow moving.

So with the mass media relegating the afore-mentioned Latinx stereotypes to archives years ago, it’s disconcerting to learn that a small, family-operated theatre north of Salt Lake City, the Pickleville Playhouse, has been producing a series of original shows over the past decade featuring the leading character of “Juanito Bandito”, written and portrayed by the Caucasian actor TJ Davis, sporting a black wig, sketchy accent and absurd handlebar mustache. Among the shows featuring this character have been, in chronological order, The Hanging of El Bandito, Bandito Rides Again, Who Shot Juanito Bandito?, The Hanging of El Bandito Reimagined, Bandito Rides Again Reimagined, Who Shot Juanito Bandito Reimagined, Juanito Bandito in the One with the Monkey, Ready, Fire, Aim starring Juanito Bandito and Love & Death vs El Bandito. Oh, there’s also the seasonal favorite, Juanito Bandito’s Christmas Carol.

In the peculiar ways of the internet, word of Davis’s character has recently begun popping up in theatrical feeds, inevitably in conjunction with charges of stereotyping. The tweets were most likely prompted by a joint letter, originated by Diana Burbano, dated February 9, from some 40 theatre artists to The Grand Theatre in Salt Lake City, a large venue in Utah’s capital where one of the Bandito shows recently played. Davis initially responded in a sustained blog post, since withdrawn, in which he defended the character, saying it wasn’t a stereotype because the character’s accent is so poor. His shorter, revised post reads, in part:

Two days ago I wrote a post trying to explain some of my points of view regarding the Bandito character.  I’ve chosen to take it down because even though I thought it might help those who had expressed concern (people who have never actually seen what we do), it seems now that a blog post is not the appropriate avenue.

I am absolutely interested in doing the right thing in every aspect of my life.  I believe that racial stereotyping is a big problem in the entertainment industry today.  I don’t want to be a part of that problem, and I do not believe that the Bandito productions are a part of that problem.

JB is not a stereotype of any race or culture.  I do not darken my face with makeup nor have I ever done so in order to make him appear to be Latino.  Bandito has been Spanish (from Spain) from the beginning.

In the post that remains, Davis seems to suggest that his character, who he claims is from Spain, isn’t making fun of Latinos. While the character’s iconography seems drawn from The Magnificent Seven and its ilk, he’s really splitting hairs. He may believe that he’s not making fun of Latinos, but even if we were to grant him that, he does appear to be making fun of Hispanics. Yes, there’s a distinction, but for the purpose of addressing stereotyping, it’s a fairly academic one. A feature story in the Herald Journal of Logan, Utah notes that the character had its origin when, “Davis, who had seen first-hand in Guatemala how non-native speakers ‘butcher’ Spanish decided to try something different. ‘I came in one day and said, ‘What if I do this with a Spanish accent?’”

TJ Davis as Juanito Bandito (screenshot via YouTube)

Davis notes that he doesn’t darken his skin, but seems unaware that one need not employ makeup to deploy brownface, blackface, yellowface and their ilk. His self-admittedly poor accent is more than enough of a tipoff as to which ethnic group he’s referencing; one of his Instagram posts includes the ad line, “We’re adding a chow. Jou’re welcome.” The open captioning on a video from one of the productions features the dialogue, “You chooted at him because he lunched at you?” Pure Jose Jimenez material.

He further protests that he is being criticized by people who have not seen what he does. While it’s probable that the rumble of unhappiness is coming predominantly from people who haven’t made it Utah to see the character in action, there’s plenty of video currently online to get a sense of what the portrayal is like. Though Davis’s earlier post indicated that he had Latino friends who told him the character was fine, that’s unlikely to be the prevailing opinion among those he doesn’t already know, as confirmation bias in his existing circle won’t be a factor.

Davis says he wants to do the right thing in every aspect of his life, writing, “Our mission in everything we do is to create fun, clean family entertainment to help our communities create lasting memories with those they love.” Let’s take him at his word, with the assumption that his communities include Latinx and Hispanic patrons, or potential patrons. Perhaps he’s unfamiliar with Gonzalez, Jimenez and the Frito spokes-cartoon, since they’ve been out of circulation for almost a half century.

Mr. Davis, the right thing is to not make a career of a character that is instantly recognizable as a stereotype, even if he is intentionally a badly drawn version of one. Utah may be a state that is largely Caucasian – as of 2016, per the US Census Bureau, the category of “White alone, not Hispanic or Latino” represented 79% of the Utah population, the next largest category is “Hispanic or Latino” at 14%. But that’s not an excuse for ignoring the minority for the amusement of the majority. In fact, it might argue for even greater sensitivity, since the families that attend the Pickleville shows surely don’t want to be teaching the lesson that it’s fine to laugh at people who are different than you, especially when they are in the minority and overmatched by the dominant ethnicity. Even when intended benignly, brownface is an offense. Your saying the character is not a stereotype doesn’t make it true.

Some might see it as unfair to impose this sensibility on a small family playhouse, but it seems that Juanito Bandito has been expanding his territory. Davis’s Instagram account promotes recent holiday shows featuring the character playing beyond his home of Garden City, with gigs at the Eccles Theatre in Logan and the Grand Theatre in Salt Lake City. There have also been student performances for elementary schools, indoctrinating children into the harmless good fun of ethnic ridicule at the earliest opportunity.

Sure, some Utahns may mourn the mothballing of an apparently beloved character, but there are those who miss Speedy and Jose as well. Letting go of the past is part of growth and progress, and it seems high time for the Pickleville Playhouse to advance past humor out of the 1960s, especially since such contemporary musical styles as rapping are already part of their performances. After all, if Davis is committed to not offending the Latinx community, in Utah and beyond, he probably doesn’t wan’t to upset the Hispanic community either.

The 30th anniversary of The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway (Photo by Jeremy Daniel)

By celebrating its 30th anniversary on Broadway last week, The Phantom of the Opera marked what now seems a never-ending series of milestones, having run longer than any show in Broadway history.

The seeming permanence of Phantom may mask its achievement, though it has an eight-year lead on the revival of Chicago and nine years on The Lion King. Even if it were to close tomorrow – and that’s not about to happen – it would take the better part of a decade before either of those surpassed it, if they could.

Congratulations are due, of course, to Andrew Lloyd Webber, but also to Richard Stilgoe, Charles Hart, Harold Prince, Gillian Lynne, Cameron Mackintosh and so many others.

There is a certain irony to Phantom’s stupendous run on Broadway, in the West End and around the world – as pointed out in Harold Prince’s autobiography Contradictions, recently revised and expanded as Sense of Occasion.

In the original 1974 book, Prince predicted that no show would ever run as long as Fiddler on the Roof, which he produced. In Sense of Occasion, he allows that he was wrong, with many shows having surpassed Fiddler – A Chorus Line, Rent, Les Misérables, Wicked and the aforementioned productions to name a few.

Last summer, Prince was quick to contradict a question I asked him about whether shows were being engineered for longer runs. He cited the international market for musicals, and for tourism, as the engine behind the longest-running shows.

What was happening wasn’t a creative decision, but rather a product of changing and expanding opportunities. Shows were running longer because ever more people wanted to see them, the new modes of marketing and because there were successive generations of new audiences.

Certainly long-running shows existed before Phantom and its brethren, but they weren’t in theatres as large, they didn’t play in as many cities, and they didn’t necessarily tour as extensively.

In the West End, The Mousetrap has run for longer, but it is a play, not a musical. In Paris, a revival of Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano has been running at the tiny Theatre de la Huchette for some 60 years. In the late 1980s, I saw a production of The Three Sisters at Moscow Art Theatre that had been in the repertory since the 1940s. It may yet still be there for all I know. The Fantasticks ran for 42 years Off-Broadway at the Sullivan Street Playhouse.

Coming back to Broadway, the expanding list of long runs is something to marvel at, especially if you are among the fortunate who invested in the shows.

But just as the growing markets, according to Prince, expanded the sense of what a Broadway show could achieve, they have also fundamentally changed Broadway itself. I have heard more than a few people remark that they have been in the Majestic Theatre, home to Phantom, only once – or not at all – in their lifetimes.

That is obviously due to the Majestic having had only one show playing for 30 years; the previous tenant, 42nd Street, ran for six years before that.

I should note that Phantom has been around long enough that I saw it on a discounted student ticket. (Though it opened a while after I graduated from university, the friend who bought the seats was only six months past graduation.)

It is possible to applaud Phantom, Chicago and The Lion King and all of those who have made them possible and bask in their success, but also temper that appreciation with caution.

While only a handful of shows each decade will even approach Phantom’s phenomenal run – Hamilton seems poised to be the latest to join that esteemed pantheon – and maybe some will run for only a decade, the impact has already fundamentally changed Broadway.

With a finite number of theatres, hovering at about 40 despite the openings and closings, these hits end up restricting the opportunities for new Broadway work. It’s great news for theatre owners, but limiting for works that might truly benefit from the awareness and opportunity that Broadway affords as a result of its legacy.

Unlike some countries, where we read about purpose-built theatres for each new extravaganza, Manhattan affords little space for new venues, especially in the theatre district.

The Shubert Organization announced, not so long ago, that it would not pursue a new theatre in the area because the costs were prohibitive. Meanwhile, the new venues coming to Manhattan are performing arts centres, designed to house a variety of work.

Only if works can set up in other cities with populations and tourism that approach those of New York, and only if the media affords comparable attention to that devoted to Broadway, might we see an expansion of large-scale work.

Perhaps Chicago, Boston, Washington DC and Philadelphia, to name but four, could become home to long-term work that doesn’t need to play Broadway to ultimately reach vast audiences.

We must accept that the model has changed, as Prince noted, and so change the opportunities for production accordingly. Even leaving aside significant concerns about pricing and accessibility, Broadway’s own success may be limiting new Broadway-scale work.

“Bird on Bench” Photo © Howard Sherman

Of the many criteria one might apply when considering what makes a great teacher, I think it’s fair to say that the ability to see and encourage something in a student that they do not yet necessarily see in themselves would rank high on the list. While this is probably not possible for each and every student, nor every teacher, one often hears stories from successful people about a teacher who really helped them along on their journey of education and discovery.

As I contemplate my education, it turns out that the person who did this for me was not in fact a teacher, but the cantor at my synagogue, when I was probably in fifth and sixth grades. His mentorship was not of a religious nature, however, but rather a cultural one. It was he who took me to New Haven’s art museums and talked me through their collections. He also encouraged me to try my hand at writing, some rudimentary plays all adapted, sans rights, from existing sources. He went so far as to loan me his own electric typewriter to facilitate my writing, and it was mine until it was obvious to my parents that I should have one of my own.

I don’t remember any specific lessons the cantor taught me. Rather, he was the first person to see how I responded to the arts, and at an age when I was decidedly awkward and different from the majority of my classmates, he allowed me to feel that my interests were not odd. As is the case with so much in our childhoods, this mentorship may have only amounted to a few outings, but they loom large in memory.

“I Will Not Be Silenced” Photo © Howard Sherman

In contrast to this experience, the single most vividly remembered moment of my formal education came once I was in college. It was decidedly not a positive one. It demonstrated how potentially damaging the words of an insensitive teacher might be, though in my case, I largely shrugged it off, transforming it into a story of it defying authority, an anecdote I told and laughed about often.

I often tell people that I have absolutely no educational training in theatre, that all I know I have learned from experience. But there is an asterisk that I always append to that statement. While my university did not have a theatre major, there was a nascent theatre studies minor. While I didn’t pursue that course of study, I opted to take, of all things, a single scenic design course. The teacher was a visiting adjunct from a nearby university with a full theatre program; it was not a deeply practical course, but primarily a conceptual one.

This is where I should admit that I cannot draw. I am unable to translate what I see in my eyes through to my hands to create even a passable visual representation of the thing itself. I neither perceive nor judge space and distance well. When I would doodle during classes that failed to keep my full attention, everything was geometric, ordered, symmetrical. When it came to arts and crafts as a child, the ruler was my favorite tool.

“Death in Trafalgar Square” Photo © Howard Sherman

So when, in this college design class, we were asked to sketch out a few ideas, to translate text into a rough setting, I was, I acknowledge, pretty hopeless. I could posit sets of boxes, rectangles and triangles; there were often layers upon layers of steps. Having read about the tricks required to suggest perspective, my ever-present lines and angle might seem to recede towards the horizon.

One day in class, as the teacher reviewed and discussed each student’s work, he came to mine and, perhaps immediately, perhaps after a bit of thought, uttered the phrase I have never forgotten.

“You have no imagination,” he told me.

In the moment, I grew angry. This wasn’t meant to be a practical course but a theoretical one. If I had known I would be judged on my drawing skills, I would have never taken the class. How dare he say such a thing in front of the other students, cutting me down so publicly.

But as it happened, the small class of perhaps eight students was made up entirely of my drama club friends, many of whom I lived with off campus. So I didn’t have to speak up for myself. I remember, in particular, my friend Leslie, who has never suffered fools gladly, putting into words all that I was thinking, with my classmates, my friends murmuring in support of her. I don’t remember how the class ended that day, but neither Leslie nor I suffered from a poor grade at the end of the semester.

“Fulton Street Station” Photo © Howard Sherman

For years, literally for decades now, I have retold this story in order to demonstrate what a fool this teacher had been to me, and how my friends rallied to support me no matter the effect it might have on them. I have, at times, told the story with greater detail, so much so that the artistic director of a regional theatre stopped me only partway through the account to correctly guess the name of this educator, indicating that such pronouncements were not out of character.

Now jump forward some 30 years, to 2013, when I bought my first camera in many years, a digital single lens reflex camera, which has become a beloved possession. Unless I am carrying a totebag with my computer and papers for work, my “good camera,” is almost always with me. Thanks to the nonexistent cost of taking digital photos (in contrast to my days of shooting on film), I use it to record my wanderings around New York as well as my more significant travels. I have threaded through countless New York streets capturing architectural details from earlier eras, and repeatedly visited Times Square and Washington Square to capture images of the street life there. I have had the opportunity to do performance photography, a special challenge that marries my love of theatre with the exploration of what I can preserve in the moment. I have even been paid a few times for my photos.

Now, more than 40,000 frames later, I have come to a realization: that professor was not wholly wrong. The timing of his observation could not have been worse, and perhaps it would never be constructive, but he had semi-accurately noticed something about me. But his observation was incomplete.

What I lack is a visual imagination. My thinking is profoundly verbal, whether speaking, writing, or even creating. When I read fiction, I retain all of the particulars of characters and places the author has given me, but I see nothing in my mind’s eye. I form no mental pictures. The words engage me and can be vividly recalled, even recited from memory, but I do not take the imaginative leap to invent the visual.

“The Bird Man of Washington Square” Photo © Howard Sherman

Yet with photography, I can frame the world before me in what I hope are inventive ways. I can see in the ever changing panorama before me details that might startle, engage or amuse me, and then in turn share that viewpoint with others. I have taken photos of which I’m very proud, but even given a team of craftspeople, I could have never invented such scenes. I am not wired to do so. It is not a flaw. It is part of what makes me, as each of us are, unique.

Some 35 years on, I no longer harbor even a wisp of ill will towards that teacher, though I hope that he learned over time how much damage he could have done to me, and might have done to others. At the same time, I worry that my own ill-chosen words have at times had a similar effect on colleagues or employees, that they remember me for verbal ineptitude or emotional opacity, and that I will never know it so that I might never make amends.

But all I can do to keep trying to express myself as best I can, whether literally or through the frame of a camera and hope that however I capture or even transform the world through my perspective, it will serve to encourage others, instead of summarily shutting them down. There are countless ways to think, to transform, to share and to imagine and we should encourage each person to do so in their own way. Failing to do so reveals only our own limitations, not those of others.

“Taking a Ride” Photo © Howard Sherman

Ethan Slater and company in SpongeBob SquarePants The Musical (Photo by Joan Marcus)

‘Jukebox musical.’ For musical theatre purists, it’s a term of derision. For producers, it’s the promise of marketing the music of a well-known star, with songs that audiences already love and are happy to hear again. For songwriters, it’s a chance to have their work on Broadway, in some cases creating a new earning stream and in other cases even revitalising their careers.

But let’s forego our value judgments and even our commercial appraisals. What about the term itself?

‘Jukebox musical’ has been applied to a range of shows. Mamma Mia! used the songs of Abba in the context of a new story unrelated to the band’s history. Jersey Boys deployed the songs of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons in recounting the group’s own history. Rock of Ages featured an array of 1980s rock songs in an original story set in that era. In retrospect, some now even consider revues to be jukebox musicals, including Ain’t Misbehavin’ and Movin’ Out.

The number and – don’t scoff – variety of these shows reveals that we’ve been collectively using the term too profligately.

After all, jukeboxes initially were designed to hold a wide array of music to be selectively programmed by those with spare change. Their capacity grew when the devices switched from vinyl singles to CD albums. But the underlying result was typically eclectic, with the patrons of diners and bars serving as their own DJs, in the era before that meant mixing and scratching, mingling existing recordings with new beats.

So while the horse has already fled the stable, and the expansive use of the term ‘jukebox musicals’ is likely to stick, it makes the most sense with a show such as Rock of Ages or the new SpongeBob SquarePants musical, opening in just over a week’s time on Broadway. The latter show features a score by, among others, John Legend, Panic! at the Disco, Joe Perry and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, and David Bowie and Brian Eno. Yes, you heard me correctly.

That’s certainly a diverse jukebox but, it should be noted, most of the songs are original to the show (which I haven’t seen yet, as it’s still in previews), not tunes yanked from catalogues. Instead of mining the work of a single composer, the show opted for a variety of musical voices, rather than any singular style, yoked together by orchestrator and arranger Tom Kitt.

Another musical that deserves to be put in the ‘jukebox’ category, without judgment, would include Urban Cowboy, which combined pre-existing country tunes with original songs by Jason Robert Brown and Jeff Blumenkrantz.

So what might best serve as the proper nomenclature for those shows that take deep dives into the work of a singular composer or songwriting team? After all, we are in the age of personal music devices and streaming, where we commune with music one-to-one via headphones as we go about our day, curating our own soundtrack, with no jukebox required. The era of streaming subscription music services even negates the need, and market, for physical albums.

Even if the term is slightly old-fashioned, and I confess unlikely to catch on, I would place Jersey Boys, Mamma Mia!, Lennon, Good Vibrations, Beautiful, Movin’ Out and their kin under the rubric of ‘box-set musicals’, invoking those multi-disc packages that allowed both avid fans and budget-conscious newbies to really explore the work of a single artist or band.

It’s a vastly more accurate term for most of these shows, and even boasts its own – admittedly snarky – theme song, Box Set, from the band Barenaked Ladies. Some sample lyrics from said song:

“I never thought words that like product / 
Could ever leave my lips / 
But something happened to me somewhere 
/ That made me lose my grip / 
Maybe it’s a lack of inspiration
 / That makes me stoop
 / Or maybe it’s a lack of remuneration / 
I can’t recoup
 / But if you want it folks, you got it / It’s all right here in my box set.”

Does theatre have room for distinguishing between jukebox and box-set musicals? I think so. After all, they’re not going away, so we might as well give them their due. And if SpongeBob really hits, its multi-composer approach may prove very popular.

For producers, however, it will become ever harder to come up with new box sets, as all of the best-known catalogues are snapped up, for good or ill. Though, come to think of it, a Barenaked Ladies musical could be lots of fun.

Katrina Lenk and Tony Shalhoub in The Band’s Visit (Photo by Matthew Murphy)

If drama is, according to one of its dictionary definitions, “a state, situation, or series of events involving interesting or intense conflict of forces,” then one could say that several shows in New York right now – two of them being Broadway musicals – are undramatic.

The Band’s Visit, which opened last week, is the story of an Egyptian police band. Due to confusion surrounding the similar pronunciation of two Israeli towns (for those who don’t speak Hebrew), the band ends up in the wrong one and is forced to stay overnight in a tiny desert community with no hotel.

There are personal interactions, friendships are born, a hint of romance, but barely a whisper of the kind of Middle East conflict that fuels the play Oslo and so much conversation about that part of the world. Indeed, the Band’s Visit may be the most apolitical piece of fiction about the Middle East ever devised – which is, of course, its own kind of political statement.

Come from Away, which opened in the spring (full disclosure: my wife is one of the producers) is the story of aeroplane passengers bound for New York on 9/11 who were diverted to the tiny town of Gander, Newfoundland when the attacks resulted in the closure of US airspace.

Not unlike The Band’s Visit, this fact-based story is about people arriving in a location that wasn’t part of their itinerary and how they are taken in by the locals. Unlike what most might anticipate for a 9/11 story, the horror of the day and those after it are somewhat distant; the show does not seek to put its audiences through the pain of the events once again or consider the ramifications of terrorism.

In terms of significant action, very little happens overtly in these musicals. They are small slices of life, prompted by error or tragedy. But having watched The Band’s Visit twice (I saw its original Off-Broadway run as well) and Come from Away once, I can attest to the enthusiasm with which audiences appear to genuinely embrace the shows. I have a deep appreciation for the reminder of humanity’s best impulses that they evoke in me. But even trying to delineate a plot does them a disservice.

Jenn Colella and company in Come From Away (Photo by Matthew Murphy)

Also on stage in New York is Richard Nelson’s Illyria, a play based upon a slice of theatrical history; namely the earliest days of the New York Shakespeare Festival, now known as The Public Theater.

It focuses on a moment of crisis in the company’s early years, when it appeared that the primary director might be defecting. Yet, the show’s mood is one of consideration, reverie and even melancholy rather than the sound and the fury one might expect from young artists such as Joe Papp and Stuart Vaughan. In tone, it is as if the Apple family, from Nelson’s famed quartet of plays, were having dinner to discuss forming an amdram troupe.

While all of these shows were developed over several years, it is worth noting that these gentle stories of kindness, camaraderie, sympathy and decency have arrived at a moment when American life on the public stage is fraught with drama – a time when the moods of many citizens are often inflamed to anger or despair by a single tweet from the White House’s Oval Office.

While I have read that horror films are often popular in times of national crisis, that they offer a safe catharsis that provides a release valve for anxieties, these shows seem to be the opposite. They offer a respite from the onslaught of news and opinion, not by suggesting that we tap our troubles away like a light musical, but rather that we remember the things we share, instead of the things that tear us up or tear apart.

Tectonic Theatre Company’s Uncommon Sense (Photo by Joan Marcus)

Attending last week’s opening night of Uncommon Sense, a new play about people on the autistic spectrum, I was delighted to see the following message under the cast listing in the show’s programme:

“The production will be presented in a judgement-free and inclusive environment. At no point will anyone be shushed or asked to leave due to noises, movements, or behaviours related to a cognition or developmental disability. The Sheen Center is committed to welcoming audiences of all abilities and appreciates your support in that commitment.”

For a show about neurodiverse people, this certainly made sense and distinguished the production from relaxed performances. Those specifically designated performances will temporarily alter a production, particularly lights and sounds, to better accommodate audience members with autism, while making others aware of their intent.

While the show is running at the Sheen Center, it is a creation of Tectonic Theatre Project, the company known for creating such works as Gross Indecency and The Laramie Project.

I wondered whether this approach to audiences just applied to the run of Uncommon Sense, and whether it was a policy of the Sheen Center, of Tectonic or mutually determined by both. Will it apply to future Tectonic shows?

I asked Tectonic’s founder and artistic director Moisés Kaufman, who wrote: “There was never any question that this play was going to make its performance inclusive of the audience which it is portraying. The Sheen was on board with that from the very beginning. As for inclusion, it is a core value of the company. We want everyone to experience our plays and we will always strive to make that possible.”

Less than a week after I saw Uncommon Sense, I saw a second announcement regarding the welcoming accommodation of audiences with disabilities, this time coming from the Broadway League, representing its members who operate theatres on Broadway. By the summer of 2018, all Broadway theatres will have equipment in place to make captioning services and audio description available at every performance for any audience member free of charge.

Using voice-recognition software, the services will be automated so that shifts in timing from performance to performance will be matched by the services. For Broadway, this will signal an end to blind or low-vision audiences and deaf or hard-of-hearing audiences being offered only a handful of performances each year that accommodate them. For each new production, services will become available approximately one month after opening, allowing for new programming for each show.

Making theatre fully and consistently accessible for all of the approximately one in five Americans with a disability will remain an ongoing challenge. Disability, after all, is a vast catch-all phrase which encompasses a wide range of physical and cognitive conditions.

But if more theatres commit to inclusion as Tectonic has, if touring houses and regional companies follow the lead of Broadway theatres – and if funders at last recognise the necessity of supporting such efforts – not only will there be less stigma for audiences with disabilities, but a wider audience base will become available. Accessibility really can be a two-way street if theatres stop and think about it.

As a reminder, however, that theatre needs to focus on accessibility on both sides of the proscenium arch, so to speak, Uncommon Sense also featured a cast member with autism (the show’s married authors have an autistic family member as well).

Additionally, the Indiana Repertory Theatre’s current production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time features Mickey Rowe, an actor on the autistic spectrum, in the central role of Christopher, quite possibly the first such actor to play the part.

Maybe these advances in diversity will lead us to the day when audience members with disabilities can regularly experience performances by professional artists with disabilities. Perhaps with authentic casting, theatres will prompt yet more young people with disabilities to know that theatre is viable career option for them too.

As investigations into political tampering with the 2016 US election on Facebook have made headlines and perhaps spurred corporate introspection, one would hope that the company is in the process of tightening its ad controls. Given the huge importance of social media company in the world’s communications, we can ill afford to have false information circulating that undermines democracy – or that supports racist and hate-filled positions.

But even if Facebook is placing ads under more scrutiny, it’s still pretty difficult to understand what led them to ban ads for a production of Sondheim and Weidman’s musical Assassins, currently underway at NextStop Theatre in Virginia, a professional non-Equity company. In the behemoth of Facebook, a single ad may well just have gotten caught up in the gears, but for NextStop, it denies one of their primary advertising platforms, one of the very few where they can deploy video.

Here’s the spot in question:

Matthew Thompson, managing director of NextStop, said that when they first deployed the ad, it was on their event page for the production, distinct from their company page. They did pay for a sponsored post, and at that time Thompson said that, “There were no issues with it. It was posted and approved almost instantaneously.”

However, when the company posted a slightly revised version, simply to accommodate a different aspect ratio for the video and tighten up the length, they looked carefully at the advisories about ad content. Upon submission, the ad resulted in a response from Facebook that noted “ad sets that use targeting terms related to social, religious or political reviews may require additional review” and also saying that “it looks like your ad may be for housing, employment or credit opportunities.”

None of these factors really came into play with the Assassins ad, so NextStop opted to take Facebook up on their offer of a manual review, since that would show that they hadn’t run afoul of any of these concerns. But instead, that yielded the denial of approval, but on the grounds that, “Your ad can’t include images that depict a person’s body as ideal or undesirable.”

Facebook’s inconsistencies here are considerable. As it happens, the Assassins ad is composed entirely of still images – many of which have been posted to Facebook by the company without complaint. In fact, the video itself hasn’t been removed from Facebook – but the company isn’t permitted to boost it to a broader audience by using it as an ad, meaning it is only going to be seen if someone seeks it out on their page, or turn up in people’s feeds through organic reach, known to be fairly limiting for those with company pages that don’t advertise.

Does the Assassins ad have an attractive woman in it? Yes, Mackenzie Newbury, who plays The Proprietor. Is she idealized? That’s a judgment, but the ad doesn’t present her as a paragon of anything, except perhaps as a representation of America and Americana, with her red, white and blue outfit. There is a quick tight glimpse of her lips, a flash of thigh, but they’re not particularly salacious; some might rightly view this as objectification – and if that is being eradicated from Facebook then it must be applied consistently. But certainly Facebook runs more expensively and slickly produced ads with attractive women in them.

Arts Integrity has reached out to the press office at Facebook for an explanation of what has transpired with the NextStop ad, and received a response saying that the issue was being explored and they would respond as soon as possible. The best possible response would be for them to say that upon further review, the NextStop ad has been cleared.

Over the years, social media platforms have often taken the position that they are merely conduits, and not responsible for what is posted unless something is clearly illegal. But now that it has been shown how the services can be manipulated, it’s important that ad content is vetted and content complaints are investigated. But they also need to take care that in policing their house and addressing violations of their terms of service, they’re not preventing individuals and companies that rely on them for their livelihoods are getting caught up in nets meant to capture bad actors, and not good theatre companies.

Update, October 20, 4 pm: Three hours after Arts Integrity’s initial e-mail to Facebook’s press office, two hours after Arts Integrity was informed that the issue of the NextStop ad for Assassins would be looked into, and one hour after this post went live, NextStop was notified that their ad had been accepted and would begin to run.

There was no further response to Arts Integrity about the issues that led to the ad being blocked.

Update, October 21, 7 am: Last evening, shortly after 7 pm, NextStop was again notified by Facebook that its ad has been disapproved.

This follows a 6:30 pm e-mail from Facebook’s PR department to Arts Integrity noting that the ad had been approved, and that on Monday, the press contact could “explain what has happened here.”

Update, October 22, 2017 11 am: Following yesterday’s disapproval, Matthew Thompson discovered, on Facebook’s desktop interface, a more detailed explanation of why the ad had been denied. It read:

“Your ad wasn’t approved because ads should clearly reflect the product or service being advertised rather than focus on a body part (ex: teeth, abs, acne). Using images of zoomed-in body parts typically evokes a negative reaction from viewers. Learn more about our Advertising Policies.

How to fix: We suggest promoting your product or service without using a zoomed-in body image.

If you think your ad follows our Advertising Policies, you can appeal this disapproval.”

Given the carnival atmosphere of the ad in question, one might wish to simply chalk this up as a comedy of errors. But it is a microcosm of the challenges of having information consolidated within the control of too few hands, especially when the ability to communicate is arbitrarily or erratically denied. While this instance pertains to arts marketing, across the massive universe of Facebook, it’s impossible to know what else might be getting censored, and how such situations are – or are not – being resolved.

This post will be updated the situation warrants.

The Florida Association for Theatre Education invited me to be the keynote speaker at their annual conference, held in Orlando October 12-14, 2017. The text below represents an edited version of that address, which was written to be spoken, not read, so please forgive oratorical repetitions, some of which will have been minimized already. There were various ad libs during the course of the speech which, I’m afraid, have now escaped me.

*    *    *

At the risk of telling you things you know all too well, since it is you who do the teaching and I who spend my time opining on theatre, sometimes from in the midst of the fray and sometimes from the sidelines, especially when it comes to school theatre and theatre education. School theatre, whether academic or extracurricular, is of course the teaching of the practice of making theatre – learning and understanding a text, interpreting it through writing, direction, design and performance.

School theatre is a bonding experience for students, a place where those with a common interest can come together with like-minded peers. Theatre is a place where students who may not fit some arbitrarily perceived model of “typical” can find others who are like them at their cores, drawn together by a need to express themselves or support the expressions of others, rather than by throwing or hitting a ball into or over a net, or a wall, or a hoop. School theatre is teamwork without fractures and brain trauma. School theatre is a place where open displays of emotion are not only accepted but encouraged. School theatre is a place where students can become someone other than who they are on the way to becoming who they will be. School theatre is a place where students can play a role in making hundreds of people laugh, or cry, or applaud as one, in response to what they’ve done.

As I said, doing what you do, you know all of this and more. Believe me, even though you may not hear it often enough, there are many people who applaud and appreciate you for your role in all of this, as I do. Indeed – and I know all too well the countless challenges you face – at times I envy you, because what you do has so much meaning in the lives of your students. You are the teachers who are in a position not just to be liked and appreciated, but loved and remembered.

*    *    *

So why, if I perceive all of this achievement, do I say that school theatre can be more? I say it because of some of the work that I do, that I have chosen to do, or perhaps has chosen me, almost as if by accident.

As some of you may know, over the past half-dozen years, I have become a vocal advocate against the censorship of school theatre. By virtue of the jobs I’ve had – including running theatres and the American Theatre Wing – my voice is given some credibility. Once I was no longer constrained by those jobs, I found myself using that voice in new ways.

It began with a blog post about a show I know well, at a school near where I grew up, an arts magnet high school, with a majority population of students of color, which was in the process of canceling a production of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, over its use of the n-word. Because I have written at length about this incident, I will jump to the conclusion, which is that the show did go on, and it was presented without altering the words of one of America’s greatest playwrights. My voice was one among many; please do not think I am taking or deserve sole credit.

Since then, I have had occasion to advocate and even fight for any number of shows to be done in high schools and colleges, and for them to be performed just as they were written. The list includes – and in some cases there have been several instances of these shows, not just one-offs – Sweeney Todd, Spamalot, Legally Blonde, Rent, Almost Maine, The Laramie Project, Ragtime and more.

What I have seen over these years, as I have looked at school theatre and read about it, as I have parsed The Educational Theatre Association’s annual list of the most-produced shows, is an inclination to play it safe, to avoid potential conflict, to stick with the tried and true. This comes from school administrations, from school boards, from parents, from community groups, who think that school plays should just be good fun, that they should be appealing for ages eight to eighty.

I am all for fun. I love to be entertained. I understand why the list of the most produced musicals in high schools is now made up largely of titles drawn from popular family films and the biggest Broadway hits.

But I worry that these shows dominate school theatre not because they are the best shows or even the shows students are most interested in, but because they aren’t going to offend or even annoy anyone at all – and because they’re familiar titles that help sell tickets. As a result, while students unquestionably learn many things from being a part of school theatre and any show that’s chosen – rigor, structure, teamwork, and so on – they aren’t necessarily learning from the shows themselves. Yes, most family musicals have clear morals and lessons, but they are simple and surface. Students don’t have to look to find them and they certainly don’t have to struggle with them.

I favor that struggle.

*    *    *

Many of you may be aware of a recent study out of the University of Alabama which shows that students who see theatre learn from it in ways they don’t from watching a film, even a film of the same story. As the authors of the study wrote, “Theater is a window for students to a broader world. Exposure to that broader world may increase their understanding and acceptance of that broader world, which is why we see increases in Tolerance and Social Perspective Taking. Plays may be more effective than movies in helping students understand and accept that broader world because we react differently to human beings acting out a story in front of us than to representations of human beings on a screen. The in-person experience may create greater emotional connections.”

Now think about the fact that this study is simply about seeing theatre. It doesn’t begin to address the experience of making theatre.

It’s worth noting that, as I’ve spread this study around on social media, many people have responded by saying, “Well of course.” “We knew that.” “It’s obvious.” But that’s a response that’s only obvious to those who are already supporting theatre, who already believe in theatre, who already frequent theatres, who already teach theatre. However, that it was demonstrated in a controlled experiment is the kind of evidence-based proof we need about the value of theatre, about its ability to evoke empathy. Keep that study, and others like it that you may know of, very close and accessible. You never know when you might need them.

But just think: if that’s what’s happening in spectators, imagine what theatre is doing, imagine what theatre can do, for students who make theatre. Of course, you don’t have to imagine it, because you see it, you foster it.

As I proceed here, I would ask you to understand that even if the examples I give touch upon the kind of work you do, that I’m not here to criticize anyone’s choices. As I hope I’ve established, I place tremendous value in what you do. Some of you may already work from the mindset I advocate; others may not by choice or by the strictures of policy. All I am asking is that you think about whether you can expand the range of what you undertake. Can you make school theatre more?

*    *    *

The body of dramatic literature, and I include musicals in that, is pretty vast. Yet as the Educational Theatre Association’s own research, extensively studied by National Public Radio a couple of years ago has shown, when it comes to plays, the most produced plays in high schools – with the exception of Almost, Maine and more recently Peter and the Starcatcher – are mired in the work of the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

Why is that so? Is it because plays ceased being worthwhile some 60 years ago? No, that’s not the case. Yes, the language of plays may have become more expansive as taboos were broken, but that doesn’t mean every play contains language or subjects that might not be appropriate in a school setting.

Probably a more significant trend is that casts have become smaller, in order to become more producible commercially, and that doesn’t work well for those school programs with a lot of students vying for roles. Another is the fact that fewer plays are produced each year on Broadway, and so the titles are less familiar, the repertoire less known to the average person. That Almost, Maine broke out the way it has is extraordinary and singular, considering it never played Broadway and didn’t have any significant commercial success, not to mention that it was intended for four actors.

Interestingly, a play that is often produced – and often challenged – is The Laramie Project, and its appeal for many schools is something that it has in common with Almost, Maine. Just because it was written for a smallish cast playing multiple roles doesn’t mean it has to be. Almost, Maine’s four actors can become 20 or so, and Laramie Project can accommodate dozens. They are often produced because of the need for a large cast play, rather than content.

But of course Laramie Project talks of issues that have little in common with You Can’t Take It With You and Harvey, two regulars from the Educational Theatre Association list. LGBTQ rights, murder, justice, guilt, redemption – that’s what the real people portrayed in Laramie must cope with, and what the students who portray those people must understand. That may be “too much” in the eyes of some authorities, yet do students learn more from enacting the lives of people addressing a tragic hate crime or from the fairy tale story of a lonely ogre seeking acceptance? Both have lessons, but which runs deeper, which offers more?

Which prepares students for the larger world, for the world they live in, the world they will face? The vast majority of your students will not become artists, but they are all citizens of this country, of this world. Can the work you do with them be more than just about developing skills and empathy, but about preparing them to look at life both critically and compassionately? Indeed, can school theatre speak directly to their lives as they are now?

The shows I referenced are but two examples, and I’m not here to advocate for one and slam the other. They are just two shows that you’re all likely to know.

In research conducted by EdTA, the discussion of social issues discussed in theatre classrooms and productions between 1991 and 2012 has dropped precipitously. Here are some numbers: multiculturalism, down 10%. Drug and alcohol abuse, down 20%. Divorce and single parent families, down 20%. Teen suicide, down 20%. The topic of bullying, not even listed in 1991, is way up, yet the subject of teen suicide is down? How does that even make sense?

Not only can school theatre be more, school theatre has been more. There is more school theatre than ever, but it is retreating to safety, it is avoiding struggle.

*    *    *

In considering this issue, I believe there is an even more central question that often isn’t easily answered: who is school theatre for? In my work, I have developed my own hierarchy, and I apply it rigorously when considering situations that arise in school theatre, and how my own work may apply to it. But even if we do not see eye to eye on many things I’m discussing, I hope you may find this applicable no matter what your perspective may be.

First and foremost, I believe that school theatre is for the students who choose to do school theatre. That is the core constituency to be served, that is who must benefit most. This may seem obvious, but I have seen situations where this fact is forgotten, especially when programs face any type of crisis.

Secondly, I think school theatre is for the other students in the school. These are the peers of the students who participate, and they may be drawn in to the theatre, the auditorium, the converted cafeteria. They may well be affected by what they see, and indeed while they may not choose to participate in theatre subsequently, they may seek out other theatre in the months, the years, the decades to come.

Third, school theatre is for parents, so they can experience and appreciate what their children choose to participate in, and see their talents, whether its manning a spotlight or singing center stage.

Fourth, school theatre is for siblings and extended family, for much the same reasons as parents, but for reasons I’ll explain in a moment, they should not be lumped together.

Fifth and finally, school theatre is for the community at large, that is to say parents of non-participatory students and those in the community who have no direct connection to any current student or students at the school.

I imagine these five groups as a series of concentric circles, with the central circle being the students who participate in and study theatre at the center, then widening out to the other groups.

Why do I separate parents from the rest of families, and those without students in the program or at the school at the fringes?

First, because the choice of what is done in school theatre should not be constrained by the need to appeal to siblings younger than the students themselves. Yes, it’s a treat when younger siblings can see their brothers and sisters on stage, but that should not drive play choice. High school material should not be infantilized for the entertainment of middle school and elementary school students; middle school plays shouldn’t be comparably limited. To do so does a disservice to the core constituency, the students at the center.

That’s also why those without any direct stake in the drama program, or even the school, are at the farthest ring from the center – because those who have no stake shouldn’t drive the educational priorities of theatre. School theatre shouldn’t be looked at as a public relations tool with which to entertain the community at large, since doing so diminishes the focus on the students themselves.

I have been challenged on this by people who say that all theatres have to keep audiences in mind when planning their programming, so kids should learn about that now. To them I say, yes, you’re right about the professional world, but this isn’t professional theatre, this is school theatre. And I refer back to my concentric circles and point to who is at the center, who is most important, and it’s the students studying and making theatre.

*    *    *

I appreciate that there are many school theatre programs that are required to be self-sustaining financially. That gets my blood boiling, because sports programs are rarely saddled with the same requirement. But I must accept a certain reality. To that I say that excellent work with students will, over time, develop respect for what is undertaken, regardless of whether schools are producing familiar, safe titles or not.

I imagine that many of you have read Drama High by Michael Sokolove, or know of the program that Lou Volpe built in Levittown PA and which Tracey Gatte carries on today. Did you know that beginning this spring, that book will be a NBC TV series, called Rise? That’s right – what music teachers got with Glee, you will now get, only better, because your story will be told by the producer and writer who created the series Friday Night Lights.

If ever there was a moment for school theatre to step up to the next level, to be more, this is it. If Rise turns into a popular hit, if it runs, you will have the greatest tool imaginable to build the case for and the strength of your work, your programs, your students. Because you won’t be doing it alone. You’ll have a TV network behind you, 22 episodes a year.

*    *    *

Whenever I get involved in an issue regarding school theatre, about a challenge to school theatre, I am usually told early on, “You have to understand, this is a very conservative community.” Never once have I been told, “Oh, this is an incredibly liberal community.” It just doesn’t happen. Those words were said to me sotto voce about the prevailing sense of Florida and Florida education when I was invited to speak with you today. As you can see, I was undeterred.

I hope you’ll notice that nothing I’ve said today is explicitly political, in terms of liberal or conservative, red state or blue state, because when it comes to allowing students to learn, to creating opportunities for students to learn, I believe there must only be knowledge. When it comes to theatre, there must always be discovery.

Yes, there are those who will take my having spoken about The Laramie Project as political, because it portrays the aftermath of the killing of a gay youth 19 years old this week. But that murder is a crime is not a political position, it’s a commonly held moral position. That the play explores a wide range of community response to that crime is not political, it is human and humane. But let me leave Laramie be, and mention some shows you may want to think about, if you haven’t already done them, even in contrast with some shows you likely have done.

I am here in the south and I suspect that many of you have done, or considered, To Kill A Mockingbird. I for one hope schools will begin to look beyond that story, beloved as it is, because it is the story of a white man who must save a black man, and how his white household is affected by that decision. It is a white savior narrative. There are few roles of any size for black actors, let alone Latinx actors, or Asian actors, and race is important to the telling of the story. If you choose to do the show, then I urge you to think about how you cast it, not turning a blind eye to race, but with consciousness about how interracial casting can affect that story.

Alternately, if you are in a school with a significant black population, think about doing one of August Wilson’s plays, because they will open up not only your stages, but conversations you couldn’t have imagined. Think about the plays of Quiara Alegría Hudes, if you have Latinx students. Think about the plays of Lynn Nottage, of David Henry Hwang; of musicals by Jeanine Tesori that aren’t just Thoroughly Modern Millie and Shrek. Whatever you do, don’t make the assumption that your production must look like the original production, don’t assume that unless a cast of characters says that a character is black, Asian, Latinx, Middle Eastern, Native American that it must be played by a white student. You can make school theatre more, you can make shows more, at times, by going beyond what has been before.

I know that between multiple classes and shrinking resources it can be difficult, but I know that drama teachers, like their students, when push comes to shove, always do more, step up and achieve more. So I say once again that I am not here to make the assumption that some of you aren’t already doing this, but to be your cheerleader, in the same way that I know you inspire your students to more. If you need help, if you meet challenges, know that I’m available to help you, and I know many, many more people working professionally who will do so as well.

That’s why when Ragtime was going to be edited by school administrators without approval in Cherry Hill New Jersey earlier this year, which would have lost them the rights to the show entirely, Brian Stokes Mitchell not only spoke up for the show, he went and met with students, teachers and the local NAACP in Cherry Hill to make sure the show went on. In fact, the debate over Ragtime in Cherry Hill achieved something all too rare – that production of Ragtime became required viewing for every student in the school, all 2400 of them. That meant that theatre was more, because it prompted conversations that didn’t stop at the auditorium doors, but permeated English classes and history classes in the weeks and days surrounding that production. Sadly, it took a crisis for that to happen. Wouldn’t it be something if school theatre was something every student always had to see? After all, as I alluded to earlier, we must create not only the artists of tomorrow, but the audiences as well.

*    *    *

Because I am an endless rewriter, and was working on this as late as this morning, I am going to take what seems like a sudden turn in topic before I close.

As I have read and heard this week, as many of us have, about the despicable and vile behavior of Harvey Weinstein, it has been tempting to blame it only on the wonton ways of Hollywood. But his behavior is not unique to Hollywood, it is sickeningly suffused through every part of American life where men hold power over women, where people hold power over one another. Some of you may have had your own comparable experiences, and that is profoundly troubling and infuriating.

Theatre is not immune to this: just over a year ago a small theatre company in Chicago, Profiles Theatre, shut down suddenly when its own culture of sexual harassment and abuse – in the guise of art – was brought to light after decades. Audiences learned that what seemed to be intense emotional performances were instead at times abuse being played out for them – it had gone beyond acting, beyond safety, into horrifying reality and been offered to them as if it were artifice.

Last week, The New York Times finally got people speaking on the record about Harvey Weinstein, just as when the Chicago Reader got people speaking on the record about Profiles Theatre. More stories will emerge, sad to say – but maybe, just maybe, this will serve to stem the generational tide of abuses of power to obtain sexual gratification, to obtain control.

Why do I bring this up in the context of school theatre? First, because we must together make clear that such behavior is unacceptable, it isn’t art and that it must be called out and stopped. But also speak of it because theatre can teach students that they have voices and can use them, that they should not be afraid to stand in the spotlight and say what must be said, or to shine a harsh light on transgressions, on injustices that must be stopped. If they have the chance to tell stories that engage with what is difficult in the world, indeed with what may be wrong in the world, alongside telling stories that bring joy and entertainment into the world, then their work in theatre makes them better actors, writers, directors, designers and technicians. But it also makes them better people, and better citizens, with knowledge, gifts and understanding that will be of value to them whatever they may be in life.

Theatre can be more because theatre is not an end unto itself. It is a microcosm of life, and there are so many lives to be understood and stories to be told. It should never be too soon to start telling them in the incredible diversity and variety, whether spoken, sung, danced or all three together. Thank you for giving of yourselves to help your students tell stories not just in your classrooms and on your school’s stages, but for the rest of their lives.