Members of the Greensboro College community have the right to be free from gender-based discrimination, sexual harassment, and sexual misconduct of any kind.
– from the Greensboro College Sexual Misconduct Policy
To start the new school year, Greensboro College in North Carolina required all of its first-year students to attend a performance of It Stops Here, a play about sexual violence, as part of the college’s newly adopted Sexual Misconduct policy. If that were all there was to report to illuminate how, beyond online training and in-person seminars, the school was employing theatre – a student written and directed play, no less – to confront this topic, it would be a terrific example of the power of theatre. Instead, the first performance of It Stops Here resulted in the harassment of the students performing the play and the opening of a Title IX investigation on the campus within 24 hours of that first presentation. It showed that even the dramatic rendering of sexual violence and its aftermath could provoke vocally insensitive, deeply offensive responses among first year students, and that despite the new steps taken by the school, many more were needed.
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In presenting It Stops Here, a project of the college theatre department, it appears that the school’s primary concern was the potential to provoke deeply felt emotional responses in the audience. The play combined the words of the playwright with monologues from survivors of sexual assault that were submitted for use and presented verbatim. There were “trigger warnings” on the show’s promotional materials and an announcement prior to the performance; students acting as ushers were stationed in the aisles with flashlights to immediately assist any student who was overcome and needed to leave quickly.
The production had its first performance, a preview really, at 11 am on Wednesday morning this week, with students required to attend as part of their first-year seminar classes, an ongoing orientation program on how to succeed in college, as the school president described it. Teachers and coaches were to attend with their students, so that the show might provide the basis for further conversation.
“There was a certain segment of the audience that was joking and making crude remarks,” said Luke Powell, a senior theatre major who appears in the play. “One of the first things I noticed was during one of the monologues. One of the girls was doing hers and I could hear that this portion of the audience was catcalling her during this story of a rape victim. That really set me off, because it’s really disrespectful.
“The worst thing that happened,” Powell later said, “was when we get to the end of the play, the stage goes dark and four of the girls do the internal thoughts of a victim during a sexual attack. Some of that group got up to leave, not because they were triggered. Some of the group was saying stuff like ‘oh, you want it,’ and one started making a noise with his hands that sounded like masturbation throughout the five or six minute scene.”
“I expected this to happen,” declared Makenzie Degenhardt, a sophomore theatre major who appears in the play. “It’s a topic people don’t like to talk about. As soon as someone says rape, people get uncomfortable. People make jokes about things they’re uncomfortable with, but in this case it was inappropriate.”
Dagenhardt described hearing, “laughing and reactions that were not appropriate. People were laughing, clapping and encouraging behavior that shouldn’t be happening.” As to how the behavior affected her own performance, Dagenhardt said, “It made me speak louder. When I’m walking down the street and a boy catcalls me, I just ignore it, so I spoke louder to make sure I was heard. I was appalled.”
Dagenhardt said that her initial reaction was, “Oh, boys react like this, this is normal.” But upon reflection she realized, “It shouldn’t be normal. That’s what the point of the show is. If it happens again, I will respond differently.”
Another actor in the play, Emily Parker, a junior theatre major concentrating in musical theatre performance, described being on stage with a male scene partner. “A particular group of boys was talking rudely,” she said. They were talking loudly about how they didn’t want to be there and how they thought he [the male actor] was gay. Typical teenage boy stuff. “He’s so gay’.”
Ana Radulescu, a freshman theatre major concentrating in directing, who was the assistant director for the show, watched from the back of the house. She described the behavior of one pocket of students during the same scene that Dagenhardt referred to. “They did call him a ‘fag’,” she said. “He had a line that said ‘No one in high school ever told me I would have a girlfriend,’ and a bunch of people around me just started laughing.” Radulescu also described hearing a student, as a female actor was speaking on stage, speaking only partially in a whisper to those around him, say, “Whore. Bitch.”
Radulescu also said that another student, seated near where she stood at the back, before the show the show had even started, declaimed things like, “It was consensual – I didn’t rape her” and “I did Haven, I promise.” Haven is the online sexual harassment training all students were required to complete.
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Of the five students who spoke on the record for this article, all of them expressed disappointment at the fact that while there were faculty in the theatre during the performance, they were unaware of any efforts by those faculty members to curtail the behavior that continued throughout the show. Several students spoke specifically about the lack of action by the Dean of Students, who they say was seated close to the area that harbored the worst offenders, and couldn’t have possibly missed what was happening. Some students also said that there was less faculty than anticipated, saying that not all of the instructors who were supposed to attend with the students, in order to facilitate subsequent discussion, had been present.
The students who were in the show all expressed, in differing ways, their own indecision about what to do in the face of inappropriate behavior and language. Emily Parker said, “We were in a predicament over whether to confront it or go on with the show.”
Backstage, Rebecca Hougas, a freshman theatre major concentrating in theatre education, was working as assistant stage manager, and said that for much of the play, she wasn’t aware of what was taking place, until late in the show.
“I could hear laughter,” she said, “and I knew this was not a laughing matter.” Hougas said that she really came to understand what was going on by seeing how the actors, who were onstage for most of the performance, reacted when they came offstage. “We had one actor come off the stage in tears over what she was trying to say.”
Several students spoke of actors being physically ill after the performance, and of the company coming together to support one another. Those I spoke with say they were upset upon leaving after the show, even as they had banded together to support one another, but not expecting any significant further fallout from the incident.
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I first learned of what had happened at the performance of It Stops Here when, the next day, playwright and advocate Jacqueline Lawton sent me a Tumblr post recounting the event, written by Nicole Swofford, a recent graduate of Greensboro with a theatre degree who is still close with some of the students involved in the production. It described many of the same incidents that were ultimately described to me, but Swofford was also reporting what was said to her, as she hadn’t been at the show.
Swofford was very clear, and very honest, about her intent is posting, writing:
“Greensboro College is a small private college with less than 2,500 students and there hasn’t been a sexual assaulted recorded in the official report in years. Which is a blatant cover to protect the school from getting into to more hot water than it already is (having suffered from lots of financial problems in the past).
This is disgusting, and as a survivor of my own assault, and an alumni of this school I am appalled. All I can ask is that you share this story with everyone, and realize our fight is far from over.”
She had written on Wednesday evening, and her post, along with Facebook posts and comments about the incident, circulated quickly around the campus.
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Where this story may differ from other accounts of sexual harassment on college campuses is that, less than 24 hours after the performance, the school opened a Title IX investigation. It did so on its own, not as a result of a specific complaint by a student, faculty or staff member. It is quite possible that this was because students reported Greensboro’s Title IX Coordinator, Emily Scott, as having been present at the performance. Her title at the school also includes “Assistant to the President.”
As information was being routed to me, but before I spoke directly with anyone on campus, a statement from the college president, Dr. Lawrence D. Czarda, addressed the issue in a school-wide communication:
“It has been reported that during a special performance Wednesday of the play “It Stops Here” for First Year Seminar classes, several audience members made comments that were offensive and sexual in nature. Under our new Sexual Misconduct policy, the comments that have been reported qualify as sexual harassment. The Title IX Coordinator has reviewed the reported comments and has asked the Title IX Investigator to gather additional information to determine who is responsible for making the comments. The college is pursuing a formal complaint of sexual misconduct against the students and is working to identify them. Upon results of the investigation, those found responsible will face disciplinary consequences.”
He also wrote:
“However, Wednesday’s incident makes clear that we as an academic and social community still have much to learn. That includes all of us, not just a few students. In addition to the Title IX investigation, the college will be reviewing and discussing the entirety of the context of the incident. Among many other questions, we will address such issues as what faculty and staff who were present might have done differently. Beyond meeting our legal obligations, the College’s goal is to make this incident a learning opportunity for the entire College community.”
When I spoke with Dr. Czarda, he volunteered that, “We do not have a history of sexual assaults on campus.” But he said that in response to the national dialogue about sexual violence, “the board adopted new policies which were put into place July 1. All students were required to take an online training course before the process of moving in. In addition, all students are required to do an on-site training program. All faculty and staff were required to do online and in-person training sessions. The fact that the student production is part of the required training means they’ve heard what these issues are about.”
When asked about what kind of preparation students had been given prior to seeing the play, he cited the online and in-person sexual misconduct training implemented by the school. “Did they know specifically what was going to happen on stage?” Dr. Czarda asked rhetorically, suggesting that they didn’t, that students attended the show without any direct contextual preparation prior to attending. But he said, “I think we did a tolerably good job in prepping the students.”
As to why no member of the faculty or staff intervened in light of the catcalling, insults and disruptions, Dr. Czarda said that was a “key question.” He said, “On the one hand, I have been told that there was some behavior that was not atypical of freshmen,” but he said, “I have not talked to any faculty or staff who heard the comments being made. I’m very troubled by that.” As to whether all faculty who we supposed to attend had done so, he said, “I hope that is not the case.”
Regarding steps being taken to insure that the incident would not recur, Dr. Czarda said that there would be campus security and faculty at every performance; he attended last night’s show. “We will have a very clear, immediate response,” he stated. “I would be totally disheartened and shocked if anything like this happened again.”
The students told me that they had agreed that if there were incidents at subsequent performances, they would simply pause in place until it ceased; some said they might direct their looks to where the believed the interruptions to have come from. Several, jokingly, invoked the name of Patti LuPone and her cellphone incident of earlier this summer.
Luke Powell subsequently reported that the Thursday evening performance had taken place without incident. “I’ve never seen an audience give a standing ovation so quickly,” he wrote.
* * *
As readers can tell from this account, some students who were a part of It Stops Here took me up on my offer to speak with them, others obviously did not, and I don’t think anyone should infer anything from the fact that I did not hear from some. That is their absolute right.
Because institutionally, it is so often the case that in the midst of a crisis organizations initially go silent, trying to decide the best course of action, I have to say that Dr. Czarda’s willingness to speak with me within three hours of my request was both surprising and appreciated.
But I now want to say to Dr. Czarda something I didn’t express when I spoke with him, in part because by the time we spoke, he was getting organized to attend last night’s performance and had limited time. I want to say that while he may be technically correct when he says there is no history of sexual assaults on his campus, that does not mean there haven’t been sexual assaults on his campus, only that they have gone unreported, that they are not part of the school’s records.
Statistically, both on campuses and in the population nationally, sexual assault is too widespread to imagine that Greensboro is a unique sanctuary. Students up until now may have been too afraid, may have been too intimidated, may not have seen genuine evidence of support and understanding in the school environment, prompting them to keep silent. If the prevailing attitude is “it doesn’t happen here” and if the new guidelines have been put in place only to comply with general practice and to insulate the school from future liability, not because of a deep understanding of the prevalence of sexual violence, then there is still a great deal more learning to be done, and not just by the students of Greensboro.
The students I spoke with were uniformly appreciative and indeed surprised by the speed with which the school began its investigation. However, several expressed concern that because the perpetrators sat in the dark and were not immediately discovered and taken out, no one will ever be held accountable. Greensboro College is now on the line both in terms of how it addresses this current situation and what it does now that it has learned that its newly implemented policies are clearly insufficient.
I would also be remiss if I didn’t say to Dr. Czarda and the Greensboro faculty that the students are not only concerned about getting through the performances this weekend. While one noted that they feel “more comfortable knowing that some of the faculty is stepping up and doing their job” and that “the regulations are going to make sure this doesn’t get swept under the rug,” there are now students on your campus who are concerned about recriminations and retaliation because they spoke up, because they spoke out. Beyond insuring the performances go forward smoothly, beyond investigating what took place on Wednesday, you now must do everything possible to make certain that all students connected with this production, and indeed all students (and faculty and staff) are safe and secure on your campus, in the days, weeks and months to come.
What happens at Greensboro in the wake of this incident is not simply a campus matter, but one with impact on every college campus, and for every survivor of sexual assault and their families and friends. If this is what happens when sexual assault is portrayed, what will happen if – and indeed, sadly, when – sexual violence occurs? The school has already been made an example. Now it must demonstrate whether it can set one.
* * *
When asked whether they thought that the rest of the audience at Wednesday’s performance had gotten the message of the show, several of the students professed somewhat ruefully that they didn’t know; one said she knew of one student who had expressly communicated how important it had been for her. If the remaining three performances go as well as last night’s did, then hopefully the message of the play will be reaching many more members of the Greensboro College community in the way it was intended to do.
At the conclusion of our conversation, Ana Radulescu summed up so much of what is essential now in regards to Greensboro and It Stops Here.
“We all now understand what those girls who sent us those monologues were talking about. In a way, we were all sexually harassed yesterday and this Title IX report says so. I never knew that through theatre someone could be harassed. Now in six hours, I understand a lot more of what comes out of those girls’ mouths.
“The idea of this piece is to start this conversation. I don’t think we planned on it starting this way. But if you want to look at it, it’s nothing different than what we meant it to do. The fact that it’s not getting ignored is sort of amazing. It has reaffirmed for us that the piece needs to happen, why it needs to happen and why it needs to happen here. If anyone questioned that, well – we have the answer.”
Update, September 5: A local television newscast covered the incident at Greensboro College last night. You can view their report here; the video piece is more complete than the accompanying text.
The title of the play discussed in this post is shown on the poster as “It Stops Here” with a period at the end of Here. The punctuation mark has been omitted from the text for clarity.
I attempted to reach the theatre department chair David Schram and Josephine Hull, assistant professor of acting and voice, but neither replied to my inquiries.
This post will be amended and updated as the situation warrants.
Please note: I afford all people the opportunity for healthy debate in the comments section of all of my blog posts, but I will not condone statements which advocate violence, racism or are in and of themselves verbal attacks. That is in no way an abridgment of anyone’s First Amendment rights; this is my right as the author and manager of this site. I will not exercise the removal of comments indiscriminately, but it is at my sole discretion.
Howard Sherman is the director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School for Performing Arts.
Les Misérables at Lakeshore Collegiate (Photo by Darren Calabrese for The Globe and Mail)
If you haven’t been reading Toronto’s The Globe and Mail every weekend this summer, then you likely haven’t come across J. Kelly Nestruck’s terrific series in which he followed a single high school theatre production of a non-musical adaptation of Les Misérables from start to finish.
It no doubt benefited the youthful-looking Nestruck that he would stand out vastly less among a gaggle of high schoolers than say, me, and it appears to have allowed him unfettered access to the process, the logistics and the emotions that are part of any theatrical production, let alone one in a high school. While Kelly wasn’t undercover at Lakeshore Collegiate Institute, I like to imagine his series as the journalistic equivalent of Cameron Crowe’s original book Fast Times at Ridgemont High, but one set entirely in the drama group.
Because I write so often about crises and conflict in high school theatre, I found Kelly’s series essential, not solely because of one part’s focus on what is “appropriate” for a high school production. It is in my memory the most sustained piece of major mainstream newspaper reporting on high school theatre since Jesse Green wrote about the field for The New York Times in “The Supersizing of the School Play” back in 2005. But Nestruck’s series goes vastly farther than Green’s article in its depth.
Since I am not given to aggregating content, I’d prefer to think of what follows merely as an index, with excerpts that in no way give a full sense of the range of the complete articles and the stories they tell, in the hope that you’ll use this post as a guide to the Globe and Mail’s entire series. (The headline of each section will take you to each separate article.) I think for anyone who cares about theatre – not just high school theatre, but the entire field and it’s future – it’s a must-read.
Last fall, approaching my seventh anniversary at the newspaper, I was in crisis about the art form that I had loved since I, myself, was a teenager.
Watching plays at Stratford, or in Toronto, or in Calgary upwards of 200 times a year, I had begun to worry about what I was seeing in the seats around me and on the stages in front of me.
I worried I was writing about an art form still dominated by white directors and playwrights and performers in a country that increasingly was not.
I worried that theatre was becoming an elitist art form whose major institutions were increasingly out of reach of even the middle class, that the core theatre audience was staying white and getting older – and that my profession was swiftly becoming as idiosyncratic and outdated as a mechanic for penny farthings.
Most worrisome of all: I began to lose faith that theatre was worth fighting for. I wondered if the “magic” I had always ascribed to live performance just was a myth I had bought into, and whether more complex and better-told stories – ones that reflect and engage with and interrogate the country and the world we live in – could actually be found on Netflix for a fraction of the cost.
Drama teacher Greg Danakas settles behind a small desk, while 25 students from Grade 10 to 12 gather around him in a circle on the floor. “Let’s read this frikkin’ play!” he says – and you’d never guess the Tim Hortons coffee in front of him was decaffeinated.
“Is anyone Instagramming this?” asks Bradley Plesa, the Grade 12 student who will be playing prisoner-on-the-run Jean Valjean.
Listening to these kids immerse themselves in their characters for the first time, it’s clear how much work – and learning – is ahead of them.
The students pause every page or so as Mr. Danakas defines words such as “cleric” or “consumption” or explains a historical event referenced in the play, like the July Revolution. “It’s a French revolution, not the French Revolution,” Mr. D says – a recurring refrain for the rest of rehearsals.
It’s also clear, however, that Lakeshore’s acting students are up for the challenge. (Unlike me – I reluctantly declined Mr. Danakas’s kind offer to play author Victor Hugo in his dystopian production of the play.)
It’s easier for some students at Lakeshore Drama to pay dues than others. Lakeshore, a high school located in south Etobicoke, is not only representative of Toronto’s cultural diversity – but also the city’s economic diversity.
Allan Easton, the school’s new principal, explained the catchment area to me one day over a surprisingly delicious lunch prepared by the culinary-arts students. In the 1980s, Lakeshore was formed by the amalgamation of three schools – an academic-oriented school in a higher-income area, a technical school in a more blue-collar neighbourhood and a third in the centre that was what Mr. Easton calls a “classic public school catering to whoever.”
The demographics of the school still reflect that mix: There are students who live near the water and come from families with incomes that may be significantly six figures, and there are students who live to the east in Toronto public housing. That class disparity is often apparent in the Les Misérables cast – one student contributes to discussions of the play by talking about what she learned on a trip to France, while another shares his experiences growing up in foster care like Cosette.
Many have part-time jobs they struggle to balance with rehearsals – but that hold different importance from person to person. Certain students are saving up to go to expensive universities abroad; others are earning money to help out at home.
Mr. Danakas’s most popular production to date was a stage adaptation of Dracula inspired by the 1998 Wesley Snipes movie Blade. It featured 17 vampires who were – in Mr. D’s words – “dressed like prostitutes,” watching the action unfold from scaffolding.
Dracula sold out Lakeshore’s 600-seat auditorium all three nights it played in 2005 – and Kathleen McCabe, the principal then, wrote Mr. D to praise him.
“I am sure that producing a high school play may have limited your true creativity because of the censoring that I imposed on you,” she wrote in the letter, which Mr. D has framed and hung on his office wall. “However, you were able to design an amazing play and keep it on the edge.”
Times have changed, however – and now it’s Mr. Danakas who has to censor himself. “I wouldn’t be able to do Dracula now,” he says with a sigh.
The drama teacher is continuing to deal with fallout from his relatively tame, gender-bending Three Musketeers from last year.
Mr. Danakas had d’Artagnan – who wants to join the Musketeers – played by a female student and decided to deal with the implications of dropping a woman into the jocular world of 17th-century French swordsmen.
Athos, Portho and Artemis gradually gained respect for d’Artagnan, but they behaved chauvinistically toward her in the early scenes. “I thought it was totally harmless, juvenile silliness,” Mr. D says.
That’s not what a couple of local middle-school teachers thought of the groping and crude gestures with épées, however. They pulled their classes out of a matinee due to the sexual slapstick.
As opening night of Les Misérables gets closer and closer, more and more people become involved beyond Mr. Danakas’s Acting Class – and more and more elements move outside of his direct control. Cosmetology students are working on the hair and make-up; business students are planning front-of-house operations; and the after-school sewing club is making long, black skirts for all the young women to wear in Mr. D’s non-musical, dystopian take on Victor Hugo’s classic tale.
On top of that, Timothy O’Hare, Lakeshore’s shop teacher, runs an entire for-credit class devoted to the design and construction of the set. I pop by the Toronto high school one morning in early May to see them at work. Instead, I find a handful of students studying or on their phones under the supervision of a substitute teacher, while a documentary about the history of sneakers plays unwatched.
Mr. O’Hare – who is much-loved by his students and doesn’t seem to mind his nickname “Mr. No Hair” – is away with much of the class at the Ontario Technological Skills Competitions. Grade 11 students Lamisa Hasan, Nicholas Latincic and Shamar Shepherd – who all had to stay behind for various reasons – happily leave the doc behind to talk to me about how they collectively designed and built the Les Misérables set.
Allan Easton, the patient and good-humoured new principal at Lakeshore, walks me through some of what is holding up Mr. Danakas’s production. The worry about the fog machine is that it will set off the smoke detectors. The detectors could be bypassed, but then staff would have to be paid to walk around and look for fires – $1,200 in overtime for three nights.
Painting the floor, meanwhile, could be a problem because it might impinge on the skilled trades. “I can’t ever be seen to be taking a union job away from anybody,” Easton explains.
Health and safety concerns also complicate Les Misérables. I remember climbing up on ladders to help hang and focus the lights in my high school auditorium, but Lakeshore’s 1950s-built catwalks are off-limits to all (teachers aren’t even supposed to get up on a ladder, so an adult volunteer did that work on borrowed scaffolding). “Even our caretakers have to have ladder training before they can use a ladder safely,” Easton says. “We’re a very litigious society now.”
As for budgeting, Mr. Danakas used to roughly estimate his ticket revenue, but now sales have to be carefully projected. “ ‘It should be fine,’ isn’t something I can go with any more,” Easton says, with a sympathetic shrug. “Accountability is huge – more than it was in the past. … Taxpayers’ money, right?”
Even at Les Misérables though, it’s clear different audience members want different things. There’s Caroline Buchanan, for instance, described to me as the ultimate drama mom. Not only is her daughter, Samantha Dodds, playing Madame Thénardier, but her partner, Jim Ellis – a 60-year-old management consultant and part-time voice-over artist – has been conscripted to play the role of Victor Hugo.
Ms. Buchanan was one of the first in line to make sure she got good seats – and was primed for a moving experience. “I don’t know why, but it’s very emotional for me,” she says. “There’s so much lead-up – and you see what they all go through. And now it’s here.”
Sara and Alexander Plesa, Bradley and Samantha’s parents, are more skeptical about theatre in general. “I’ll be completely honest, where I’m not the ‘drama mom’ is that school comes first, grades come first and this comes last,” says Ms. Plesa, who works in a civilian role for the Toronto Police and affectionately calls her kids “drama brats.” “I’ll fight with Bradley to the end of time on that – and Mr. Danakas.”
But the Plesas have had a number of personal setbacks over the past year, with Mr. Plesa’s cancer diagnosis, cruelly, coming just as he was on the verge of being hired by the police. Their children’s performances tonight have surprised them – particularly boisterous Bradley’s deeply centred Jean Valjean.
“You wouldn’t know that their life has been the way it has been [lately] by watching that,” Ms. Plesa says. “It’s almost flooring to me: Is that my son?”
I came to Lakeshore with a naive point of view. I really did want to renew my faith in theatre after becoming frustrated with professional theatre in this country – and rediscover the joy of theatre I had felt as a high school student myself. But you only get to be a teenager once. And what I found when I looked at high school drama through an adult critic’s eyes were things I hadn’t noticed the first time around. I found an acting class that wasn’t fully representative of the racial diversity of its school, and that it was easier for students from certain economic classes to participate than it was for others.
I found a high school theatre with less money and less audience than it used to have, and more hoops to jump through, set up by administrators and unions. I found bureaucracy and I found self-censorship – and I found art’s value being sold with the language of business.
But what I ultimately discovered at Lakeshore is that the dissatisfaction that I’ve been feeling about the professional Canadian theatre I cover as a critic isn’t really about theatre at all, but about the wider society that theatre exists in and reflects. If theatre and democracy have indeed been linked since ancient Greece, then it makes sense that theatre would suffer from the same problems as our democracy – which is also unfair and bureaucratic and filled with leaders who speak to taxpayers instead of citizens.
* * *
Again, bravo to everyone – the teachers, the students, the administrators, the parents and the reporter. Bravo.
All excerpts from the series High School Drama by J. Kelly Nestruck from The Globe and Mail, originally appearing between July 3 and August 21, 2015.
Howard Sherman is director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at the New School for Performing Arts.
If you’re like me, someone deeply committed to the arts – in practice, in education, in media coverage, in every aspect of life – you’ve probably had the same fantasy I’ve had over the years. What, I often wonder, would the scenario for the arts be like if they had the same attention and resources as those afforded to sports, especially in high schools and colleges?
That scenario can be played out with serious thought, especially as we watch school arts programs being cut – just last week the Atlanta school system cut music teachers at the elementary level. But it can also lead to some laugh-worthy imaginings – performance enhancing drugs for actors, anyone?
In the most sustained flight of fantasy I’ve seen surrounding this daydream, comedian Owen Weber has just released a video imagining The “thESPiaN” Network, covering theatre as if it was sports television. It’s executed with striking verisimilitude and real professionalism. That’s right, guys in suits at a desk saying things like, “You can’t blow opening night – the critics don’t give redos,” mentioning that a drama program gave up a “sixth round Fortinbras,” and declaring, “We’re getting wild now – Oscar Wilde!” I’m very amused.
Remarkably, Weber has released the video in four and eight minute version, and the it’s the long version that has my favorite sight gag, regarding a production of the Scottish play.
There are a couple of small things that bothered me as I watched the videos. Now I don’t know Weber’s other work (though clearly I’ll be checking it out), so I have no idea whether these are characteristic or anomalies. One is very likely intentional, and it’s a moment when an actress being discussed is briefly, fleetingly objectified not for her talent but for her looks. It’s very likely that this was meant to emphasize the “bro” culture of sports, even though, let’s face it, even ESPN has female sportscasters who would be very quick to shut down that sort of conversation about a female athlete.
My second observation is that the video is completely cast with Caucasians, and while everyone may have worked for nothing and Weber’s friends who were available for the shoot on any given day may have left him few options, I do wish that a video that will surely be making the rounds of theatre programs and theatre offices everywhere – and I’m contributing to that dissemination – better represented the diversity and inclusiveness of the arts. Quoting Jeanine Tesori at the Tony Awards, though she was speaking specifically to women at that moment, “You have to see it to be it.” Look, I know: comedy is no fun when it’s picked apart, but I can’t share these without mentioning that.
I wouldn’t be sharing these videos if they weren’t well-executed, consistently clever and at a few moments, laugh out loud funny. And the bottom line is, if there was a “Stage Center” on TV every night, I’d be watching it. And maybe some new ways of talking about the arts wouldn’t be such a bad idea at all.
When it was all said and done, three student-written short plays, part of an evening of playlets, monologues and songs, went on as scheduled at Cherokee Trail High School in Aurora, Colorado. But in the 10 days leading up to that performance, the students claim they were told the plays and one student-written monologue were canceled. The students successfully garnered the attention of a local TV station, the National Coalition Against Censorship, and the Arts Integrity Initiative at the New School for Drama over the impending cancelation.
However, the school claimed the shows were never canceled and that the students misunderstood, but first delayed the performance of the pieces in question and then rescinded that delay, which would have pushed the plays to a later date. The school cited lack of proper process for approval, issued permission slips to the parents of all participating students and sent a broader memo to parents regarding the content of the pieces, defining them as “suitable for mature audiences.” Amidst this, rumors suggested that some contemporaneous school vandalism was the work of the drama kids. One student-written monologue was canceled entirely because the student’s parents reportedly denied approval for it to be performed.
What precisely triggered all of this activity around brief student-written plays? LGBTQ subject matter.
* * * *
The cast and creators of “Evolution” at Cherokee Trail High School
Students in Cherokee Trail’s Theatre 3 class developed the “Evolution” evening under the banner of their student-run Raw Works Studio, working on them both in class and after school for more than a month. According Theatre 3/Raw Works students – including Josette Axne, Kenzie Boyd, Brandon McEachern, Dyllan Moran, and Ayla Sullivan, with whom I shared phone calls, texts and e-mails at various times beginning April 16 – they were informed by the school’s Activities Director Christine Jones on April 15 that because of the LGBTQ content in the student written works, the pieces could not be performed and would be excised from the pending performance set for April 24.
The students immediately took action, reaching out to the local media, setting up a Facebook page called “Not Original,” contacting the National Coalition Against Censorship (which in turn contacted the Arts Integrity Initiative), all over their understanding that the plays were being cut from the performance. After first speaking with Axne, I spoke and corresponded primarily with Sullivan in the first few days.
By the time Channel 9 in Denver, NCAC and Arts Integrity made contact with the school’s administration on April 16, Principal Kim Rauh had prepared a response, which portrayed the situation in a different light. It read, in part:
The student written plays will be performed at Cherokee Trail High School. The decision that was made was to postpone the date of the performance to allow our theater process to be completed. Students were invited to meet with us to work through the process and give the necessary time to work through all of the “what ifs” and attempt to be proactive as opposed to reactive and to plan for success. With every production there is an element of both directorial and administrative review and approval. The plays were submitted after the due date for final approval for the original performance date. We have extended the process timeline to allow the plays to be performed at a later date at Cherokee Trail High School.
Channel 9’s account of the situation, the only significant local news story, was reported on the evening news on April 16, stating that the pieces would now be performed on May 9.
* * * *
“Not Original”’s Facebook post about school vandalism
On Friday morning April 17, shortly before 8 am Colorado time, I received, in the space of ten minutes, an e-mail and phone call from Ayla Sullivan. She was deeply concerned that an act of vandalism at the school overnight was being attributed to the Theatre 3 students, even though she said it had been covered up before students arrived at the school that morning, so that not only were she and her classmates not involved, they didn’t even know the nature of the vandalism. Sullivan asked how the drama students should address this, and I advised them to tell the truth and make clear their position about whatever had occurred. Ten minutes later, the following message was posted, as a screenshot from a cellphone, to the “Not Original” Facebook page:
The vandalism we are now aware of that happened earlier this morning was not done by any member of Raw Works Studio and is not affiliated with the Not Original Movement whatsoever. Due to none of the members even seeing this vandalism, we do not know what it says and if it is even related to us. Whatever the markings say, we can not see it because it was covered as early as 6:45 this morning.
If someone wrote something that is related to Not Original through vandalizing public property, we absolutely oppose it. We do not support vandalism, violence, or hate speech. We do not support this action. We are, and have always been, a peaceful movement.
This is not the way towards change. This is not acceptable.
To date, the students say they haven’t heard anything more about the vandalism. It was a brief source of anxiety, but not central to the dispute.
* * * *
On April 17, I sent a series of questions about the events of the past two days to Principal Rauh, copying Tustin Amole, the director of communications for the school district. It was Amole who responded, very promptly. Describing the reasons and process for what was happening with the plays, she explained:
All student performances are subject to administrative review prior to rehearsals beginning. The teacher is responsible for submitting material for consideration. I do not know how soon prior to that the students finished the plays. Regardless of when the materials are submitted, there is a long-standing process which must be followed.
In cases where the material may be mature or sensitive, the school meets with the parents of the students involved to make sure that they have permission to participate. We would then inform the broader community so that they are aware of the subject matter and can make a decision about whether they want to come and perhaps bring younger children.
Because I had pointed out that the new date set for the student written works (all of the other pieces were to be performed as originally scheduled) conflicted with tests for Advanced Placement and the International Baccalaureate, Amole wrote me:
In our effort to ensure that the students have the opportunity to perform the plays, we selected a date that allowed time for the process.We understand concerns about the timing, but this is the only available opportunity before school ends.
Following this exchange, I wrote again to Amole, inquiring as to the school’s specific concerns about the material, which had gone unmentioned. She replied:
The plays concern some issues around sexuality and gender identity. We would not censor the subject matter, but do work to ensure that all parents were informed and give consent for participation, and that attendees know the nature of the material. In other words you would not take children to a movie without knowing what it is about, nor are you likely to allow children to participate in an unknown activity. In the Cherry Creek School District, parents are given the option of reviewing activities, books and other materials and asking for alternatives if they object to what is assigned.
As for when the review process had begun, she responded:
The conversations with the students began when the material was submitted to administrators for review. We were looking for alternative dates to complete the review process when some of the students decided to call the media. Because they did not have that class yesterday, they were unaware that a new date had been determined. Had they waited to talk to their teacher during the next class, they would have been informed. They also always have the option of coming to the principal to express their concerns and they chose to call the news media instead. We regret that they chose not to work through our long established process.
That same day, the students told me, there were two meetings with Christine Jones, who outlined for them the plans for going forward.
* * * *
After all of this, imagine my surprise when, just before 5 pm Colorado time on Monday, April 20, the NCAC and Arts Integrity Initiative received the following e-mail from Ayla Sullivan:
We have officially gotten our show back! Thank you so much for your help and support. Your belief in us is the only reason we have this. Thank you.
I wrote Rauh and Amole minutes later, to find out how the timetable had been restored to the original date. Amole replied two days later, sharing the communication that was going out to parents that day, which read in part:
I wanted to take this opportunity to communicate an update regarding the Theatre 3 production at Cherokee Trail High School, Evolution. Evolution contains a series of vignettes including songs, original student works and published scenes centered around the theme of love, some of which contain topics that may be considered best suited for mature audiences.
Because we are not putting topics on the stage, but rather actual students with actual feelings it was our desire to ensure that we had the time to adequately communicate the nature of the production with our parents and community members to help ensure the safety and well-being of all involved. The events of the past week have allowed us to do so and as such the administration, director and students have determined that we can perform the show on the originally scheduled date of April 24.
In response specifically to me, Amole added:
As of now, we do not have permission from all of the students’ parents to participate. While we continue to work to obtain the required permissions, we will honor the parent’s wishes, as per district policy. The performances of those students who do have parent permission will go forward.
* * * *
Graphic design for “Evolution” at Cherokee Trail High School
On April 24, the following student written pieces were performed as part of “Evolution”: A Tale of Three Kisses by Kenzie Boyd and Brandon McEachern , Roots by Dyllan Moran, and Family: The Art of Residence by Ayla Sullivan and Brandon McEachern. The evening was, in the words of Dylan Moran, in an interview with KGNU Radio that he gave the day of the performance, about “how love evolves, both through time and within ourselves.”
On April 29, five days after the performance, I spoke with the students to ascertain how the performance had gone. They reported attendance in the neighborhood of 300 people, which while it only filled the orchestra section of their theatre, they said was comparable with other performances of this kind, and they seemed satisfied with the turnout. But had there been, when it was all said and done, any censorship of the work?
Brandon McEachern replied, “The only thing that was asked to be changed was certain curse words. There was no content change. It was just not having the word ‘shit’ or something like that. Those are the only changes they asked for the shows.”
“Certain words were allowed to fly in certain shows that weren’t allowed in others,” Moran continued. “It was very touch and go. There wasn’t any set rule. We’d be performing and it was like, ‘That one’s not OK,’ and we’d move on. Life Under Water did have changes, not as extensively as the original ones, probably because it had already been produced.”
I wondered, given the representations of Amole on behalf of the school district, whether the students had in fact misunderstood their conversation with Jones on April 15, given all that had transpired since. The unanimous reply of Boyd, McEachern, Moran, and Sullivan was that they hadn’t.
“It was very clear to us, on the day, that the show would not be happening,” said Moran. “There was no editing, there was no pushing it to a later date, there was no discussion about it. It was only when we got involved with the media that they changed their story and said, ‘No, we are going to push it back. We told them we were going to push it back, they just didn’t listen to us’.”
Sullivan continued, “There was also the sense of, when we were approached later, that Friday, which was April 17, by our activities director, that we were being guilt tripped, that we didn’t give her the benefit of the doubt and we immediately met with the media outlets and tried to make this a bigger thing than what it was – that it was our fault for misunderstanding, which never happened. It was very clear.”
When asked if it was made clear to them why there was concern over the material, Sullivan said there was a single reason given, that it was about “how the community would react to LGBT representation.” The students said it was on Friday that they were told by Jones that if they could meet all the necessary requirements by Monday, in terms of parental permission, the school leadership would reconsider the May 9 plan.
Had the students anticipated any pushback against the student written shows? “When we were going through the entire process,” McEachern said, “I didn’t think the school would tell us that these were controversial issues and it would make people uncomfortable. I just thought it would go on like a regular show. I didn’t think there would be any backlash.” Sullivan added that once the news broke, “there was nothing but support.”
Referring to sentiment within the school, Boyd said, “I think immediately, as soon as we found out, that there was an immediate buzz on Twitter, everyone from school and even from out of state, that were talking about this and how disappointed they were in the school. I think it was definitely at first – the whole situation is definitely a lesson for schools in general and even for society in general, to really look at people and look at what they’re saying versus what they’re doing. Because everybody’s always talking about equality, equality, equality but then when they actually get the opportunity, it gets shut down pretty fast. So I think it’s a big lesson, but I also think that in a positive manner other than just lessons, it really brought everyone together, because I’ve never seen this school so united.”
* * * *
But what of the student-written monologue, Ever Since I Was A Kid? The students I spoke with, who explained that it had been cut because the parents of the student author had declined to give permission, spoke freely of the piece. They shared that it was a personal account of a teen who was in the process of gender transition. It suggests that this piece was, at least in part, what Amole referred to on April 22 when she wrote me that not all permission slips had been received.
I must note that I spoke to the author/performer of “Ever Since I Was A Kid” on April 20, before it was clear that parental permission was being withheld and that the piece in question would not be performed. Because the situation had changed and I was not able to speak with this student again, I have withheld the content of our interview because, despite sending messages through the other students, I could not confirm whether the author was still comfortable with my using our conversation. The students I spoke with said their classmate was permitted to perform in other parts of “Evolution,” just not with the original monologue.
* * * *
As much as I have tried to reconstruct the timeline of this incident, it is clear that the students’ account and that of the administration differ. The students say they were told originally, in no uncertain terms, that the student-written pieces were being cut. The school maintains that they simply needed time to put the work in context.
Missing from this report is any account of the circumstances from either the Theatre 3 teacher, Cindy Poinsett, or the Activities Director, Christine Jones. Because it is typical in most schools that faculty and staff do not speak to the press without approval, and because after the first response to my inquiry to the principal, all responses came from the school system’s spokesperson, I did not attempt to contact either Poinsett or Jones. Should either of them choose to contact me directly, I will amend this post to reflect their input.
I have to say that throughout this period, the students I spoke with were remarkably poised in their accounts of what took place. While as I noted, the school was very responsive to my inquiries, there is one notable shift in the timeline they created: on April 16 they said it would take three weeks to put everything in place in order to allow the student written pieces to be performed. Two business days later, everything had been accomplished that allowed the pieces to go forward as originally scheduled.
That the original “solution” would have excised these pieces from the April 24 performance and isolated them as their own event, that May 9 was initially the “only” possible date on which they could do so, suggests that the administration was responding on the fly, in response to external inquiries. If the students had misunderstood what they were originally told, why on April 15 didn’t the school simply say that all would go on as planned if the students brought in signed permission slips by April 20, as they ultimately did, instead of promulgating a new date?
I also have to wonder why, as has so often been the case when potential incidents of censorship arise in high schools, was the initial reason given for the action the assertion that an approval process had not been followed? The students say they had been working on the pieces for more than a month and were never given any deadline or reminded to get their materials in by a certain date. Is Principal Rauh suggesting that the students and their teacher had been keeping the work under wraps? Was there a disconnect between the teacher and the activities director, or between the activities director and the administration?
At the root of this incident remains the skittishness that schools have regarding any public representation of LGBTQ issues and lives to their community at large. While opinion polls show that six out of every ten Americans support marriage equality, that percentage jumps to 78 percent for people under 30. Presumably that is at least the same for the general acceptance of LGBTQ Americans overall, although to quote a New York Times editorial, “being transgender today remains unreasonably and unnecessarily hard.”
So it seems that whatever precisely took place at Cherokee Trail, it derives from the students having a more evolved attitude towards equality than the school fears the local adult community may hold. How long will students be required to get permission before they can tell true stories of their own lives and the lives of those around them? When will all schools stand up for student expression of their lives and concerns on the stage from the outset, and stand firm against those who continue to oppose the tidal wave of equality that will inevitably overtake them?
* * * *
I asked several of the students what the ultimate takeaway was from their experience.
Sullivan said, “We got a lot of positive support and had a positive show, but my biggest concern is that now that our department has made a name for itself for doing original content, the administration is going to create a harder process, a new deadline. I’m concerned that student-written work will not be able to be performed the way it should, that now they will have something of a deadline process to fall back on and use that to censor other voices and censor experiences in that light. That kind of worries me, because we’ve already seen an attitude of they don’t want this to continue and they don’t want to have to deal with this again.
“I definitely feel that our principal and our activities director have found that this has created such a mess that they don’t want student-written work to continue, that they don’t want Raw Works, the studio itself, to be representative of the theatre department anymore and that they don’t want student-directed student works.”
Boyd picked up that thread, saying, “I don’t think it’s as much concern about it continuing, as much as they’re going to make it so hard to continue that we’re going to have to stop ourselves. I definitely think there’s been so much backlash on them now that they can’t just say no more original work, but I do think that the process next year is going to be a lot harder to the point that it may be impossible to put on original works.”
When I pressed the students on whether anything explicit had been said about the future for student written work, McEachern said, “Right now, it’s just a concern of ours. They have not said anything.”
In my last communication with Tustin Amole, I asked whether the events surrounding “Evolution” would have any impact on the Theatre 3 class, Raw Works or student written plays in the future, and received the following reply:
Our process will remain unchanged. As I have already explained, it is the standard process that has worked well for us for a long time.
The class also will be unchanged. Students will be able to write and perform their own work.
So for now, all we can do is watch and wait until next year, to see what stories get told at Cherokee Trail.
Howard Sherman is director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School for Drama.
Students watching The Last Days of Judas Iscariot outside at the Florida Thespian Festival
A theatre scene performed al fresco on a spring Florida evening sounds idyllic. But when Tomas Roldan and Matthew Ferro, juniors at New World School of the Arts High School, took their award-winning scene from Stephen Adly Guirgis’s The Last Days of Judas Iscariot to a plaza outside the Florida State Thespian Festival in Tampa on March 28, they weren’t doing so seeking charm or fresh air. They made the performance choice as a third option after being given two official choices by festival leadership: alter Guirgis’s words or don’t perform at all.
* * *
The Florida State Thespian Festival is the largest such gathering in the country. Over a long weekend, high school students gather for talks, workshops and competitions all focused on theatre; in Florida, there are more than 7,000 people in attendance from the large state’s 16 designated districts. This year’s festival included full productions of, among others, Ragtime, The Great Gatsby, Night of the Living Dead, The Threepenny Opera, Violet, Pippin, and Seascape; there was even a concert by The Skivvies, the musical theatre duo known for their talent, their wit and their commitment to performing in their underwear.
Woven throughout the festival are the competitions, where students from schools across the state perform short scenes from a wide range of shows, assembled into groups of competitors so that one set of adjudicators can make decisions on those competing in that defined grouping; the festival is simply too large, and too brief, to allow for an American Idol-type winnowing to a single champion, so each group produces its own winners. Ferro and Roldan received a Critic’s Choice honor for their scene between Jesus and Judas from Guirgis’s play, which Roldan said had been their goal from the time he and Ferro started working on their scene, nearly a year earlier.
The winners of Critic’s Choice in each group are invited to perform in the Critic’s Choice Showcase on the final evening of the festival. Given the number of winners, it is held in segments (or acts) throughout Saturday night in the largest venue used by the festival, the Straz Center’s main hall, seating nearly 3,000. The audience is made up of students, teachers, parents and family. Because competitions are happening on a rolling basis throughout the weekend, the run of the evening is still coming together even as the first performers come to the stage at 6 pm.
* * *
It is the policy of the Educational Theatre Association, which runs the International Thespian Society, not to censor the work of writers. The director of the Florida chapter, Linday M. Warfield Painter, echoed that sentiment, saying, “I don’t condone the changing of a playwright’s language any more than the next person.”
In Florida, students competing with scenes that may have potentially controversial or even offensive content are asked to “asterisk” their scenes, noting what some might find problematic. This doesn’t preclude their competing, but serves as notice for those attending the competitive rounds that if they wish to avoid such material, they should step out before the scene is performed. Roldan and Ferro’s scene was duly asterisked for its language – the scene contains iterations of the word “fuck” some dozen times – and for its contemporary portrayal of religious figures Jesus and Judas. The Florida guidelines also require that school principals sign off on the choice of scenes to be performed by their students – except for schools in Miami-Dade County, where a teacher’s approval is sufficient. New World School of the Arts High School is part of the New World School of the Arts, an arts university in Miami affiliated with Miami-Dade College and the University of Florida.
The asterisk system, implemented less than a decade ago partly in response to consternation at the state capitol over content seen at the festival, apparently works well enough in the many small competition rooms, but it becomes problematic, and even irrelevant, at the critics choice showcase. Given the size of the theatre and the numerous brief scenes being performed, the policy is that the audience cannot come and go as they please, so there isn’t a steady attrition of audience once the students they come to see have completed their scenes. If an audience member exits at any point during one of the acts, there is no readmission. So it’s not feasible to offer the audience the opportunity to leave if a scene might offend them, leaving the asterisk process in the dust.
As a result, after winning in their group, the winners have to perform one more time, for adjudicators who will determine whether the scene is appropriate for the large audience. That’s where Roldan and Ferro said they were surprised.
“They knew our piece was asterisked for religious content and for language,” recalls Roldan. “They asked us how severe the language was and we said we drop, we have a few f-bombs in there. Then they told us OK – well we’ll listen to it and tell you what we can do about the language. So we performed the scene again and they told us, ‘Wow, that’s a really great scene, except you guys curse way too much and there’s too many f-bombs in the piece. So you guys have to fully, completely clean it up or you wouldn’t be able to perform it’.”
Ferro, interviewed separately, described the process similarly, saying, “We performed it for the two people who were running the show, the Critics Choice show. And it was almost right then and there that they were like ‘We love the piece, we really do. But the language is an issue.’ From the get go, those two people, Ed and I think it was Amy, said ‘We’re going to fight for you. We want you guys to perform this, but we have to find a way.’ So originally they gave us options like changing the language; then it was how about we perform at the very end and we’re going to caution people about our content. Then it was like, ‘We’re going to roll the dice and we’re going to ask our bosses what they think we can do’.”
Both Ferro and Roldan say they were urged to get dinner while the issue was explored, which they did. “When we came back,” continued Ferro, “they had already spoken with their bosses, the person who was running the whole thing and they told me and Tomas that we could not perform with the language. We had to change it or just go on stage and tell them that we couldn’t.”
In response to an inquiry about what transpired, Painter said, “I wasn’t in the screening room for this event. I had entrusted other volunteers within the organization to do that for me and they had asked, ‘We’ve got 12 f-bombs dropped in the piece.’ I can see why the two teachers screening it said, ‘Guys, can we clean that up a little bit just for this one moment [the showcase].’ I don’t think that has been – I’m positive that’s not the first time that’s happened, that they’ve been asked to clean up language. As far as whether or not a piece – they weren’t asked not to perform. They were given the option, so it wasn’t like, ‘No, you have bad language, you may not perform.’ The option was there.”
Asked to clarify who is in attendance at the showcase, Painter explained that it is not a public event per se. “We have a mixed crowd as far as different communities from across the state,” she said. “We have Christian schools, we have private schools, we have different schools that are from more conservative communities across the state that are all packed into the 2800 people house. That’s really the reason that we do any kind of screening. And the screening is just, that’s all they’re looking for, if it is an asterisked piece, what is it asterisked for? If it’s something that it’s a simple matter of staging that we could restage really quickly without compromising the integrity of the acting and all that. This piece was probably, had I known ahead of time, that the judges did not give us an alternate, I probably would have suggested it not even necessarily be – just to save them the heartache of having to go through that moment. It’s just because of the content, there’s so much of the language issue with it.
“I can tell you that my community I’ve gotten away with all sorts of shows at my school, I’ve done Rent and Threepenny Opera and Cabaret, even my community wouldn’t be OK with a bunch of f-bombs being dropped on stage. It’s a tough one.” At another point, she said, “For that general audience, they were asked to remove at least a few of the f-bombs to take it down from a “rated R” to at least as PG or PG-13 for the general audience. And they refused to do so, which is their prerogative and their right as artists. I respect that, but we couldn’t out it on our stage in front of a general audience.”
Recalling the scene backstage, as she argued on behalf of the students, one of Ferro and Roldan’s teachers, Annie McAdams, recalls one of the adjudicators for the Showcase saying to her, “’Look, it’s just the word “fucking,” we can’t have “fucking” on this stage, it’s too big a house.’ I said, ‘That doesn’t make sense, how come we have asterisks? What if they say we can let the lights up and everyone can leave if they don’t like it?’ And they said, ‘No, we can’t do it. It’s OK in the little rooms, but it’s not OK in this big room.’ Oh, and they also said that the adjudicators know that and they are not supposed to advance material that will be offensive, they are not supposed to do this. Then I said, ‘Well why do we have that policy if it doesn’t matter? Why do we say that they can do this material if in fact they’re not going to get advanced, they’re not going to be considered?’ So how many other students haven’t been considered? And they never knew.”
* * *
Michael Higgins was the director of the Florida State Thespians for approximately 17 years (he didn’t recall exactly); his tenure concluded in 2010 and Lindsay Painter’s began in 2013. Last week, he spoke of what was happening with the language in competing scenes when he first took on his role. He had not attended the 2015 Festival.
“At the time it was not regulated as far as any kind of censorship issue,” said Higgins. “Then, as all things do, it became more and more of an issue as students were choosing that adult material and more than that it was getting inordinate positive response by the judges. My feeling at the time was since you were trying to get a monologue performed in two minutes, oddly enough the shock words gave you more punch and power in those two minutes and got you more notice than perhaps a much better written monologue, but it didn’t have such immediate punch that you could get in 90 seconds or two minutes. So unfortunately it moved a tide toward more adult language and away from what was much better material without that.”
After a staffer in the lieutenant governor’s office attended a showcase some 15 or so years ago and voiced language and content concerns to Higgins, as did some letters he received, he said the state board of the Thespians moved to address the issue.
Higgins explained, “At the state level we were told that we could not edit these Miami-Dade kids at all or offer any roadblock to their performing because if we did, that county, which was the biggest participator of the state festival would pull out. Then we thought we needed a merger of these ideas here, how could we accommodate what at that time was a quite liberal south Florida from what’s always been a quite conservative north Florida, especially northwest Florida.
“We weren’t going to get into that game of saying one word’s bad or another situation’s bad. What we were going to do was create an asterisk, essentially putting the responsibility back on the artists, saying, ‘Artist, you want to do something that may offend some people for whatever reason. You have a responsibility before your piece to inform your audience that there is something that maybe some would consider objectionable, give a very brief synopsis of what that may be and then allow time for anybody who chooses not to be part of that to get up and leave the space before you do your material,’ putting the onus on the actual performer.
“That worked well for many, many years. It became a bit of an issue when at big events like closing ceremonies, Critic’s Choice when all the winners were showcased and we were doing these in big theatres, 1,000 seats theatres and then on practical terms when Susie got up to do her monologue and said before it, ‘it contains objectionable material’ that the audience was in no way going to be able to make a choice to leave or stay. So we had to address that concern now. Do you only select Critic’s Choice pieces that are suitable for the quite conservative or do you say to heck with everybody and allow every piece to go and just field the complaints of those who are troubled by it?
“The solution that was found at that time was that I as state director took the responsibility on myself as head honcho and I would watch all of the pieces and I would let the piece know ‘this does contain some objectionable material.’ Do you want to edit out these couple of words or option two, not perform it but still get your notice, awards, prizes and mentions at the festival? But now you as the artists have got to understand that you have an audience that is mixed in their liberal/conservativeness, they do not have the option to exercise their right to exit and not participate in theatre, so in order to preserve the festival there is something greater than your free choice at this adolescent age and you must work for the greater good. That worked for quite a while with some groups deciding I don’t want to be censored, so they didn’t perform yet won all of their awards and bells and whistles, and others saying, ‘oh sure, if it’s a matter of getting rid of the word fuck twice I can say that is not really a big deal to me and I understand that the audience has changed from what happened in a small room of 30 people to an audience now that has 10,000 people with young children and families and all kinds of people.’ The switch is for the audience, just like good old theatre.”
* * *
The Guirgis scene was suggested to Ferro and Roldan by one of their teachers, Elena Maria Garcia, an adjunct at New World School with 14 years experience.
Stephen Adly Guirgis
“I love [Guirgis’s] work,” said Garcia, “and I said to the boys, ‘If there’s anybody in this class who will really understand this piece, and just be able to play it, not for the shouting or any of that stuff, because it’s really easy to do that, but for the compassion and the struggle – really what that scene is about between Judas and Jesus. I said you guys can pull this off.’ They struggled a lot but they finally got it and it was just glorious. It was just one of those moments that you go ‘Wow, this is why I teach. This is why I sit in traffic ever day.’ When you see moments like that you go, ‘Damn’.”
Annie McAdams, a faculty member at NWSA, was new to the school and the world of Thespian competition at the start of the current school year. Asked whether she had any initial concerns about the scene being in competition, given the language, she said, “I was not worried about the content of their scene. I wondered if the Thespians would like the content of their scene, and it occurred to me that it might be a hard piece to win a festival with because of the content. Not only that it had profanity but also the subject matter – that it’s Jesus and Judas arguing. I moved to Florida from New Jersey which is a blue state. Everyone feels that Florida is liberal, but I’ll tell you, it’s not as liberal as the northeast. So yes, it occurred to me that they might not win with it, but I knew that they could compete.”
When asked about their awareness of any guidelines about content or performance, both Garcia and McAdams cited the asterisk rule. McAdams said she didn’t know of more, while Garcia said she knew there were some for the state festival, but deferred to McAdams as the official head of the troupe.
Asked about this, Painter cited the following guidance on the Florida Thespian website:
The board wishes to restate its position that the sponsor and student should choose material that they would feel comfortable sharing in front of their peers and their school. The material chosen should match the community standards of your school district and your town! There should NEVER be an attempt to choose material for competition that you would “never be able to do on your own stage.” There is no shortage of prize-winning, world-class drama that would be acceptable in any high school in the state!
To this end, you will find the following statement in the registration for state. Both you, the sponsor, and the principal* or his/her designee are asked to sign the following:
The board requests that you verify that each piece which will be performed representing your school has been screened by the sponsor and endorsed by the principal or his/her designee. We ask you to certify that each piece meets your community standards and the standards set by your school and your school board. We also understand this caveat will not guarantee that all material presented will fit the guidelines of all schools. To that end, we will continue to use the asterisk as a further means of denoting material which might be considered sensitive for some viewers.
*NOTE: In Dade County the teacher, not the principal will be asked to certify that the piece meets community standards.
Set off separately, the statement continues:
Florida State Thespians does not pre-approve the material which is presented at this conference. The individual director is the ultimate judge of what is suitable for his/her students to perform for their home school audience. They are also responsible for placing the asterisk on any of their entries which might be questionable in nature. All material performed at this conference has been approved by the principal of the originating school. That approval indicates that he/she attests that the pieces submitted from that school would be suitable for general audience presentation at the school from which it came.
Even with these warnings and precautions, we realize that some of the more mature material may trouble some of our audience. We have endeavored to forewarn by the use of the asterisk and, at the Closing Ceremony, by identifying edgy material prior to its presentation. Should any member of our audience be offended by any performance, we encourage them to voice their concern to the State Director who has been directed by the State Thespian Board to forward those letters of complaint to the administrator involved. The administrator who approved the material in the first place is the person who should be able to defend his/her choice.
We cherish the right to free expression, but we also understand that, as educators, we have a responsibility to use that freedom wisely. We have tried to differentiate between words which might offend and ideas which might make the audience uncomfortable. Theatre, at its highest, may create dissension and make people examine their beliefs. Blasphemy and blatant sexual references are not suited to this conference. We have encouraged everyone to be sensitive to them starting at the district level. Discussion of contemporary issues and problems are the stuff of real theatre and deserve a place on our stages. Community standards differ widely in our state and this is a thorny issue we do not take lightly. As theatre educators, we cannot solve the problems of society by refusing to give a platform where those problems can be examined in an intelligent and forthright manner. We feel giving audience members the opportunity to challenge some of the choices local administrators make will give a greater voice to everyone in our large and extremely diversified audience.
Julie Cohen Woffington, executive director of the Educational Theatre Association said that there are no such restrictions on the national festival. As for guidelines for each state group, she wrote, “We have suggested guidelines for the individual events program that are available online, but they do not refer to choice of material or language.” Asked about any policy regarding the alteration of texts for competition or performance at the national festival, Woffington replied, “We have a statement on Freedom of Expression on our website. We also have information in the individual events guidelines that require securing performance rights.”
* * *
Returning to the night of the showcase, Roldan describes his reaction at the Sophie’s Choice he and Ferro had been given: remove the language or forego performing.
“At that moment, I was kind of disappointed,” Roldan said. “I was pretty sad. It was heartbreaking to hear that we would have to clean it up or not perform. The thing is, we always thought that the words were put in there for a purpose and they do have a meaning in the piece. So you might be able to change a few but even if you do the piece might lose some of its importance and some of its value.”
Asked if they had given any thought to changing the piece, Ferro said, “I was considering it. Tomas was calling Garcia – we were both shocked a little bit. So he called Garcia and I was thinking maybe we should change it. I just wanted to perform it. It was Tomas, who after he hung up with Garcia, who turned to me and said I guess we can’t perform it. He had already kind of made the decision. That’s how me and Tomas work, we kind of take turns making big things like that and I agreed with him completely. I don’t even know what I was thinking. You’re right, we shouldn’t perform it.”
McAdams recalls asking the students, “Are you sure you don’t want to just change the language? So that you can perform? I knew they were so proud, and I knew they had worked so hard, and honestly I didn’t think they had a chance of winning really because of Jesus and Judas, more than the profanity. So I really wanted them to have that experience of performing in front of their peers on that big stage. They said absolutely not.”
With McAdams’s help, Roldan and Ferro crafted a brief statement, which they read from the stage during the Showcase instead of performing their scene. It said:
Today we will not be performing a duet scene from The Last Days of Judas Iscariot by Stephen Adly Guirgis. We were thrilled to be awarded the Critic’s Choice for our category. We chose a scene we love by an artist we respect. The scene is asterisked for language and content. Tonight Florida State Thespians is asking us to alter our scene by removing the offensive language. We feel as young artists that this language is an integral part of the author’s intention in the scene. Rather than censor our scene, we have chosen to perform our piece outside. In 15 minutes we will be outside by the steps to perform. Please join us to support Art.”
* * *
I’d like to make some observations about what transpired in Florida two weeks ago.
It is clear that the state organization does have guidelines for performances at the showcase which differ from the guidelines that apply to competing works. It is certainly unfortunate that Garcia and McAdams were either unaware or not fully aware of them. While Lindsay Painter admitted to me that, “I don’t think it’s terribly easy to find and obviously after this conversation and this issue this year, we will make sure that’s easier to locate,” the way events unfolded for Roldan and Ferro might have been anticipated had they seen that language or been advised of it. That said, it’s worth noting that according to the young men, at no point in the adjudication process, either at their district level (where they did not receive an award and so were not eligible to perform) or the state level did anyone affiliated with the competitions make Roldan and Ferro aware of the potential restrictions on their performance until after they’d won and were at the final screening.
But perhaps it’s a good thing that things fell this way, because it reveals the strain of censorship that does affect the public performances at the Festival. Deploying language about “blasphemy and blatant sexual references” in performance, it is clear that the Florida festival is exercising judgment over what is permissible and what isn’t, and doing so rather late in the game to boot. There is no way of deciding definitively what is or is not blasphemy or blatant sexuality, even if you’re willing to grant that such a restriction is appropriate; it’s always going to be a judgement call. It’s worth noting that while a synonym for “blasphemy” is “obscenity,” “blasphemy” in its primary usage refers to “impiety” and in some cases irreverent behavior towards anything held sacred, not simple cursing. In the scene from Guirgis’s play, the word “fuck” or “fucking” is used as an interjection or adjective; at no time does it refer to a sexual act.
If in fact scenes that aren’t “appropriate” for the final showcase are being scored poorly to avoid the sort of conflict that arose over the scene from Judas Iscariot, that’s a black mark on the entire adjudication process. Not only did McAdams say that she had been told this was the case, but let’s also recall Painter’s slightly ambiguous, halting, “This piece was probably, had I known ahead of time, that the judges did not give us an alternate, I probably would have suggested it not even necessarily be – just to save them the heartache of having to go through that moment.” That can be construed to corroborate what McAdams heard about judging, although it stops short of being explicit. [Updated: please see addendum below with Lindsay Painter’s clarification of position on the issue of instructions and process for adjudication.]
I should note that late in our conversation, Painter introduced the idea that the reason Ferro and Roldan were not permitted to perform was because of how they behaved when given their choice, suggesting they had “started harassing other troupes and other humans.” I suspect that teenagers hearing such news for the first time may well have acted out in some way, though Ferro denied it and McAdams said she saw no such behavior and was told of no such behavior when she arrived backstage. I was surprised when Painter raised it 22 minutes into a 29 minute conversation; if it was central to the decision, it seems it should have been brought up as a factor much sooner.
Because of the Festival’s policy of placing the responsibility for the scenes chosen on school officials, with Miami-Dade having a different policy than the other districts, there has always been the potential for crossing some invisible line as Ferro and Roldan did. But by actively urging them to alter the author’s language, the festival applies censorship pressure as a prerequisite for performing some winning “asterisked” work, and based on the accounts from both Painter and Higgins, this is common practice. That is a poor example to set for students, teachers or parents – the work of authors cannot and should not be altered to meet the perceived need of an audience. That the festival has codified such actions in order to defend the festival against those who would dictate content to all is troubling, to say the least.
I will acknowledge that the State Festival organizers have challenges, not least the huge scale and popularity of their successful event. More importantly, they grapple with the reality that few states or even individual towns have unanimity about what is blasphemous, blatantly sexual, or obscene, and they’re trying to maintain an event statewide. But I think it’s fair to say that even the most liberal school has a sense of what is appropriate for their students, and by leaving the content, and quite explicitly any blame for that content, to the schools, the Florida festival must find a better solution to its current practice of altering content and staging to suit a homogeneous audience in an effort to minimize complaints. Perhaps “asterisked” scenes should be adjudicated together and have a defined portion of the showcase evening, while the self-identified inoffensive material is gathered separately at all stages. In that way, students whose schools permit them more latitude will be assured of both fair judging and the opportunity to perform. But altering a playwright’s words violates copyright law, and doing so in order to placate sensibilities remains censorship, no matter how it is rationalized.
I have written before that I believe that school theatre is first and foremost for the students – not for their parents, their siblings or the general public. Students should have the opportunity to take on challenging work, contemporary as well as classic work. If that work contains “strong” language but is within the education parameters of their school, so be it. “Protecting” the students, or an audience, from words or ideas should not drive education or school-related activities.
* * *
Ferro and Roldan both cite the idea of performing their scene outside as having come from one of the same adjudicators who gave them the “censor or don’t perform” ultimatum, saying he seemed genuinely sympathetic to the decision they faced. I asked them both how the impromptu performance went.
Roldan said, “Well at that point we were all adrenaline, I would say, especially Matthew. He really got on board and once he got on board he was completely on the bull and he was just going at it. We just performed it, a whole lot of people came and it was a great experience. The scene itself, I felt that while we did it outside, it wasn’t the best we did it, because at that point we were doing it now out of frustration and we had all those emotions inside of us, so I felt that maybe made us deviate from the scene. It still came out great, but not as good as it came out when we showed the piece for the first time in the competition.”
Ferro also felt the scene lost something. “I gotta be honest, it wasn’t the same,” he said. “For myself, I wish it hadn’t gone down that way because I feel like the whole point was kind of lost, the whole point of just doing the scene, the beautiful scene, was lost. I wouldn’t say it was because of Tomas. I kind of blame myself because I was so amped up on trying to get the crowd to listen to me and I was very energetic, I don’t think I was able to calm down and perform the piece like we’d rehearsed a thousand times. I don’t know. For me, it’s sad that the piece wasn’t as good as we had done it a million times before.”
Garcia viewed it very differently. “I’m thinking, OK, because there’s a massive dance where these teens go to right afterwards to celebrate the end, I said to them, I think you might get a few [people to watch]. I don’t think you’ll get that many kids because they’ll want to go to the dance. How wrong was I? There were over 200 kids standing on the lawn in their beautiful gowns and high heels going into the soil. They didn’t care, they were all there in silence watching these boys do their piece. It was right out of a movie. I was like, I can’t believe, they will never forget this. This is such a wonderful moment right now. I just thought Guirgis would be, ‘My god, they’re still hearing my work.’ These kids are anti-censorship and they kept hugging the boys and saying, ‘Thank you so much for doing the right thing. This is what its about – we’re artists and we shouldn’t have to change our work.’ It was beautiful.”
Though the young men refused their achievement prizes that night, McAdams brought them home, suspecting they’d ultimately want them, and both Ferro and Roldan expressed regret that they hadn’t ultimately accepted the recognition that evening, that they hadn’t respected the Festival more even at a moment of crisis.
When asked whether she might recommend different material for students in the future as a result of what transpired, McAdams said, “I guess there would be a discussion I would have with the kids: ‘Look, if you want to win, here are the parameters you need to be in.’ But as a teacher, I would say, ‘Pick material you respond to, pick material that you are passionate about. Pick writing that’s good’.”
Ferro, asked if he had known all that was going to happen, would he have chosen a different scene, said simply, “No, I really wouldn’t have.”
I’m pleased that Ferro and Roldan are juniors, not only because they will have the opportunity to compete and perhaps win one more time (Garcia says she’s pointed them towards True West) but because it gives the Florida Thespian Festival the opportunity to right a wrong – and I believe it is a wrong, regardless of the forewarning on their website. Roldan and Ferro should be given the opportunity to perform their scene from The Last Days of Judas Iscariot on the main festival stage next year, all “fucks” intact.
And, of course, they still have a shot at the National Festival in June. I’m rooting for them.
* * *
Addendum, April 15, 3:50 pm: Upon reading this post, Lindsay Painter asked me to include the following information regarding the adjudication process.
The judges are not encouraged or told to be concerned about the asterisks when providing a score and feedback. In fact, when I meet with them each morning of the festival, it is one of my main points I make. The students of Florida should be receiving honest non-bias feedback from the professionals we hire to adjudicate. To suggest otherwise, in regards to how our organization has been handling the showcase is faulty. The judges have nothing to do with the showcase. They give us their picks for who the best in the room was, (all regards to content aside) and that makes-up the list for showcase. But, they have nothing to do with our asterisks system or the system we’ve had in place for preparing the showcase presentations.
Painter further requested that the following distinction be made, and because I write in the interest of constructive dialogue on these issues, I share it as well:
This is a Theatre Festival, not a competition. There is no prize, no winner. Each performance is provided an assessment. We showcase one piece from each room as a way to celebrate the work the students of Florida have brought to the festival. It’s not a thing to win or not win. And if they are not able to perform, an alternate does. This is the spirit of the festival. There is no placing or winning of the Florida State Thespian Festival. Only of presenting, receiving valuable feedback, and celebrating the work of the student artists. These students were not impacted in any way in the feedback or rating they received by the judges. They were given their superior. That is the highest honor they, or any student at the festival, can hope to achieve.
Correction, April 15 3:45 pm: This post originally stated that Michael Higgins was Lindsay Painter’s direct predecessor. That was incorrect, and is now accurately reflected above.
Correction, April 16, 11:30 pm: This post has been corrected to reflect that New World School of the Arts is affiliated with the University of Florida, not Florida State University, as previously stated.
Full disclosure: I delivered a keynote and conducted a workshop on the subject of school theatre censorship last summer at the Educational Theatre Association’s annual teacher’s conference. EdTA paid me an honorarium and provided me with round-trip travel to Cincinnati and accommodations while there.
Howard Sherman is director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School for the Arts.
Jerry MacKinnon in This Is Modern Art at Steppenwolf Theatre
If, like me, you’re connected to members of the Chicago theatre community on social media (I’m NYC based), you’ve certainly seen an outpouring of reaction to two major reviews of the new Steppenwolf for Young Adults show, This Is Modern Art (Based On True Events). Since all perception of what’s being said on any subject in social media is mediated by who you ‘follow’ and who you ‘friend’ and what you like and retweet, I can’t possibly tell you what the prevailing sentiments are overall, online or in Chicago theatre lobbies. But I will say this: my connections are very unhappy, and in some cases enraged. Among their charges are that the reviews are deeply insensitive to a story about young people of color, and by extension the lives of all people of color, and that they condescend to the work from a place of privilege.
Chris Jones of the Chicago Tribune and Hedy Weiss of the Chicago Sun-Times both gave what I would characterize as predominantly negative reviews of the production. Both shared a common theme: that the play, about graffiti artists, celebrated their work without making sufficiently clear, to the critics’ minds, that the majority of graffiti art is also illegal vandalism. Jones calls graffiti “disrespectful”; Weiss calls the characters “urban terrorists.” The play is based upon a true incident in Chicago, when elaborate graffiti was created on the exterior of the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago, so it summons shared Chicago memories, beyond the writers’, readers’ or audiences’ personal experiences.
From the reviews, I offer two excerpts (with links to the complete pieces):
“But here is what “This is Modern Art” barely even mentions: Graffiti comes at a price. It can be invasive, self-important and disrespectful of the property of others — and plenty of struggling folks have had to clean graffiti off something they own or love. Graffiti can be inartful, for goodness sake. More importantly yet, graffiti had the effect of making people feel unsafe in the city. It terrified people. It was only when public officials declared themselves determined to wipe it out that cities finally came back to life, with broad benefits.
You wanna go back to riding public transportation in New York or Chicago in the 1980s? I do not. You do not have to be conservative or somehow not down with youth to think it reprehensible that these issues do not have a place in a show for schools that is quite staggeringly one-sided.” – Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune
“To start, a hypothetical question addressed to the powers that be at Steppenwolf Theatre: How would you react were you to arrive at work one morning only to discover that the entire facade of your theater had been spray-painted with graffiti, and that the message left behind went like this: “All the world is OUR stage.”
I pose the question after having just seen “This Is Modern Art,” the wildly misguided new Steppenwolf for Young Adults production written by hip-hop artist Idris Goodwin and “Louder Than a Bomb” founder Kevin Coval, and directed by Lisa Portes.
Clearly the play is meant to be a provocation and a catalyst for controversy and discussion among the many high school groups that comprise the principal audience for this series. And no one would deny that in terms of its fine acting and knowingly “hip” writing and design this is an entertaining and “artful” production. But “This Is Modern Art” also sends out a slew of profoundly misguided messages to its impressionable viewers. And no politically correct review to rationalize it will appear here.” – Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times
Now before I go on, I should point out that I write about this issue is as a middle-aged, Caucasian, cisgender, heterosexual Jewish male raised in and around New Haven, Connecticut. Many could say I write from a position of privilege as well; that’s their right. But I cannot be anyone but who I am and, as a longtime follower of theatre criticism, I would hope that all critics would write openly and honestly about their perceptions, with their biases out there for all to see and take into account. In the interest of full disclosure, I should also mention that I’ve known Chris Jones for more than a decade professionally; I’ve never had any occasion to meet or communicate with Hedy Weiss.
This Is Modern Art at Steppenwolf Theatre
With all of that out of the way, I have to say that I find both reviews limited. Not because I disagree with their opinions of the play – I’ve not seen it or read it, so I can’t – but because the reviews fail to give me sufficient information about the play that might allow me to draw any conclusions of my own. So much of the bodies of the two reviews are devoted to condemning graffiti and vandalism, and taking the play to task for not sharing that perspective, that it’s very difficult for me – and I would assume most readers – to assess whether the play might be something I want to see, which a daily review should do, even a negative one.
Presumably Chris and Hedy could have noted their displeasure with the play’s perspective while still attending more fully to the details of the play and the production, which they fleetingly praise. Subsequently, as senior critics, they could have easily then written separate essays in which they explored their political and personal reactions to graffiti as vandalism, and question Steppenwolf’s responsibility in presenting the work if they wished, instead of forcing such op-eds into the confines of a standard review.
Inevitably, some of the rhetoric surrounding these reviews has addressed the role of the critic, always a charged discussion but one that must be considered in the context of the diminishment of arts coverage in legacy mainstream media. Nationally, critics remain in their positions for as long as they’re able, even as positions are cut and newspapers constantly seek buyouts that target veteran employees (read older, better paid) in an economic version of Logan’s Run. But with limited alternatives, few critics are opting out voluntarily, and so it’s not entirely surprising to find that many “major” critics mirror the demographics that prevailed decades earlier: largely white and mostly male. That can set up a division with both artists and audiences who make up the more diverse America of today (though the field of theatre still has a great deal of work to do on diversity and equity in its own ranks as well), since they find work, often as not, being judged publicly by people who may not mirror them in any way or share or understand their experiences. When I started in theatre, for example, I wondered where the young critical voices were in the major media; remarkably, 30 years on, I still wonder (though I know I can find those voices online, in many cases working for free).
Kelly O’Sullivan and Jerry MacKinnon in This Is Modern Art at Steppenwolf Theatre
In the case of This Is Modern Art, a work explicitly created for teen audiences, I would suggest that the arts or features editors at the two Chicago papers missed an opportunity. While absolutely still affording Chris and Hedy their primacy as the papers’ critical voices, wasn’t this the moment to offer more diverse staffers the opportunity to weigh in? While This Is Modern Art does have evening performances for the public, the majority of the schedule is daytime shows, presumably for students and youth groups, and therefore deserving of viewpoints that might in some aspect approach greater commonality with the expressly targeted audience. Admittedly, it would be impossible to check off a series of demographic boxes on any critic that would fulfill the wishes of every reader and every artist on every show, but the paper might have made an effort when reviewing a show for youth to acknowledge that the seemingly monolithic role of critics doesn’t always serve readers, by adding diverse voices here (and, when appropriate, in the future). Op-ed pages have multiple voices, not just one.
In concluding her review, Hedy appears to try to trump any criticism of her perspective, as follows, “Really, what could Steppenwolf have been thinking? Now, I just hope local politicians will not jump on the bandwagon and, as the ultimate hypocrisy, make this play their ‘cause.’” She has presumptively critiqued those who might disagree with her, which strikes me as unfortunate. Professional critics have every right to state their opinion boldly, but preemptively challenging those with other opinions seems unnecessary.
In his review, Chris notes “the authority figures like police officers (mostly played by Chris Rickett) are either inept or bumbling or misunderstanding — certainly they never are allowed to make any kind of sympathetic point,” and later declares, “By all means, connect the city’s kids to this artistic tradition, but I say there is a moral obligation to make them think about the price we all pay.” I will only say that West Side Story also portrayed the police as ineffective and a source for ridicule (“Gee, Officer Krupke”) and that there are countless works of theatre that don’t pretend to balance – where, for example, in Grease do we find an appealing, highly respected honor student to counter the allure of Danny Zuko?
J. Salomé Martinez in This Is Modern Art at Steppenwolf Theatre
Mind you, like Chris and Hedy, I’m not saying that I want to see our cities riddled with graffiti the way they were in the 70s and 80s. But I am open to seeing a story that attempts to explore what might have motivated some of the people behind it, then or now. Both reviews assert that because the show is targeted at students it is therefore irresponsible in its sympathetic perspective. While I doubt any young person is unaware of the potential consequences for the defacement of public property, especially those being taken to the theatre by teachers or counselors, the Steppenwolf study guide (available to all online) spells it out:
“For these artists…their art form is worthy of the likes of Caravaggio and Escher, but to the city it is defined as “the criminal defacement of property with paint.” The consequences are severe: $750 to $1,500 in fines, felony charges and possibly prison time for the offenders. And it can mean a big bill for the city: Chicago has spent nearly $5 million dollars in graffiti removal in this year alone. Although the protagonist of our story, Seven, is motivated by a desire to gain recognition for his art and an evolution of what the public views as ‘high art, fine art, worthy of being in a museum’ the Art Institute bombing comes at a cost. Not only to the Institute, which had to remove the paint, but also for the artists who committed the crime and, who, nearly five years later, still face felony charges if their identities are revealed.”
And while I was unsuccessful in securing a copy of the play to read, the study guide suggests that the show’s protagonist does not get away consequence-free:
“As for Seven, at the end of the play, he is left grappling with whether or not what he did was worth it; after all, he now has no crew, no girlfriend, no graffiti.”
The experience of theatre for young people taken to it is rarely confined to just watching a play. It is typically contextualized through conversation, both before and after seeing a show, at the theatre and at schools and youth organizations. The evening performances reportedly had those same opportunities, although they’re certainly not compulsory. But for the ostensibly impressionable young seeing This Is Modern Art, the play is not presented in a vacuum, which these reviews seem to presume it is.
In reading commentary about the reviews on social media, I found the personal attacks on Chris and Hedy extremely distasteful; I applaud those who sought to temper that unacceptable rhetoric. The conversation now should be a greater one than simply these reviews and this play. Hopefully this incident will provoke some genuine consideration and conversation – which includes Chris and Hedy and some of the artists expressing concern about these reviews – about what voices are given the platform to judge work, the need for not just critics but their editors to open new avenues to diverse voices and critical responses, and the necessity for work to be judged on its own terms, not just on the basis of what others think it should be, whoever the work is “for.”
Howard Sherman is director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at the New School for Drama and Senior Strategy Director at the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts.
It is not, sad to say, news that controversy has surrounded a production of Terrence McNally’s Corpus Christi. It is certainly not surprising to hear that such controversy took place on a university campus. But when one hears that Corpus Christi became the subject of controversy as a result of a production at a Christian faith-based university, the reflex is to wonder how anyone ever thought it could be done there in the first place. But the production of Corpus Christi that was to have been produced this past weekend at Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia reveals a situation that demands something more than a reflexive scoff, as it reveals a great deal about the struggle between the tenets of faith and academic freedom, between traditional ways and where our society is in the 21st century.
The basic facts are this: Christian Parks, a senior majoring in theatre at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) proposed as his senior project a production of Corpus Christi, which was, according to him, approved by the school’s theatre faculty in the spring of 2014. Since January, due to increasing concerns by the school administration over the content of the play, Parks was called into a series of meetings about the play, which escalated from expressing concern to reducing the number of performances from four to two and severely limiting who would be permitted to attend to the show being completely canceled. It seems to echo many cases of academic theatre censorship, although there appears to have been significantly more dialogue surrounding the process as it accelerated – and how the final decision was made, and by whom, seems unique in my experience.
* * *
For those unfamiliar with Corpus Christi, it is McNally’s 1998 play in which he reimagines the story of Jesus as told and enacted by 13 gay male friends in the present day. When it was first announced for its premiere at the Manhattan Theatre Club, it was thrust into the center of controversy over its content – which few people had seen or even read – resulting in violent threats against MTC and the production, causing it to be briefly canceled and then restored, with strong protests outside the theatre during its run and security measure put in place to protect the theatre, the show and its patrons.
The play subsequently had numerous productions around the country, many which had their own controversies where it played, again, often over what people imagined to be the content rather than the play itself. It has been produced at colleges and universities, provoking similar reactions. Now, 17 years later, the play is produced intermittently, hardly surprising for any play that, in its way, had such a huge “moment” in the late 90s.
Writing of the play in the preface to the trade paperback edition, McNally describes it as follows:
Corpus Christi is a passion play. The life of Joshua, a young man from south Texas, is told in the theatrical tradition of medieval morality plays. Men play all the roles. There is no suspense. There is no scenery. The purpose of the play is that we begin again the familiar dialogue with ourselves: Do I love my neighbor? Am I contributing to the good of the society in which I operate or nil? Do I, in fact, matter? Nothing more, nothing less. The play is more religious ritual than a play. A play teaches us new insight into the human condition. A ritual is an action we perform over and over because we have to. Otherwise we are in danger of forgetting the meaning of the ritual, in this case that we must love one another or die. Christ died for all of our sins because He loved each and every one of us. When we do not remember His great sacrifice, we condemn ourselves to repeating its terrible consequences.
All Corpus Christi asks of you is to “look at what they did to Him. Look at what they did to Him.” At the same time it asks you to look at what they did to Joshua, it asks that we look at what they did one cold October night to a young man in Wyoming as well. Jesus Christ died again when Matthew Shepard did.
* * *
The play is set in the present day and employs language that might raise concerns within religious groups, but McNally’s message of dialogue and ritual seems particularly well suited to the discussion of faith in present day life. That said, it helps to know something about the Mennonites. Here I’ll draw from the website of Mennonite Church USA.
Mennonites are Anabaptists
We are neither Catholic nor Protestant, but we share ties to those streams of Christianity. We cooperate as a sign of our unity in Christ and in ways that extend the reign of God’s Kingdom on earth.
We are known as “Anabaptists” (not anti-Baptist) – meaning “rebaptizers.” The Anabaptist movement began in the 16th Century in Europe.
To defuse a commonly held misconception I also draw from their website the following
Mennonites are not Amish
We find that many people asking about Mennonites are actually thinking of the Amish or “Old Order Mennonites.” Mennonites and Amish come from the same Anabaptist tradition begun in the 16th century, but there are differences in how we live out our Christian values. The distinctiveness of the Amish is in their separation from the society around them. They generally shun modern technology, keep out of political and secular involvements and dress plainly.
It is important to know, however, that there is great debate within the Mennonite community about the acceptance and role of LGBTQ followers, which has historically been one of exclusion. However, as in so many faiths, there is a strong contingent of Mennonites who want to see the church change its ways, and there are groups working to bring that about. But there is no agreement.
* * *
Christian Parks first proposed doing Corpus Christi as his senior project two years ago, inspired by seeing a production of the play in San Francisco by 108 Productions as part of their “I Am Love” effort to bring the play and its message to communities around the country, including communities of faith.
“There is an application process,” Parks explained, describing the theatre department’s standard procedures, “where I give them the name of the script. I also give them the reasons why I’m doing the project. I also give them a budget that I had to pre-balance, so that they knew where I was going to spend my money. Then we began more discussions after the script had a read-through and that’s when the conversations about this being a student lab production entered in. That entails making sure there’s a talkback, a way for the audience to process the show after every performance and it also means the department will not collectively advertise this outside the campus.”
Parks explained that a lab production is a full production, with four performances, and that while it may not be advertised off campus, the local community may attend. He then said, “I got approval when the season was approved, in the spring of 2014. Surprisingly enough, the administration is mailed every season that gets approved and this show was on the list.”
Asked as to whether he was aware of the play’s controversial past, he said, “In the fall, I began my senior thesis, which is the theoretical part which goes along with the production. I wrote a conceptual, theorized piece using poor theatre and Grotowski and using some other things that had more to do with the ritual side of Corpus Christi. I actually had to dive into the script and look at past performances, where this had been and the controversy that has been around it. So yes, I was very aware of everything that was around Corpus Christi. But it was a lab production, so that was the clearance, or should I say the filter, in which I said that ‘Yes, this is a thing but we’re doing it as a lab production. That will be alright.”
Had Parks considered that the play might not be approved?
“It was a little iffy because I’m in a religious community and an especially close-knit one like the Mennonites. The university, according to the process we went through last year, was ahead of the church, so I knew that on the church denominational level will do whatever it does, and yes it’s going to make some conflict, but that’s OK because there’s enough people who can take care of that.”
“The process” Parks refers to was a “Listening Process” on the EMU campus in 2014, which sought to address issues relating to LGBTQ representation, particularly among the faculty. After six months, the school deferred formal action on hiring policy. Parks’s proposal was being considered by the theatre faculty during this time.
“I wasn’t aware,” he said, “that there was enough harm and enough pain and enough tension in the process that we went through, because in the spring of 2014 we approved it as a department in the middle of the listening process. It seemed, especially with the concept around the show, as if it would fit the culture that we were in and becoming.” Asked about his reference to “pain and hurt,” Parks explained that he was referring to situations that arose, “any time you have a lot of straight people talking about queer and gay bodies, and just constantly being under the microscope as they figure out what to do with us. So this show was a way of finally putting our voice at the table that they tried to do with us last year, but it didn’t really work because they still don’t understand and don’t want to understand.”
* * *
Parks said that conflict over the play began when he put out his audition notice at the beginning of January, which included a description of the play. Parks then described a series of meetings that he was called to by the administration beginning in late January. The first two were led by the Provost and Academic Dean; at the first, Parks said he was made aware of “concerns” and was asked to provide the script. He said that the provost subsequently stated that he never completed reading it, having stopped at the play’s nativity scene, at roughly page 20. Parks was also asked for his director’s notes and his advisor was asked for an explanation of the standard lab process.
At the second meeting, a week later, he said “We prepared a resource list and they took four or five of their resources and I took four or five of my resources and we were going to synthesize them together for people who might have more questions and might need places to go.” Parks also said that at that time, there was some concern as to whether he could field a full cast, and that the possibility of a reading instead of a full production, which would require less rehearsal, came up, but that he quickly thereafter secured a full cast and notified the theatre department that a production would be possible as originally planned. At a third meeting, this one called by the president, following a weekend meeting by the president’s cabinet, he was given a choice.
“The two decisions that they laid on the table for me was that either they would shut it down completely or, on the basis of academic integrity, they would confine the show to the classroom so that it would become a classroom endeavor which meant one performance at one time with a select group of people, a select group of classes and classes that were already dealing with subjects around sexuality conflict and faith. We compromised and went with one day instead of one performance and so there was a three o’clock and an eight o’clock performance. That is what we settled on and that each of these classes would get a ticket and only people who would be allowed to enter the theatre would be the people with a ticket, which meant that we would have to turn away anyone who came from the community and anyone who was a student but didn’t have a ticket.”
Following this decision, the restrictions on attendance were announced.
“It went on Facebook,” said Parks, “The theatre department had to tell people and that got out quicker than wildfire and what that means is that all of the justice connections that I have got whiff of it. People were angry and they went to social media to get out their anger. That is when I got called in for another meeting, Wednesday the 18th.”
This is now just prior to the two remaining scheduled performances, set for February 21.
* * *
I reached out to several people, via e-mail, in the EMU administration about the Corpus Christi situation. I did not receive a reply from Heidi Winters Vogel, Parks’s advisor and an associate professor, and my inquiries to the university president Loren Swartzendruber and provost Fred Kniss were referred to Andrea Wenger, Director of Marketing and Communications for the school. I should note that Wenger attempted to schedule direct conversation between me and the provost, however his schedule and my own were in conflict, and Wenger accepted and responded to my questions via e-mail at my suggestion in the interest of expediency.
I asked Wenger when the administration first became concerned about Corpus Christi and whether it was their practice to alter academic efforts in response to complaints over previously approved content.
She wrote, “Administrative leadership became aware of the play – and its controversial history – in mid-January. It is not the school’s practice to ‘alter academic efforts in response to complaints about previously approved academic content.’ Production of the play hadn’t been reviewed or approved by department leadership or administration prior to mid-January.”
Wenger explained that, “Public performances were cancelled by the president’s cabinet when administration learned that what they had been assured in mid-January would be a staged reading with no publicity morphed into a full-blown production.” Responding to my question about limiting attendance, she said, “The student involved intended to sell tickets to this show. He anticipated off-campus interest and support even with limited publicity. The administration cut the performance schedule from four performances over three days to two performances on one day with an invitation-only audience
She further said, regarding the timing of the process, “The administration first became aware of the planned staging in recent weeks. Administration is evaluating the process of how the play was selected and vetted. EMU students are given freedom to choose productions that explore controversial topics as part of a rigorous academic program.
A report on the cancelation of the play in the school newspaper quoted Swartzendruber as citing threats of violence over the play, although he acknowledged that those had been over other productions, and none had been made at EMU. Asked about this, Wenger responded, “Given the history of this play’s controversial nature – which in some settings has generated threats of violence – EMU leadership took the action that they believed was in the overall best interests of students’ safety and well-being. Leadership had enough information to be concerned about the possibility of disruption.”
* * *
Which brings us to the cancelation.
The EMU student newspaper ran their story, on Thursday, February 19, with the headline, “Parks Cancels ‘Corpus Christi’ Over Controversy,” saying that the decision was his, not the administration’s. Regarding the accuracy of this account, Parks returned to the meeting of February 18.
“After hearing what was going on,” he said, “and after doing some strategic planning in my mind, that is when I went in and I knew that they were going to shut it down. I knew. And so instead of the story being written as they shut it down, I’d rather it be written as I took it down, because I refuse to be a victim. I refuse, I refuse. So that’s when I made the decision, Wednesday the 18th, that Corpus Christi is coming down and we would not be having the performance and so I went back and told my cast.
I wondered whether Parks had jumped the gun, and asked Andrea Wenger whether the administration would have permitted the performances to go on had Parks said he was canceling them
“No,” Wenger replied. “The invitation-only performances were to be cancelled; administration believed this to be in the overall best interests of EMU students’ safety and well-being. Administration had enough information to be concerned about the possibility of disruption — especially when it became apparent that the students were proceeding with a full production versus a staged reading as originally planned.”
That statement stands in relief against a university wide communication by Wenger on behalf of Swartzendruber on February 18 which read, in part, “Despite the nature of the play, which varies from the university’s theological and biblical understandings, the cabinet sought to protect academic freedom and honor the student project as an academically engaging activity intended primarily for an internal audience,” then citing Parks’s decision as coming in the wake of the “intense reaction to the planned staging.” It doesn’t point out that the intense reaction was coming, at least in part, from the administration itself.
So no matter what had took place, and who spoke first, Corpus Christi wasn’t going to be seen at Eastern Mennonite University. The administration has responsibility for the denouement.
* * *
Seeking more perspective on the situation, I reached out to Barbra Graber, the co-chair of the EMU theatre department when she retired in 2005, having first started on the faculty in 1981. She had made several public postings on social media, which led me to her.
I asked her about the process that had taken place, which, when we spoke (preceding my communications with Parks and Wenger), she only had learned about the situation through friends and former colleagues on campus and what she had seen on social media. She also made clear that while she was familiar with McNally’s work, she did not know Corpus Christi.
Graber said, “It was troubling to hear that EMU pulled this play at all after it being passed through the theatre department. For the president’s office to feel that they just have the right to pull something the theatre department has already approved and that students have put their heart and soul into, you need to let the show go on. You can’t just step in and make that decision. It is a blatant misuse of freedoms, of rights, all kinds of rights violations going on there.”
“Religious people love to make decisions for other people and think they have a right to do that and they think they have the corner on what should or shouldn’t be spoken into the public arena.”
Graber, who now works with Our Stories Untold, a Mennonite advocacy group focused on addressing sexualized violence within the church and its members, that also seeks to address the church’s heterosexism and suppression of LGBTQ members, also took exception with Swartzendruber’s citing of potential threats as a reason for opposing the show, saying that Mennonites had historically always faced up to violence without flinching.
“In the name of justice we will walk into anything violent,” she declared. “We don’t shirk from violence. Because we serve a higher calling than this world, we will walk into violence. We will be these voices, we will be these peace and justice people – until it’s our own little prejudices and bigotry. When it affects our own bigotry and prejudice then we say, ‘Oh, there might be violence, we’d better stop this.’ It would be like Martin Luther King saying there’s a threat of bombing here so we’re going to cancel church.”
* * *
Parks had cited his inspiration for producing and directing Corpus Christi at EMU as being a production of the play by 108 Productions, best known through their “I Am Love” efforts which subsequently became a documentary film, Corpus Christi: Playing With Redemption. I reached out to both Nic Arnzen and James Brandon, who are partners in 108, I Am Love and the film, which they directed, and reached Arnzen first.
When he described that close to half of their ongoing touring performances, now a decade old, are in church-related venues, I asked about how the play reached those communities. “We basically answer the call where people are eager to see it,” he said. “Invitations often come from some spiritual leaders who are eager to broaden the minds of their congregation.”
Arnzen said that while certain Christian denominations resist the play, that once the group is in a community, they always issue an invitation to the leaders of all area churches, noting that, “We’ve had 10 years of running the play with little or no protest.” He observed that they rarely hear back after sending invitations, but that, “We’re not bitter that they’re not reaching back. We respect people’s boundaries. If I don’t respect their boundaries, how can I ask them to respect mine?”
Arnzen spoke about the many misconceptions about the play among those who haven’t seen or read it, dating back to the original Manhattan Theatre Club production. While acknowledging that they play does have “some words in it, very real language” and estimated “the f-word” appears “22 times, I think,” he was quite clear in his feeling about the overall message of the play.
“I attest to the fact that this is a very respectful retelling of the Jesus story.”
As a side note, 108’s production of the play uses a mixed gender cast, as Parks planned to do at EMU.
* * *
From four performances to one to two to none, Corpus Christi was not seen on the EMU campus this past weekend. There was, on February 18, after Parks’s decision – before the university administration was going to make it for him, one last rehearsal of Corpus Christi. While there was no official invitation, but apparently the theatre was packed. It became, in Parks’s word, a sit-in.
Parks has been assured that the show’s suspension will not affect his academic record, that he will receive full credits for his work and will graduate on time. I wondered whether he wanted to try to present the show off-campus, out from under the school’s authority.
He said, “I have considered it and I have considered it. The thing that is stopping me is that I have 13 actors who have lived through the I have a cast that wasn’t included in the decision making. No one sat at the table with me, no one gave their voice to what did happen, should happen, what might happen and at the bottom of the totem pole was the Corpus Christi cast. Now we have some harm and trauma that has been done and I don’t want to lead made cast members back into the hurt and trauma because now this story has it. I’ve been trying to think about how you do that and still give care to actors and not exacerbate the entire problem?”
I asked Parks whether he has any regrets and he said no. “I got to do what I love and there was some controversy about it,” he declared. “That’s OK, because I’m a queer body and that’s OK because I’m used to controversy.”
The conversation on the campus has not ended, and indeed I am told that the school community is consumed by it. There will be a student assembly for further conversation tomorrow, February 26. What will Parks’s role be at that event?
“I was invited,” he said. “I want to be the gatekeeper of the story. I want the facts to be straight.” And then his voice trailed off, in the equivalent of a verbal shrug as to what else might happen.
I will add my voice to that conversation, to the extent this is read on the campus, to say that 1) contrary to an assertion in the school newspaper, Corpus Christi has been produced on college campuses, dating back to at least 2001, however I was not able to determine whether it had been done at any faith-based university; 2) Andrea Wenger’s statement that not even the theatre department had approved the play, when Parks’s project had been approved in the spring and he was working on a thesis that was ready when the university asked for it and had announced auditions through university channels, seems highly contradictory; 3) that while there have been protests and threats against productions of Corpus Christi, my research did not reveal any overt acts against productions, only threats, and canceling it on the grounds of threats, or imagined threats, is the equivalent of giving in to terrorists, and 4) if the Mennonite Church’s practice of discernment in regards to this play is to be complete and thorough, then the play should be seen, so all discussions are fully informed by production, not merely by reading the script, or worse, hearsay, because that is how plays are truly meant to be seen.
The Mennonite Church may be wrestling with whether to welcome LGBTQ members of their church, and Eastern Mennonite University, in their handling of Corpus Christi, has proven how urgent the need to address this actually is. As someone who believes in complete equality for all people, I’d just like to suggest they have a leader in their midst who can open eyes and change minds and do so with love, respect and care. His name is Christian Parks.
I will update, correct and amend this post if circumstances warrant.
Perhaps you’re unaware of it, but there’s an arts education film up for an Oscar this year. And no, I’m not referring to something in the documentary short subject category, but rather a Best Picture nominee.
But what of Whiplash the arts education film? After all, we don’t get all that many, and when we do, they tend to be syrupy uplift pictures like Mr. Holland’s Opus or Music of the Heart. Since Whiplash can’t possibly be accused of being saccharine, why isn’t its musical didacticism being discussed in arts circles?
For anyone working in or teaching the arts, the answer is probably simple: it’s a harsh film in which we see the ugly side of musical monomania, a depiction of college level arts education that would probably send any prospective student running in the opposite direction from a conservatory program. But I’d like to suggest that while music is the movie’s métier, it’s really not about the arts at all, insofar as it mirrors or exists in relation to any cinematic antecedent. Whiplash is, first and foremost, a sports movie-military movie hybrid.
Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons in Whiplash
Made for only $3 million, Whiplash has stripped its story to the bare essentials, perhaps for budget reasons, or perhaps solely to focus our attention on a handful of bravura scenes. While it establishes our hero’s passion for music, it spends the majority of its first two acts showing us how he beats his way into an elite music ensemble – and then proceeds to have his hands and emotions beaten to a pulp by a teacher who is music educator as drill sergeant, a hard-ass, perhaps heartless, taskmaster whose idea of teaching seems based in ridicule and torment rather than actual training. While it’s likely that Teller’s character has other teachers and classes, they’re all relegated to the level of incidental or absent in favor of scenes of solo practice or ensemble totalitarianism under the baton of Simmons.
Richard Gere and Louis Gossett Jr. in An Officer and a Gentleman
We’ve seen the drill sergeant in countless films – Burt Lancaster in From Here To Eternity, Louis Gossett Jr. in An Officer and A Gentleman, and R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket to name three (with only the last suggesting that the drill sergeant methods might not be all they’re cracked up to be). You could also add Robert Duvall’s The Great Santini into this mix, especially for the scene where he bounces a basketball off of his son’s forehead. We’re meant to wonder whether these men are psychotic or uniquely skilled “builders of character” and that’s the same model that’s in place in Whiplash. They have their equivalents in the average sports movie – think of Gene Hackman in Hoosiers, trying to reclaim his stature after punching a kid at a prior job – and the link between sports movie, military movie and Whiplash becomes fairly obvious. They all share the idea of growth through humiliation.
Now to be clear, I really liked Whiplash as a film, and I’m not inclined to think that it’s representative of arts, or specifically music, education in any way, nor do I think it should be. It’s just one story, probably no more accurate about jazz than Smash was about the theatre, and I liked it for the two lead performances, the steadily rising tension between those characters, and because it was, at least, a film that sought to take the arts with a degree of seriousness – although I bridled quite a bit at the cruelty in the name of something meant to be emotionally resonant and I was troubled by its abject failure of the Bechdel Test or any meaningful depiction of diversity. Without giving away anything, I did think its third act, while thrilling, was ultimately preposterous in its plotting.
I happen to have a deep antipathy for stories with heroic but brutal coaches or brutal but tough-loving drill sergeants; often as not, I find myself deeply angry after watching stories in those genres, since I would never have been able to function in the face of such dehumanizing treatment, and always question whether it’s necessary or even morally right. Despite using that same template, I was able to stay with Whiplash because, while I have seen my share of angry directors and conductors in my day, I’ve never encountered such relentless ugliness in the arts.
The film did force me to review my own musical training, because while I did act in high school and college, I had absolutely no theatre education, but I did dabble with musical instruments. Disregarding compulsory class-wide forays into the recorder and its more simplistic forerunner the flutophone, I took cello lessons in elementary school for what now seems like all of three weeks and took private guitar lessons for perhaps a year and a half in junior high. Much as I loved music, I demonstrated no particular skill on any of these instruments but revealed my inability to submit to anything resembling regular practice. I continued to play the guitar, badly, for fun, for many years, but I haven’t picked one up in any meaningful way in about a decade.
Would I have benefited from a J.K. Simmons in my life? Might I have mastered the guitar – or the piano, as my mother dearly wished – if there had been someone to really push me? I tend to think not, because the drill sergeant as music teacher might have not only turned me away from the instrument, but from music itself, and that would have been a shame, since (recorded) music remains a balm for me in times of stress or sadness. But might I have developed a skill had I been under the guidance of someone who wasn’t content to let me practice lackadaisically or walk away after a brief attempt? That we’ll never know.
As for Whiplash? Good movie, but a work of fiction, more spare than Mr. Holland’s Opus, but equally manipulative. And for god’s sake, if you are thinking of taking up music, or any arts training, or you have a child who shows aptitude and interest, I strong suggest you approach it not as an arts movie, a sports movie or a military movie. At that point, consider it a horror film – as you watch it, keep repeating: it’s only a movie, it’s only a movie, it’s only a movie. At least I hope it is.
No, I’m sorry, it’s not a blog post; it’s a press release. But if you’ll read on, I hope you’ll understand why I’ve placed it here, and indulge me this once. – Howard
NEW YORK (February 12, 2014) – The New School for Drama (Pippin Parker, Director) announces the launch of the Arts Integrity Initiative, a new project aimed at supporting and protecting the work of artists at every level of society and production. Under the leadership of arts administrator, writer and advocate Howard Sherman, Arts Integrity will not only examine and take an active role in instances of censorship and alteration of works, but also serve as a resource for the academic and professional arts communities.
The program is designed to ensure that audiences and practitioners alike have the opportunity to engage directly with challenging, vital work that reflects the very best the arts have to offer.
“As long as books are banned, creative works are rewritten, and plays and musicals are eliminated by schools because they deal with challenging issues, we need to be vigilant about protecting freedom of speech, quality education and the rights of artists,” said Richard Kessler, Executive Dean of The New School’s Performing Arts School and Dean of Mannes School of Music. “With this new program, The New School addresses the subject from multiple vantage points, developing students who understand the necessity of free artistic expression as a means by which to explore, reflect, and critique society.”
The program features new curricular opportunities for students that explore the value of free artistic expression, as well as enhanced community outreach and projects to confront the issue. These commitments will be amplified through a range of public programs to promote discourse on the silencing or manipulation of artistic works, copyright protection, and broader use of the arts as a vehicle for social engagement and justice.
Projects associated with the Office for Arts Integrity include integrated coursework in conjunction with a forthcoming Master’s degree in Arts Management and Entrepreneurship; a collective space for affected professional and community artists to raise concerns and seek guidance; an online publication chronicling challenges to artistic expression and offering original work speaking directly to those issues from within the New School community and expert outside voices; and public programs to raise awareness of the silencing of artistic works and devise strategies for mobilization of the creative and educational communities.
“Since he first picked up the anti-censorship banner, no one has been a more vocal, tireless, and effective advocate for the playwright’s right to be heard than Howard Sherman,” said John Weidman, President of the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund.
“I began doing work in this area on an ad hoc basis four years ago,” said Sherman, “and since that time I’ve increasingly found the need for a proactive resource to study and address arts censorship, supporting both academic and professional arts companies in their efforts to do work that has the greatest rewards for their constituencies. At the same time, I find more and more examples of works being altered unilaterally to appease often arbitrary assessments of what is appropriate or acceptable – or even simply appealing.”
Sherman continued, “Too often when challenges arise, those who are targeted don’t know where to turn, and I hope we’ll be able to provide those facing such restriction or tampering with guidance and on the ground resources, as well as collaborate with other organizations which share those goals, while bringing specific arts expertise to the table. In addition, our plan is to explore the roots of these issues in the arts and work collaboratively within schools and both the amateur and professional communities to develop best practices to reduce these high profile incidents over time, even as we look to explore cases that never reach the general public.”
Recent examples of obstruction of artists’ rights include the ongoing lawsuit preventing production of David Adjmi’s dark parody 3C and the unauthorized alteration of the musical Hands on a Hardbody in its Texas premiere in Houston. Recent arts censorship efforts have included the cancelations of Almost, Maine in North Carolina and Spamalot in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania; and the cancelations and subsequent restorations of Rent in Trumbull, Connecticut and Sweeney Todd in Plaistow, New Hampshire.
Howard Sherman is senior strategy consultant at the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts, a position he’ll continue in parallel to his new role at The New School for Drama. Sherman has been executive director of the American Theatre Wing and the O’Neill Theatre Center, managing director of Geva Theater, general manager of Goodspeed Musicals and public relations director of Hartford Stage. He has recently been recognized as one of the National Coalition Against Censorship’s “Top 40 Free Speech Defenders of 2014” and will be honored later this month with The Dramatists Legal Defense Fund’s second “Defender” Award. His writing about the arts has been seen in such publications as American Theatre magazine, Slate and The Guardian, and he is the U.S. correspondent for London’s The Stage newspaper. He blogs at www.hesherman.com.
There were, in my estimation, many interesting people at the first performance of Almost, Maine in Hickory NC this past Thursday night.
Almost, Maine program cover for Hickory NC
To begin with, there was the author, John Cariani, who had come out to support the production, something he can’t do very often given how frequently his show is produced around the country. There was Jack Thomas, who produced the New York City premiere of Almost, Maine a decade ago. There was the doctor who had helped to found OutRight Youth of Catawba Valley, a support center for LGBTQ young people in this rural North Carolina region, which the performances, in part, benefited. There were the two women who were part of the local “Friends of the Library,” who knew little of the show but just wanted to support the effort. There was a high school drama teacher from the Raleigh-Durham area who had driven two and a half hours to see the show – and had to drive home that very night.
Oh, and there was the guy out on the street as I entered the building who was carrying a cross and shouting about how we were all going to hell for supporting homosexuality, and that God had very specific intentions for how humans should use their genitalia in relation to one another – though he was somewhat less circumspect than I just was in his phrasing.
Blake Richardson and Jonathan Bates in the scene “They Fell” from Almost, Maine
This production of Almost, Maine in Hickory was originally to have been produced at Maiden High School in nearby Maiden NC, but the show was canceled, after rehearsals had begun, when the school’s principal buckled to complaints about gay content and sex outside of marriage, reportedly from local churches (one made itself known publicly shortly before performances began). Due to the determination of Conner Baker, the student who was to have directed the show at the high school and ended up performing and co-directing, and with the tireless support of Carmen Eckard, a former teacher who had known many of the students since she taught them in elementary school, the show was shifted to Hickory, where it was performed in the community arts center’s auditorium.
Ci-Ci Pinson and Nathaniel Shoun in “Where It Went” from Almost, Maine
There were shifts in casting due to schedule changes, due to the show no longer being school-sanctioned, due to the need to travel 15 miles or so to and from Maiden to Hickory. But nine young people, a mix of current and former Maiden High students and a few students from local colleges, made sure that Catawba County got to see Almost, Maine, the sweet, rueful comedy that is hardly anyone’s idea of dangerous theatre.
Save for Cariani and Thomas, I hadn’t anticipated knowing anyone at the show that evening, though I had been in communication with Eckard and Baker since the objections first arose at Maiden High. But I was very pleased to spot Keith Martin, the former managing director of Charlotte Repertory Theatre, now The John M. Blackburn Distinguished Professor of Theatre at Appalachian State University, who I knew from my days as a manager in LORT theatre, but hadn’t seen or spoken with in more than a decade. Keith’s presence had a special resonance for me, because nearly 20 years ago, before the cast of Almost, Maine was born, he had been at the center of one of the most significant and ugly efforts to censor professional theatre in that era, namely community and political campaigns to shut down Charlotte Rep’s production of Angels in America, a national news story at the time which saw lawsuits, injunctions, restraining orders and even the de-funding of the entire Charlotte Arts Council, all in an effort to silence Tony Kushner’s “Gay Fantasia on National Themes.” The efforts failed, but left scars.
Keith Martin
I spoke with Keith a few nights after we saw Almost, Maine, and even as he recounted – and I recalled – the fight over Angels, he told me of two other censorship cases in North Carolina in the 1990s. The first, with which I was familiar and which played out over much of the decade, began in 1991, when a teacher named Peggy Boring was removed from her school and reassigned due to her choice of Lee Blessing’s play Independence for students, which was deemed inappropriate by administrators. Boring didn’t accept the disciplinary action and brought suit against the school system, which went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ultimately let stand a lower court decision which said that Boring’s right to free expression did not extend to what she chose for her students, an key precedent for all high school theatre and education.
The second occurrence which Keith told me about took place in 1999, when five young playwrights won a playwriting contest at the Children’s Theatre of Charlotte – but only four of the pieces were produced. The fifth, Samantha Gellar’s Life Versus the Paperback Romance, was omitted to due its inclusion of lesbian characters. The play was ultimately produced locally under private auspices and also got a reading at The Public Theater in New York with Mary-Louise Parker and Lisa Kron in the cast, but in the wake of the Boring case and Angels in America, it couldn’t be seen in North Carolina in a public facility or produced using public funds.
As we talked, as he told me firsthand accounts of situations both known and unknown to me, Keith was very concerned that I might focus too much on him when I sat down to write. It’s hard not to want to tell his story – or, perhaps, his stories – in greater detail. But since we both went to Hickory to celebrate Almost, Maine and the people who made it happen, here’s just a handful of the very smart and pertinent thoughts he shared.
Why had he made the hour-long trip to Hickory? Because, he replied, “When one of us is threatened, we as a theatre community are all at risk.”
Why is this important even in high school? “Teenagers aged 13 to 17 are, I believe, among the most marginalized voices in America today,” said Martin. “It’s ironic, because they’ve developed a sense of place, they have a spirit of activism, but they’re not yet of a legal age to give voice to their passion.”
Regarding efforts to minimize controversy in theatre production, Keith said, “Theatre has always been the appropriate venue for the discussion of difficult subjects and it provides a respectful place where people of goodwill who happened to disagree about different sides of an issue can see that issue portrayed on stage and then have a healthy, informed debate.
Is there something special about North Carolina that led to these high profile cases emerging from the state? “Angels in America was portrayed as having happened in a southern, bible belt town. But what happened after that?” Keith asked me, going on to cite the controversies and attempts to silence Terrence McNally’s Corpus Christi at Manhattan Theatre Club and My Name is Rachel Corrie at New York Theatre Workshop.
The team behind Almost, Maine in Hickory NC, including playwright John Cariani
As I said at the beginning, there were many interesting people at the opening of Almost, Maine. I suspect the students in the show didn’t know, or even know of, Keith Martin, and this post is one small way of putting their work in a broader context that he embodies in their state. I have no doubt that there were other people with personal experiences and connections relating to what the students had achieved, and it’s pretty much certain that neither they nor I will ever know them fully. But just as Keith said to me in our conversation that, “these kids need some recognition that their efforts have not gone unheard,” it’s important that they know that their theatrical act of civil disobedience does not stand alone, be it in North Carolina or nationally. The same is true for everyone who had a hand in making certain that Almost, Maine was heard over the cries of those who wanted it silenced.
In one of my early conversations with Conner Baker, as we discussed her options, her mantra was that, “We just want to do the play.” She and her classmates and supporters did just that, in the least confrontational way possible, but in doing so their names belong alongside those of Peggy Boring, Samantha Gellar, Keith Martin and many others in the annals of North Carolina theatre, at the very least.
I’ll leave you with one last connection between Keith Martin and Almost, Maine. The SALT Block Auditorium where the show was produced is located in an arts center which is the former Hickory High School. Keith Martin attended that very school decades ago and performed on the stage where Almost, Maine was produced last week. The role he recalled for me when asked? The title character in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I suspect that even James Thurber’s famous daydreamer couldn’t have imagined the controversy surrounding Almost, Maine…or its happy ending. Maiden’s reactionary, cowardly loss was Hickory’s heroic gain.
As readers can tell from this account, some students who were a part of It Stops Here took me up on my offer to speak with them, others obviously did not, and I don’t think anyone should infer anything from the fact that I did not hear from some. That is their absolute right.
