“I hope that The Vagina Monologues is a point of departure – it’s not a panacea, it’s not the only play, it’s not the definitive play. It’s a play, it’s an offering.”

Those are the words of Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues, spoken in the wake of the controversy that has arisen over the decision by the campus theatre group at Mount Holyoke College to abandon its annual production of The Vagina Monologues in favor of a newly written student work that is, in their judgment, more inclusive of a wider range of women’s experiences than Ensler’s influential work from 1996.

In a story first reported by CampusReform.org, writer Yvonne Dean-Bailey quoted from a campus-wide e-mail by Erin Murphy, representing Project Theatre on the school campus, regarding their decision.

At its core, the show offers an extremely narrow perspective on what it means to be a woman…Gender is a wide and varied experience, one that cannot simply be reduced to biological or anatomical distinctions, and many of us who have participated in the show have grown increasingly uncomfortable presenting material that is inherently reductionist and exclusive.

As the story broke wide, many seized upon the school’s recent decision to begin accepting students who identify as women as being at the root of the decision by the theatre group. Some commenters to the spate of articles, all derived from the Campus Reform story, spoke of censorship. Mount Holyoke, in a statement, responded, saying in part:

A story/post in the online publication Campus Reform included inaccurate and incomplete information regarding the student-led decision to cancel a student-run production of the “Vagina Monologues” at Mount Holyoke College. The story also incorrectly connects the play’s cancellation with the College’s transgender admission policy.

The Mount Holyoke College student organization Project: Theatre notified the student body on Jan. 14 of its decision to cancel the play “Vagina Monologues” after evaluating input from peers about the production.

The students’ decision to cancel the play was made independently of the College’s transgender admission policy.

As a women’s college with a long tradition of educating women leaders, Mount Holyoke College supports and encourages students to take the lead in establishing and governing their own organizations.

In the initial rush of stories, no one spoke with Ensler about her work and the decision by the Mount Holyoke drama group. A story published last night by The Guardian was the first to reach Ensler, and also included a bit more from Murphy, although she did not agree to release to full text of her original e-mail to them. Because I have known Ensler casually for several years, I wanted to hear more from her, and we spoke this morning. I also tried to reach Erin Murphy at Mount Holyoke (using the student activity contact form on the college’s website as well as LinkedIn), but without success. Some articles have reported on various tweets coming from other students on the campus who oppose the decision to no longer produce the play, but I have opted to not cull from Twitter searching.

Playing off the title of her newest play, I asked Ensler whether the decision by the Mount Holyoke students was a case of O.P.C. – Obsessive Political Correctness.

“I think there’s so many issues running through all this,” said Ensler. “I don’t want to label it as such because there are genuine concerns that people are having that I want to be very thoughtful about.

Eve Ensler (Photo by Brigitte Lacombe)

“This is my perspective on it: The Vagina Monologues is a play. It’s one play. It was never meant to speak for all women and it was never a play about what it means to be a woman. It was a play about what it means to have a vagina. It was very specific. I don’t think I ever said that the definition of a woman – that a woman is defined by having a vagina. I think we have to be able to live in a world where talking about our vaginas is legitimate, due to the fact that three and half billion women have them.

“I wish the play was irrelevant. I wish we had reached a state where women are liberated and safe and not under this kind of ongoing oppression of violence and degradation and inequality. But that hasn’t happened yet. I don’t think we’re close.

“I think that it’s also really important that trans and transgender people have voice and have access to voice and have plays and ways of articulating their concerns and their issues. Ten years ago there was an all trans production of The Vagina Monologues and I spent quite a bit of time with trans women and we actually went away for a weekend and we shared stories and experiences and as a result they asked me to write a piece for them called ‘They Beat The Girl Out Of My Boy’ which I did and which has been an optional monologue. It was included in the V-Day performances of The Vagina Monologues for the last 10 years and trans women and trans men have been performing The Vagina Monologues for 10 years. So I feel like there has been inclusion.”

My own reaction when I read about the situation at Mount Holyoke was that the students had every right to make any decision they wished about what to produce, but that perhaps they hadn’t needed to be so negative about Ensler’s work, instead simply moving on to the new work they plan to create. Ensler’s response to how it was handled?

“I believe it’s Ken Wilber, in this wonderful book called Up From Eden, who says this really, really brilliant thing. He says that every time we evolve in our brain, our human consciousness, to the next level, we make a terrible error of not integrating the stage before, so that our evolution, our brains do not become wholly integrated.

“My feeling is that there have been many places in the world who have been doing The Vagina Monologues for years who then felt there are other voices we want to give voice to. There are other stories we want to give voice to and they took the momentum of The Vagina Monologues and the experience of that and that spurred them to create their own pieces. But they didn’t feel the need to annihilate The Vagina Monologues in the process.

“I think I have to say that we have to live in a climate and in a world where women with vaginas feel safe and free and open about articulating the stories about their vaginas. That has to remain a possibility and something that we cherish and celebrate in the same way that I would honor transgender people giving voice to their own realities. I think there’s something about the ‘either or-ness’ about it that I find problematic.”

Later in our conversation, Ensler observed, “I think we have to be careful as we’re evolving and exploding more and more voices that we don’t silence other voices. That’s the thing we always have to be very concerned about and having our attention paid to. It isn’t one thing or the other. We’ve come to the point where we want to now integrate and want other voices. That is fantastic. Go and write a play that does that. Celebrate that. I encourage that. I’ve been celebrating artists my whole life who are giving voice to new strains and pushing the edge and challenging the givens and the status quo.”

*  *  *

For perspective on perceptions of The Vagina Monologues, I asked Jill S. Dolan, Annan Professor in English, Professor of English and Theater in the Lewis Center for the Arts, and Director, Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies at Princeton University, for her thoughts.

“First, let me say I admire the cultural work Ensler’s play did,” Dolan wrote to me.  “When it was first performed, seeing this white woman, barefoot on a stool in a pool of light, wearing a long dress, sitting in front of a microphone, talking about vaginas in such an explicit way, felt very radical.  Not so much because what she was saying was radical, especially not to those of us who came of age with feminism, and were accustomed to a kind of frankness about women’s bodies, but because she was telling these stories Off Broadway, in a theatre venue where these stories hadn’t been told.  When the show took hold, and performances expanded to include other women, the same fascination (and, let’s be frank, titillation) continued to make it popular.  It’s still performed in regional theatres all over the country (and probably, the world).

“I much admired Ensler’s industry in making the show the center of V-Day activism. She did a lot to raise awareness on campuses about violence against women, and the play became the center of an activist project that was easy for students to latch on to, because it came pre-packaged. Ensler licenses the play with very specific rules about how it’s to be performed and who its local activist collaborators should be. I think this is where the tensions began around the play and the production—Ensler’s control came to be seen as too constraining.

“But in my own critical reading, The Vagina Monologues were always only partial. Ensler’s play represents her work interviewing women around the world about their lives and their relationships to their bodies via social interdictions, but the monologues aren’t verbatim (Anna Deavere Smith-style), nor are they ethnographic to the extent that she uses the interviews in edited form. Ensler says the monologues are ‘based on’ her interviews, but she filters them through her own perspective as a white Western woman.  That’s where much of the criticism lies; that the whole show is, in a way, a white Western woman’s perspective on female experience.  She’s been criticized for being imperialist; for being a western feminist who presumes to ‘save’ women of other cultures and experiences; and for being tone-deaf to cultural difference and women’s agency.”

I asked Dolan whether The Vagina Monologues might be losing relevancy because it doesn’t represent enough different constituencies.

“The issue about trans inclusion is really just the latest salvo here. Because Ensler is very particular about how The Vagina Monologues are staged and produced, I know of many colleges and universities that simply bootleg the show and rewrite it as they see fit. The best thing about The Vagina Monologues phenomenon, from my perspective, is that it’s clarified the importance of telling women’s stories, or telling stories of those who aren’t part of the ‘mainstream’ on particular college campuses. That people gather annually to participate in or to hear these stories has made it an important rite of passage for many students.  I know of students who were absolutely radicalized by participating in The Vagina Monologues production on campus (or by doing their own version). That’s hugely important activist theatre work.

“That said, I think students are realizing that the occasion of the show might actually give them permission to tell their own stories, or to seek out other ways of putting together activist performance work. And that’s a very good thing.  Is it a period piece?  Well, most plays are . . . and Ensler has tried to revitalize the show by adding new monologues every year.  That said, I do think The Vagina Monologues movement might have crested, partly because the play is showing its age. It’s just not as radical anymore to stand in public and talk about vaginas . . .  That’s what’s changed.”

*   *   *

Ensler has written an essay for Time magazine, coming out Monday, on the decision by the Mount Holyoke students, and she raised it in our conversation as we discussed the issue of representing more constituencies.

“I’ll share with you something that I wrote in the Time piece, because I think it’s connected to this: ‘Inclusion doesn’t come from refusing to acknowledge our distinctive experiences and trying to erase them in an attempt to pretend they do not exist. Inclusion comes listening to our differences and honoring the right of everyone to talk about their reality free from oppressing, bigotry and silencing. That’s real inclusion’. I think we have to create a world, where people with vaginas and people without them who identify as women, all of us get to address our oppressions, dreams, desires, and secrets and that we keep creating a landscape where there’s room for everyone.

So, I wondered, is Ensler concerned about the play’s perception today and future popularity, as highlighted by the decision of the Mount Holyoke Project Theatre?

“First of all, I think that looking at the dialogue that’s going on, I don’t really think that’s happening. There are 715 productions of The Vagina Monologues that are about to happen right now around the world and there are every year. My feeling is if it’s time for a new play or new plays to come into being that have new voices, that should happen. I don’t feel like anybody has to do my play. It’s great if they want to do it and it’s great if they don’t. It’s been 20 years.

“But I also want to say that I do think that women talking about their vaginas and articulating what happens to and about and around their vaginas is something that’s going to remain important to women. And if that changes, it will change. I actually think that the dialogue that’s being generated around this is good. We have to keep looking at everything and examining everything. I wrote that play 20 years ago. The world was a very different world then. Now people write plays that reflect this world.

I asked Ensler whether, if invited, she would attend the new piece being created by the Mount Holyoke students.

“Of course I would,” she replied, “and I would totally celebrate the new work.”

This post was updated on January 19 to include a link to Eve Ensler’s essay for Time magazine.

“What’s the deal with all this high school theatre?”

That’s the kind of comment—spoken, written or tweeted—I’ve been getting regularly over the past four years since I began writing about instances of censorship of theatre in American high schools (and, on occasion, colleges). To be fair to those who may be skeptical about the extent of the problem, I myself have been surprised by the volume and variety of issues raised over the content of shows being done—and, in some cases, ultimately not being done—in school-sponsored theatre.

But between writing about these incidents, and directly involving myself as an advocate in some of them, I’ve come to believe that what’s taking place in our high schools and on our campuses has a very direct connection to what is happening (and will be happening) on professional stages.

So here are nine common questions that have arisen as my advocacy has increased, and some answers—although, as every attempt at censorship is different, there aren’t any absolute answers.

1. Why is there so much more censorship of high school theatre these days?

There’s no quantitative study that indicates the policing of what’s performed is any greater than it was 10, 25 or 50 years ago. Everything is anecdotal. But the Internet has made it easier for reports to spread beyond individual communities and for news-aggregation sites uncover and accelerate the dissemination of such stories. It only takes one report in a small-town paper these days to bring an incident to national attention; that was a rarity in the print-only era.

2. Isn’t this just a reflection of our polarized national politics?

School theatre censorship doesn’t necessarily follow the red state/blue state binary division, because the impulse can arise from any constituency. While efforts to quash depictions of LGBTQ life—as with Almost, Maine in Maiden, N.C., or Spamalot in South Williamsport, Pa.—may be coming from political constituencies galvanized against the spread of marriage equality, or from certain faith communities which share that opposition, that’s hardly the only source. Opposition to Sweeney Todd, both muted (in Orange, Conn.) and explicit (in Plaistow, N.H.) was driven by concern about the portrayal of violence in an era of school shootings and rising suicide rates, while Joe Turner’s Come and Gone was challenged by a black superintendent over August Wilson’s use of the “n-word.”

3. What’s the real impact of school theatre on the professional community?

The Broadway League pegs attendance at Broadway’s 40 theatres in the neighborhood of 13 million admissions a year and touring shows at 14 million a year. TCG’s Theatre Facts reports resident and touring attendance of 11 million. That totals a professional universe of 38 million admissions.

Based on figures provided to me by half a dozen licensing houses, there are at minimum 37,500 shows done in high school theatres annually, and conservatively guesstimating three performances of each in 600 seat theatres at 75-percent capacity, that’s more than 50 million attendees. In both samples, the numbers don’t represent the total activity, but high school theatre’s audience impact is undeniable, both as a revenue stream for authors and as a means of reaching audiences who might not see any other theatre at all.

4. Does it really matter what shows kids get to do in high school?

While there are valuable aspects to making theatre that apply no matter what the play choice may be, many schools view their productions as community relations, frequently citing that they want to appeal to audiences “from 8 to 80.” While the vast majority of students in the shows, and their friends who come to see them, will never become arts professionals, they are the potential next generation of audiences and donors for professional companies. If they are raised on a diet of Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz (both currently very popular in the high school repertoire), how can we expect more challenging work , new work, or socially conscious work to sustain itself 20 years on?

5. Are school administrators fostering an environment in which censorship flourishes?

I’m unwilling to accept the idea that our schools are run by people who fundamentally want to limit what students can learn—or perform. But they are operating within a political structure topped by an elected board of education, and can be subject to political pressure that often makes the path of least resistance—altering text or changing a selected show, in most cases—the expedient way to go. Unless an administrator (or a teacher, for that matter) is independently wealthy, they can’t necessarily afford to risk their job fighting for the school play that may have challenging content. That said, students at Newman University rebelled against administration-dictated text changes, reverting to the script as written for the latter two of their four performances of Legally Blonde in November.

6. Isn’t this a free speech issue?

In a word, no. Schools have the right and responsibility to determine what is appropriate activity and speech under their control, and just because students are exposed to all manner of content in the media and even in their day-to-day lives doesn’t mean that schools can or must permit it, either in classrooms or performance. That The Crucible is in countless high school curriculums does not necessarily prevent it from being censored as a performance piece, despite the seeming double standard.

The same stringent oversight that affects school theatre is also often directed at school newspapers and media. However, while some school systems attempt to control all student speech, it is a First Amendment violation to infringe on student speech to the media about their dissatisfaction with the actions of a school, including censorship. Drama teachers, who are best equipped to make the cases for the shows they choose, are usually prevented from doing so by employment agreements which prohibit them from discussing school matters without the express approval of the administration, typically the superintendent.

7. Don’t shows get edited all the time in schools for content?

In all likelihood, shows are constantly being nipped and tucked by teachers and administrators to conform to their perception of “community standards,” whether it’s the occasional profanity or entire songs. But that doesn’t make it right, and it is censorship. Aside from violating copyright laws and the licensing contracts signed for the right to the show, it sets a terrible example for students by suggesting that authors’ work can be altered at will, undermining the rights of the artists who created the work.

Some writers and composers have authorized school editions or junior versions of their shows for the school market to recognize frequent concerns and to keep from denying students the opportunity to explore their shows. But the rights must lie with the authors, not each and every school. If that isn’t made clear early on, how can we expect to fight censorship anywhere?

8. When a show is canceled and then successfully restored through a public campaign, is that winning the battle and then losing the war?

That’s a genuine concern of mine—that once there’s a public battle over theatrical content, the school will thereafter clamp down even harder and apply greater scrutiny forever after to drama programs, academic or extracurricular. At the Educational Theatre Association’s national conference this past summer, one attendee asked the others if there were shows that they believed would be great for their students but which they couldn’t even raise as possibilities. Every single teacher in the room raised his or her hand. So the incidents that become public—ones in which a show is announced, then has approval rescinded—are the tip of the iceberg. Drama teachers and directors are already having their choices limited, often by self-censorship. There’s much more work to be done, but if blatant examples don’t come to light, it may never be possible to galvanize support for school theatre that challenges students to do great work and great works.

9. Can professional artists and companies make any difference when incidents of censorship arise?

Local theatres—professional, community and academic—make superb allies in fighting against censorship. Institutions and individuals within communities that are respected for their art occupy a position from which to speak out forcefully and effectively for school theatre programs. Whether it’s a nearby artistic director or a one-time resident who has gone on to a professional career, they bring a history and authority that will speak to both the local populace and the media. The vocal support of the Yale School of Drama and Yale Rep with the aforementioned Joe Turner, and of Goodspeed Musicals and Hartford Stage in the case of Rent in Trumbull, Conn., were key factors in the ultimately successful efforts toward restoring those shows to production.

In closing: The first time I inserted myself into a school theatre censorship debate in 2011, I assumed it was a one-off. I did not realize at the time that I had found a cause. Each time an incident comes to a conclusion, regardless of whether the outcome was, from my point of view, positive or negative, I think that surely the message is getting out there and this will be the last time. But then comes the phone call, the e-mail, the tweet, from someone I’ve never met and possibly never will, saying that a show is threatened or has just been shut down. And I begin my introductory speech, which is unfortunately well-honed at this point.

“This is no longer about education,” I say, “this is no longer about art. This is now a political campaign.” And off we go.

This post first appeared at AmericanTheatre.org

Hands on a Hardbody at Houston’s Theatre Under The Stars

Are these my “best” blog posts of 2014? I couldn’t say. All I know is that they’re my most read, from a year in which page views on my site more than doubled over 2013.

Certainly 2014 was a year in which my writing found more focus, and whether the most-read posts bear out readers’ interest in that focus, or are simply a byproduct of a somewhat narrower range of subjects, I also don’t know. But if you’ve only discovered me part way through the year, or only read me sporadically, maybe there are a few posts here that escaped your attention, and if you’re interested, this will save you some scrolling and clicking.

Curtain call for Little Shop of Horrors at Jonathan Law High School

Before I start the official list, I want to bring your attention to a post which finished just out of the Top 10, the sad and yet remarkable story which bears out the sentiment “the show must go,” even when the show is a high school musical and when one of the cast members is murdered. To me, this story encapsulates so much about what theatre can offer, even at the worst times.

May 5: On Stage In Milford, With Sweet Understanding

Here’s the full rundown of the Top 10, in publication order, with some related posts included in my comments so as not to be too repetitive. Clicking on the titles will take you to the individual pieces.

January 22: Who Thinks It’s OK to ‘Improve’ Playwrights’ Work?

Was I surprised by this instance of unauthorized text alterations to a Brian Friel play at the Asolo Rep? Yes. But this turned out to merely be the precursor to a more widely-known incident yet to come, in Texas in June. Still, it was evidence that the issue of copyright and author’s rights isn’t just about high schools tinkering with “inappropriate” content – it can happen anywhere.

March 3: When A Theatre Review Condescends

It’s not usually fair to criticize a critic for a review of a production, since it’s their opinion, so when I wrote this piece taking a Philadelphia critic to task, I tried to do so on the basis of text and fact, not opinion. I received a lot of response about this piece, a great deal of it privately.

March 26: How You Can Save Arts Journalism Starting Right Now

Some found my stated “solution” overly simplistic, so either I failed to make, or they failed to recognize, my point about arts journalism lasting only as long as the metrics bear out an interest on the part of readers.

May 28: A Whispered Broadway Milestone No One’s Cheering

If you find me rather grouchy every Monday at 3 pm, it’s because that’s when the Broadway grosses are released, with one or more shows variously pronouncing the achievement of a new “sales record.” A number of outlets report these figures week in and week out, even though there’s usually a limited amount of actual news that matters to anyone outside the business. The “season” and “annual” compilation figures tend to provoke me even more, due to the perpetually positive spin even when the real story can be found by looking just a bit more carefully at the numbers.

June 3: When The Audience Bellows Louder Than Big Daddy

I was a bit surprised that this piece got the attention it did, as I wrote it after several West Coast outlets had already reported on this incident. Why my account drew lots of eyes I’ll never know, but I do hope it’s used in many arts management classrooms to speak to the essential nature of a well-trained front of house staff, no matter what size your theatre may be.

June 13: Into The Woods With Misplaced Outrage

The movie’s out. Now people can like the changes or not, but at least they’re judging the complete work, not stray accounts (which even Sondheim ended up disavowing). I’m seeing it on New Year’s Eve, FYI.

June 20: Rebuilding “Hardbody” At A Houston Chop Shop

I remain the only writer to interview Theater Under the Stars artistic director Bruce Lumpkin about his reworking of the text and score of the musical Hands On A Hardbody. The theatre pretty much circled the wagons as soon as my piece came out, even declining to speak with American Theatre magazine when Isaac Butler looked at the incident and the issue a few months later.

June 26: Under-The-Radar Transition at Women’s Project Theater

Let’s hear it for anonymous tips! I was the first to report this story, an unpleasant account of the ousting of an artistic leader by a board that sought to portray it as a voluntary separation (foreshadowing the scenario between Ari Roth and Theater J just this month). I do find myself wondering why the outcry over Theater J has been so much greater, when the Women’s Project situation had some notable similarities.

September 19: In Pennsylvania, Director Is Fired Over School “Spamalot”

This was certainly the biggest school theatre censorship story of the year that I covered, as it played out over the course of nearly four months, from when it was first reported in the local Pennsylvania media. It was the final, unfortunate post that received the most attention, but for those who don’t want to start at the end, two other highly read posts on the situation in South Williamsport PA were “Trying To Find Out A Lot About A Canceled Spamalot” (July 15) and “Facts Emerge About School ‘Spamalot’ Struck Out Over Gay Content” (August 21). I wish I had written a blunter headline for the latter story, because it revealed that school officials had indeed lied about the reasons behind the cancelation of the show, and I regret not calling them out as strongly as possible. To my knowledge, they have not been held to account for spreading disinformation.

October 21: How To Fail At Canceling The Most Popular Play In High School Theatre

While the school was let off the hook for buckling under to outside pressure because the students took matters into their own hands, it’s encouraging to know that their production of Almost, Maine is only weeks away, as detailed in “Falling For ‘Almost, Maine’ in North Carolina in January.”

Though I don’t place it in the official Top 10, because it’s a compilation rather than something I actually “wrote,” my piece chronicling the censorship and restoration of work by my friends at the Reduced Shakespeare Company as they embarked on a tour starting in Northern Ireland is also one of my most read for 2014.

January 26: “The Reduced Shakespeare Controversy (abridged).”

Finally, my thanks to you for reading, clicking, liking, favoriting and sharing, and for your comments on the posts themselves, on Twitter and on Facebook. It’s truly appreciated.

Many of you already know the story of the Maiden High School production of John Cariani’s Almost, Maine, shuttered by school officials this fall due to the content of a single scene in which two men discover that they love one another. The cancellation rightly got a great deal of attention, not least because Almost, Maine is the most popular new play done in high schools nationally, a widely accepted work that hit a wall in one North Carolina town due to the school administration caving in to their own worst instincts and to outside pressure, even though the source of the pressure managed to remain under the radar.

So in the season of love and good cheer, it seems the optimal time to affirm that Almost, Maine will go on next month, with students taking the show off campus, producing it independently in a nearby town with the help of Carmen Eckard, a former teacher who taught a number of the students when they were in elementary school.

Hosted by the United Arts Council of Catawba County, Almost, Maine will be presented at the SALT Block Auditorium in Hickory NC on January 15, 16 and 17 at 8 pm. While there have been some shifts in the cast, the production will feature seven current Maiden High students, two recent graduates and a Maiden High student as stage manager. Conner Baker, the student who was directing the show at the school has joined the cast, so she’ll be co-directing the show with a local attorney, William Morgan, who previously directed the show at an area community theatre.

Many familiar with this story will also recall that in order to produce the show independently, Eckard and Baker launched a Kickstarter campaign that sought to raise $1,000 to cover expenses. That effort yielded over $6,500 in funds, and with program ad sales, the production is sure to bring in yet more revenue by mid-January. In a bright silver lining to the cloud cast by the school’s censorship, the bulk of the donations to the production will be shared by the Arts Council and OutRight Youth Catawba, which seeks, in their words, “to reduce the isolation felt by LGBTQ youth by providing a sense of community and developing programs and services to counteract the prejudice and oppression that LGBTQ youth often face.”

Both tickets and program ads are available from the production’s website: http://almostmaiden.com

As for a fall show at the high school, I’m told there was no replacement once Almost, Maine was nixed. That’s a loss for every student at the school and a black eye for every administrator, school board member and community member who worked to shut down Almost, Maine. I can only hope they’ll all make the short trip from Maiden to Hickory to support the show and the students who kept it going – and to, in part, counteract a narrow-minded decision that gave in to suppression of young people’s ambitions and lives, rather than standing for love.

Not to dash anyone’s dreams, but I think it’s fair to say that the majority of the hundreds of thousands of students who participate in high school theatre annually will not go on to professional careers in the arts. The same holds true for the student musicians in orchestras, bands and ensembles. They all benefit from the experience in many ways: from the teamwork, the discipline and the appreciation of the challenge and hard work that goes into such endeavors, to name but a few attributes.

But for some students, those high school experiences may be the foundation of a career, of a life, and it’s an excellent place for skills and principles to be taught. As a result, I have, on multiple occasions, heard creative artists talk about their wish that students could learn about the basics of copyright, which can for writers, composers, designers, and others be the root of how they’ll be able to make a life in the creative arts, how their work will reach audiences, how they’ll actually earn a living.

I’m not suggesting that everyone get schooled in the intricacies of copyright law, but that as part of the process of creating and performing shows, students should come to understand that there is a value in the words they speak and the songs they sing, a concept that’s increasingly frayed in an era of file sharing, sampling, streaming and downloading. Creative artists try to make this case publicly from time to time, whether it’s Taylor Swift pulling her music from Spotify over the service’s allegedly substandard rate of compensation to artists or Jason Robert Brown trying to explain why copying and sharing his sheet music is tantamount to theft of his work. But without an appreciation for what copyright protects and supports, it’s difficult for the average young person to understand what this might one day mean to them, or to the people who create work that they love.

*   *   *

All of this brings me to a seemingly insignificant example, that of a production of the musical The Wiz at Skyline High School in Oakland, California back in 2011. Like countless schools, Skyline mounted a classic musical for their students’ education and enjoyment, in this case playing eight performances in their 900 seat auditorium, charging $10 a head. These facts might be wholly unremarkable, except for one salient point: the school didn’t pay for the rights to perform the show.

The licensing house Samuel French only learned this year about the production, and consequently went about the process of collecting their standard royalty. Over the course of a few months, French staff corresponded with school staff and volunteers connected with the drama program, administration and ultimately the school system’s attorney. French’s executive director Bruce Lazarus shared the complete correspondence with me, given my interest in authors’ rights and in school theatre.

I’m very sympathetic to any school that wants to give their students a great arts experience, and so the drama advisor’s discussion in the correspondence of limited resources and constrained budgets really struck me. Oakland is a large district and Skyline is an inner-city school; I have no reason to doubt their concerns about the quoted royalty costs for The Wiz being beyond their means. But their solution to this quandary took them off course.

Skyline claims that they did their own “adaptation” of The Wiz, securing music online and assembling their own text, under the belief that this released them from any responsibility to the authors and the licensing house. While they tagged their ads for the show with the word “adaptation,” it’s a footnote, and if one looks at available photos or videos from the production, it seems pretty clear that their Wiz is firmly rooted in the original material, even the original Broadway production. Surely the text was a corruption of the original and perhaps songs were reordered or even eliminated. It’s also worth noting that Skyline initially inquired about the rights, but then opted to do the show without an agreement.

*   *   *

OK, so one school made a mistake over three and a half years ago – what’s the big deal? That brings me to the position taken by the Oakland Unified School District regarding French’s pursuit of appropriate royalties. OUSD has completely denied that French has any legitimate claim per their attorney, Michael L. Smith. In a mid-October letter, Mr. Smith cites copyright law statute of limitations, saying that since it has been more than three years since the alleged copyright violation, French is “time barred from any legal proceeding.” Explication of that position constitutes the majority of the letter, save for a phrase in which Mr. Smith states, “As you are likely aware, there are limitations on exclusive rights that may apply in this instance, including fair use.”

As I’m no attorney, I can’t research or debate the fine points of statutes of limitation, either under federal or California law. However, I’ve read enough to understand that there’s some disagreement within the courts, as to when the three-year clock begins on a copyright violation. It may be from the date of the alleged infringement itself, in this case the date of the March and April 2011 performances, but it also may be from the date the infringement is discovered, which according to French was in September 2014. We’ll see how that plays out.

The passing allusion to fair use provisions is perhaps of greater interest in this case. Fair use provides for the utilization of copyrighted work under certain circumstances in certain ways. Per the U.S. Copyright office:

Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: “quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author’s observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.”

*   *   *

Rather than parsing the claims and counterclaims between Samuel French and the school district, I consulted an attorney about fair use, though in the abstract, not with the specifics of the show or school involved. I turned to M. Graham Coleman, a partner at the firm of Davis Wright Tremaine in their New York office. Coleman works in all legal aspects of live theatre production and counsels clients on all aspects of copyright and creative law. He has also represented me on some small matters.

“In our internet society, “ said Coleman, “there is a distortion of fair use. We live in a world where it’s so easy to use someone’s proprietary material. The fact that you based work on something else doesn’t get you off the hook with the original owner.”

Without knowing the specifics of Skyline’s The Wiz, Coleman said, “They probably edited, they probably varied it, but they probably didn’t move it into fair use. Taking a protectable work and attempting to ‘fair use’ it is not an exercise for the amateur.”

Regarding the language in fair use rules that cite educational purposes, Coleman said, “Regardless of who you are, once you start charging an audience admission, you’re a commercial enterprise. Educational use would be deemed to mean classroom.”

While Coleman noted that the cost of pursuing each and every copyright violation by schools might be cost prohibitive for the rights owners, he said that, “It becomes a matter of principle and cost-effectiveness goes out the window. They will be policed. Avoiding doing it the bona fide way will catch up with you.”

*   *   *

That’s where the Skyline scenario gets more complicated – because their “adaptation” of The Wiz wasn’t their only such appropriation of copyrighted material. In 2012, the school produced a stage version of Julie Taymor’s Beatles-inspired film Across The Universe, billing it accordingly and crediting John Lennon and Paul McCartney as the songwriters. The problem is, there is no authorized stage adaptation of the film, although there have been intermittent reports that Taymor is contemplating her own, which her attorney affirmed to me. In this case, the Skyline production is still within the statute of limitations for a copyright claim.

I attempted to contact both the principal of Skyline High and the superintendent of the school district about this subject, ultimately reaching the district’s director of communications Troy Flint. In response to my questions about The Wiz, Flint said, “We believe that we were within our rights. I can’t go into detail because I’m not prepared to discuss our legal strategy. We believe this use was permissible.”

He couldn’t speak to Across The Universe; it seemed that I may have been the first to bring it to the district’s attention. Flint said he didn’t know whether other Skyline productions, such as Hairspray and Dreamgirls, had been done with licenses from rights companies, although I was able to confirm independently that Hairspray was properly licensed. Which raises the question of why standard protocol for licensing productions was followed with some shows and not others.

*   *   *

My fundamental interest is in seeing vital and successful academic theatre. So while their identities are easily accessible, I’ve avoided naming the teacher, principal and even the superintendent at Skyline because I don’t want to make this one example personal. But I do want to make it an example.

Whether or not I, or anyone, personally agree with the provisions of U.S. copyright law isn’t pertinent to this discussion, and neither is ignorance of the law. The fact is that the people who create work (and their heirs and estates) have the right to control and benefit from that work during the copyright term. Whether the content is found in a published script and score, shared on the internet or transcribed from other media, the laws hold.

If the Skyline examples were the sole violations, a general caution would be unnecessary, but in the past three months alone, Samuel French has discovered 35 unlicensed/unauthorized productions at schools and amateur companies, according to the company’s director of licensing compliance Lori Thimsen. Multiply that out over other rights houses, and over time, and the number is significant. This even happens at the professional level.

At the start, I suggested that students should know the basic of copyright law, both out of respect for those who might make their careers as creative artists, as well as for those who will almost certainly be consumers of copyrighted content throughout their lives. But it occurs to me that these lessons are appropriate for their teachers as well, notwithstanding the current legal stance at Skyline High. There can and should be appreciation for creators’ achievements as well as their rights, and appropriate payment for the use of their work – and those who regularly work with that material should make absolutely certain they know the parameters, to avoid and prevent unwitting, and certainly intentional, violations.

*   *   *

One final note: some of you may remember Tom Hanks’s Oscar acceptance speech for the film Philadelphia, when he paid tribute to his high school drama teacher for playing a role in his path to success. It might interest you to know that Hanks attended Skyline High and thanks in part to a significant gift from him, the school’s theatre – where the shows in question were performed – was renovated and renamed for that teacher, Rawley Farnsworth, in 2002. Hanks also used the occasion of the Oscars to cite Farnsworth and a high school classmate as examples of gay men who were so instrumental in his personal growth.

I have no doubt that there are other such inspirational teachers and students at Skyline High today, perhaps working in the arts there under constrained budgets and resources. Yet regardless of statutes of limitations, it seems that the Rawley T. Farnsworth Theatre should be a place where respect for and responsibility to artists is taught and practiced, as a fundamental principle – and where students get to perform works as their creators intended, not as knockoffs designed to save money.

*   *   *

Update, December 3, 2014, 4 pm: This post went live at at approximately 10:30 am EST this morning. I received an e-mail from OUSD’s director of communications Troy Flint at approximately 1 pm asking whether the post was finished and whether he could add to his comments from yesterday. I indicated that the post was live and provided a link, saying that I have updated posts before and would consider an addendum with anything I found to be pertinent. He just called to provide the following statement, which I reproduce in its entirety.

Whatever the legality of the situation at Skyline regarding The Wiz and Across The Universe, the fundamental principle is that we want the students to respect artists’ work and what they put into the product. My understanding is that Skyline’s use of this material is legally defensible, but that’s not the best or highest standard.

As we help our students develop artistically, we want to make sure they have the proper respect and understanding of the work that’s involved with creating a play for the stage or the cinema. So we have spoken with the instructors at Skyline about making sure they follow all the protocols regarding rights and licensing, because we don’t want to be in a position of having the legality of one of our productions questioned as they are now and we don’t want to be perceived as taking advantage of artists unintentionally as we are now. It’s not just a legal issue but an issue of educating students properly.

While everyone I have spoken with about this issue disagrees fairly strenuously with the opinion of the OUSD legal counsel, it’s encouraging that the district wants to stand for artists’ rights and avoid this sort of conflict going forward. I hope they will ultimately teach not only the principle, but the law. As for past practice, I leave that to the lawyers.

Update, December 3, 2014, 7 pm: Following my update with the statement from the school district, I received a statement of response from Bruce Lazarus, executive director of Samuel French. It is excerpted here.

By withholding the proper royalty for The Wiz from the authors, the OUSD is communicating to their students that artistic work is worthless. Is this an appropriate message for any budding artist? That you too can grow up to write a successful musical…only to then have a school district destroy your work and willfully withhold payment?

It needs to be made clear to the OUSD and the students involved that an artist’s livelihood depends on receiving payment for their creative work. This is how artists make a living. How they pay the rent and feed their families. It is simply unbelievable that this issue can be tossed aside with an “Our bad, won’t happen again” response without consideration of payment for their unauthorized taking of another’s property.

Are other students of the OUSD, those that are not artists, being educated to expect payment for their services rendered when they presumably become doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs and the next leaders of the Bay Area? Of course they are. And so it goes for the artists in your classrooms, who should be able to grow up KNOWING there is protection for their future work and a real living wage to be made.

Equal time granted, I leave it the respective parties to resolve the issue of what has already taken place.

To say that Newman University’s production of the musical Legally Blonde was performed with its book and lyrics intact this past Saturday and Sunday would seem to be a wholly unremarkable event. But because that wasn’t the case at Thursday and Friday’s shows, the fidelity of the latter two performances is rather more intriguing. How did a university production suddenly shift away from censorship halfway through a four performance run? How, to paraphrase a lyric from The Producers, did Legally Blonde go right?

*   *   *

Newman University in Wichita, Kansas is a Catholic school with an undergraduate enrollment of 2,795, according to data from the U.S. News and World Report online rankings. It was founded by a religious order, the Adorers of the Blood of Christ as a women’s college in 1933, becoming co-ed in 1965.

The theater program at Newman is in just its fourth year. It was only in 2013 that students could declare as theatre majors, and the program currently has 18 majors and 12 minors. The school boasts two theatres and the theatre program produces four shows each year. Past productions include Lend Me A Tenor, Iphigenia in Aulis and in Taurus, Measure For Measure, and this fall’s Buried Child. Director of Theatre Mark Manette notes that there have been some rumblings about the content of some of the department’s productions in the past, including sexual content in Tenor and Pippin, citing one 2012 letter to the school newspaper saying that the school was producing plays with “a heaping helping of sexual innuendo.”

In announcing Legally Blonde, Manette felt he was choosing a mainstream, modern show for his students, aware that it is one of the most popular musicals in high school theatre. Save for making some very minor script emendations – “god damn” is a problem at a faith-based university, for example – the show went into rehearsals using the script as written. In the words of senior C.L. Smet, a theatre major who was cast as Paulette, “There were very light hints of censorship early on, but only the type of things that we are used to. In most shows we are asked to take out all instances of using the lord’s name in vain because we go to a Catholic university.”

*   *   *

Manette’s purview over the theatre department does not require him to submit his play selection for approval to the university. But with rehearsals underway, he was called to the Provost’s office on November 6, in order to address rumors that had begun to swirl about the content of Legally Blonde.

“When I was called into the office I was told that our production featured live masturbation, drug use, and two guys kissing,” said Manette. “My response was that the show features none of these things. But the seed of the rumors could be traced to the two changed lines:  ‘Masturbatory emissions’ and ‘Get you high and laid’.”

Although Manette clarified the show’s content, he was still asked to make changes to the script. “I was told that I had to make the changes or else,” said Manette. “I did send a letter to the Provost stating that I had signed a contract not to make any changes to the script. He took that up the ladder, so to speak, and told me to go forward with making changes.”

C.L. Smet and Trevor Farney in Legally Blonde at Newman University (Photo courtesy of Newman University)

According to Smet, “Nothing seemed weird until a few days before tech week started, when individual cast members started being pulled aside and told that we had to change lines.  For instance, my line ‘What’s she got that you don’t got, three tits?’ had to be changed to ‘three boobs’ ­ this was a very minor change compared to many others but was still frustrating and unnecessary right before tech week.  We were told by our director, music director, and the head of our department that these changes were from the administration directly.  We were told that several higher-ups…were lodging complaints about the content.”

“We were also told repeatedly not to raise hell about the issue, because if we were to dig too deep we might cause more harm than good,” Smet related. “Obviously, however, we decided to pursue the matter. I was one of the loudest about my disappointment with the administration.  I attempted to have a meeting with the President of our college.  However, when I told them it was regarding Legally Blonde censorship, I was told she ‘didn’t speak to students,’ which I find very hard to believe.  Many other students were confused and bothered by the censorship.  A few of them were willing to just lay low and let it pass, but most of my fellow theatre majors saw the utter illegality of the changes and wanted to do something to help.  Apart from the legal issues, many students were just sad that at the college level we were expected to perform a watered-down play, as if the world would end if somebody say “masturbate” on stage.  It was a very frustrating and confusing time for everybody involved.”

*   *   *

On the evening of the first performance, the school newspaper, The Vantage, published its weekly print edition with a lead story on the censorship of the Legally Blonde text. The story was assigned by the paper’s editor-in-chief, senior Matt Riedl – who happened to be a member of the Legally Blonde ensemble.

“It was my decision as editor-in-chief to pursue the story,” said Riedl. “It wasn’t something that was being brought out by the administration. We thought it was our responsibility. Every viewpoint can be voiced. There had been a few voices that had been pro-censorship, but we thought it was important that every viewpoint be represented.”

The story by Delaney Hiegert, ran with the headline “Legally Blonde Censorship Rankles Cast Members,” as well as a subheadline, “Illegally Changed?” It cited Provost Michael Austin confirming that the show would be a censored version.

There were at least six lyric changes to the musical, as well as multiple dialogue changes, in order to make the play more appropriate for all audiences, he said. The changes involved taking out any sexually derogatory remarks, references to sex and drugs, any use of the word “Christ,” and most all cursing.

For instance, Elle Woods’ line “masturbatory emissions” has been changed to “accidental emissions,” and Professor Callahan’s line, “Get you high and laid,” has been changed to “Get you entertained.”

“When we do plays, we are inviting not just the campus, but the community to come watch,” said Austin. “We have to be very careful to represent the values of the institution.”

The Vantage article spoke not only to the changes to Blonde, but the greater potential impact of the censorship on the theatre program. Quoting freshman Trevor Farney:

“I loved being a part of Buried Child. I love the directors and the people I’ve gotten to work with,” Farney said. “But I don’t want to act in something that’s just going to be a watered-down version of what it should be. In Legally Blonde, the censorship is annoying but it doesn’t hurt the production that much. But if the censorship continues, I don’t even know if I’d want to stay in the program. And that’s a shame.”

The Vantage story made the alteration of the Blonde script a campus-wide issue. Riedl cited that the piece received 1500 page views on the paper’s website, in contrast to the prior month’s top story, which had only 700. He noticed that in some places, in particular the theatre’s lobby, someone had flipped the papers upside down in their racks, so that the headline wouldn’t show. He said that his girlfriend reported sitting in the theatre pre-show and watched as many people read the paper’s front page.

“The article in the Vantage was huge,” said Smet. “It had a massive impact around campus and the entire Wichita theatre community.  The outpouring of support was awesome, and it encouraged the cast to continue fighting.”

*   *   *

Legally Blonde at Newman University (Photo courtesy of Newman University)

The first two performances of Legally Blonde at Newman contained the mandated cuts and substitutions imposed by the administration. But C.L. Smet says that change was already afoot.

“Once the Vantage article was published, cast members became even more open about not being okay with the censorship,” Smet said. “For our Saturday performance we returned 100% to the written word of the script – we did the play that was actually written.  We joked that it was the first Legally Blonde performance we’d done, and after the show we all had a group bonding moment celebrating the uncensored show.”

Riedl described the decision in similar terms. “We decided to perform the musical in its full uncensored form on Saturday and Sunday,” he said. “It was kind of a group decision. We had a little meeting before our performance on Friday and we talked about it. The coverage was getting so widespread and everyone was talking about it so we decided we weren’t going to put up with it any longer. We were going to subvert the order to change.”

The student motivated changes don’t precisely jibe with the account from Provost Michael Austin.

“We ended up not making the changes,” said Dr. Austin. “They went on according to script. We looked at what might be possible but decided that we’d do it the way it was in the script.”

Austin did say that the issue was a major one for the school, saying it was “hotly debated and discussed.” He said that he attended the show on Sunday and that the show was performed as written, but could not speak to whether the complete text was in use at all performances.

Riedl professed surprise when informed that the administration had withdrawn its requests for text changes. “Really? That’s interesting,” he said. “Because I was under the impression it was a cast decision. There’s definitely some confusion there. I had not heard that. That’s very interesting.”

Riedl went on to recount a moment during the Saturday night show, during the song, “Blood in the Water.” “‘Get you high and get you laid’ was supposed to ‘get you entertained,’ he recounted. “From the stage, I heard someone whisper, ‘I thought that was supposed to be censored.’ It took some power to not break character from that.”

With somewhat conflicting stories about how the show was restored to its original text, Manette seemed to walk a careful line about what had taken place. He ascribed the choice to the students, noting that, “The people who had called for the censorship were not the ones behind the decision to do the show as written.”

*   *   *

The issue of censorship is not an off-limits topic on the Newman University campus. It’s worth noting that all freshman this year were assigned to read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the now classic novel in which censorship is taken to its ultimate extreme, with all books being sought out and burned by “fireman,” forcing lovers of knowledge into clandestine circles designed to preserve knowledge and texts.

“There is artwork all over the building regarding censorship related to that novel,” Manette said. “Most members of the faculty and audience were appalled at the idea of censoring a production.   Two pieces of art work across from the entrance of the theatre were mysteriously taken down on opening night – one was a nude – and they were miraculously replaced after the show closed.  Coincidental?”

Smet told a similar story. “There was a great deal of other censorship happening in our arts department — nude paintings and “controversial” art work were removed from the hallways against the art department’s will.  The entire fine arts sector of Newman was upset that they were being censored.  Many people told us they supported us ‘fighting the power’.”

*   *   *

It’s unclear precisely where the complaints about Legally Blonde began and it’s also not certain exactly when or if approval was given to perform the show as written, as it was at the latter two performances. Precisely who in the administration really wanted the show edited remains somewhat vague, and no one with direct knowledge would speak to it on the record. But certainly the students took matters into their own hands, perhaps with the tacit approval of some members of the school administration.

Dr. Austin was quite clear about lessons learned from the imbroglio.

“Generally, I can say that the incident was not handled well,” he wrote to me, “for which I take full responsibility. We will not be suggesting changes to plays in the future, nor do we have any plans to exercise prior restraint on plays chosen by the Theatre Department.”

Austin’s statement is very encouraging, suggesting that Mark Manette will be able to continue to build Newman University’s theatre department and give his students the opportunity to work on a wide range of shows – as they were written. For the staff of The Vantage, they’ve gotten proof of the power of independent journalism to foster change. As for the cast of Legally Blonde? They’ve demonstrated that the words spoken on a stage matter, and that the words of authors come first.

*   *   *

Note: interviews for this article were conducted through a combination of voice interviews and e-mail correspondence. The word “said” may apply to both voice and e-mail communications.

Earlier this month, the administration at Maiden High School in Maiden, North Carolina tried to put a stop to the student production of John Cariani’s Almost, Maine. With permission slips in hand, the cast chosen and rehearsals just underway, the school announced the show was off. But it’s only off school grounds. The play will go on.

*   *   *

As first reported last week by WSOC TV in two reports [here and here], with additional reporting from Think Progress, Almost, Maine was shuttered because of a single scene, entitled “They Fell,” in which two buddies reach the startling discovery that they love one another – by actually falling down. Repeatedly. There’s no sexual innuendo, no physical contact, and the words “gay” and “homosexual” aren’t spoken. The scene takes up six pages of a 54 page text.

It’s not as if the school didn’t know the play was in the works. Maiden High School junior Conner Baker, who was to direct the production, said that when the administration was asked for permission, they gave it within a day.

“Our teacher advisor spoke to our principal,” said Baker, “who then spoke to the superintendent. We were told through our student advisor.”

She explained that students had to get permission slips with parents expressly agreeing to let their children participate, which hadn’t happened before in her experience. Of the permission slip, she said, “I don’t remember it word for word. It was along the lines of, ‘We have chosen Almost, Maine as our fall play this year. The play includes nine vignettes about love, one of which is centered around two male best friends who realize they are in love with each other’.”

Baker also described parents being required to come to one of two meetings in person to give their approval, also a new requirement. “Whenever a parent came in, I explained to them the content of the play and told them that for their child to audition, they needed to sign the permission slip.” Students also were permitted to audition with the scene in question, but Baker said she didn’t know where that requirement came from. “We were told by our teacher, though I know it wasn’t her decision. I also do not know why.”

After the show was cast and had just begun rehearsals, the word came that the show was off. “We were told by our teacher. They said the community isn’t ready for it. There wasn’t really a big discussion about it.”

*   *   *

Maiden High School’s logo

In spite of all the strictures placed on the audition process – the permission slips, parents coming to meetings – the school’s statement, issued after the news media began to pick up the story, clearly sought to obfuscate the issue, using the ‘approval hadn’t been given’ excuse that crops up so regularly in instances of school theatre censorship. Issued by Principal Rob Bliss (Robert_Bliss@catawbaschools.net) , it read:

“Our faculty and staff are still in review of potential performances to be conducted by our students this fall. At this time, no final decision has been made regarding whether and what drama performances are to be presented this fall. In regards to the request for students to perform the play “Almost Maine,” careful review and consideration was given to the contents of this play. The play contained sexually-explicit overtones and multiple sexual innuendos that are not aligned with our mission and educational objectives.

“As principal of Maiden High School, I have an obligation to ensure that all material, including drama performances is appropriate and educationally sound for students of all ages.”

The consensus in conversations on Facebook between various students was that some adults and churches in the area had made their displeasure known to the school administration, focusing on the gay storyline. None of them appear to have made their concerns known publicly. Yet this prompted the school to pull the plug without giving any hearing to those in support of the play.

*   *   *

Upon learning about the cancelation, one area adult, Carmen Eckard, a former local teacher, sent an e-mail to a number of administrators at the school. She wrote, in part:

“These kids have spent years fostering their love of theatre. In fact, I taught many of them at Startown Elementary, and they loved theatre class! That has blossomed into a real appreciation and dedication, and the decision to cancel a play after rehearsals had begun is extraordinarily disrespectful, and counterintuitive to education.

“Their passion is now spurred, and they will show you how dedicated they are.  I’m sure you’ll quickly realize that a mistake has been made.

“My advice would be to reinstate the play, before Huffington Post picks up this story. It’s just the kind of thing they love, and I’m sure we’ll all appreciate not  being highlighted in national news as a ‘backwards’ town, again.”

She received a response from the school superintendent Dr. Dan Brigman (dan_brigman@catawbaschools.net), who thanked her for writing, but didn’t address Almost, Maine at all, simply saying another appropriate play would be found. [For legal reasons, I am paraphrasing the superintendent’s brief reply.]

It seems a shame that Brigman didn’t heed Eckard’s warning, given the media attention that has resulted  from the cancelation (even reaching up into Maine). As for being highlighted in the national news “again,” while I didn’t ask Eckard what she was referring to specifically, I am assuming it was the 2012 stories about local Pastor Charles Worley of the Providence Road Baptist Church in Maiden. Worley got lots of press, far beyond HuffPo, for stating that gays and lesbians should be confined behind an electrified fence. Plenty of North Carolinians spoke out against Worley at the time, but his church remains active in the community.

*   *   *

Conner Baker (l.) and Carmen Eckard (photo by Eckard Photographic)

Eckard did more than just write a letter. She got involved.

“As soon as I realized that it was my old students and the play was Almost, Maine, I started looking for ways to help,” she wrote in an e-mail. “By Friday, Connor and I had scheduled a meeting, and people had started contacting both of us, asking for ways to help.”

In my very first communications with Baker and Eckard, both immediately said they hoped to try to do the play off-campus, so I asked them both whether they considered fighting the decision.

Referring to the response she received from the principal, Eckard continued, “The response I received convinced me pretty thoroughly that trying to change the ruling would be a waste of time. It also gives the power in the situation completely to the school board – it’s their decision. The community is extraordinarily conservative.”

Conner Baker said, “I think at first we considered that, but as a group, we just want to do what’s best for us. Our whole reasoning behind speaking out was to be able to do the show.”

While many outside groups and individuals offered their support, Baker and Eckard felt it was best not to be antagonistic as they went forward.

Eckard explained, “The kids said, ‘The main thing we want to do is that we don’t want to alienate the community, we want to keep things positive. We’re going to take our play somewhere else for people who want to see it.’ I think this way will make people happy-ish.”

*   *   *

Before learning that the show might go on off-campus, playwright John Cariani learned of the situation in Maiden and crafted a reply that was posted to the Almost, Maine Facebook page. It read, in part:

“If Maiden High School administrators take issue with ‘They Fell’ because it’s about two young men who are simply stating their feelings for one another, they are calling into question the validity of same-sex love by making it seem wrong and different and other. They are allowing a dangerous cycle of fear and self-hatred among LGBTQ youth to continue, and, consequently, they are tacitly promoting homophobia. This is simply not necessary. Nor is it helpful. We don’t need any more Tyler Clementis or Jamey Rodemeyers and Jamey Hubleys. We need kids to know that it’ll “get better.” Falling in love is tough enough when you’re young. Let’s remove the stigma of falling in love with someone of the same sex…

“By canceling the play, it seems to me that school officials are pleasing parents and pillars of the community rather than serving the students. I think there’s a better solution than to stop the production.”

In a phone conversation, I asked Cariani if he had originally conceived of his play being performed by high schools, where it is enormously popular, landing as number one on the Educational Theatre Association’s list of the most produced plays in high school theatre this year. (You can see a list of upcoming productions by searching on the Dramatists Play Service website’s Page to Stage page.)

John Cariani, author of Almost, Maine

“Not at all,” he replied. “I thought it was a play for adults. The first high school production was Cape Elizabeth High School in Maine. They were a great theatre program when I was growing up [also in Maine, but in another school system]. Their teacher approached me and I thought, ‘High school students can’t do this play.’ But I got to see their production. The teacher helped me to understand that high school kids are on the verge of adulthood, but still optimistic of what the world can do for them and what they can do for the world. That is what makes high school kids, when they do it well, do it super-well.”

Cariani said he knew of a couple of instances in the past where there were efforts to censor or cancel the play. He noted one at Bel Air High in Maryland where the American Civil Liberties Union was instrumental in insuring the play went on. He also echoed Baker and Eckard’s sentiments about how to go forward.

“It’s important that we achieve our goals without being mean,” he offered. “It’s dangerous.”

But, I wondered, given the countless productions around the country, wasn’t it possible that some school might have already done, or might be planning to do, the show and altering “They Fell” unilaterally? What would he like to say to anyone who has done that or contemplates that, against the legal contract of the license and copyright law?

“It’s lying,” said Cariani, “because that’s not the play.”

*   *   *

Some of the Maiden High Students who will continue to work on Almost, Maine (Photo by Eckard Photographic)

Last night, October 20, Baker and Eckard held a small meeting to begin organizing the play for production away from Maiden High School, discussing possible venues, budgets and timing.

I asked Baker whether she thought she might lose any of her cast, since the show is no longer a school activity, especially because the school has already begun surveying students as to their interest in participating in an alternate play under official auspices.

“Only one person for sure said they couldn’t do it anymore,” she replied. “But the show really is meant for four actors and we have a cast of 20, so even if half of them dropped out, we could still do it.”

Maiden senior Logan Riley wrote to me, regarding the school’s effort to mount its own show, “The school system wants to have another show to settle the unrest in the community. This does not mean that we will actually put on another show.”

Moving the play off school grounds could still result in opposition. Are either Baker or Eckard concerned?

“We don’t care if they oppose it,” said Eckard. “Free speech! It won’t matter if they are against a public performance, because those of us involved aren’t under any particular employment or jurisdiction that would cause us to fear retribution.”

Baker echoed the sentiment. “I mean, people will complain no matter where we perform it. We aren’t forcing anyone to come out and see it, but if people do protest, it won’t stop us from performing it.

*   *   *

So the students of Maiden High School are going forward with Almost, Maine, targeting the first weekend in January for production. They’ve set up a Kickstarter page to raise the funds they need and hope to confirm a location shortly. Their cleverly named website-to-be is www.almost maiden.com.

This isn’t the first time students have taken a show off of school grounds to get it done (there are many precedents, including Wilton CT and La Grande OR) and one has to applaud the Maiden students’ commitment to seeing the show happen, with its myriad messages of love intact. I have to confess to feeling that the school is getting off easy, since the relocated production also shifts the spotlight off of their efforts to silence the students and the play, leaving intact the utterly unacceptable official message that LGBTQ love is something to be hidden away – even as North Carolina begins legal same sex marriages.

But Conner Baker has a simple reason for how the play will now happen, and it’s pretty hard to argue against.

“We aren’t doing it to upset anyone,” she says. “We just want to do what we love doing.”

Aside from being the month of copious pumpkin flavored foodstuffs, October also brings two perennial theatrical top ten lists that are worthy of note: American Theatre magazine’s list of the most produced plays in Theatre Communications Group theatres for the coming season and Dramatics magazine’s lists of the most produced plays, musicals and one-acts in high school theatre for the prior year. They both say a great deal about the state of theatre in their respective spheres of production, both by what’s listed explicitly, as well as by what doesn’t appear.

In the broadest sense, both lists are startlingly predictable, although for different reasons. If you happen to find a bookie willing to give you odds on predicting the lists, here’s the trick for each: for the American Theatre list, bet heavily on plays which appeared on Broadway, or had acclaimed Off-Broadway runs, in the past year or two. For the Dramatics list, bet heavily on the plays that appeared on the prior year’s list.

But in the interest of learning, let’s unpack each list not quite so reductively.

American Theatre

As I’ve written in the past, what happens in New York theatre is a superb predictor of what will happen in regional theatre in the coming seasons, especially when it comes to plays. Any play that makes it to Broadway, or gets a great New York Times review, is going to grab the attention of regional producers. Throw in Tony nominations, let alone a Tony win – or the Pulitzer – and those are the plays that will quickly crop up on regional theatre schedules.

Anyone who follows the pattern of production would have easily guessed that Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike would proliferate this year, being a thoughtful, literary based comedy with a cast of only six. That American Theatre lists 27 productions doesn’t even take into account the 11 theatres that did the show in 2013-14, and certainly there are non-TCG theatres which are doing the show as well. It’s no surprise that Durang has said he made more money this past year than in any other year of his career; it’s a shame that financial success has taken so long for such a prodigiously gifted writer and teacher.

In general, shows on the American Theatre list have about a three year stay, typically peaking in their second year on the list, but this can vary depending upon when titles are released by licensing houses and agents to regional theatres. 25 years ago (and more significantly years before that) theatres might have had to compete with commercial tours, but play tours are exceedingly rare birds these days, if not extinct.

Perhaps this rush to the familiar and popular and NYC-annointed is disheartening, but it’s worth observing that the American Theatre list notes how many productions each title gets, and that after the first couple of slots, we’re usually looking at plays that are getting 7 or 8 productions in a given season, across TCG’s current universe of 474 member companies (404 of which were included in this year’s figures). Since the magazine notes a universe of 1,876 productions, suddenly 27 stagings of a single show doesn’t seem so dominant after all. Granted, TCG drops Shakespeare from their calculations, but even he only counted for 77 productions of all of his plays across this field. So reading between the lines, the American Theatre list suggests there’s very little unanimity about what’s done at TCG member theatres in any given year, a less quantifiable achievement but an important one.

Dramatics

While titles come and go on the American Theatre list, stasis is the best word to describe the lists of most produced high school plays (it’s somewhat less true for musicals). Nine of the plays on the 2014 list were on the 2013 list; 2014 was topped by John Cariani’s Almost, Maine, followed by A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the two titles were in reverse order the prior year. The other duplicated titles were Our Town, 12 Angry Men (Jurors), You Can’t Take It With You, Romeo and Juliet, The Crucible, Harvey and The Importance of Being Earnest.

Like the American Theatre list, the Dramatics survey doesn’t cover the entirety of high school theatre production; only those schools that are members of the Educational Theatre Association’s International Thespian Society have the opportunity to participate, representing more than 4,000 high schools out of a universe of 28,500 public, private and parochial secondary schools in the country. Unlike the Dramatics list, there are no hard numbers about how many productions each show receives, so one can only judge relative popularity.

Almost, Maine’s swift ascension to the top rungs of the list is extraordinary, but it’s due in no small part to its construction as a series of thematically linked scenes, originally played by just four actors but easily expandable for casts where actor salaries aren’t an issue. Looking at recent American Theatre lists, they tend to be topped by plays with small casts (Venus in Fur, Red, Good People and The 39 Steps), while the Dramatics list is the reverse, with larger cast plays dominating, in order to be inclusive of more students (though paling next to musicals where casts in school shows might expand to 50 or more).

The most important trend on the Dramatics list (which has been produced since 1938) is the lack of trends. Though a full assessment of the history of top high school plays would take considerable effort, it’s worth noting that Our Town was on the list not only in 2014 and 2013, but also in 2009, 1999 and 1989; the same is true for You Can’t Take It With You. Other frequently appearing titles are Arsenic and Old Lace, various adaptations of Alice in Wonderland, Harvey, and The Miracle Worker.

No doubt the lack of newer plays with large casts is a significant reason why older classic tend to rule this list; certainly the classic nature of these works and their relative lack of controversial elements play into it as well. But as I watched Sheri Wilner’s play Kingdom City at the La Jolla Playhouse a few weeks ago, in which a drama director is compelled to choose a play from the Dramatics list, I wondered: is the list self-perpetuating? Are there numerous schools that seek what’s mainstream and accepted at other schools, and so do the same plays propagate themselves because administrators see the Dramatics list as having an implied educational seal of approval?

That may well be, and if it’s true, it’s an unfortunate side effect of a quantitative survey. But it’s also worth noting that many of these plays, vintage though they may be, have common themes, chief among them exhortations to march to your own drummer, to matter how out of step you may be to the conventional wisdom. They may be artistic expressions from other eras about the importance of individuality, but in the hands of teachers thinking about more than just placating parents, they are also opportunities to celebrate those among us who may seem different or unique, and for fighting for what you believe in against prevailing sentiment or structures.

*   *   *

Looking at musicals on the American Theatre list is a challenge, because their list is an aggregate of plays and musicals, and while many regional companies now do a musical or two, it’s much harder for any groundswell to emerge. In the last five years, only three musicals have made it onto the TCG lists, each for one year only: Into The Woods, Spring Awakening and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. That doesn’t mean there’s a dearth of musical production, it simply shows that the work is being done by companies outside of the TCG universe.

Musicals are of course a staple of high school theatre, but the top ten lists from Dramatics are somewhat more fluid. While staples like Guys and Dolls, Grease, Once Upon a Mattress, You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown and Little Shop of Horrors maintain their presence, newer musicals arrive every year or two, with works like Seussical, Legally Blonde, Spelling Bee, and Thoroughly Modern Millie appearing frequently in recent years. At the peak spot, after a six-year run, Beauty and the Beast was bested this year by Shrek; as with professional companies, when popular new works are released into the market, they quickly rise to the top. How long they’ll stay is anyone’s guess, but I have little doubt that we’ll one day see Aladdin and Wicked settle in for long tenures.

*   *   *

When I looked at both the American Theatre and Dramatics lists over a span of time, the distinct predictability of each was troubling. Coming out when they do, before most theatrical production for the next theatre season is set, I’d like to see them looked at not as any manner of affirmation, but as a challenge – whether to professional companies or school schedules. I admire and enjoy the plays that are listed here, and nothing herein should be construed as critical of any of these shows; audiences around the country deserve the opportunity to see them. While I do have the benefit of living in New York and seeing most of these popular shows there, I must confess that I am most intrigued by the theatre companies and school groups that might just say to themselves, ‘Let’s not do the shows, or too many of the shows, that appear on these lists. Let’s find something else.’ Those plays may never appear as part of any aggregation, but I suspect the groups’ work will be all the more interesting for it, benefiting both artists and audiences.

A couple of weeks ago, yet another high school play was canceled over its content, this time at Santiago High School in Corona, California. Unlike the cases we often hear about, there was no press about the decision, no student protest, no faculty outcry. By the time I learned of it and communicated briefly on social media with a couple of students involved in the show, they were ready to just move on. The play was to have been performed in the latter part of this month.

Hearts Like Fists at Theatre of NOTE

The play, Hearts Like Fists, was first produced only two years ago, debuting at Theatre of NOTE in Los Angeles in August 2012. It made its East Coast premiere in December of the same year at New York’s Flux Theatre Ensemble. Described in a synopsis as “a superhero noir comedy about the dangers of love,” it has already been produced at several high schools, including the Jewish Community High School of the Bay Area and at Sachse High School in Sachse, Texas; it will be done next month at TMI – The Episcopal School of Texas in San Antonio. As someone who sees real value in high school students having the opportunity to work on contemporary plays, I was very pleased to see that such a new work had been quickly found by schools.

How did I learn of the quiet cancelation in Corona? My high school theatre advocacy was mentioned in conversation on Facebook where the play’s author, Adam Szymkowicz, had shared the news, which he only learned of through students who had contacted him on Twitter. While a school representative, in response to my inquiry, said that the cancelation was due to the play not having received the proper approval, that is an oft-cited reason that typically differs from other accounts. But with no other accounts to go by in this case, I’m left only with a vague sense of something amiss, since I doubt that any teacher would go into rehearsal for a show without having followed the appropriate protocols. That would be a willful challenge to an administration, putting employment at risk.

Advertising for production at Theatre of NOTE

In my opinion, the play has an enormous amount to offer school theatre troupes, as it addresses love, rejection, and female empowerment by inverting many comic book tropes, offering strong female roles in a stylized ensemble work with 9 or 10 roles. It does, however, contain stage violence and a handful of phrases that might well bring parents up short. Shorn of context, they include, “She knees him in the groin,” “I promised you angry sex,” and “I’m thinking about your body pressed against mine…I’m thinking about taking of all your clothes piece by piece…Then I would tear into you, with my hands and with my teeth. I would leave marks.”

While these phrases are not typical of the dialogue in Hearts Like Fists, and indeed these examples comprise the majority of what I thought could prove problematic for schools, one can imagine parents who might take exception to hearing this out of the mouths of 17-year-olds, even if the same students might discuss such things in their own lives or hear them even on broadcast TV. But as a result, the skittishness of administrators to allow them to be spoken in performance is not a complete shock. It’s a shame, really, because the play offers so much, but schools have long proven themselves to be risk averse.

I know Szymkowicz entirely from online interactions, stemming in large part from his impressive ongoing series of interviews with other playwrights, so I reached out to him about the cancelation, both before and after reading the play. Via e-mail, I asked Szymkowicz about the fact that in his Facebook dialogue, he seemed disinclined to make an issue of the cancelation.

Adam Szymkowicz

“As a playwright I am used to plays being postponed or cancelled for various reasons,” he replied. “Productions appear out of nowhere and sometimes just as mysteriously, planned productions don’t happen. I’m not saying it’s a fun thing about being a playwright but at this point I’m used to it. It never occurred to me that I have any power in whether or not planned productions do actually happen. Either people want to do a play or they don’t. I can’t make people do my play just because they said they would.” Szymkowicz noted that the show has had 10 productions, with four more coming up, and would soon be his most produced work.

Had he ever thought about Hearts Like Fists as a play for high schools, I wondered. “No,” was his simple reply. “It was a commission for South Coast Repertory. But I specifically didn’t have cursing in it because of how sensitive it seemed that Orange County audience was to curse words based on the reading of another play I had there.  The fact that high schools have been doing it is a happy accident.”

But, in hindsight, does he believe there are facets of the play that particularly speak to high school performers and/or audiences? “I think loving the wrong person is an experience a lot of people have in high school,” he observed. “Also being a secret superhero (metaphorically) or having super powers not yet fully expressed. All general love confusion. High school is, for some, a confusing time.”

As is the case with a number of newer musicals, I wondered if he would consider authorizing a high school version of the show, with his own content edits. “I looked at the play once,” he wrote, “a year or so ago, with an eye to that, but I couldn’t figure out how to make tamer versions of certain scenes still work.”

Given the few phrases that might well give schools pause, I wondered whether Szymkowicz had considered that schools that have done or will do the show might be making their own, unauthorized edits, and how he would feel about that. He replied, “I wouldn’t like that and, of course, as you know, contractually they are forbidden from doing so.”

However, he wasn’t opposed to school editions on principle, saying, “If it doesn’t harm the play, sure. I am glad high schools are doing more challenging work and pushing boundaries and creating conversations. I worry about work that is sanitized past the point of having meaning or worth. But if you as a writer can take out something too adult (not that we all agree on what that is) but still have a play you are proud of, more power to you. Some wonderful plays are done frequently at the high school level.”

Finally, I asked Szymkowicz whether there was anything he’d like to say to the students, or to the administration, about the play being canceled.

“I spoke to a few of the students over Twitter who seem heartbroken and sent my regrets that this happened after they had already started rehearsals. I suspect the administration thought it would harm his/her community in some way to do this play. I think it is a bigger harm to not let them do the play.  But look. I’m a playwright, not an administrator. I think theater is a good thing. I think communication is always better than shutting down conversations that make us uncomfortable. And honestly I also think my play is kind of tame. I suspect if these kids wrote plays themselves they would be much more upsetting or explicit than my play.”

I happen to agree strongly with Szymkowicz that communication is better than cancelation, and I believe that somewhere in the process of play selection, the start of production at Santiago High and the cancelation, some essential communication was missed. I admire the teacher who wanted to bring new work to her students and I respect the playwright for his decision that any alteration in the play would be to its detriment, and that even in high schools, he wants to see his play done as written, which is his absolute right. Much as I’d like to figure out if there’s a villain here, I can’t. And, sadly, circumstances have insured that Szymkowicz’s villain, the rejected, lovelorn Doctor X won’t be found at Santiago High either.

I am angry and I am sad. But I am not entirely surprised.

Earlier this morning, Dawn Burch, drama director at South Williamsport Area Junior/Senior High School in Pennsylvania, was fired from her position. By e-mail. The reason given? “Job performance.”

It doesn’t take a detective to figure out what’s really going on. At the beginning of July, Burch asserted that her musical choice for this school year, Spamalot, had been nixed by the school due to its gay content. School officials vehemently denied that was the case.

In late August, Keystone Progress and I received copies of school e-mails between Burch, principal Jesse Smith and superintendent Mark Stamm regarding the decision. An e-mail from Smith from the end of June cited “homosexual themes” as the reason for canceling the show.

So now, less than a month after the administration’s efforts to hide their own actions were revealed, Burch suddenly loses her job. Save for holding auditions and beginning rehearsals for the school’s fall play, Alice in Wonderland, she has barely undertaken her job for this year, as prior to that it was summer break. When exactly did these job performance issues come to light? Awfully coincidental, no?

I believe Burch has been fired for telling the truth. Burch has been fired for not being willing to accept that gay life was not something to be hidden away, not something to be ashamed of, not something to be afraid of. It hardly takes another Right-to-Know request to put together the pieces.

I wanted to interview Burch about what has transpired, but she was too emotional to say much more than the bare facts of the firing as cited above, except to express concern about what would happen to the fall play and to the students already cast, who were looking forward to being in the show. Will it still happen? Who knows. But even on a difficult day, Burch’s main concern was for the students. She may not be a teacher (and therefore has no tenure), but putting the needs of students first is a sign of an excellent teacher, accredited or not. There are many ways to teach.

It’s worth noting that at a Board of Education meeting a week and a half ago, conversation regarding the Spamalot issue was expressly deferred until this coming Monday, September 22. So it’s quite remarkable that this decisive action took place even before the South Williamsport community could discuss the issue publicly; that they were denied any opportunity to speak before the issue was resolved and that it became a referendum on Burch’s performance, rather than about condoning homophobia and then hiding that fact. Will the topic still be discussed Monday night? Perhaps. But there’s going to be a lot of discussion in the past tense when it comes to Burch.

Perhaps we’ll all be surprised. Perhaps overwhelming support for Burch will be in evidence on Monday night. Perhaps the Board of Ed members will discover that this is an issue that will be a factor when they run for reelection. Perhaps parents will make clear that they can’t trust the word of the board chair, the superintendent and the principal, given their efforts to obscure the truth in this situation. Perhaps the press will cover the fallout of this firing with rigor and depth, and a truer picture will emerge.

I don’t know how the students will feel, or what they’ll be told about the loss of their drama director. I don’t know how they’ll react, or if they will at all. But just as kids are smart enough to intuit a great many things from a very early age, I suspect many of them are going to realize that they’ve just been given a lesson in right and wrong, in honor and duplicity, in the politics of fear and silence. They’ve seen just how badly their elders can behave in the name of protecting them. I hope they’ll see through it as well.

And I hope they’ll realize that Dawn Burch is a hero. I think plenty of people already do.