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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today, my book is published. This is the realization of a dream that I had given up on long ago. But my most overwhelming emotion today, and every time I look at the finished book, is sadness.

It would be wrong to say that I wrote Another Day’s Begun for any one person. Presumably like any other author, I wrote it for many people to read. But the person who I most wanted to read it, who I most wanted to have place it on her bookshelf, cannot. 

Catherine “Kaki” Marshall was a mentor to me in my days as a student at the University of Pennsylvania, and I am hardly her only protegee. Many kids at Penn, from the late 70s to the early 90s, would find their way to Kaki’s office, on the mezzanine level of the Annenberg Center, when she was the Associate Managing Director there, for knowledge, for caring. There was, quite literally, always an open door, unless you wanted to talk privately; I can’t recall her ever shutting anyone out for her own needs.

Having gone to Penn already in love with theatre, but convinced by many that it was no way to make a living or a life, I took stabs at other fields of interest, but none really resonated. I was most engaged with my time in the Annenberg Center, in my work study job in the box office, 20 hours each week, during my freshman and sophomore years. I joined the Penn Players, the school’s longest established drama troupe, and in two semesters, I directed two shows, staged managed one, and appeared in one. Kaki was the faculty adviser

Having met Kaki and grown friendly with her – mind you, she was a contemporary of my parents, with children of her own around my age – I was able to be assigned to her office for my work-study gig in my junior and senior years. To this day, I don’t remember doing any work beyond answering the phone. What I remember is sitting in Kaki’s office talking about theatre and constantly borrowing books from her wide, multi-tiered shelves – every book about theatre and nothing else. Because Penn had no theatre program, Kaki was my undergraduate theatre curriculum. 

I also recall one particular totem on those bygone shelves: a small, square fading color photo of Kaki and Hal Prince, in swim clothes, lounging on chaises at what Kaki told me was Hal’s vacation place in Spain. Hal was one my first theatre idols and, thanks to Kaki, I met him for the first time when I was a junior – and we sat together in Kaki’s office and talked. Kaki had done theatre at Penn with Hal when they were both students, and he remained her friend until he passed away.

In those last two years of college, when I was ostensibly working for her, we grew quite close, bonded by my overwhelming stress about school and career as well as by a personal tragedy in her family. We discussed these subjects openly, and she was for me – and again, I know for others – my theatre mom. She understood my concerns and worries and interests and desires and she supported them with knowledge and perspective. Her office was less my job and more my refuge. Kaki understood my love of theatre in a way my parents, always supportive but not personally invested in theatregoing or theatremaking, could not.

On the last day I saw Kaki on campus before graduating, I vividly remember telling her that I would always keep in touch. “Oh, Howard,” she said, “so many students say that. But with time and distance, it doesn’t often happen, and you need to know that I understand and it’s OK.”

Having introduced this essay talking about my sadness, this is where you might think I’ll now tell you about drifting away from Kaki and regretting the loss of our bond. But that wasn’t the case – I did realize what I had found in her, every minute, and was determined not to lose it.

I was faithful and would call every couple of months to share my news and hear hers. I would look for any pretext to visit Philadelphia, and always include a visit with Kaki, and with her husband Joe too, who I knew to have had a similarly influential effect on his students at Temple Law School.

Most every summer, I would spend a long weekend with Kaki and Joe at their beach home on the southern Jersey shore. We never ran out of things to talk about and, aside from politics and current events, which we discussed with vigor (from the same perspective), our main topic was theatre. Since Joe passed away several years ago, I tried to call Kaki every few weeks.

Our ongoing friendship was such that she always received a call from me on her birthday, year in and year out. She never asked for it, but I know she enjoyed it, proven by a call perhaps 10 years ago. I was in England in late September, as I usually am at that time, when my phone rang as it rarely did when people knew I was traveling. Kaki’s name showed on the screen.

Given to bouts of pessimism, I feared something was wrong. I answered by saying, “Kaki, hi, is everything OK?” With a laugh she replied, “Everything’s fine. But I wanted to know if everything is OK with you?” “I’m fine,” I responded. “I’m in England, remember? Why are you concerned?” “Because it’s my birthday,” she said, “and all of my kids have called now but I haven’t heard from you and I got worried.”

She also spoke to me every year on my birthday, though she didn’t know it. I always made a point of calling on that day because I certainly never expected her to keep track of the date, not with six children and more than a dozen grandchildren, plus siblings and nieces and nephews and cousins. Every year on these calls, I never pointed out my birthday, but we would mark that it was the birthday of Hal Prince. That date is two days from now.

We continued to go to the theatre together when possible, as we had when I was a student. I can’t recall which was when, but I believe our final two shows seated side by side were Tectonic Theatre Project’s two-part The Laramie Project and The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, which we saw on a single marathon day, and Bill Irwin’s The Happiness Lecture.

For 36 years, I would call, I would send her things I wrote and we’d discuss them, and when face to face, we would laugh together and have the kind of earnest talks about theatre that I always craved. Because of this, because of the bookshelves in her Annenberg office where I learned so much, my greatest desire has been to know that Kaki had read my book and had it on her much-reduced home bookshelf, the bulk of her theatre books having been given away years earlier.

Kaki died in August of 2020, not from the virus, but simply in the course that a life runs, and she was not ill very long. She was one month shy of her 95^th birthday. It was only weeks from the time she went to the hospital until she died. We had spoken perhaps two weeks before things had started heading in the direction I had feared for some time. I feared it because my parents had both passed years earlier, leaving Kaki as my only true surrogate parent. 

Earlier this past summer, I had thought that perhaps I should let Kaki read the manuscript of Another Day’s Begun, not because there seemed to be any imminent concern, but just in case anything happened. She was 94, after all. I decided against it, putting faith in the fact that all of the women in her family were long-lived, quite remarkably so. I wanted her to see a complete finished book, not simply as something on its way to being a book. It was a miscalculation I will always regret.

Countless people have influenced my life, more than I could ever thank in the book or face to face. But I most wanted Kaki to read Another Day’s Begun because she was the one person I could truly credit for fanning the flame of my theatre love and knowledge at the earliest stage. Also, while she had seen shows at theatres where I worked, this book is something that is truly mine, a testament to her support, her help, her faith in me, her love – and her understanding of me.

I cannot share this with Kaki in recognition of all she gave to me. But in her honor, her memory, and with the deep love I felt and feel for Kaki, I share it today with all of you, because she would have been very happy for us all to have a new theatre book for our shelves. And if a student spots a copy on your shelf and expresses interest, please loan it to them, because in that moment, you will do for that student what Kaki did for me, and that act honors our friendship.

If you see a stage production of The Sound of Music, here are some words you won’t hear: Nazi. Hitler.

Here are some words you will hear in the stage version: Gauleiter. Anschluss. Third Reich.

Regardless of whether you see The Sound of Music on stage or watch the perennially popular 1965 movie, here’s another word you won’t hear: Holocaust.

None of this is meant as criticism of The Sound of Music in either version. They are simply facts about the musical’s book and screenplay. Coming 14 and 20 years after the end of World War II, the stage and screen musicals (respectively) arrived in a period when a significant majority of the theatre and filmgoing public still held vivid memories of the war, and countless stories – both real and fictional – had proliferated in its wake, some coming while battles and atrocities still raged. Even casual mentions of associated terms and names surely brought instant recognition of the entirety of the perfidy that corrupted Germany and killed millions.

The real-life Trapp Family Singers

The Sound of Music focuses its attention on a heavily fictionalized account of the real-life Trapp Family Singers, who charmed Austria in the late 1920s and 1930s, leaving for America in 1938 following the country’s annexation by Germany (aka the Anschluss) so that the paterfamilias, a former naval captain, would not be pressed into service by the Third Reich. Rodgers and Hammerstein, the famed lyricist and composer working on what would be their final show together, and Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, the book writers, foregrounded the romance of Captain von Trapp and the governess to his children, Maria, with the rise of the of the Reich lightly threaded through the show, only to come into its fullest focus in the climactic escape of the family from Nazi clutches. Seven years after the Broadway premiere of The Sound of Music, John Kander, Fred Ebb, and Joe Masteroff would make the rise and intent of the Nazis much more explicit, and central, in the musical Cabaret.

While the overall structure of The Sound of Music remains the same in both the stage and film versions, there are many differences. In the stage version, the characters of Max Detweiler and Elsa von Schrader are, at the very least, appeasers of the German rise to power in Austria (“What’s going to happen is going to happen,” says Max, “Just be sure it doesn’t happen to you”) and at worst, potential collaborators. Indeed, unlike the film, where the Captain’s romance with Elsa is ended almost exclusively because of his evident love for Maria, in the stage version the couple break apart over their differing viewpoints of how to respond to the ominous political shift, laid out in the song “No Way To Stop It,” which does not appear in the film.

Program cover for LaGuardia High School’s The Sound of Music

This dramaturgical prologue is provided in order to consider the recent debate at New York’s LaGuardia High School – almost 60 years since the musical’s debut, 73 years after the end of the war – over the presence of swastikas in a high school production of the stage musical. As first reported by the New York Daily News, the school’s principal insisted upon the removal of swastikas from the set and costumes of the show just before it began its 10-performance run. Students involved in the production protested, and a compromise was reached, in which the presence of the swastika was greatly reduced, but not eliminated: it was prominently rendered as banners (on video screens) flanking the stage during the Kaltzberg Musical Festival where the family competes late in the show, and as a cloth flag somewhat inexplicably draped over a gate in the convent where the climactic scene takes place (a nun pulled it down at LaGuardia, echoing the film moment when Captain von Trapp removes and tears apart a Nazi flag hung on his house).

The swastika was also to have appeared, as it would have in Germany and its conquered territories in that era, on armbands worn by military personnel. The compromise saw it replaced by the stylized twin lightning bolts that were the symbol of the Schutzstaffel, the SS, originally Hitler’s personal guards which grew into the Nazi elite force, charged with planning and carrying out the eradication of Jews, as well as Romani, queer, disabled and other specified identities which did not conform to the ostensibly “pure” Aryan characteristics. That the SS symbol was acceptable while the swastika was not has to do with a lack of historical understanding of what the former represented, while the latter, alarmingly, is in ongoing use by neo-Nazi organizations and vandals to this day, and therefore better recognized and instantly repellant.

The script of The Sound of Music does not require swastika banners, though it does specify SS uniforms, where the swastika would have been seen. The placement of either symbol, or the frequency of its use, misses the larger issue that must be considered when producing The Sound of Music today, namely that the show minimizes the historical underpinnings of the story in favor of romance, and that today, in an era when white nationalism has raised its vile head in international politics and in America, productions shouldn’t lean in to sanitization. That’s not to say that the text can or should be altered, but by avoiding the most obvious symbols of a regime known for unspeakable atrocities, productions risk underplaying its horrors. That the swastika scares people is only appropriate.

To be sure, schools will want to take care that images of the show featuring Nazi symbols and paraphernalia are not taken out of context, something that can occur all too easily in this era when everyone has a camera at the ready in their cell phone, and when such images can quickly be shared widely via social media. In the wake of the reports on the LaGuardia dispute, many teachers have written on social media about the care they take during rehearsals and performances regarding the use of props, costumes and photos thereof, often keeping those materials under strict control. One teacher wrote on Facebook of ritually burning the Nazi armbands after the final performance, so they could not be misappropriated.

Signage at LaGuardia High during the run of The Sound of Music

In a program note, presumably written and printed prior to the eruption over swastikas, the LaGuardia principal Lisa Mars, who also billed herself as executive producer of the show, wrote of the need to delve “deeper into the plot,” citing both Nazism and the Third Reich; an accompanying note from director Lee Lobenhofer invokes facism. A program insert, likely added in the wake of the controversy, headed “Stand with us, United Against Hatred,” explained that the students and faculty of the school had asked that a portion of ticket proceeds be donated to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. “LaGuardia Arts stand united against hatred and we ask that you join with us in denouncing all forms of hate and intolerance. When we say, ‘Never again will those atrocities of war be repeated,’ never again must be a promise kept.”

All of these statements and sentiments are not merely admirable, but necessary. Unfortunately, whether in advance or in response to outcry, the materials provided to the audience, which thanks to the number of performances and size of the theatre was some 10,000 people, didn’t say enough. While students involved in the show, or throughout the school, may have participated in some supplemental educational initiatives designed to ensure that they understood the full scope of what is only touched upon in the musical, the public statements made an assumption of knowledge that simply may not be the case. There should have been several pages in the program explaining all of the terms pertinent to the era, both those used in the show and those left out, as well as an overview of what took place in Europe during Hitler’s rampage. A related lobby display could have reinforced the messaging. We do need to delve deeper, but that excavation was not in significant evidence for the public at LaGuardia.

In April of this year, a survey by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany found a widespread lack of knowledge in the United States about Hitler’s rise to power and the scope of the Holocaust. As a result, LaGuardia – and all schools, community groups, and even professional companies planning to produce The Sound of Music– must take every opportunity to educate not only students but all audiences on the real facts (not alternative facts) about the viciousness of Nazi Germany and those who facilitated its rise, either overtly or through inaction, and the terrors that came to pass under its rule.

Yes, introducing the full reality of Nazism may mitigate the romance and sweetness of The Sound of Music, but at a time when Holocaust ignorance and outright denial has found increased footing, no opportunities should be missed. If the show is produced solely so we can sing along with “Do Re Mi” or “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” then its educational value is reduced, regardless of how often “the flag with the black spider” appears.

Producing The Sound of Music without swastikas plays into the hands of those who want to minimize or eradicate the truth of Nazi Germany, of why that symbol holds such terrifying power. But retaining that ugly symbol is only the start even with school productions, where successive generations (and their parents, siblings and friends) must be clearly taught what happened in that era, to more than just Austrians during 1938, so that we can educate against virulent policies that seek to turn certain groups into “the other,” to be insulted, excluded, and eradicated, in direct renunciation of our common humanity. We must not risk blessing only one homeland forever, as the song goes, but all of them that wish to unite in peace.

This article references the Williamson Music edition of The Sound of Music © 1960, as found in the collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.

As word about a scuffle over a theatre production at Mitchell High School in Mitchell County NC has started to make its way beyond the local North Carolina media, accounts seem to be placing their emphasis on what is really the least of the problems there. After all, in America, people are free to pray as they see fit. Less than 30 people gathered to pray over the presentation of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) to a high school audience. What’s getting lost, or not reported at all, is the censorship that occurred, and the homophobic outbursts during the performance from students and afterwards from the clergy.

On Thursday, November 8, while 10^th graders were taking the PSAT exams, students at Mitchell High were treated to a performance of Shakespeare (abridged) by the local Parkway Playhouse, which had produced the show a few weeks earlier. The presentation was arranged by the local Toe River Arts Council, which has brought all manner of arts offerings to the local community.

The majority of the show was performed until about 15 minutes to the end when, in the words of Dwight Chiles (via e-mail), one of the three actors in the company, “We were just starting to get to the audience participation section when I saw the managing director of Parkway in the wings signaling to me that we needed to cut the show. So I ran offstage leaving the other two actors continuing the show to talk with her. She said we had run out of time and that we needed to end the show now.  I asked if we should jump to the ‘Faster, Backwards’ section and she said, “No, we have to stop now.”

The Parkway Playhouse production of “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)”

He continued, “I ran back onstage just as the other two actors were about to pick an Ophelia and I told the audience that we actually have run out of time and that we were not going to get to finish but to make sure they go home and watch Lion Kingso they can see how Hamletends but to remember that it is a Shakespeare Tragedy and everyone dies at the end and then the curtain started closing on us. It wasn’t until we got back to the theatre to unload that we found out the show was shut down because of content.”

What has been reported, primarily by the local TV station WLOS, is that there was “inappropriate content” in the show, though no one has officially specified on the record exactly what content was considered so objectionable that it required that the show be summarily shut down. News accounts say that texts from both students and teachers to the school and district administration prompted the action. WLOS cited the portrayal of alcohol consumption and suicide (spoiler alert: Romeo and Juliet commit suicide) as the offending actions.

The school superintendent, Chad Calhoun, has not responded to several e-mail requests from Arts Integrity for an interview.

A silly and inspired travesty of the Bard of Avon’s oeuvre, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), the first show from the Reduced Shakespeare Company, has been playing internationally for some 30 years. It is widely produced in high schools, and upcoming and recent past productions, per the Broadway Play Publishing website, include Lee High School, Huntsville AL (2019), St. William of York Catholic Church, Stafford VA (2019), Hawaii Baptist Academy, Honolulu (2018), Prattville High School, Pratville AL (2018), Oak Glen High School Newell WV (2018), Newton County Day School of the Sacred Heart, Newton MA (2018), Dalton High School, Dalton GA (2018), The Academy of Classical Christian Studies, Oklahoma City OK  (2017), Cedar Fall High School, Cedar Falls IA (2017), and St. Teresa’s Academy, Kansas City MO (2017).

Unlike many shows, where authors do not permit alterations to the text as written, that is not the case with Shakespeare (Abridged). In an e-mail, co-author Jess Winfield wrote, “As far as I know, we’re unique among licensors in that we not only encourage but practically demand that productions adapt the text to suit the cast, the audience, and the news of the day. There are a few places in the script that specifically call for update and adaptation.” Winfield provided the authors’ note from the published text, which reads in part:

Far be it from us writers to tell you directors and actors how to stage the show; but having performed it ourselves about a billion times, we’d thought we’d offer you a smidgen of performance advice.

The show was developed through improvisation and ad lib, and is predicated on the conceit that these three guys are making the whole thing up as they go along, getting by on blind enthusiasm and boundless energy wherever they lack talent or any real clue about Shakespeare’s work. It’s important that the actors be genuinely surprised by each line, each action, and each turn of events. For example, although the audience participation section of Act Two is presented here based on our broad experience with how audiences generally respond, each audience is different. The actors should respond honestly to the audience’s performance, and their own, rather than stick blindly to the written text.

Jeff Bachar, artistic director of Parkway Playhouse, a professional non-Equity theatre, notes via e-mail that when asked by Toe River Arts to present the show at Mitchell High, “We, Parkway Playhouse, were asked to come up with a ‘PG-13’ version of the performance which we did.  We removed profanity and toned down the sexual innuendo.  There other small changes throughout such as: instead of mentioning drinking a six-pack the actors substituted ‘a bunch of Red Bull’.”

Bachar, confirming Chiles’ account of the suspension of the performance, also pointed out, “What has gone largely unmentioned is the fact that there were derogatory remarks made by a few students towards the actors.  These related to being transgender and homosexual.”

Chiles confirms that, writing, “There were a few homophobic slurs and things thrown at us on stage such as when I ran out in my pink tights I heard one student say ‘gay’ and few more said it again during the stage kiss in Romeo and Juliet.  Another time is when my character said “trans-global political thriller,” an audience member yelled “tranny,” which doesn’t make sense. As far as I could see there was no action taken by the teachers to stop people from saying things.”

In the wake of the performance shutdown, there have been two apologies by Toe River Arts, from both the executive director and board chairman, taking responsibility for not having more fully vetted the text and agreeing that there was inappropriate material.

So while a toned-down version of a popular high school show was shut down over content, beyond vague references to drinking (which had apparently already been cut) and suicide (a legitimate concern among today’s teens, but hardly surprising given the source material and Romeo and Juliet’s place in most high school curricula), there’s been no specific accounting over what was so inappropriate that the show couldn’t continue.

When the next day, the much-discussed prayer circle of less than three dozen was organized, off school grounds but adjacent to a familiar yellow school bus, it didn’t exactly produce a groundswell of response for a school with 600-700 students.

But in the wake of the prayer circle, local Pastor John McKinney, writing on Facebook that he applauded the school for their actions, shared an image of a petition he was starting, titled “Petition to Micthell [sic] County School Board” with a petition summary and background reading “Toe River Art [sic] Council or any organization of such nature,”and an action requested which read:

We, the undersigned, are concerned citizens who urge our leaders to act now to ban Toe River Art Council or any other organization from all Mitchell County Public Schools that would promote Homosexuality, Incest, Suicide, or any other that would be contrary to life. We are showing by signing that we support you and stand with you to make this decision.

The manner of dissemination of the petition, or its success, is unknown. However, it makes clear that there is censorship afoot, and that the portrayal of certain actions or lives are anathema to some in Mitchell County, and they want to impose their will on the entire community. The anti-LGBTQ stance, that causes so many young people to leave their homes and hometowns as soon as possible, is unmistakable.

Thinking back on what he thought might have run afoul of the supposed lines that were crossed, Chiles wrote, “I am guessing the depiction of drinking was when Romeo drank the poison from the apothecary and we used a flask for the poison. Also, when Benvolio tells Romeo to go to the feast of Capulets he says ‘there is free beer’ which is in the script.  The only time we used coarse language is in the Othellorap. One actor said ‘Beyotch’ and we didn’t edit it out because we needed to keep the rhyme with ‘heeyotch’. The suicide was the end of Romeo and Julietand the actor playing Juliet used a retractable knife and did the whole ‘stabby, stabby’ bit from the original production.  The stage kiss was also between Romeo and Juliet and it was just that a stage kiss.  Inches away from actually kissing each other.”

Asked whether he was concerned that the incident would harm Parkway Playhouse’s relationship with the Toe River Arts Council, Bachar replied, “I believe that continuing conversation with TRAC will help our relationship continue; however, in my opinion they censored our performance and I see that as contrary to their mission.  Regarding the schools, my belief is that we will be able to continue our involvement with them eventually but it will take a great deal of dialogue.  There is a petition in circulation that, if successful, would hinder free speech within Mitchell County schools so we would like to work with the school board there to make sure that does not occur.”

Chiles, reflecting on the incident notes, “One of the issues that I am having problems with is the apology that Toe River Arts Council issued that really just threw us under the bus especially our director for being a high school theatre teacher and saying that we did not do our job in editing the performance for the school.  But when the representative from Toe River did not show up to our rehearsal to help edit we did the best we could without any guidelines except it needed to be PG-13.  That really wasn’t fair.”

The question now is: will certain religious leaders and the censorially-minded, gender-and-sexuality-restrictive minority of Mitchell County succeed in restricting access to or funding for the arts in their area? Or will the majority of community take a closer look at what has transpired in their midst and speak out to make certain that area students receive an education that helps them to be well-rounded citizens who are prepared to compete in the world of the 21^stcentury, in Mitchell County or beyond? In any event, it’s fair to hope that they’re all learning about their Constitutional rights, including the separation of church and state, and the right to free speech.

Because god help Shakespeare, in full or abridged, if the first group succeeds.

Editor’s preface: Austin Tichenor of the Reduced Shakespeare Company wrote an extensive Facebook post after seeing a production of 1776, directed by his sister, the author of this essay, at their old high school in California, 38 years after having directed his own production in their hometown. His reflections prompted Arts Integrity to solicit this post, about how the production had come together; it is certainly only one example of how 1776 and many works for the stage are being reexamined in high school productions, especially in the wake of the success of Hamilton. Amy Tichenor Moorhead, teaches dance and musical theatre at Piedmont High School in Piedmont CA.

The musical 1776 has been a favorite of my family’s for decades, but I never considered it for my high school’s annual musical until I realized the opportunity that lay in gender-neutral, as well as color conscious, casting.

Like most high school musical theater directors, I’m always looking for shows that have lots of roles for female actors. While researching online, I learned of Kansas City’s Musical Theatre Heritage all-female 1776 in 2010. There was precedent for this in our 2011 production of Les Misérables in which two women were cast in small roles written for men. I realized right away that there’s no reason women couldn’t play any of the male roles in 1776, and that in this way, we could fully embrace trans* and non-binary students as well.

Keith Edwards, son of the late composer and lyricist Sherman Edwards, told Playbill.com in 2010, “An inclusive society is roughly what the Founding Fathers desired with the launch of the Declaration of Independence, and although they did not emancipate slaves or women at that moment, they prepared the way for both.” Inclusion is always one of my primary objectives and though I don’t think of 1776 as a show frequently performed in high schools, it felt like a valuable way to include young women in discussions from which they’ve been largely excluded. With the addition of an ensemble, plus color-conscious and gender neutral casting, the experience could be powerful.

The announcement that I would employ gender neutral casting was met with enthusiasm, and the audition process began in September for our February 2018 production. The casting process is challenging, more of an art than a science. It revives memories of my own auditions which makes me sensitive to the actors’ hopes as well as despair in not being cast as they’d wished.

I entered the audition process with no plan about how I would cast each role. I asked the actors to indicate on their audition form if they were comfortable playing either male or female characters as well as playing opposite either male or female actors and almost all were fine with both.

I could have cast the show a number of different ways, but I chose the actors I thought were strongest for each role, taking the whole cast into account. I didn’t plan to cast Abigail/John and Martha/Thomas traditionally, and I looked seriously at other combinations. During callbacks, certain actors emerged for roles that I never could have anticipated and this is the marvel of the audition process.

I hoped a student with a decent Scottish brogue would audition for McKean, and it turned out there was more than one – a woman won the role. One casting intent I did have was that the Courier would be played by a woman, but it was ultimately cast traditionally. At the conclusion of casting, only 30% of the roles were cast gender typically.

With the rehearsal process underway by early October, I decided the production would be costumed in traditional dress of the period. I considered modern-day gender neutral costuming, like formal concert attire, but found this was actually going to be more expensive, and the cast was excited about wearing 18th century coats and trousers, with buckles on their shoes, cravats, the use of canes, and a few powdered wigs.

Though 1776 calls for a cast of 26, I chose to add an ensemble to help bring the streets of Philadelphia to life — and to be inclusive of more students who wanted to participate in this musical — bringing the cast to 48. About half of the ensemble were costumed as female and the other half were dressed as male.

In addition to costume and staging choices, the physicality of each character is vital, because in a classic musical like 1776 the characters need to be defined as following the social expectations of their particular gender. How to shake hands, how to sit up straight, how to stand tall, how to bow in the manner of a stereotypical 18th century male required extensive rehearsal for all in the cast. The issues of correctness are more about the time period and region, so the women worked just as hard as the men to achieve the proper physicality. Even though the male characters are dressed as males, the fact that many are female actors in male roles is still apparent and it allows us to see these eighteenth-century congressMEN in a new light.

Rehearsals provided ample opportunity to take note of gender equality. In scene two, Richard Henry Lee declares, “I’ll stop off at Stratford just long enough to refresh the missus” and the bawdiness continues when he launches into the song “The Lees of Old Virginia” with the lyrics “may my wife refuse my bed if I can’t deliver . . .” Seeing a 21st century teenage girl portray an 18th century slaveholding man – conceived by a man in the 1960s to be an energetic but righteous buffoon – was both entertaining and eye-opening. It also emphasized that women’s roles in the story of our nation’s founding are missing from 1776, and when they are present, it is as a partner in bed.

Early in scene three, Thomas Jefferson announces he is leaving for home on “family business”, Stephen Hopkins’s response required attention in rehearsal. Hopkins chimes in and tells Jefferson, “Give her a good one for me, young feller.” We tried several different deliveries in attempt to retain the spontaneous, lighthearted intent of the line and the female actor, ultimately, embraced the notion that Hopkins is completely unaware that he is being offensive and was not considered to be so at that moment in history, though he is today. He’s not evil, he’s just of another time and set of sensibilities.

Benjamin Franklin is probably the most inappropriate character by 2018 standards with riotously suggestive dialogue throughout the show. Upon the arrival of Martha to Jefferson’s room in scene 4, Franklin asks, “Well, Halooo, and whose little girl are you?” Hilarious (because impropriety is often a source of humor) – and creepy – whether  Franklin is played by a male or a female. With a female in the role, it is even more difficult for the audience to ignore the impropriety because we can’t overlook the fact that a female delivered the line.

While the Thomas and Martha engage in a lengthy kiss, Franklin explains, “Of course she’s his wife. Look how they fit.” I had thought this line would be even funnier delivered by a female actress, but it never got the laugh that I expected. Perhaps because we know more about Thomas Jefferson than we used to, and times have changed. Later, Franklin jumps up from his nap at the invitation to go to New Brunswick “for the whoring and the drinking” – and once again the idea of women as “little brides” or whores is highlighted by the young women in the male roles saying these lines. It’s arguable whether the casting or the fact that it’s 2018 made the line more, or less funny.

Abigail Adams, a more fully-developed character than Martha Jefferson, still revolves around her husband John. She does reference their sick children and their farm’s struggles, alluding to how difficult it must have been for the women left at home. I initially planned to bring Abigail’s home to life with little children scurrying around to suggest all she would have had to contend with while still scraping out time to correspond with John. I had to let this staging idea go given the complexities it presented with the congress set and the placement of Jefferson’s house, and given Abigail’s primary role within the script as her husband’s main source of strength and support.

*   *   *

“The Lees of Old Virginia” in the Piedmont High School 2018 production of “1776” (Julie Reichle Photography)

Piedmont High School is predominantly European American (68%); however, the audition pool contained African-American and Asian-American students, as well as students of Indian  and Pacific Islander heritage. As a white, cisgender woman I gave a great deal of thought in casting deliberations as  to how to cast the individuals not historically granted access to privilege and power. In prior years, I have practiced color blind casting. But as Diep Tran, associate editor of American Theatre magazine told the Los Angeles Times, “Color-conscious” means “we’re aware of the historic discrimination in the entertainment industry . . . and we’re also aware of what it means to put a body of color onstage”. Snehal Desai, artistic director of the Asian theater company East West Players in Los Angeles, the longest-operating theater of color in the United States, said in the same article, “The thing about colorblind casting is that it denies the person standing in front of you. It ignores identity, and for people of color, that further alienates us”.

In casting a high school production of 1776, does color matter ? Yes it does. I was aware of the critical need to becolor conscious. On casting Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda told The Atlantic, “This is a story about America then, told by America now…and we want to eliminate any distance between a contemporary audience and this story”. One-quarter of the actors featured in my 1776 production were students from communities traditionally underrepresented on stage, playing historical characters who were, in real life, white.

There are two roles in particular that gave me pause. In the casting of Joseph Hewes (North Carolina) and Dr. Lyman Hall (Georgia), although I knew the actors would be wonderful in their roles, it occurred to me that the audience might be troubled and unsure how to interpret African-American students portraying Southern delegates, that is, stepping into the shoes of slaveholders. As Jessica Gelt wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “Color-conscious casting implies an understanding of the profound implications of skin color.”

I wrestled with how the Southern delegates were arranged on stage. Initially, I followed the Director’s Stage Guide’s furniture positioning for the scenes in the chamber which called for Hall and Hewes to be upstage left. I worried that the audience might see the casting of Hall and Hewes as resulting in an unfortunate accident which placed these two students in the back, behind others, rather than a conscious casting choice that would cause people to think. I tried several subtle variations on the arrangement of the delegates in that up-left corner, and eventually placed Edward Rutledge (cast typically) between them, and further upstage than Hewes. We did have a stage level change that gave some flexibility.

I worried about what the audience would think about the casting during Rutledge’s “Molasses to Rum to Slaves”. Even more than worrying what they might think, I worried that they wouldn’t think about it at all. At the conclusion of the song, the stage directions call for Rutledge to walk out as Hewes and Hall follow him. I directed Hewes and Hall to exchange a look and a nod before they began to follow Rutledge to suggest that they were making the independent decision to walk out rather than to simply be followers of Rutledge, under his authority.

*   *   *

From the 1980 Tichenor family production: “But, Mr. Adams” (l-r) Austin Tichenor (John Adams), John Tichenor (Benjamin Franklin), David Stein (Roger Sherman), Chris Stevens (Robert Livingston), and Bruce Turner (Thomas Jefferson)

I noted previously that 1776 has been a favorite of my family, dating back to when my brother Austin directed it in 1980. It was a community theater production that we produced with alumni and then-current students from Piedmont High School, performed in the same high school auditorium as my production 38 years later.

Austin cast himself as Adams, my other brother, John Tichenor, played Franklin, our dad played Hall, I assisted the choreographer and dressed the wigs, Mom sold tickets and cleaned the toilets — it was very much a family affair. In a post on Facebook after seeing my production, Austin noted an example of the benefits of diverse casting: “When Dr. Lyman Hall reveals his famous epiphany (“A representative owes the People not only his industry, but his judgment, and he betrays them if he sacrifices it to their opinion”) the moment retained all its irony but gained added resonance by being spoken by a young African-American woman. It became a fantastic and moving moment about the power of representation: Not only on our stages but in our governments.”  Just the reaction I’d hoped for.

With a gender neutral, culturally diverse cast, 1776 facilitates dialogue about our 2018 political panorama and reminds us of our responsibility for making sure that all voices are heard as we move forward. Rehearsals presented frequent opportunities for discussion and making connections to our country today – and there would be even more if we were doing the show this summer. The experience provided us with an opportunity to consider gender, racial and ethnic equality through the lens of musical theater.

As I continue to unpack the adventure five months later, the production still informs my thoughts about casting and directing.  I’ve realized that my casting process must be color conscious rather than color blind and even more than before, I will consider the gender spectrum. Instead of auditioning two distinct groups, men and women, I will look beyond the strictures of gender expectations, and, as I have in the past, the racial and ethnic default to casting roles as white unless specified as characters of color when choosing actors for roles. Yet I will be carefully aware of how the words and messages of the text resound when embodied by actors who do not replicate the characteristics of those who may have created the roles.

As I anticipate RENT, which I’ll be casting in September, a show that embraces characters all along the gender and sexuality spectrum, I’m eager to see what revelations we’ll come to when we cast consciously.

I am tired.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*    *    *

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

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

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

*    *    *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I favor that struggle.

*    *    *

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

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

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

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

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

*    *    *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*    *    *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*    *    *

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

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

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

*    *    *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*    *    *

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is unlikely that many people in the theatre are unaware of the controversy that arose in mid-May, when a small Portland, Oregon theatre company proposed a production of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with a black actor in the role of Nick. Outcry built swiftly after Michael Streeter of the Shoebox Theatre posted the following message to Facebook:

“I am furious and dumbfounded. The Edward Albee Estate needs to join the 21st Century. I cast a black actor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The Albee Estate called and said I need to fire the black actor and replace him with a white one. I refused, of course. They have withheld the rights.”

This touched off a tidal wave of conversation, debate and anger over the actions of the Albee estate, with many decrying the late playwright, who had been well known to exert significant control over all productions of his plays during his lifetime, as racist. That charge was leveled at the representatives of the estate as well, since they were sustaining what were understood to be Albee’s wishes.

So it was rather surprising when, just a couple of weeks ago, the Pulse Theatre Chicago opened their own production of Virginia Woolf, with black actors as George and Martha and white actors as Nick and Honey. This seemed to contradict the prevailing takeaway from the Shoebox controversy.

Upon learning of the production via a review by Kerry Reid in The Chicago Tribune, Arts Integrity contacted Sam Rudy, the spokesman for the Albee estate, to ask about how this production had been allowed to go forward when the Shoebox production had not been able to, unless they had recast with a white actor as Nick.

In response, Rudy shared a statement from Jonathan Lomma of WME, Albee’s agent and now agent for the estate. It read:

“Regarding your inquiry, the Albee Estate gave Chicago’s Pulse Theatre Edward’s own script edits that the playwright thought could be useful when George and Martha are portrayed by actors of color, as they are in the current Chicago production.

Those approved edits by Edward himself were used in an all African-American production of Woolf at Howard University several years ago.

While it has been established that non-Caucasian actors in different combinations have played all the roles in the play at various times with Edward’s approval, he was consistently wary of directors attempting to use his work to provide their own commentary by, for instance, casting only Nick as non-white, which essentially transforms George and Martha into older white racists, which is not what Edward’s play is about.”

The edits suggested  by Albee primarily consist of a word or short phrase, 13 in all, mostly adjusting references to hair and eye color. The most significant change is a brief section in the Act 2 “begin and water” monologue.

In conversation, Lomma drew attention to a particular speech of George’s, which Albee felt was completely transformed, in a profoundly negative way, were it to be spoken by an older white man to a younger black man:

“All imbalances will be corrected, sifted out…  We will have a race of men…test-tube bred…incubator born…superb and sublime…  Everyone will tend to be rather the same…  Alike.  Everyone…and I’m sure I’m not wrong here…will tend to look like this young man here… I suspect we will not have much music, much painting, but we will have a civilization of men, smooth, blond and right at the light-heavyweight limit…  diversity will no longer be the goal.  Cultures and races will eventually vanish…the ants will take over the world….  And I am, naturally, rather opposed to all this.”

The Zachary Scott Theatre Center production of Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

The Howard University Virginia Woolf

As Lomma noted, there had been productions of Virginia Woolf cast with black actors during Albee’s lifetime. When the Shoebox controversy arose, many people pointed to a production at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2002 in which Andrea Frye, a black actress, played Martha with white actors in the others role. Less noted was a 2003 production at the Zachary Scott Theatre Center in Austin, again with a black actress, Franchelle Stewart Dorn, as Martha in an otherwise white ensemble.

While in May the estate was not able to provide much detail about these productions, a college production at Howard University, while mentioned in passing at the time and cited in Lomma’s statement, is evidence that Albee was not doctrinaire about race in the play.

Vera Katz, the first white theatre professor at the historically black Howard University, planned a production of Virginia Woolf as her final show before retiring in 2001. She reached out to Albee and he visited the show while it was in rehearsals, and offered suggested changes to the text that would make minor changes appropriate for an all-black production.

In June of this year, Michon Boston wrote on her Eclectique 916 site about the Howard University production, which she said was the first time she had seen the play staged. She reached out to Vera Katz to ask about Katz’s experience of producing the play, given the controversy that had just flared.

She received the following response from Katz, which Boston said Katz specifically asked her to share:

“My delay to responding to this debate is because my husband is critically ill.

In 2001, I had the audacity to contact Mr. Albee by writing him a letter in long hand and sending it through his agent. What I asked Mr. Albee in the letter was to adjust two specific changes to his play, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” for a performance by an African American student cast at Howard University.

These changes were:
1) The mysterious baby we never see referred to as a “blond blue-eyed child”;
2) The university names in which George has lectured and taught.

My husband said “You’ll never hear from him.”

To my surprise, Edward Albee responded by calling me. He immediately agreed to discuss the changes asking me to get my script and reviewed them with me over the phone. The “blue-eyed” child became “the dark dusky child”, and the university names became HBCUs – Howard, Fisk, Wilberforce, etc.

Mr. Albee expressed his desire to visit Howard and talk with the young actors. When he arrived he insisted on shaking every actor’s hand and gave a brilliant lecture about the play.

He was extremely interested in a tour of the campus. During the tour he was very knowledgeable of persons the dormitories and buildings were named for — Mary McLeod Bethune, Dr. Charles Drew, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Ira Aldridge. For me, he seemed to want to expand his awareness of the Black experience during this visit.

Albee stood for a long time in front of a portrait of Ira Aldridge (actor). He talked about the importance of Ira Aldridge to the theater.

Mr. Albee said he was unable to attend the performance of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” because his play “The Goat or Who Is Sylvia?” was in production.

We thanked him by mentioning his visit in the program at Howard and sent him a copy (of the program).

Boston concluded her post by noting that Katz was working on a book in which she would go into more detail about her interactions with Albee and the Howard University Virginia Woolf.

Kate Robison and Adam Zaininger as Nick and Honey in Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” at Pulse Theatre Chicago (photo by Joe Mazza)

Professional vs. Non-Professional Productions

Following a phone conversation earlier this week with Arts Integrity, Chris Jackson, Producing Artistic Director of the Pulse Theatre Chicago and director of their Virginia Woolf, shared a statement explaining how they secured the rights for the show, having already explained that the company had no difficulty with its plans. He wrote:

“Pulse Theatre Chicago is a 501 (c)(3) non for profit, non-equity professional theatre company. We rent spaces across the city when we decide to mount each production. We do not have an artistic home and we work on a very low budget, mostly out of pocket. All of our artists are paid a small stipend after the run of the show. Because of those factors, Dramatist [Dramatists Play Service] informed us that we only qualify to the non-professional rights to the production, which in regards to casting, only requires that the gender of the characters may not be changed from the intended.

“To my knowledge, the estate only had an issue with the interracial casting of the couple of Nick and Honey, which is understandable because in my opinion that casting choice disrupts the central theme of The American Dream being unachievable. I don’t think the estate is complete restrictive of actors of color being cast in Albee plays. If they were, we wouldn’t be talking! As far as I know, the estate approved our production. The only communication I have received from the estate about this production specifically came from them through Dramatist. They sent, opening night, the revisions that Albee made for the Howard University production of the show.”

In conversation, Jackson noted that he had secured rights to Virginia Woolf more than a year ago, while Albee was still alive.

As it happens, the licensing rights for Virginia Woolf are slightly complicated, compared to many plays. Dramatists Play Service handles the non-professional rights, while Samuel French handles professional rights, resulting in part from the fact the DPS didn’t begin handling professional rights until the early 1980s. Lomma continues to handle “first class rights,” which include Broadway, national tours and the West End.

So while Pulse is a professional non-Equity company, for the definitions that exist between DPS and French, their production was deemed non-professional. While Shoebox is comparably small, they appear to have been defined as professional for the purposes of licensing.

Following a conversation with Arts Integrity, and responding to questions about the process of licensing Albee’s work, Peter Hagan, President of DPS, sent the following e-mail:

“Our Albee nonprofessional licenses essentially mirror our boilerplate licenses for our other plays.  The language simply says – as our other licenses do – that the play must be performed as written by the author, with no changes, etc.  As you know, Mr. Albee was very specific about how casting changes could affect the authenticity of what he had written.  Our license form for the Albee plays is actually quite old – so old, in fact, that it includes Albee’s prohibition against performing the play before a segregated audience!

As I told you, we do not represent the professional rights to some of the Albee plays, including Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? For all of those Albee plays for which we do represent the professional rights, there is a stipulation that the director, actors, set, costumes and rehearsal schedule must be approved by the Estate of Edward Albee before a license is granted, as was the case when Mr. Albee was alive. As you know, he took a very hands-on approach to the professional productions of all of his plays.

As for our distinction between what is considered a professional production and what is considered nonprofessional, when actors are paid $150 per week or more for their work, we consider that a professional production, whether it is Equity or non-Equity.  Samuel French has a different policy, so you should check with them about that.”

Asked about how Samuel French handles the stipulations on Albee plays that French represents, the company’s executive director Bruce Lazarus said that, for all shows they license, “On professional productions, if requested by an author, we submit any information that is requested to the author’s agent. We support a playwright’s right to approve casting to be sure it reflects their authorial intent.”

Albee famously denied all requests to allow for productions of Virginia Woolf with entirely male casts.

*   *   *

Sophie Okonedo and Damian Lewis in the 2017 West End production of Edward Albee’s The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? (photo by Johann Persson)

In the wave of controversy over the Shoebox production that never was, a debate flourished over the rights of authors, and subsequently their estates, to exert control over the way in which plays are produced, beyond even the specific of Edward Albee’s requirements. It extended to the question of how long copyright protection runs and whether estates, by following the express wishes of an author too slavishly following their death, may be sustaining outdated thinking, be it in how texts are examined or how society has evolved since the play debuted.

Arts Integrity has written many times in the past in support of artists rights and the right of their estates, based in the legal protections afforded to authors in the theatre, which differs from film and television (and cases where a play may be sold for adaptation into those media). Arts Integrity also advocates for inclusive casting, and opening traditionally, and in some cases roles that were explicitly thought of as, white to performers of color.

It bears noting that Edward Albee passed away less than a year ago. While many chafed against the degree to which he controlled his works during his lifetime, and indeed may disagree with his feelings about the casting of Nick in relation to the rest of the company, it is not necessarily realistic to expect the people to whom he entrusted his estate to immediately abandon his wishes within months of his passing. That said, it is not unrealistic to imagine that the estate’s thinking will evolve, especially as current trustees of the estate will eventually give way to successors in future years, given the term of copyright.

For now, the creative elements of Albee’s plays in professional production, including directors and casts, will continue to be reviewed and approved by the agent for the estate, Lomma, and trustees of the estate, as submitted to them by DPS and French. However Lomma indicated that, save specifically for Nick in Virginia Woolf being cast as black with the others characters as white, there is no hard and fast proscription against artists of color taking on roles in the plays. Sophie Okonedo’s role in a recent West End production of The Goat, a role played on Broadway by Mercedes Ruehl and then Sally Field, is evidence that’s the case.

However, all parties represented in this article made the point of saying that the sooner producers engage in conversation about their interest in Albee’s plays, and their plans for them, the less likely it is that issues will arise.

In contrast to the impression left in May, Jonathan Lomma said, on behalf of the estate, “In Edward’s almost 30 plays, virtually all of the roles can and should be done in a diverse, color conscious fashion.”

One doesn’t expect to hear the words “nudity” and “children’s theatre” discussed in the same sentence. But there’s been a lot of that juxtaposition going around up in Boston as a result of the Boston Children’s Theatre production of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest in the latter half of April. “Artistic director caught in storm over nude scene at Boston Children’s Theatre” blared the headline in The Boston Globe one day late last week, only to be followed the next day by “Amid nudity flap, board member resigns at Boston Children’s Theatre.” WBUR’s The Artery had commentary headed “Nudity Turns ‘Cuckoo’s Nest’ Into Hornet’s Nest at Boston Children’s Theatre.”

The headlines were spurred by internal disputes between the board and staff of BCT regarding the nudity in the production. Executive artistic director Burgess Clark informed the press that he is on layoff at the moment, as an alternative to his resigning, in the face of what he sees as board meddling in his artistic prerogatives. He characterized what took place to Don Aucoin of the Globe as attempted censorship by two “overreactionary ninnies” on the company’s board.

*   *   *

Scene from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, as seen in The Boston Globe

The fuller situation, as pieced together from e-mail correspondence with Clark and BCT executive director Toby Schine, a phone conversation with BCT board member Henry Lukas, and the press accounts, is as follows.

The not-for-profit BCT, through its program for young people aged 14 to 19, has been producing shows in the past few years geared towards more mature youths, including Rent, Spring Awakening and Reflections of a Rock Lobster. Cuckoo’s Nest was part of that progression of work. Clark says that he has done the full texts of those shows, not student editions.

When Cuckoo’s Nest was announced for production, there was no public notice that nudity would be part of the production, nor was the board apprised of it. Clark, in an e-mail, said that the nudity (one male actor, aged 21, enacted during an exchange that covers less than one page of the acting edition script) was not pre-planned, but, per Clark, originated at the actor’s suggestion at the first rehearsal. “I asked him if he had ever appeared nude onstage before and he said no,” wrote Clark, “but that he was willing. I thought it was a brave risk for a young actor to offer.  I told him we would attempt it if it seemed organic. Five weeks later when we were in tech, we tried it and it played beautifully.  The cast had become so comfortable with one another by that point that it was pretty casual and had just the right tone.”

Asked when he learned of the nudity, Schine, the executive director, wrote, “Burgess mentioned it to me two weeks in to the rehearsal process. He had considered it for the scene in the pre-production, but thought it better not to take the risk, given that we likely wouldn’t have an actor who was comfortable with the idea. On the first day of rehearsal, the actor playing McMurphy, Sam Mulcahy, asked if the scene would be played with him nude for a few moments – Burgess then reconsidered. He finally said he wanted to move ahead with it two weeks before we opened.”

For student performances, the actor wore boxer shorts, and for the first two general public performances (there were ten general audience shows in total), he wore them as well. The nudity was introduced at the third public performance and was in place for the remainder of the run.

“We had agreed to try it both ways—so we did it without the nude scene the first two performances and did on the next two,” wrote Clark. “The scene as we had rehearsed it (nude) worked much better with our audiences.” In light of that decision, Schine wrote, “We contacted the parents involved in the scene and had discussions with them, [and] had Sam Mulcahy sign a nudity waiver based on AEA’s for his protection and for the theatres.”

During the second week of the three-week run, following the introduction of the nude scene, all parties agree that two board members contacted Schine to discuss the nudity; one audience member also called the company with concerns. What is unclear is the exact nature of the board members’ communications, which has been described variously as “demands from the board members to cut the nude scene” to “a concern about process.” Arts Integrity has asked Schine for clarification, since he was on the calls, and none of the complaints went directly from board members to Clark; as of the morning of May 9, Schine’s e-mail has an auto-respond message saying he is out of the office for two days.

In response to the initial expressions of concern, heated or not, Clark writes, “Toby called Hank [Miller, the board president] back and Hank said, ‘This is an artistic decision and I have to trust you to make the right one. You have my support.’” Lukas, the board member interviewed, confirms that Miller gave his support and makes clear that the board never met or discussed the issue until after the production had closed, and that at no time did the board ask for the production to be altered. Clark acknowledges that the two board members were acting independently.

Clark has said that from the time the concerns were raised, he felt uncertain from day to day as to whether the show would go on. He characterizes the subsequent events as, “After daily harassment from these board members, who were acting completely without authority, I made my plan to resign.  My board president and my executive producer collectively offered the alternative of being temporarily laid off rather than have me resign, until they could present a united front from the board. That has yet to take place.”

Subsequent to this, one of the two board members who took issue with the nudity resigned. The board met on Monday May 8, following which Lukas said, of the more advanced work Burgess has done with the older participants, “Burgess has done a great job.” He went on to say, “We’re hoping that we can sit down with Burgess, clarify the issues and have him back. Asked whether there have been any other organizational changes coming out of the meeting, Lukas responded, “Not that we’ve finalized, no.”

News accounts report that the staff has gone on “strike” in support of Clark, and BCT classes were canceled this past weekend. Asked about the strike, Schine responded, “I did not strike – I felt it was most advantageous for our process as an organization to stay on staff and work aggressively to move conversations forward between our Board President, Burgess and the Staff. As of this moment, I’m hopeful that we will be able to move past this challenge towards a very invigorated Boston Children’s Theatre. We’ve had very, very challenging conversations, and we have learned a lot as an organization about how we need to re-align our organizational spine.”

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Scene from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest at Boston Children’s Theatre (BCT publicity photo)

There are numerous issues bound up in the situation at Boston Children’s Theatre – censorship, public nudity, content for children’s theatre, not-for-profit leadership and governance among them – and they bear consideration, separately and together.

Taking censorship first, it is clear from all accounts that the board of trustees Boston Children’s Theatre did not attempt to censor Burgess Clark’s production of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. While two board members independently did express concern – what they sought, how strongly, how often and at what volume is in dispute – they were not acting on behalf of the board. The board never met to discuss the issue while the show was running, and the board president was supportive of the company’s staff leadership in making the decision that they thought best under the circumstances.

In a letter to the BCT board, dated May 8, the National Coalition Against Censorship’s Director of Programs, Svetlana Mintcheva wrote, in part:

“Adults, possibly shamed about their own thoughts and fantasies, may occasionally be embarrassed, but if anyone can look at a nude and not see an issue, it is a child. Nevertheless, there are frequent calls to censor artwork containing nudity so as to “protect children” from what some claim is “indecent,” or simply to avoid controversy.

However, the U.S. Supreme Court has stated multiple times that simple nudity (i.e., representations of the nude body in a non-sexualized manner) is constitutionally protected expression. Schad v. Mount Ephraim (1981), Jenkins v. Georgia (1974), Osborne v. Ohio (1990).”

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest was originally seen as a three-act play on Broadway in 1963 for a short run and subsequently revised into a two act for an Off-Broadway revival in 1971. The Off-Broadway script is the one that is available for production through Samuel French. It carries a message from playwright Dale Wasserman saying:

“There is profanity and strong language in the play. Particularly as concerns educational institutions and community theatre, you may feel free to modify or delete language which may give offense in your community without, however, altering the basic text.”

What it does not have is any stage direction indicating nudity. Indeed, in the scene in question, the script notes that the character of McMurphy, when told to remove a towel around his waist, reveals silk boxers covered in white whales, saying:

“Ain’t they some shit? They was a present from a co-ed at Oregon State. She said I was some kind of symbol.”

Commenting on the addition of nudity in his production, Clark wrote, “When it was written, I doubt that would have even been an option.” At a separate point in the correspondence, he wrote, responding to a question about the dialogue about the boxers, “The dialogue was the same with and without the boxer shorts. The particular line ‘Ain’t they some shit?’ (which now referenced his manhood on display) got quite a laugh as I recall.”

In a phone call with Samuel French, the company’s executive director Bruce Lazarus said that BCT had not sought any permission to alter any of the show’s text. Stage directions and costuming, however, are not the same as text in some cases, and not always followed in staging shows unless the action is essential to the plot or the author’s clear intent.

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The issue of nudity on stage is a complicated one when working with professional actors, let alone young ones. Professional practice generally requires that any role requiring nudity be stated as such in a casting notice, and that the actor agree to it in writing at the time of contracting. In university theatres, many schools have guidelines that require nudity to be discussed prior to the start of production with a department chair, and state that no student should be required to perform nude or appear in a production with nudity if they do not wish to do so, among other protections (including prohibitions on photography and video recording of any nude scenes). The advance notices and stipulations are designed to insure that, in the power dynamic between a director (who also may be an employer or teacher) and their cast, no one is expected or pressured to participate in a process that makes them uncomfortable, or seen to be opposing the wishes of the majority opinion on such matters. Such guidelines have been increasingly implemented over the past few decades as protection for all concerned.

While the actor who appeared nude reportedly suggested the idea himself, and the other actors who appeared on stage in the scene who were under 18 received parental approval to participate, the process for nudity in a children’s theatre production could have been more thorough, consistent with professional or educational practice. Burgess professed to being surprised that the nudity had become “such an electric issue.” Separately, he wrote, “The nude scene is organic to the story, and I was proud to again be the first children’s’ theatre in the country to be staging full male nudity by a 21-year old actor.”

This also begs the question of whether it was appropriate to make the audience aware of the nudity, especially in the context of production by a youth theatre program that’s part of a children’s theatre company. “We gave ample warning of the nudity, language and adult themes,” Clark wrote. Schine wrote, “The audience was warned on signs upon entering the theatre, the website, during a curtain speech and in the playbill. During the tech process, we invited parents, theatre staff (those not working on the show already) and solicited opinions.”

However, while notice may have been given at the theatre, BCT’s website speaks only of  “strong language and adult themes,” and notes that, “No one under 14 will be admitted without a guardian’s permission.” Unless there was a pop-up box in the ordering process, now disabled, there is not specificity about nudity in the online advisories. With the nudity only added to the show following the first two performances, the question of whether ticket buyers should have been or were advised about the nudity in advance of arriving at the performance, and how and when, remains unclear.

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Regardless of one’s moral, ethical or even legal perspective on the issues surrounding Cuckoo’s Nest at BCT, the problems that emerged would seem to stem in particular from a failure of communications within the totality of the organization. While board members certainly have the right to share their thoughts with the company’s leadership, if individual board members did in fact demand that the show be altered, they were placing the executive director in an untenable situation, since artistic and managerial leaders typically report jointly to the board, not to individual board members or factions within the board. If that was their demand, as characterized by Clark, then they should have asked for an emergency board meeting to address such an action, since artistic leaders are indeed empowered to make creative decisions for the organization, but are ultimately accountable to a board. If they were asking only for conversation, as characterized by Lukas, then Schine’s account of the conversations may have precipitated the kind of brinksmanship that arose, as Clark was relying upon what he was told by Schine, having never spoken directly to the complainants. The circumstances remain unclear.

While at professional organizations, or for that matter any not-for -profit, the danger of a board trying to micromanage, let alone dictate appropriate artistic content, is always a concern. Strong artsboards have grappled with the issues of governance and put in place procedures for communication and oversight of staff. However, when an artistic director has no direct communications with any of the board in a time of crisis, that is only bound to exacerbate issues. Additionally, when an organization is anticipating potentially controversial issues, not apprising the board in advance, or as soon as possible when such circumstances arise, is foolhardy, since the board’s support and guidance can help to protect against any blowback.

It’s impossible to say how this will all resolve, since the situation seems fluid. There appears to be a great deal more communication needed, ideally with all pertinent parties in the same room at the same time. As for the efforts of BCT to serve older youths beyond the nomenclature of “children’s theatre”? That seems a worthy goal, provided the company follows best practices, hewing to, as the vision statement on their website includes, “maintaining and understanding artistic discipline,” with “professionalism and professional standards play[ing] a key role.” That process calls for – and in light of the specific controversy you should pardon the expression – getting everything out into the open. Everyone in leadership, staff and board, at BCT, needs to be on the same page, on the same team, and acting in the very best interests of the young people they are there to train and serve.

Addendum: As this post was to be published, Don Aucoin at The Boston Globe published a commentary piece which also sought opinions from other youth theatre companies in the Boston area. You can read it here. It concludes with a paragraph that seems counterproductive to a positive theatergoing experience. It reads:

“Reassuring words, but it’s still probably wise for parents to be ready to clap their hands over the eyes or ears of their little ones when they take them to any theater, anywhere. Just in case.”

That seems an awful state of mind for parents to be in when taking their children to the theatre. If they have any concerns, they should call the theatre company and inquire as to specifics of content. Sitting poised for alarm seems no way for anyone to attend the theatre, and to do so seems a certain way of spoiling the show for both parents and children.

Update, May 11, 7 am: The Boston Globe reports that Burgess Clark and the Boston Children’s Theatre staff have returned to work at the company. A total of three board members, specifically board president Hank Miller as well as the two trustees who registered complaints about the nudity in Cuckoo’s Nest, have resigned. The company’s annual benefit, which generates roughly 10% of its income, has been postponed from next week until the autumn. A series of steps are being put into place to address longstanding financial instabilities which have come to light, as well as the company’s failure to compete mandatory tax filings since 2014.

Update, May 12, 8 am: Contrary to their account from one day earlier, The Boston Globe now reports that there is again a rift a Boston Children’s Theatre. Next steps seem to be uncertain following the seeming detente of the prior 24 hours.

This post will be updated as circumstances warrant.

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Note: in the interest of full disclosure, I acknowledge that I attended high school and was friends with BCT board member Lori Correale. While I was aware of her son’s participation in the company, I did not know she was a board member until I began researching this article, at which point I determined that I couldn’t interview her, in order to avoid any real or perceived conflict of interest. I did ask her for help with contact information for board members who might be willing to speak with me.