» arts education Howard Sherman

As a result of their quixotic effort to secure the first high school performance rights to Hamilton, Wexford Collegiate School of the Arts’s Hamilton videos drew a great deal attention earlier this month, perhaps as much for being pulled from YouTube than from their short life online. A CBC video about Wexford’s efforts to gain the attention of the Hamilton team remains online, even though it contains material that was otherwise withdrawn from circulation due to claims of copyright infringement. That video has been seen much more widely than the original Wexford videos were, racking up many hundreds of thousands of views after being posted to Facebook by the CBC.

In the wake of the debate over the videos, Ann Merriam of Wexford Collegiate, who directed the Hamilton performances, responded to questions posed by Arts Integrity about the origin of the school’s Hamilton videos, and any public performances of the material. The questions were posed prior to the videos being removed from YouTube, with no anticipation that such action would necessarily take place.

Wexford students perform Hamilton on CityTV

Merriam said that the material from Hamilton was performed four times publicly, once at a show choir festival at the Etobicoke School for the Arts, once at a Benefit for Arts Education, and twice as part of the Wexford Variety Show. In addition to “Right Hand Man,” “Yorktown” and “Burn,” which appeared as videos, the songs “Alexander Hamilton,” “Guns and Ships,” and “You’ll Be Back” (identified by Merriam as “The King”) were also performed. In addition to the performance venues mentioned by Merriam, the students also performed on a program called “Breakfast Toronto” on the CityTV channel.

No specific budget for the performances was broken out by Merriam, who wrote, “Firstly, we are a public high school and don’t track costs by production. This project was all volunteers. I didn’t have any budget since it initially was not part of our programmed year.” However, Merriam did indicate that there were costume rentals both for the performances and for the video shoot (which was separate from the public performances), of “approximately $750-800” each time. In addition, Merriam wrote, “We paid $1,000 to a hip-hop artist to create original tracks.”

She explained that the cost of the rentals for the video shoot was covered by a group of parents from “People for Education,” since it fell outside of the school’s Variety Show activities. As for the director of the videos and the multiple choreographers, Merriam said they were all either volunteers or individuals who work regularly with the school on various assignments for small annual stipends. Approximately $1,200 was spent on equipment rentals for the video shoot.

Admission was charged to the Wexford Variety Show, where the six numbers were performed. Past shows have had a $20 (Canadian) ticket price. The 2016 price has not been confirmed. There were also tickets sold for the show choir event.

Given the furor that arose, there was commentary from many quarters. On the legal front, a post from Adam Jacobs, an attorney with Hayes eLaw in Toronto, was most helpful and informative, especially in regards to where US and Canadian copyright laws may differ. However, Jacobs was very clear about where Wexford had gone awry:

SOCAN’s tariffs do not, however, deal with the performance of a musical work in combination with acting, costumes and sets; these “grand rights,” which include many of the other protectable elements from Hamilton, would have to be licenced from the various creators of Hamilton. This leaves Wexford Collegiate in a scenario where, should they offer to pay the relevant SOCAN tariff to perform the musical compositions, they are able to publicly sing musical compositions from Hamilton, just without the accompanying characters, costumes, dialogue, staging or choreography….

Any reproduction of the Hamilton musical compositions, including any reproduction of the public performance of those musical compositions in order to post the video to YouTube, would require a private licencing agreement with the composer and music publisher….

Note, however, that even if one or more Canadian copyright exceptions were to apply, YouTube will apply American copyright law to determine whether there has been any infringement. It is likely that the US law would provide even less scope for the posting of such videos than Canadian law.

While Wexford Collegiate may have been ill-advised to perform musical compositions from Hamilton and post videos of the performances on YouTube, there were avenues available to the school to engage their students’ creativity while complying with Canadian copyright law.

The Dramatists Guild of America issued a statement on copyright in the wake of the Hamilton videos, without making specific comments about the Wexford situation. It read, in part:

When their work shows up in unauthorized productions, or on YouTube videos, it’s not just a matter of lost revenues. It is an infringement on the very nature of the dramatists’ authorship and a violation of their right to control their artistic expression. Even the non-commercial public use of their work by well-meaning fans, either on the internet or in amateur productions in their communities, can damage a show’s value in various markets, and it is a copyright violation under most circumstances. Most importantly, it undermines an author’s prerogative to decide when, where and how their work will be presented.

Finally, it is important to note that for every online commenter who castigated the Hamilton team for, apparently, asserting their copyright (“apparently” since the show has made no public statement on the situation to date), it seemed there was another commenter who took the students of Wexford to task, often quite unpleasantly, for their appropriation of copyrighted material. But what is clear from Merriam’s detailing of the context of the performances is that this was not a case of students going rogue, either in performing the material or sharing in hopes for more opportunity to perform Hamilton, but rather students participating in activities organized by and sanctioned by their school.

It is no surprise that the students were disappointed and confused when the videos were removed, because they were operating within the parameters they’d been given. Invective serves no purpose in clarifying this situation and bringing forward the proper practice for all to understand and learn from. Clearly that learning must come first for the faculty and administration of Wexford Collegiate, who from this point forward, will presumably operate within the guidelines of Canadian copyright law (and US law, where applicable) in all of the work presented by and at the school. Through them, successive classes of Wexford students must be taught what is and is not permissible, so that ultimately the students can preserve their own rights to earn a living from original work they create now and in the future.

CBC video about Wexford “Hamilton”

One final thought: as the school campaigned for attention, media outlets were, as is their nature, attracted to this story because it involved a hot show and talented kids. Save for the CBC, which acknowledged in its original report that these performances were unauthorized (but still embedded the YouTube videos and created their own from them), there seemed to be little thought by video, print or online outlets as to whether they were distributing material that violated copyright. Since they would presumably fight the appropriation of their own material, it’s a shame that reporters, editors and news directors didn’t look at this situation more critically, before playing a role in disseminating material that was not properly licensed for performance or recording.

Wexford Collegiate “Hamilton” video via CBC

On the one hand, it’s hard not to admire the efforts of Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts in Scarborough, Canada, near Toronto. A teacher and her students made as thorough a pitch as possible to be the first high school to produce the musical Hamilton, seemingly having staged several elaborate numbers from the show in their effort to be recognized. While YouTube videos showed a only simple set, the lights, costumes and sound demonstrated how much time and effort was spent trying to get the attention of the creators of Hamilton, with full out performances of multiple numbers from the show.

There’s no doubt that pretty much every high school as well as college theatre troupe in the US and Canada (and perhaps even ones outside of North America) shares Wexford’s desire to produce Hamilton. There are numerous professional venues that are still trying to book the show, be it as a tour or sit-down production, and no doubt plenty of Equity and non-Equity companies would relish the opportunity to perform the musical.

Wexford Collegiate “Hamilton” video via CBC

Of course, Hamilton has connected with young people in a way probably unrivaled since Rent, making the pleas from young people particularly potent. We are living in the time of Hamilmania, as a single musical has captured the interest and imagination of theatregoers and non-theatregoers alike. Everyone wants a piece of Hamilton, or Hamilton itself.

On a practical level, it was always highly unlikely that Wexford’s efforts would succeed. At this point, Hamilton isn’t even confirmed for a professional Canadian debut, let alone a high school one. Performance rights have not been made available beyond official companies derived from the Broadway production. If permission were to be granted uniquely to Wexford, the outcry from high schools everywhere would be deafening.

Of greater concern is that the Wexford videos didn’t appear to be simply demos to make their case. An article from the CBC says, “They’ve [Wexford] already performed an unauthorized presentation of material from the show, parts of which were captured on video.” So there’s more than what YouTubers were seeing? How much of Hamilton was staged at Wexford?

The CBC spoke with the teacher behind the project, Ann Merriam:

“After seeing it the first time, I said to myself, ‘I’m going to see it again, I’m going to tell everyone I know to see it, and I’m going to introduce it to my kids and school and have them perform it,'” she told CBC News in an interview.

Merriam said her school’s performances of the show were “an unbelievably meaningful” experience for the kids.

This suggests something much fuller was presented at Wexford Collegiate, very possibly violating the copyrights of the very artists whose permission is being sought. It’s one thing to work on numbers from Hamilton in a class, but another if what took place rises to the level of performances, even if only in front of the school’s student body. Whether or not the “performances” were advertised or charged for, Wexford may well have crossed a line, and indeed may be teaching some very bad lessons about respecting copyright, even as they were asking permission to produce the show legitimately.

YouTube takedown notice

As of the evening of June 16, the same day the Wexford videos were first featured by the CBC, they were gone from YouTube, due to a copyright infringement claim. So if the goal was to get their appeal noticed, Merriam and her students succeeded, but not in the way they wanted. Perhaps the videos were scooped up preemptively by automated copyright protection services, but the jury’s out.

If much time and money were spent to produce this elaborate pitch, one can’t help but be concerned about the wisdom of the effort at all, both in the allocation of resources and the precedent of performing too much of the material to which the school was apparently fully aware it didn’t have the rights. If either Merriam or the CBC overstated what was actually performed, that’s unfortunate, but since the videos were not parodies or amateurish tributes by a handful of fans, they possibly went too far as recorded material. Arts Integrity both called and e-mailed Merriam before 11 am on the 16th, while the videos were still available, for more clarity on the project, but neither inquiry received a response.

Lin-Manuel Miranda has already said how much he looks forward to seeing Hamilton done by high school students, and you can’t blame Wexford for trying to be the first. However, in the process, the school became an object lesson for other high schools (or any theatre group) thinking of similar gambits, with Hamilton or any show not yet available for licensing. Artists control and are compensated from the works they create through copyright, and violating it is not the way to plead your case.

NAfME_Logo_shield-360x240 The statements, on their face, are utterly startling. “Blacks and Latinos lack the keyboard skills needed for this field.” “I don’t have to take this. Yes, my board is all white, and they are one of the most diverse boards of any organization – more than any arts organization at this table.” It was implied that musical theory is too difficult for black and Latinos as an area of study.

These remarks were attributed to Michael Butera, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of the National Association for Music Education, as being made by him at a National Endowment for the Arts meeting for service organizations, at which equity, diversity and inclusion were the primary topic. Butera’s comments were reported by Keryl McCord, operations director of Alternate ROOTS, in a widely disseminated blog post dated May 4, entitled Why We Must Have Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity and in the Arts: A Response to the National Association for Music Education. It read, in part:

What most roiled my spirit was his belief that blacks and Latinos lack the keyboard skills and ability to grasp music theory needed for this field. If Mr. Butera had not left the room after making his remarks, this written response would not be necessary. But he did leave the room, depriving me and everyone else at the table a chance to respond, to try to engage in a dialog. What was said was said publicly, and was so deeply disturbing and has remained with me since our meeting, that I could not, not respond.

The late Dr. Maya Angelou tells us that when someone tells you who they are, you should believe them. I believe Mr. Butera said what he meant, and meant what he said. So I am not raising this issue publicly because I think he should apologize. No apology needed, not to me at least. The challenge is not that he said out loud what he believes to be true. But it is the substance of what he believes that is the central issue and that can’t be resolved with an apology. No. The more critical challenge is that Mr. Butera leads an organization dedicated to music education in our schools, to being “resources for teachers, parents, administrators” and providing “opportunities for students and teachers nationwide.”

An image circulating on Facebook, attributed to Deejay Robinson

In a phone interview with the Arts Integrity Initiative on May 8, Michael Butera flatly denied both of the statements about blacks and Latinos attributed to him. As to the issue of board diversity, Butera confirmed that the board of NAfME doesn’t current have any board members of color. He pointed out, in reference to his recollection of the meeting, “I did indicate that the board is elected from the membership and that we have in the past had members of minority and ethnic groups. But the statement is, in my personal judgment, a total misrepresentation of the dialogue.”

The situation was reported, based on McCord’s post and social media response to it, on the Education Week site on May 9. The social media response was extremely negative towards Butera and the statements attributed to him, questioning whether he should or could continue in his role with NAfME.

The conversation in question took place on April 26 at the NEA was during what was essentially a breakout session during the main meeting, in which the attendees were divided into eight groups of eight for smaller conversations regarding EDI within their organizations. McCord and Butera were at the same table, as was a member of the NEA staff. Only those eight people were fully party to what transpired.

As of midday today, May 10, another one of the eight people at McCord and Butera’s table has issued a statement about what happened and what was said. Jesse Rosen, President and CEO of the League of American Symphony Orchestras, wrote, in part:

I can attest to the accuracy of Keryl McCord’s account of what was said and what took place. Mr. Butera indeed said that he could not take action to diversify his board, and that African Americans and Latinos lacked keyboard skills needed to advance in the music education profession — two statements which many of us around the table challenged. The group was unable to further pursue the meaning of his comments as Mr. Butera abruptly and angrily walked out of the room, well in advance of the meeting’s scheduled end time.

One other person at the table, communicating to Arts Integrity through a third party, said that they did not wish to be publicly involved with the developing issue. The NEA staff member at the table, Jessamyn Sarmiento, Director of Public Affairs, told Arts Integrity that she would not share her recollection of the events, saying, in reference to the people at the table, “It is up to them. It is their conversation to be had.”

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From the website of the National Association for Music Education:

National Association for Music Education (NAfME), among the world’s largest arts education organizations, is the only association that addresses all aspects of music education. NAfME advocates at the local, state, and national levels; provides resources for teachers, parents, and administrators; hosts professional development events; and offers a variety of opportunities for students and teachers. The Association orchestrates success for millions of students nationwide and has supported music educators at all teaching levels for more than a century.

From the website of Alternate ROOTS:

Alternate ROOTS is an organization based in the Southern USA whose mission is to support the creation and presentation of original art, in all its forms, which is rooted in a particular community of place, tradition or spirit. As a coalition of cultural workers we strive to be allies in the elimination of all forms of oppression. ROOTS is committed to social and economic justice and the protection of the natural world and addresses these concerns through its programs and services.

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Keryl McCord

Speaking on May 6, Keryl McCord said that in the wake of her post, there has been no response to her or Alternate ROOTS regarding her assertions from Butera or NAfME. She said, “I haven’t seen an e-mail, I haven’t received a phone call, I haven’t seen anything on our Facebook page.”

Asked whether there was any additional conversation with Butera that took place at the NEA session which she had not reported, McCord said, “I remember him saying something about quotas when he was talking about his board being all white and I kind of raised my eyebrows. ‘Well what do quotas have to do with it? We’re not talking about quotas.’ But that’s the only other thing and I really don’t remember where that came, early in the conversation.”

Reiterating points made in her piece, McCord concluded by saying that among the things that really stood out for her was, “That the executive director and CEO of the National Association for Music Education literally got up and said, ‘I don’t have to take this,’ and literally stormed out of the meeting. I’m still floored. We were at the National Endowment for the Arts because the discussion was about inclusion, diversity and equity in the arts. Before he left I tried to say to him, ‘Michael, this is the work. It’s hard, but this is the work, don’t leave.’ I don’t know if he’ll remember that, but that’s what I said to him. As I said in my piece, it was as if he dropped this bomb on the table and then he left.”

McCord does acknowledge that Butera had said something about a prior appointment that required him to leave early, and Butera is emphatic on that, saying “I had another commitment and had to leave at maybe 3:30, which I had advised the organizers of the meeting that I had no time. I had to leave at 3:30 no matter what and I did. Clearly that caused some consternation.”

Asked whether she had any counsel for Butera or for NAfME in the wake of his statements, McCord said, “I’m not going to take a position that his board should let him go. I think it’s a come to Jesus moment for the board to figure out, ‘Does he represent them well at this point?’ They’re governance. It’s their job to do. If you were to say, ‘Keryl, what outcome would you like to see happen,’ I think that they need to do some serious, serious training around issues of equity, diversity and inclusion.”

Further, McCord said, “I think that bringing in an organization like The People’s Institute who did great training with Grantmakers in the Arts, to really make a commitment to not trying to do this on their own, not trying to sit around the table and figure it out, but to really understand, to get a deeper understanding of the issues and how to address them and get some language, and some framework and context and understanding of what the issues are. If they would do that, that would be huge. My sense is that they are operating in kind of a vacuum, maybe, and I don’t really know this organization. I responded as someone sitting at the table who was appalled at the behavior of this person. I think it’s a learning opportunity, a huge learning opportunity for the board and for Mr. Butera.”

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Michael Butera (photo by Becky Spray)

Having directly denied the statements made by McCord, but prior to Rosen’s corroboration of her account, Michael Butera spoke about the conversation regarding board make-up as he recalled it.

Were there discussions about minorities, keyboard skills, theory and so forth in the broadest sense, not about minorities keyboard skills as a link? The answer to that is yes. Now let me follow up. What the conversation was about was whether or not minorities, particularly in the school systems of this nation, have sequential programs of music instruction that will enable them to have the same opportunity and the same chances that children who are not in those zip codes have. And the answer to that question is no, not currently.

Currently far too many of our urban centers do not have deep sequential programs of music instruction and where would it be more important to do that than in our urban centers. These are complicated and profoundly difficult conversations to have and we have to have them in an open, honest and direct manner. So when we talk about the skills that one needs to be admitted to a college or university in order to study to be a music educator, keyboard skills are important, as are theory skills. If you are in an educational system where it does not provide that opportunity then you are less likely to have the opportunity to be admitted.

It is not because of you or your ethnicity that that’s the case, but that it’s the direct problem that we face in multiple areas in American society. We have underfunded, under cared for, under thought through the ways in which multiple elements make it more difficult for minority people to have the same opportunities that majority people do. And they’re really difficult conversations. So there’s a big difference in terms of talking about the opportunities that people have and making a statement that is attributed to me that minorities do not have the skills. That’s simply not true.

So how does that comport with what two people say Butera said at the NEA convening? “Clearly, I have to admit,” said Butera, “I didn’t do a good job or I wouldn’t be seeing the blog. Obviously that’s true, you can’t be blind to what other people interpret. But it’s an interpretation and it’s not the fact. I am deeply and profoundly personally and organizationally committed to social justice in every way you can imagine.”

The NAfME’s five year strategic plan, slated to begin in 2017, shows efforts at equity, diversity and inclusion as one of its five core values (the subject was not part of the prior five year plan). In response to a question about any EDI initiatives or training to date, for staff, board or membership, Butera said:

This plan that you’re looking at, this plan was only adopted in the last few months I believe. So you can see that in the newer plan to make a significant effort to make a statement of our belief that this is an area we have to work on. So now we are in the process of developing initiatives that will move us in that direction. You know these things don’t happen – the plan passes and the next day you have 25 different plans. I’m not trying to be light about your question. So the answer is yes we’re trying to build a series of initiatives that would be appropriate to each of the planks in our strategic plan, and of course this is one of them.

Asked to clarify his statement on the diversity of the board, Butera once again disagreed with McCord’s portrayal, saying, “What I really said was not about my board at all, but a different part of the conversation saying the issue of diversity is not a matter of counting numbers and color and ethnicity on the board. The issue of diversity is whether or not there’s a firm, solid, meaningful commitment to the principles of diversity and inclusion and in that context I believe our board is firmly committed or they would not have changed the strategic plan to move in that direction.”

Butera went on to say that while the board doesn’t have any members of color, he said that people of color were on subcomittees, task forces and research entities of the organization, and noted there would be a new board member of color come June. He remarked, “Yes, we would surely have a better conversation when minorities are sitting there, but you know it’s not true that there aren’t any minorities in the organization.”

Butera said he could not provide any statistics on the diversity of his board or committees, or the racial or ethnic make-up of NAfME’s members, saying the organization doesn’t collect that data. He also said that he had no influence whatsoever over the election of board members, not even the ability to make suggestions, and that only a by-laws amendment would permit his participation.

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The board president of NAfME, Glenn Nierman, who is the Chair of Music (Music Education) at the University of Nebraska, responded to inquiries from Arts Integrity twice, briefly both times. In his first e-mailed response on May 6, he simply acknowledged that the board was aware of the situation and would be looking into it at an executive committee meeting on May 7. Following the meeting, he followed up on May 8, again by e-mail, writing, “The NAfME National Executive Board has been advised by legal counsel to proceed prudently and cautiously in gathering information about this matter. That is what we are doing. We have been advised not to comment about the situation at this time.”

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At one point in conversation with Arts Integrity, Butera commented,” The facilitator said we should consider this – and you’ve facilitated meetings yourself – see this as a safe environment. A safe environment to me means that we should all let our hair down and tell each other as best we can and as respectfully as we can that we think about, feel about, can do about these kind of issues.

On the subject of safe spaces, Sarmiento of the NEA noted, “We are a government agency. Every meeting, unless we were having a closed session with the National Council on the Arts, any time a government agency convenes a meeting, it’s always open. When we have our meetings, they are always open to the public.” That suggests that everything is ‘on the record.’

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The irony in this situation is that all parties seem to agree on the necessity of music education and the lack of proper arts education in our schools. (A separate open letter about the state of music education, prompted by this situation at the NEA service organization meeting, has been jointly issued by Grantmakers in the Arts and The New School College for Performing Arts.) McCord, Rosen and Butera all speak to the need for equity, diversity and inclusion work as part of that effort. However, while Butera denies the specific statements attributed to him, two other professionals in the field directly contradict him, suggesting that his statements and behavior at the NEA convening are inconsistent with that mission.

Specifically in Butera’s case, the implications for his role as the head of NAfME are serious. Can he continue to lead the organization if indeed he harbors the beliefs that McCord and Rosen say he voiced? Can he effectively function to initiate and pursue EDI work if he fundamentally believes – although he said in an interview that he does not – that blacks and Latinos lack skills that are central to music study, a statement that is absurd to anyone with a knowledge of music nationally or internationally? If his communication around these issues results in accounts like those of McCord and Rosen, can Butera be an effective advocate for music education for all, regardless of race? Will investigation by the board of NAfME include conversations with the people who are currently unwilling to go on the record about what took place, or the three who are as of yet unidentified to Arts Integrity?

The board and perhaps membership of NAfME will make the final decision as to whether Butera is the person to lead them forward on their new strategic plan and the implementation of EDI work for the organization overall. In the wake of McCord’s post and Rosen’s affirmation, they have a lot to consider. But even if one accepts Butera’s assertion about that implementation requiring time and consideration before disseminating to their extensive membership, it seems there are two essential steps to be taken.

First, the staff of NAfME must go through its own EDI training immediately and must be held to account for it by the existing board, because even if Butera merely communicated poorly instead of actually making statements which can be construed as racist, he and the people working for him need to learn how to meaningfully discuss the issues of equity and diversity throughout the field of music education. Based on what has transpired, regardless of which account one accepts, there is essential, immediate work to be done.

Secondly, the board of NAfME and its executive staff cannot simply say that it would be helpful to have people of color in the room as decisions about diversity and inclusion are made. People of color must be present, they must be central to the planning, and one board member of color simply isn’t enough in this day and age.

Equity, diversity and inclusion aren’t, to use a loaded phrase from the days when these topics weren’t even discussed, the white man’s burden. They are the job of everyone and everyone has the capacity to do the work. But participants have to work towards believing in EDI as essential for music, for the arts, for society, if they do not already, and they have to give voice to it, truthfully and meaningfully, at every opportunity if that is truly part of their values.

Update, May 10, 2016, 8 pm: As of this evening, the following statement appears on the NAfME website, as “A Message From The National Executive Board”:

Last week, we were made aware of a situation involving remarks made by NAfME’s CEO, Michael Butera. We take this issue very seriously and, understandably, have heard from many in our community in recent days. Diversity, inclusion and equity in music and the arts are at the core of what we do at NAfME and we are committed to taking the appropriate actions to ensure that remains true. To that end, Mr. Butera has been placed on administrative leave while we conduct an objective investigation, which is nearing conclusion, into the matter. We have reached out to participants in last week’s discussion, including Keryl McCord of Alternate ROOTS, to fully understand what happened and assess the situation. We appreciate the dialogue that has taken place over the course of the last week and look forward to continuing this important conversation.

Update, May 11, 4:00 pm: Michael Butera is no longer the leader of NAfME. A statement on the organization’s website reads as follows:

After a thorough review process, the National Executive Board of the National Association for Music Education (NAfME) and Michael Butera have agreed that he will not be returning to the association. We wish him well and thank him for his service to our purpose and mission.

Additionally, we are announcing that Michael Blakeslee will serve as the new Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer for NAfME, effective immediately. Mr. Blakeslee’s vast experience and knowledge of our organization, fostered over nearly 30 years of dedicated service to NAfME and the music education profession, best position us to move forward and advocate for and provide opportunities to students and teachers.

These last few days highlight the need for real, substantive conversation about what must be done to provide access and opportunity to all students no matter where they live. This is an ongoing journey and we are ready to play an increasingly important role in convening and facilitating a dialogue and prompting action around how all of us can increase diversity, inclusion, and equity in music and the arts.

This post will be updated as warranted.

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Note: There is a growing conversation around the term ‘people of color,’ with some entities advocating for the use of ‘African, Arab and Native American (ALAANA),’ in addition to white, Asian and Latin@. Because the remarks in question herein speak of ‘black’ and ‘Latino,’ and attributed quotes include the term ‘minority,’ Arts Integrity has elected to utilize the broad term ‘people of color’ for the purpose of this essay and will be taking the new language under advisement for the future.

Howard Sherman is director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School College for Performing Arts and interim director of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts. This post originally appeared, under a different title, on the Arts Integrity website.

Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane in The Producers (Photo by Joan Marcus)

Let’s get the story straight. When Tappan Zee High School’s production of Mel Brooks’s The Producers was performed this weekend, there were swastikas on stage. This shouldn’t be any surprise to those who know the musical, the story of two producers who set out to make a mint by foisting a musical called Springtime for Hitler on Broadway audiences. With a song-and-dance Hitler – embodied at times by two different actors – and a chorus line of male and female stormtroopers in the show’s big number, Brooks’s play-within-a-play travesty of Nazi Germany during the Third Reich pretty much makes the swastika de rigeur, though not absolutely essential.

Garrett Shin, left, Greg DeCola and Jarrett Winters Morley in “The Producers” at Tappan Zee High (photo by Peter Kramer)

If you followed the headlines of Peter Kramer’s original story for LoHud.com or the followup from CBS2 News, you’d be sure that the swastika had been eradicated at Tappan Zee, in response to complaints from, reportedly, four parents after seeing rehearsal photos online. “Tappan Zee parents: Pull swastikas from ‘Producers’,” was the banner across Kramer’s story. “High School Removes Swastikas From Production Of ‘The Producers’ Following Controversy,” declared CBS. In fact, two banners featuring swastikas were removed from the production. Kramer has now reported that the symbols remained on display on costume armbands when called for.

So what’s really at issue here, since it’s not meant to be a sweeping defense of the swastika, a widely-known symbol of the Third Reich, or a celebration of its tenacity in high school theatre? The issue is, once again, the seeming willingness of a school administration to alter a theatrical production at the smallest hint of controversy, rendered in sharpest relief because it ended up pertaining only to oversized uses of an “offensive” symbol, which means the decision was not merely arbitrary, but inconsistent. It certainly contradicts the sweeping statement by School Superintendent Bob Pritchard, who told WCBS reporter Tony Aiello, “There is no context in a public high school where a swastika is appropriate.”

Um, history books? Productions of Cabaret or The Sound of Music? Saving Private Ryan?

Per WCBS: “The optic, the visual, to me was very disturbing. I considered it to be an obscenity like any obscenity,” Pritchard said.”

The swastika itself is not necessarily an obscenity. It is the symbol of obscenities, the Third Reich and the war and the Holocaust. Scrawled on a house of worship, or a cemetery? Yes, I would agree that that is an act of desecration, an obscenity. But in the hands of Mel Brooks, it is also a target to be seen and disdained, to be ridiculed, to be laid low.

Jose Ferrer and Mel Brooks in “To Be Or Not To Be” (1983)

Like a great deal in our lives, and in our arts, that want to do something more than simply blindly entertain or pacify, context is essential. At Tappan Zee High, rehearsal photos showing swastika banners were shorn of context, and for people who may not know The Producers, some dismay is understandable. But the job for the school then (and really, before such a thing even happened) was to put the production in context – for the students in the show, the other students at the school, for parents and for the community. As brassy and broad as the musical The Producers may be (the original movie was more obviously subversive and dark), it remains consistent with Brooks’s oft-stated desire to use the power at his command – humor – to take down the greatest horror of his life time. Let’s not forget that’s coming from a Jewish American who fought in World War II.

Charlie Chapin in “The Great Dictator”

There’s so much that could have been taught at Tappan Zee High over this incident, about World War II and the Holocaust, about the post-war rise of Jewish comedians (in the Borscht Belt not so very far from the school itself), of the role of satire in political and social commentary. That we eliminate and simply ignore the things we do not care for is at least contrary to what students should be learning from this experience, if not downright ironic.

Donald Duck in “Der Fuehrer’s Face”

There is a litany of humorous and satirical responses to Hitler and World War II; The Producers is simply part of a tradition that stretches back to Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be Or Not To Be (which Brooks later remade) and the Donald Duck carton Der Fuehrer’s Face. Even Germany, where the swastika remains outlawed for political use, permits it for historical works (though the German debut of The Producers substituted pretzels for the symbol), such as in the film Downfall. Hitler was even the star of a popular German satirical film, Look Who’s Back.

Swastikas make sense in The Producers, but the show can survive without them. I hope the students at Tappan Zee High had a great success this past weekend. What does not make sense is when a few people voice complaints and the immediate reaction is to heed their call without allowing opposing views a fully equal opportunity to make their case, when the public relations optics trump an educational opportunity, and when things are torn down in response a a vocal minority. What does not survive is productive and indeed educational dialogue around a terrible time in world history, how it led to the very show they were performing, and why exactly “Springtime for Hitler” is a comic and cultural touchstone in its own right, precisely because of the horror behind the swastika.

Howard Sherman is director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School College of Performing Arts. This post originally appeared at artsintegrity.org.

Let’s get the story straight. When Tappan Zee High School’s production of Mel Brooks’s The Producers was performed this weekend, there were swastikas on stage. This shouldn’t be any surprise to those who know the musical, the story of two producers who set out to make a mint by foisting a musical called Springtime for Hitler on Broadway audiences. With a song-and-dance Hitler – embodied at times by two different actors – and a chorus line of male and female stormtroopers in the show’s big number, Brooks’s play-within-a-play travesty of Nazi Germany during the Third Reich pretty much makes the swastika de rigeur, though not absolutely essential.

Garrett Shin, left, Greg DeCola and Jarrett Winters Morley in “The Producers” at Tappan Zee High (photo by Peter Kramer)

If you followed the headlines of Peter Kramer’s original story for LoHud.com or the followup from CBS2 News, you’d be sure that the swastika had been eradicated at Tappan Zee, in response to complaints from, reportedly, four parents after seeing rehearsal photos online. “Tappan Zee parents: Pull swastikas from ‘Producers’,” was the banner across Kramer’s story. “High School Removes Swastikas From Production Of ‘The Producers’ Following Controversy,” declared CBS. In fact, two banners featuring swastikas were removed from the production. Kramer has now reported that the symbols remained on display on costume armbands when called for.

So what’s really at issue here, since it’s not meant to be a sweeping defense of the swastika, a widely-known symbol of the Third Reich, or a celebration of its tenacity in high school theatre? The issue is, once again, the seeming willingness of a school administration to alter a theatrical production at the smallest hint of controversy, rendered in sharpest relief because it ended up pertaining only to oversized uses of an “offensive” symbol, which means the decision was not merely arbitrary, but inconsistent. It certainly contradicts the sweeping statement by School Superintendent Bob Pritchard, who told WCBS reporter Tony Aiello, “There is no context in a public high school where a swastika is appropriate.”

Um, history books? Productions of Cabaret or The Sound of Music? Saving Private Ryan?

Per WCBS: “The optic, the visual, to me was very disturbing. I considered it to be an obscenity like any obscenity,” Pritchard said.”

The swastika itself is not necessarily an obscenity. It is the symbol of obscenities, the Third Reich and the war and the Holocaust. Scrawled on a house of worship, or a cemetery? Yes, I would agree that that is an act of desecration, an obscenity. But in the hands of Mel Brooks, it is also a target to be seen and disdained, to be ridiculed, to be laid low.

Jose Ferrer and Mel Brooks in “To Be Or Not To Be” (1983)

Like a great deal in our lives, and in our arts, that want to do something more than simply blindly entertain or pacify, context is essential. At Tappan Zee High, rehearsal photos showing swastika banners were shorn of context, and for people who may not know The Producers, some dismay is understandable. But the job for the school then (and really, before such a thing even happened) was to put the production in context – for the students in the show, the other students at the school, for parents and for the community. As brassy and broad as the musical The Producers may be (the original movie was more obviously subversive and dark), it remains consistent with Brooks’s oft-stated desire to use the power at his command – humor – to take down the greatest horror of his life time. Let’s not forget that’s coming from a Jewish American who fought in World War II.

Charlie Chapin in “The Great Dictator”

There’s so much that could have been taught at Tappan Zee High over this incident, about World War II and the Holocaust, about the post-war rise of Jewish comedians (in the Borscht Belt not so very far from the school itself), of the role of satire in political and social commentary. That we eliminate and simply ignore the things we do not care for is at least contrary to what students should be learning from this experience, if not downright ironic.

Donald Duck in “Der Fuehrer’s Face”

There is a litany of humorous and satirical responses to Hitler and World War II; The Producers is simply part of a tradition that stretches back to Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be Or Not To Be (which Brooks later remade) and the Donald Duck carton Der Fuehrer’s Face. Even Germany, where the swastika remains outlawed for political use, permits it for historical works (though the German debut of The Producers substituted pretzels for the symbol), such as in the film Downfall. Hitler was even the star of a popular German satirical film, Look Who’s Back.

Swastikas make sense in The Producers, but the show can survive without them. I hope the students at Tappan Zee High had a great success this past weekend. What does not make sense is when a few people voice complaints and the immediate reaction is to heed their call without allowing opposing views a fully equal opportunity to make their case, when the public relations optics trump an educational opportunity, and when things are torn down in response a a vocal minority. What does not survive is productive and indeed educational dialogue around a terrible time in world history, how it led to the very show they were performing, and why exactly “Springtime for Hitler” is a comic and cultural touchstone in its own right, precisely because of the horror behind the swastika.

Howard Sherman is director of the Arts Integrity Initiative.

this titles has been censoredIMG_0660

When a student-devised piece of theatre begins as The Politics of Dancing, an examination of relationships springing from Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, and is ultimately produced as This Title Has Been Censored, something is amiss. When a student production scheduled for multiple performances in a college theatre department’s mainstage season ends up as a single workshop performance with rudimentary tech given during a final exam period, something is strange. When an original work of theatre begins to address gender roles and is immediately downsized, something is troubling. When these actions were prompted because an inchoate project was judged by departmental leadership based solely on a few preliminary scenes reviewed four months before the work was to be finished, something seems wrong.

But those are all aspects of what transpired over the past several months in the theatre department of Oklahoma State University. The Politics of Dancing, which had been announced as part of the school’s 2015-16 mainstage season in the Vivia Locke Theatre, which seats some 500 patrons, was to have been presented in February; the rest of the season included A.R. Gurney’s What I Did Last Summer, and The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Instead of The Politics of Dancing, the school produced John Cariani’s Almost, Maine.

So what exactly happened to The Politics of Dancing? In October, Professor Jodi Jinks, who holds the school’s Mary Lou Lemon Endowed Professorship for Underrepresented Voices, shared a few short scenes from the work the students had begun to create with the head of the department, which both she and the students say weren’t necessarily representative of what the finished work would be like, given the evolving nature of any devised theatre.

“Professor Jinks allowed us as an ensemble to explore what we wanted. It kind of naturally flowed in that direction,” said student Jessica Smoot via e-mail. “Honestly I think it just came from the fact that you can’t properly explore romantic relationships without understanding gender, and since it is such a hot topic these days it became a much more fascinating subject to explore.”

Student Joshua Arbaugh said, also via e-mail, “The focus of the show never switched from ‘general relationships.’ Gender was only one subject that the show was going to touch on. There was never a time that we as a group decided that the show would be about gender. However, gender and gender roles play a big part in relationships so we devoted a healthy amount of time early in our devising process to explore the many facets of gender in our research and our work. We had no idea that this would displease anyone and did not believe that it was a divergence in our declared ‘focus’.”

Prof. Jinks says that she shared some very early drafts of Dancing on October 19 and two days later department chair Andrew Kimbrough met with the students involved in the production and, in Jinks’s words, “dropped the bomb, or gave the option.”

“We could change the direction we were heading in and create something for our [mainstage] audience, or the students could say what they wanted to say and move to the studio,” explained Jinks.

The audience, as described by students in their meeting with Kimbrough, was “over 50, white and Republican,” according to Jinks in an interview with the campus newspaper The O’Colly. Kimbrough told The O’Colly, “I believed the students’ assessment of the audience was accurate.” From The O’Colly:

The theater department advertised the play as a production that “examines the mating rituals of our planet’s most advanced and complicated species,” according to a department brochure.

“I was seeing an evolution of work that was, one, not on the topic that was proposed, (and) two, that tended to be one-sided in its address of transgender issues,” Kimbrough said.

Kimbrough said he visited the class and requested that if the students continued with “The Politics of Dancing,” they keep in mind the type of audience they would be performing for.

“Even though they were moving in a new direction, they were never asked to abandon the topic but simply to proceed from the vantage of mid-October with our current audience in mind,” Kimbrough said. “And I believe when you’re running a business, this is the No. 1 rule. You must create work that has your audience in mind.”

After a weekend of consideration, according to Jinks, the students decided to move the production to the smaller studio. “Ultimately,” said Jinks, “they decided to perform the play they originally wanted to write.”

But that plan hit a snag when Jinks and the students were later informed that their production in the studio would have no production support, because the technical departments, in her description, “could not do two things that close together or at the same time,” with the substituted mainstage show cited as a conflict.

“They were offered the studio and thought they could do that,” said Jinks. “That was the option they were presented, and slowly, bit by bit, it was removed.”

Regarding Kimbrough’s position on the project, Arbaugh wrote, “The idea of him bullying our work until he was ‘comfortable’ with it was too great a cost. However, none of us would have chosen to lose departmental support and our spot in the season. We were all blindsided by the decision and I would say it’s because we gave the ‘wrong answer’.”

Arbaugh continued, saying, “The Politics of Dancing was supposed to be a true test of all our talents. We, as students of the theater, were to use everything we had learned in this in this endeavor. When it was cancelled, it was like a big door was slammed in all of our faces saying, ‘who you are is inappropriate and what you have to contribute has no value.’ So self-esteems suffered and even now there is anxiety in the department.”

So why did the show become This Title Has Been Censored?

“As a class,’ wrote Smoot, “we found that using the source materials we were initially assigned (A Doll’s House and the “Politics Of Dancing” song) were becoming more of a hindrance to our creativity, so we scrapped them from the show. This, along with the struggles we had faced through the process, made the show look completely different from what it was initially intended to be – but that can be expected with devised theatre! We wanted to rename the show in a way that acknowledged the struggles in the process. The final product still discussed gender, but in a much more personal way that drew from many of our personal experiences and life moments interspersed with current events revolving around gender.”

At the show’s single performance, Jinks wrote the following in the program:

During the first few weeks of this current semester the Devised Theatre class was developing a different play than the one you will see today. It was called the The Politics of Dancing and it was to be performed in the Vivia Locke in February of 2016. The devised class would build it and perform it, with me serving as facilitator and director. Over a year ago I made preliminary choices to jump start the process with the class. We were to deconstruct Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House and build a new piece by looking at Ibsen’s work through the lens of gender identification, transgenderism and gender politics – subjects which are omnipresent in the media of late. However other lessons (struggles) interrupted that process.

Jinks believes that some of the problems that arose came from many in the theatre department being unfamiliar with company-created theatre.

“I was working with faculty who have no experience with devising, but I thought we were addressing those needs, “ she said, noting that there was “some rigidity, some pushback even before it was canceled.” Jinks said she discounted that response, calling it “irrelevant.”

“It was so early in the process, the play could have gone in any direction. We had four months. They canceled it because the idea was threatening.”

Jinks described a series of meetings with the dean, the provost, the faculty council and the Office of Equal Opportunity between November and early February.”

“I was met with a wall of silence and denial,” she said, “I’d like them to tell me why it isn’t a denial of academic freedom of speech.”

In February, Jinks met with Kimbrough and the provost.

“I gave both men my action requests, “ she said. “One, Andrew was to acknowledge that an error was made in canceling The Politics of Dancing. Two, Andrew would apologize to the department – faculty, staff and students. Three, the department would write policy so that this doesn’t happen again. Four, there would be a recusal from professional advancement discussion by Andrew over me.”

“Andrew said no to one and two,” she continued. “He did say he would apologize for not having everyone in the same room at the same time to discuss the issue.”

Jinks has been at Oklahoma State University for five years, four of those on a tenure track. She will be up for tenure review in two years.

* * *

Dr. Andrew Kimbrough was contacted by e-mail and asked for an on the record interview regarding this situation. His entire reply was as follows

I’ll be happy to speak to you once our challenge is fully resolved and behind us. I’m learning a lot, and would appreciate more professional response. Thanks.

A second request, noting that his replies to The O’Colly would be the only opportunity for his voice to be heard in this article, received no reply.

Since Dr. Kimbrough asked for more professional response, it seems only appropriate to provide him with some.

My first thought is to say that if indeed you are not already well-versed, Dr. Kimbrough, you should become familiar with the process of devised theatre as an evolutionary process that cannot necessarily be given a label more than half a year in advance and be expected to stick to exactly the original premise. That said, devised theatre must have a place in the OSU theatre department with the full resources of the department, because devised theatre is important both academically and creatively; it is essential that theatre students of today learn about and experience devised, collaborative works to prepare them forprofessional careers.

Please reconsider your statements and overall perspective, Dr. Kimbrough, about the audience being the most important arbiter of what students perform at OSU. Your assertion in The O’Colly, “When you’re running a business, this is the No. 1 rule,” seems profoundly misplaced within an academic theatre program. Students should not be educated according to the perceived preferences of the local consumer marketplace, but rather taught in order to develop their talent, their skills, and their knowledge so that they themselves are competitive in the marketplace of theatre. Indeed, if your position on why we make theatre were voiced by the artistic director of most of America’s not-for-profit theatres, that individual would be questioned by many in the field for abdicating the role of an artistic leader and kowtowing to lowest common denominator sentiments. Yes, there are financial demands on all theatres, and theatre cannot survive without an audience, but those concerns need to operate in balance with the creative impulse. To visit those concerns on students who have paid for a complete theatrical education, with audience satisfaction superseding the education imperative, seems a corruption of the role of academics.

Dr. Kimbrough, your students have the same sentiments as I do.

Jessica Smoot wrote, “He sees this department as a business, and while that has been very beneficial when building the department, it can become dangerous for the creative integrity of the department, which I think is very detrimental to our department. There are ways to warn people to not come if you’re easily offended – add ratings, label shows as avant garde or fringe – but don’t take freedom of speech from the students. We will spend the rest of our lives having to worry about where the money to support our art will come from. Let us have some freedom while we still have the ability to not worry about finance, so that when producing our work becomes harder, we will be creating better quality work from the start because we have already had a chance to practice.”

Joshua Arbaugh wrote, “How could we possibly predict what every audience member came to see and how do we know whether or not there is a completely different audience that has simply been alienated by these ‘choices’ in the past. When someone says, “We need to cater to our audience.” That person is really saying, ‘what’s going to be the most digestible to the kinds of people I personally want to come to these shows.’ My answer is no, the theater season should not be selected to impress Andrew’s hetero-normative white friends.”

Finally Dr. Kimbrough, while one would hope you would do so in all things, it’s particularly incumbent upon you when your department has an endowed chair for underrepresented voices to always demonstrate genuine concern and respect for the students who embody those voices and the professor directly charged with serving them. When you offered the students the opportunity to pursue their vision in a smaller space due to your concerns over the marketability of a piece which appeared to be leaning towards a consideration of gender, and they were subsequently informed that they would receive no technical support and no promotion, you were effectively suppressing art on that subject, regardless of your intent.

I am very fond of Almost Maine (and its author, John Cariani) and I’ve seen Cabaret numerous times, but I don’t think those are shows which deeply explore gender issues and represent efforts at diversity, as you suggested to The O’Colly. You need to redress the impression you have instilled in your students as quickly as possible, by planning for work which explicitly examines that topic, either on the mainstage or for a sustained run in the studio. In addition, you would do well to endorse a new student devised work on the subject of gender in modern society that you will stand behind as firmly as you do The 39 Steps or As You Like It (which does have a bit of gender bending of its own, rendered safe by being 400 years old).

On top of all of this, Dr. Kimbrough, to speak your language for a moment, if money is an important consideration, your actions may be alienating a presumably important donor. To cite an article in The Gayly:

“Literally, the name of this endowed professorship is ‘The Mary Lou Lemon Endowed Professorship for underrepresented voices,’” said Robyn Lemon, daughter of the late Mary Lou Lemon. “Not allowing these students to perform this play contradicts the very reason this entire professorship was set up.”

The bottom line here is that the education of students must come first at a university, and that education must not be simply current but forward-thinking in its philosophy, its pedagogy and its practice. The Politics of Dancing isn’t likely to be resurrected; its moment has passed. But if Oklahoma State University theatre wishes to stand for excellence, if it wants to both compete for students and for the students it graduates to be competitive, it must make very clear that it embraces students no matter their gender identity, their race, their ability or disability – in short, it must be genuinely and consistently inclusive – and it should use its stages to make that clear to the entire university, the local community and beyond.

* * *

One last word: as The O’Colly researched its story on this subject, Kimbrough acknowledged that he attempted to have the story quashed. He was quoted saying, “I think it would be in the best interest of the department if there was no negative publicity of this incident.” When there are charges of censoring a piece of theatre by reducing its potential audience significantly and withdrawing support from it, that’s not a very good time to also try to keep the story from being told. As is so often the case, efforts to avoid negative stories only lead to yet more inquiry and more concern. That holds true for decisions to cease answering questions about a subject in the public eye. Theatre is about telling stories and very often, about revealing truths. The story of The Politics of Dancing is incomplete. It is up to Oklahoma State Theatre to bring it to an honest, open, inclusive and satisfying ending for all concerned.

Howard Sherman is director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School College of Performing Arts. This post originally appeared at artsintegrity.org.