“There is more than one way to burn a book,” wrote Ray Bradbury, in an afterword to his novel Fahrenheit 451. “And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”

It is no small irony, consequently, that Bradbury’s classic tale of book burning, written in the wake of Germany’s affinity for book burnings leading up to and during World War II, finds itself banned at times in the present day. Book challenges and resulting book bans may not send a plume of smoke into the sky, but the goal is the same: to make it difficult for people to be exposed to certain ideas, to control what they may learn and think. Another classic of thought control, George Orwell’s 1984, often finds itself alongside Bradbury’s novel where such censorship takes root. Both appear on PEN America’s dataset of some 5,800 books banned in US schools between July 2021 and June 2023.

There are multiple compendiums of banned books in schools that have been developed by different organizations. In addition to the expansive list from PEN America, The Washington Post studied trends within book challenges numbering roughly 1,000, drawn from 150 school districts during the 2021-22 year, publishing their results in a multistory report on December 23. Days earlier, on December 20, the Orlando Sentinel listed 673 books removed from classrooms in Orange County, Florida this year alone, primarily due to new Florida laws which require school media specialists to remove books with pornography or so-called “sexual conduct.”

The 673 books from Orange County described many of the same trends as those summarized by the Post and PEN: young adult books, books with LGBTQIA+ content, books by authors of color. Among the authors whose works were placed into review were Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood, Gordon Parks, Ovid, Marcel Proust, William Styron, Kurt Vonnegut and Alice Walker; among the perhaps more unexpected titles are Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.

It’s impossible to know what books are in Orange County schools but presumably the number and range is considerable. US News says the district serves over 200,000 students and has 91 middle schools and 60 high schools. That said, it’s not unreasonable to expect that the source of the challenges matches the profile ascertained by the Post in its study, which revealed that 60% of the book challenges came from only 11 people. 

Within the 657 books detailed by the Orlando Sentinel, it’s worth noting that a small number of plays were placed under review. They are, in alphabetical order by author:

Four Plays by Aristophanes

Dance Nation by Clare Barron

The History Boys by Alan Bennett

The Bridges of Madison County by Marsha Norman and Jason Robert Brown

The House of Bernarda Alba by Federico Garcia Lorca

The Collected Plays by Lillian Hellman

M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang

The Beauty Queen of Leeanne by Martin McDonagh

Sweat by Lynn Nottage

Equus by Peter Shaffer

The Food Chain byNicky Silver

That’s right: in Orange County, Florida, students currently can’t read three Tony Award winners for Best Play, as well as a major work by a Pulitzer prize-winner, let alone a collection of plays by one of the earliest major dramatists in world history. There is no indication as to the specific reason why these books have been withdrawn or what universe of books these were drawn from. Is the list so short because the district hasn’t provided schools with a representative sampling of play texts or because the individuals lodging complaints simply haven’t focused their attention in that direction?

Curiously the significantly longer PEN list for 2022-23 doesn’t show any dramatic works, suggesting something in their methodology may be at play, though prose works by writers who are strongly affiliated with theatre can be found, including Alan Cumming, Tim Federle, Lupita Nyong’o, and Adam Rapp; a manga edition of Hamlet also appears. If for some reason PEN has extracted dramatic works intentionally, then they have done the field a great disservice, since the challenging or banning of any text must be brought into the light.

The presence of play texts in school classrooms and libraries is essential, because even in districts where drama has escaped the censors’ eyes, there simply are too few production opportunities for students to be exposed to the breadth of dramatic literature. Incidents of production censorship make the news intermittently, but my own workshops reveal how many titles are refused for production by school officials, and yet more aren’t even proposed by teachers who fear blowback for even suggesting them.

In the wake of the Orlando Sentinel article David Henry Hwang wrote on the social media platform Threads, “Proud to have my play banned in Florida! When the MButterfly movie was banned in China in the 1990s, this led to everyone there wanting to see it. Remains to be seen how Floridians react.”

Nothing would be more gratifying than to find that bans only increase the popularity of the works under fire, sending students to public libraries and bookstores to seek out the forbidden fruit. If that were the case, we’d see authors clamoring to be banned. But once a book is banned, even if the ban generates attention, time passes and attention eventually fades, while the book remains unavailable as part of an educational experience, whether in a classroom or in a school library.

As expansive and valuable as all three reports are, those from PEN and the Washington Post are surely not fully representative of the full extent of book challenges and bans across the country, since they rely on various forms of public records releases, external submissions in response to requests, and direct discovery through interviews. As with so many such cases, they still must be looked at as the tip of the iceberg and, when it comes to dramatic works, as largely insufficient, except to highlight the degree to which a relatively small activist group of narrow-minded people want to dictate what literature can be accessed by young people who are inquisitive, broad-minded and in search of thoughts and stories beyond those that have passed some manner of purity test invented by unqualified individuals on censorious crusades.

As the Sentinel and the Post note, challenges don’t always result in bans and some works may yet be restored to school shelves. That’s why the only response is to support the books and the opportunity for expansive learning – and to watch for where theatre is being silenced, be it in performances, or just as text on shelves in schools.

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.

“It was brought to the District’s attention that the current production contained mature adult themes, profane language, and sexual content,” reads the communication from Sherman High School in Sherman, Texas. “Unfortunately, all aspects of the production need to be reviewed, including content, stage production/props, and casting to ensure that the production is appropriate for the high school stage.”

The scurrilous, sensual, and shocking show in question? Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! The date of this communication? November 6, 2023.

It would be easy to simply find this ludicrous. Oklahoma! is, after all, widely considered to be the first musical of the modern era, a landmark of marrying song and story. It was a long-running smash that was seen as representing the best of America in its original run, which overlapped with World War II; there are many stories of military inductees seeing the show just before they were sent over to the war in Europe, or as the first thing they did when the returned stateside. Oklahoma! as Americana may gloss over the subject of how the territory was opened to white settlers by banishing the indigenous residents, but it’s worth noting that the musical was faithfully based on a play by Lynn Riggs, a member of the Cherokee nation.

The widescreen movie in 1955 starred Shirley Jones and Eddie Albert among others, and has been played and replayed on television, home video and streaming seemingly ever since. There have been multiple Broadway revivals and it’s popular outside the US as well; over two decades ago, a production at London’s National Theatre made a star of an unknown Australian named Hugh Jackman.

Oh, and Oklahoma! was the single most popular musical in US high school theatre nationally in the 1960s and 1970s, before falling into the second position in the 1980s and 1990s. That’s the salacious tract that Sherman, Texas officials feel they need to clean up for public consumption. Presumably they will next be coming for that cesspool of sin, Annie. Mind you, Sherman High has produced Oklahoma! at least twice before, the most recent production coming less than 10 years ago.

Looking deeper into the school’s statement comes this peculiar language: “There is no policy on how students are assigned to roles. As it relates to this particular production, the sex of the role as identified in the script will be used when casting. Because the nature and subject matter of productions vary, the District is not inclined to apply this criteria to all future productions.”

What’s that about precisely? It’s about the fact that last week, the powers-that-be at Sherman decided that students must be cast according to the gender which they were identified by at birth, and in the case of the trans male student cast as Ali Hakim, that meant Max Hightower was being removed from his role with zero clarity as to whether he would receive any other role, as most assuredly wouldn’t get one according to his gender identity. This despite the fact that Oklahoma! has been open to cross-gender casting for a number of years, as well as multi-racial casting, so it is not trapped in the limitations of the era in which it was first produced by rigid rights holders.

Philip Hightower, Max’s dad, retells the story of how this casting edict was shared with parents, saying that he received a call last Friday from the school principal, explaining the new policy that was being imposed. After this brief call, Hightower immediately tried reaching Max’s guidance counselor, so the student might have some immediate support when informed of the decision. Reaching a different counselor, as Max’s was unavailable, Hightower asked for a copy of the new policy. Hightower says the counselor seemed completely flustered and had no idea where to find such a thing.

“I do want to stress this,” says Hightower, “because I think it really shows the current state of education, especially in Texas. This guy wanted to empathize with me, like really on a personal level. He would start all these sentences about caring and never finishing. The one that sticks out the most is he said, ‘You know, man to man,” and there was a long pause. ‘Father to father.’ He never finished. They’re terrified. They’re terrified of this situation, they don’t know what to do.”

Hightower said that on getting home from work, he expected to find a profoundly upset Max. But that wasn’t the case.

“I realized I should have thought better because I know Max,” said Hightower. “Max is a fighter, The first thing he said to me when I came in was something along the lines of, ‘Can you believe this shit?’ I said, ‘Max, what do you want me to do?’ I told him, I’d reached out to the local news. And he said, “I want to fight.”

While initially, going into the weekend, local media was slow to pick up on the story, but after Hightower and his wife posted their accounts of the situation on social media, they were met first with a groundswell of local support, and then local outlets began to do interviews. As of Tuesday afternoon November 7, The New York Times was on the case.

But does Hightower think the decision can be altered?

“No,” he flatly declares. “You don’t know these people. These people here have the majority and they know it. And they don’t care. I mean, we’ve seen it every day.”

Brett Boessen, parent of another Sherman high student, his daughter Lucy, who was cast in the play, says the recent actions have given him a new perspective on what’s happening in his community.

“This one decision,” said Boessen, “more than any other decision that I’ve seen, that the school has made in the past year or two, has got me really thinking that school board elections are important. There are some people on the board right now who need to be removed when the next election happens in the spring. This just is not a way to protect and nurture students in the school system. It sends absolutely the wrong message to students about how the school board thinks about them and everything else.”

Boessen, who was speaking as a parent but happens to be the chair of the Communication, Media, and Theater Department at Austin College, was also skeptical of what might be done.

“I would hope that the parents would be upset about this in sufficient enough numbers to be able to make some kind of change,” said Boessen. “But I’ll be honest, I think a lot of people have real fears right now. Maybe some of them are unfounded. But maybe some of them are realistic about the kind of pushback and reprisal that people make on social media, but then through social media in the real world might have against people who speak out and who say something about these kinds of policies. So I’m not holding my breath that the community will stand up and say, ‘Absolutely not, this is this is wrong, get this fixed right away.’ I don’t know that that will happen. Even if there is a kind of majority sentiment, I think a lot of it is probably silent.”

As if the motivations of the school administration and board were not self-evident in their attempts to suppress and deny trans identity, it’s worth noting that the Sherman school district has adopted a program called “Stand in the Gap.” It is described on the Sherman Independent School District website in detail, but the following stands out:

For this year, we’re going a step further and asking our church congregations and community to “Stand In The Gap” for us. Stand in the gap between the challenges of this world and our staff and students through prayer.

The gap is ostensibly the place where families and communities have “failed,” taking in loco parentis far beyond its intent to a place of superseding the parental role. This alignment of church and state, as opposed to separation, suggests that Sherman has taken a theological approach to education, going on to outri ght ask for prayers for staff and students. Even though one of their tenets is “protection from harm,” such protection is being decided selectively, presumably something that can be lain at the feet of the school superintendent, Dr. Tyson Bennett, who signed the Stand in the Gap policy. They appear not to be concerned about protecting trans and queer students, or students who just want to find a good part in a show.

There are some dark elements of Oklahoma! that director Daniel Fish emphasized in his radical reworking of the show for a production that played to acclaim in New York and London, and on national tour. But high schools aren’t pursuing that interpretation. Someone has suggested to Sherman High officials that such darkness must be rooted out, such as the wanton Ado Annie, who perhaps kisses a few too many men, or the scantily clad women tacked up in Jud Fry’s shed. In keeping with the time period in which it was written, Oklahoma! is decidedly chaste, if not completely sanitized.

In their statement, Sherman High suggests a production will go forward, after these troubling elements have been addressed. But they should be reminded that they can’t simply alter the work to suit their tastes, and of course they’ve really brought these elements up as a smokescreen to distract from their retrograde attitudes about student identity.

Will a production happen, delayed by a few weeks? That remains to be seen, and there’s a school board meeting at the beginning of next week, but according to Phillip Hightower, a significant number of cast members have already quit the production. So Sherman may not only clean up Oklahoma!, but eradicate their school musical. Perhaps that’s what they really want. But that’s not what’s best for their students. That’s why voices in Sherman, when it comes to transphobia and censorship, contrary to Ado Annie’s plaintive cry, must say “No!”

For an update on this post, read “Oklahoma! Santized for Your Protection” posted on November 11. Click here.

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

Given the disastrous reduction in live theatre that has marked the pandemic since March of 2020, one might assume that incidences of high school shows canceled over content concerns would have been curtailed as well. But as lockdowns have been lifted and as theatre educators have devised creative means to produce safely, production shutdowns have followed. However, the reason for the cancelations that have risen to public awareness is not typical of what has come before.

Over the past decade, when school theatre productions have been shut down, it is typically because of parents or community members who object to the content of the shows, with particular sensitivity to the representation of LGBTQ lives (Rent, The Laramie Project), the slightest hint of sexual activity (Almost, Maine), violence (Sweeney Todd), or the occasional profanity. The object has ostensibly been to “protect” the students – those in the show, their classmates, and even their younger siblings from engaging in such topics. The intent has been suppression of subjects and themes, all of which the students are most assuredly aware.

What of the recent cancelations?

In late February, McCaskey High School in the Lancaster PA school district canceled the spring production of Hairspray because of students who were troubled by language they found offensive regarding Black and Hispanic characters and people with disabilities. An email from a group of students to their principal was forwarded on to the superintendent, who made the decision to cancel the show.

In March, The Chadwick School, a private school in Palos Verdes Peninsula CA, shut down a planned production of the school edition of Avenue Q. A message from the administration to parents said that while “the musical had the full support of the administration…elements of our community felt uncomfortable, based on principle, with some of the tone, timing and content of the show.” The message went on to say, “The original work has been praised for its irreverent and provocative approach to themes such as race and sexuality,” but that while “theater is an effective forum to explore important topics such as these, we also believe it is important to respect the perspectives of the individuals who raised concerns.”

This week, the Hunterdon Central Regional High School canceled plans to produce South Pacific because staff and students were concerned about the show’s treatment of race. According to NJ.com, citing the district superintendent, “the district believed [South Pacific] was ‘important and relevant,” but also that “the district was aware the musical featured stereotyped characters and dialogue, and originally intended to offer a concert version that ‘significantly reduced the dialogue’.” There is no indication whether or not Concord Theatricals, which licenses the Rodgers & Hammerstein catalogue, had approved of the concert-style cutting of the show.

While the specifics at The Chadwick School are somewhat vague in the administration’s statement, and it’s unclear where the objections originated, at McCaskey and Hunterdon the source is apparent: it’s students who wanted to see the shows shut down or replaced, specifically because they felt that portrayals and dialogue were insensitive and offensive to often marginalized communities. These incidents echo what transpired at Ithaca High School in 2018, when students pushed for the shut down of a production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame after a white student was cast in a role that had been played in prominent professional productions by a BIPOC actor.

In the wake of the heightened awareness surrounding discussions of race engendered by the Black Lives Matter movement, and perhaps influenced by the advocacy of such groups as We See You White American Theatre and the Broadway Advocacy Coalition, it should not be surprising that high school students are not simply aware of, but motivated by, such concerns. Given that the racial reckoning of the past couple of years mirrors the societal upheaval around civil rights and, on its heels, youth culture in the 1960s, activism by high school students is far from surprising, especially when one considers the greater sophistication of teens in comparison with those over 50 years ago.

When the Ithaca students spoke out in 2018, their efforts yielded death threats over their fight for representation, spurred on by right-wing sites like The Daily Caller. This week, Fox News, already deeply engaged in spreading the canard of cancel culture in relation to Dr. Seuss and the Warner Brothers characters Speedy Gonzales and Pepe le Pew, have embraced the South Pacific situation as merely another example of what they decry, namely the ostensible disappearing of material that they consumed in the days before distinct communities (women, BIPOC, disability) communities were afforded a voice to express the offense given by certain portrayals and the increasing willingness of both individuals and corporations to avoid slurs.

Adults of a certain age may not even understand where the offense lies in the Dr. Seuss books withdrawn, or appreciate how an aggressively romantic skunk might echo sexual harassment or worse. Some of that comes from being brought up in an era with different mores or only remembering the barest outlines of material they consumed decades ago. They may further be confused by the weaponization of these stories being treated as examples of yet more “political correctness,” another catch-all term, like “cancel culture,” both applied to denigrate present-day sensitivity to and concern about works which once punched down at certain people with impunity.

There is no question that given only a cursory glance, the suspension of certain high school productions looks like censorship – it is, in the case of public schools at least, government officials ending a form of expression. When it rises to that level, it is very difficult to countenance, even when done in order to avoid perpetuating harm through uncritical representations of misogyny, racial bias and the like.

So the first question to be asked of the faculty and administration is, “What was the rationale for selecting this show?” “How were its dialogue and themes considered in light of present-day viewpoints on how some works may have grown dated?” “Does this material still say what it intended back in its original era?” While some of these questions may seem absurd with such modern material as Avenue Q or Hairspray, it’s worth remembering that both are around 20 years old. South Pacific is considerably older.

The next question is whether, in recognizing what some may view as problematic material, any effort was made to contextualize it for students and even the larger community. Some may object to the use of the n-word in certain texts, but does that mean the works of August Wilson shouldn’t be studied or performed in a high school setting? How, and by whom, students are led to understand certain material can have a significant impact or the repertoire open to schools. While Wilson’s estate will not permit the alteration of his texts, that is not always the case for all works in high school settings. If a handful of words render a work ostensibly unperformable, the author(s) or their estate(s) may grant dispensation for certain changes.

That it was the student version of Avenue Q that raised objections in California is interesting in that the text and lyrics had already been altered to render it more fit by some for school performances. Perhaps it is due for another review. Yet at the same time, it may reach a point where the bowdlerization of the material renders it so unrecognizable that it becomes a different work altogether. The degree to which that does or does not occur is entirely at the discretion of its creators.

It is important to note that unlike some high school shows that were shuttered specifically to suppress ideas like racial, gender and sexual equality, the decision in Lancaster over Hairspray was not shrouded in short, blunt statements. Instead, the superintendent, Dr. Damaris Rau, wrote a blog post fully explaining her decision. She wrote in part:

I also believe context matters. Our country has gone through some horrific events, including the murder of George Floyd. I know many of our students participated in the social justice marches this summer. We know mental health issues of adolescents have grown and intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic. The language and portrayals in the show risked further discomfort—and potentially trauma—for students facing the harsh reality of racism in our country. In addition, many families bring their younger children to see our musical.

In light of this current environment, the calls for social justice, and the written concerns of the students, I believe this is the best decision at this time.

In emails with Arts Integrity, Dr. Rau elaborated that in addition to specific dialogue in the show, the students had expressed concern that Hairspray is a white savior narrative. She went on to talk about the in-school training around implicit bias, equity, and diversity, which began two years ago.

The objections to South Pacific may prove most surprising because it was written specifically to decry racism – witness “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught.” But in its portray of Bloody Mary and Liat weren’t they also deploying stereotypes that have become more and more obvious as racial awareness has evolved over the past 70 plus years? Those who believe vintage anti-racism texts can’t possibly become problematic need only look to another musical from roughly the same era, Finian’s Rainbow, which used blackface in order to fight racism.

Nothing herein should be considered to advocate for the alteration of texts to avoid any and all offense; we will not benefit from the homogenization of culture. The state of copyrighted texts is the sole purview of creators or their estates, and even if changes are authorized individually or enshrined globally, it is vital that the original versions are retained and preserved, since we should never be comfortable with the permanent erasure of history. But if the Seuss estate decides that it’s works no longer are fit for purpose and withdrawn from commercial circulation, that is their absolute right and represents an understanding of societal change, not cancelation but consideration.

Consideration of texts for school theatre is essential as well. Just because educators have always loved a show from their youth doesn’t necessarily make it the best choice for today or for their target audience. By the same token, a flight to safety will not serve either, because theatre is indeed a place where hard issues should be on the table, but only when properly contextualized for those putting on the performance and those who are intended to see it.

It serves no one to have shows shut down. Before a show is announced or auditions held, work must be chosen in the very best interest of the students, with the goal of a fair and equal society, work which does not demean but educates and even lifts up. When it comes to how works of prior eras are perceived today by their students, even teachers may have to be carefully taught.

The communication announcing the cancelation of a production of the musical The 25^thAnnual Putnam County Spelling Bee at Hyattsville Middle School in Maryland could not have been more terse.

Unfortunately we have decided to cancel the Spring Musical dates of May 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th.

Additionally, we will hold a parent meeting after spring break, Tuesday April 23^rdat 4:30pm in Mrs. Gee’s Room to address next steps and to answer any of your questions, comments, or concerns.

The letter was signed by Genese Gee-Schmidtke, the Hyattsville Middle School Theatre Arts Director. The signature included the tagline, presumably common to all of her communications, which reads, “Respect Art, Create Art, Live art…Do good!”

Inquiries regarding the cancelation to the office of Dr. Monica Goldson, who holds the title of Interim CEO at Prince George’s County Public Schools (in lieu of the more typical title of Superintendent), which includes Hyattsville, received the following reply:

Thank you for contacting me concerning the cancellation of the play at Hyattsville Middle School. Staff spoke with the Principal and listed below is what actually took place.

Teachers expressed concern given the extended use of profanity in the play even though it was play was identified as PG13 appropriate. The supervisor for Performing Arts, was then requested to review content during which time it was decided that the play should be cancelled since copyright laws did not permit the change in language when she reached out to the company.  It was then deemed more appropriate for high school and not middle school.

A letter will be crafted and sent home to the school community this week.

In addition, we will work with the central office Creative and Visual Performing Arts team to create a process for approval of plays prior to students practicing and preparing to ensure this does not happen again.

The 25^thAnnual Putnam County Spelling Bee is the comic recreation of a student spelling bee. It ran on Broadway from May 2005 to January 2008 and received a Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for Rachel Sheinkin, as well as a Tony for Dan Fogler who played one of the student competitors. It has widely been produced since, however for school productions, the lyrics of one song, “My Unfortunate Erection,” have been revised to “My Unfortunate Distraction” to remove the obvious sexual connotation.

According to news reports, the Hyattsville production has been in rehearsal for months, and as Gee-Schmidtke’s brief communication indicates, the cancelation came over spring break, with the performances scheduled for the weekend following the return from break. Presumably, Gee-Schmidtke did not cancel her own show, but rather was communicating the decision of others above her in the school or district hierarchy.

With the material most obviously problematic already revised and implemented for the Hyattsville production, precisely what concerns remained? A report from WJLA TV references a statement from the communications office for the district, saying that a review of the script yielded, in WJLA’s characterization, “concerns surrounding profane language, sexual innuendo, and several lines in the play that could potentially be viewed as racist.” Coverage of the Tuesday meeting in The Washington Post characterized school officials as citing “a number of concerns — with racial humor, sexual innuendo and what one described as some ‘cuss words’.”

Arts Integrity has written to the CEO and the Hyattsville principal, as well as the communications office asking for those specific examples. As of publication time, the only response received, from Raven Hill in the district communication office, read, “I will follow up with you later today.” This post will be updated with that response upon receipt.

It has been widely rumored online that the main concern about the show pertains to the characters of the two gay dads of one of the student characters. Schools spokesperson Hill was quoted by the Post as saying, “I know that there was a rumor and a concern, but we’re not seeking to remove gay characters, nor was the play canceled because of gay characters.”

James McGonnigal, an area resident who does not have a child who is a student at the school, but attended the meeting, characterized the conversation in the meeting in an e-mail with Arts Integrity, writing:

The meeting last night was not only filled with contradictions to the statement made earlier in the day about reasons for the production’s cancellation. The meeting began with Principal Thorne reading the county’s prepared statement and followed with questions and replies. During the questioning from parents and community members, the Principal and County representatives first attempted to blame MTI for not allowing the changes being requested.

McGonnigal went on to write:

There was more discussion of the list of requested changes, this time from Ms. Gee – the director of the show. One parent asked for that list to be shared and they said it would take a few days to compile it. And then I asked if the director could confirm that the inclusion of gay parents was not on the list of requested changes. After replying “Well, there were several requested changes made and we just want to make sure that we’re offering a show that’s appropriate for all ages.” When I asked again, “Can you confirm that the inclusion of gay parents was not a concern brought to MTI,” she replied “No, I cannot confirm that.”

McGonnigal has set up an online petition in support of the play going forward.

In a video recording of the start of the meeting, the school principal, Thornton Boone, reads a prepared statement which includes making a distinction between MTI school edition scripts, which he says are prepared for high schools, and Broadway Junior editions, which he cites as being for elementary and middle schools, noting that there is no Broadway Junior edition of Spelling Bee. He proceeds to say, “Based on this information, it is recommended that this production not be presented by Hyattsville Middle School.” He then outlines the intention to develop a plan for the future approval of shows for the 2019-2020 school year and proceeds to cite the school’s adherence to policies against discrimination and harassment.

Boone goes on to recount a conversation between MTI and Ms. Gee-Schmidtke in which she was ostensibly told that any changes to the script would be in violation of copyright. He goes on to state that LGBTQ content was not the reason for the cancelation, and announces that in a June performance, students will present excerpts from prior school productions, including Into The Woods, Fame, Once on This Island, Romeo and Juliet and Annie.

The impression that no changes to the Spelling Bee text are permitted, even when properly requested, is rebutted by WJLA’s report, which also cites McGonnigal:

“There are a handful of ‘damns’ or ‘Jesus Christs’ that are in there, that could easily be cut out, I don’t think with any complaint from the licensing agency,” said Jamie McGonnigal, who says he is very familiar with ‘The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee’.

ABC 7 reached out to the licensing agency, Music Theatre International, and a spokesperson confirmed that they have accommodated similar requests in the past.

If gay dads aren’t the issue, if mild curse words can be altered with permission, what remains a problem with Spelling Bee? Again, the school district isn’t being specific. The most likely point of contention may well be a brief scene when one of the student spellers utters, “Jesus, can’t you come up with a harder word than that?” and Jesus appears to that student in a one-page scene in which he explains that spelling bees aren’t something he much concerns himself with.

If it is the depiction of Jesus which is a problem under the PGCPS guidelines, then presumably that is not a matter that would be any different in the high school than the middle school. Is this the “extended use of profanity” alluded to in an e-mail from Goldson to the Justine Christianson, president of the school’s PTSO? Are we to parse the language carefully to distinguish profane from what is often seen as its synonym, obscene?

There may be a solution at hand, namely that the show proceeds, despite losing days of rehearsal, with a “mature content warning” appended in materials promoting the show, as if anyone in the community isn’t now aware of such reservations on the part of the administration after major press coverage. The school and the district will reportedly issue their decision by tomorrow. But what’s worth noting is that the solution didn’t come from anywhere in the school hierarchy. Rather, it was proposed by a student at yesterday’s meeting.

It seems that Hyattsville Middle School’s leadership, and the district leadership, has an awful lot of work to do very quickly if they are to dispel both rumors and establish the clear facts about any censorious intent. They need to be transparent about what changes they’re requesting and to eliminate any sense that gay parents aren’t a problem and that their reasoning isn’t in any way arbitrary or that they have failed to seek genuine solutions.

But it also seems clear that in both this decision and their plans to implement a review process, which would likely only serve to reduce the variety of work available for performance at the school, they should listen to their students and include them in that process going forward. Because, with teachers often silenced in such cases, it seems the students may have the most creative ideas about how to solve problems, and get on with the show.

Update, April 24, 12 noon: Actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson, well-known for his role on the comedy Modern Family, wrote the following on Twitter shortly after 11 am this morning.

As one of the original “Gay Dads” in Spelling Bee & a hopeful future Gay Dad I am so annoyed by this. Pull it together Maryland Middle School. I’m sure there are gay students in your school. Think about how this is impacting them. What a disappointment.

He subsequently added:

The arts are so vital to our school system. They teach kids compassion, trust and team work. The arts build bridges between kids with different backgrounds and economical upbringings and they have always been a safe space for LGBTQ youth. The arts are NOT about discrimination.

Update, April 24, 4:30 pm: A letter from Principal Thornton Boone to the school community has announced that Spelling Bee will go on, however it is delayed by two weeks to make up for lost rehearsal time and with one less performance than originally scheduled. The students participating in the show will be required to have signed permission slips from their parents and students at the area elementary schools will not be invited to performances, which will be noted as being rated PG-13, adopting the movie rating nomenclature.

The letter repeats much of what Mr. Boone said at yesterday’s meeting regarding the show, including concerns about “profane language, racial jokes and sexual innuendo/content and its appropriateness for our young performers.” It reiterates that “the theatre licensing agency declined our requests to alter the musical, which led to our original decision to cancel the upcoming performances.”

While the letter states that, “There are no plans to remove the characters or references from the production,” it also states that on Friday this week, during two one-hour sessions, the school’s CPA Coordinator will be available “for any parent to review the script and suggest changes.”

Because the school has not provided the list of its original request for changes ostensibly made to MTI, which it claims were denied, it is impossible to ascertain what was actually asked of the company and through it, the authors of the show. In addition, if the school stands by the claim that no changes may be made, why is it providing parents with a platform to suggest changes, when it has no certainty that such suggestions may be acted upon. The school does not have the unilateral right to make changes, which it previously acknowledged, so what exactly is the plan of action going forward? As noted in the WJLA TV coverage, MTI has previously accommodated requests for changes, so why does Hyattsville paint them as intransigent, then suggest changes may be forthcoming?

While it is a positive step that the production appears to be happening with its LGBTQ content intact, Hyattsville Middle School and Prince George’s County Public School District remains opaque in both their specific concerns and verifiable efforts to resolve them with the licensing house. Mr. Boone writes, “We understand the anger, confusion and frustration over this matter.” If that is indeed the case, then perhaps he and his colleagues can do better in their communication now by fully documenting their actions, from beginning to end, instead of trying to placate everyone without getting to the root of the issues that have played out so publicly.

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.

Those who have followed the career of James Franco, and at times it has almost been hard to avoid, are aware that the actor had a period where he was a perpetual student, described in 2008 in Vanity Fair as displaying a “pan disciplinary omnivorousness.” He has a bachelor’s degree in English from UCLA, did graduate studies at Columbia, NYU Tisch, Yale and Brooklyn College, and has lectured at the UCLA School of Film, Television and Theater. Since English, writing and other creative endeavors were part of his studies, presumably along the way he might have learned a few things about the First Amendment, copyright law and the fair use provisions.

But whether this was a gap in all of Franco’s study, or whether it occurred while he was allegedly asleep in class (Franco denies that charge, on the basis of it being a bonus lecture), the creative dynamo and education addict seems to have had no qualms about shutting down a Cranston RI-born show, James Franco and Me, when it dared to book a short August run in New York at the People’s Improv Theatre (PIT). Multiple media outlets, attuned to covering Franco in his many ventures, briefly reported the creative censorship in July, including Salon and The New York Times.

Some reports at the time suggested that the play, by and starring Kevin Broccoli, was about Franco. Broccoli disputes that claims, saying, “In the show, it is stated that he’s fictional. It’s even suggested he might be an imaginary friend. Nothing that he says in the show is a direct quote of his. There are no quotes from any of his movies. As far as I know, nothing that ‘he’ talks about in the show actually happened in real life.”

Kevin Broccoli

“But the show is highly autobiographical on my end. So the really bizarre thing about this, for me, is it really does feel like someone’s not allowing me to tell my own story, because they want to prevent me from just using some celebrity’s name in something.”

It is well established that parodies of people are permitting under the fair use provisions of copyright law, though to be accurate Broccoli wasn’t parodying a written work, but rather playing with the persona of a public figure. Whether or not the show was funny or serious is irrelevant, since parody need not serve only comic purposes. Broccoli asserts that he has taken nothing specific from the public record of Franco’s life, only the idea of James Franco, public figure.

The cease and desist letter, from attorney Thomas B. Collier of Sloane, Offer, Weber and Stern was sent not to Broccoli, but rather to PIT, prompting them to cancel the James Franco and Me booking out of concern of being subjected to legal action. It claims, in part, Franco’s right of publicity, as well as asserting trademark violation and unfair business practice according to California Business and Professions Code Section 17200 and California Civil Code Section 3344, which the letter quotes as follows:

“Any person who knowingly uses another’s name, voice, signature, photograph or likeness on or in products, merchandise or goods for the purposes of advertising or selling or soliciting purchases of products… shall be liable for any damages sustained by the person or persons injured as a result thereof.”

The New York statutes regarding right of publicity can be found here.

But Epic Theatre Company, Broccoli’s Rhode Island based troupe, never employed Franco’s voice, signature, or likeness (a local publication created an image juxtaposing Franco and Broccoli’s faces), and even if it did use his name, it wasn’t to sell a commercial product as meant by the statutes invoked. Artistic use falls within the First Amendment, which Mr. Collier omits, presumably to frighten PIT and through them, Broccoli and Epic. The letter, incidentally, concludes by asserting that it is itself a copyrighted legal communication, and therefore can’t be published in whole or part. More scare tactics.

With the threat of such action hanging over the show, Broccoli said he has been unable, to date, to secure an alternate venue. In fact, even when he remounts the show for a single performance this Saturday back in Rhode Island, he is excising Franco and calling the show __________and Me, because he can’t afford to defend himself from actions by Franco and his attorneys. He likens the show he’ll now perform, as a benefit for the ACLU, it to the internet parody “Garfield Without Garfield.”

What has taken place here is that James Franco and Me has been shut down because Kevin Broccoli and his company don’t have the financial wherewithal to battle a celebrity with considerably greater resources. His first amendment rights have been trampled because he isn’t wealthy enough to fight back, and so his play, at least in its original form, is silenced.

The situation recalls that faced by David Adjmi’s 3C, a dark parody of the television series Three’s Company, which was kept out of production following its premiere at Rattlestick Theatre by a specious claim from the rights holders to the original series, who claimed that, among other things, it would damage their opportunities for commercial exploitation of the then-35 year old sitcom in the live theatrical marketplace. In that case, Adjmi could not afford to fight the case alone, but was supported by the law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine and by the Dramatists Guild and Dramatists Legal Defense Fund. The court ultimately ruled in favor of Adjmi and the play, which is now receiving productions – including, coincidentally, one last month at Epic Theatre.

Arts Integrity contacted Bruce E.H. Johnson, a partner at Davis Wright Tremaine to ask his thoughts about the cease and desist letter sent to the PIT in regards to James Franco and Me.

“In my opinion, this claim is bogus,” wrote Johnson, in response to e-mailed questions, which included inquiries as to whether “right of publicity” laws come into play in this case.  “The right of publicity applies only to advertising and commercial use; it does not apply to a play, which is absolutely protected by the First Amendment.”

Johnson continued, “Any advertisements for a First Amendment product, like a play, are also protected by the same First Amendment principles.  From Steven G. Brody and Bruce E.H. Johnson, Advertising and Commercial Speech: A First Amendment Guide at 2-30 (2d ed. 2017): ‘The courts normally afford full First Amendment protection to advertising promoting speech in books, movies, and other fully protected media.’   And the fact that ‘tickets are being sold’ to the play doesn’t make it a commercial product.  This First Amendment principle was affirmed by the US Supreme Court in New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), finding absolute First Amendment protection: ‘That The Times was paid for publishing the advertisement is as immaterial in this connection as is the fact that newspapers and books are sold’.”

In Johnson’s assessment, “I can’t think of any situation where a celebrity sued for a fictional portrayal in a play.  Given the absolute First Amendment protection here, such a lawsuit would be immediately tossed out.” Broccoli notes that the New York Musical Festival was advertising a show entitled Matthew McConaughey and The Devil as part of their 2017 season. Woody Harrelson is also a character in the show.

It is particularly worth noting that James Franco and Me is not even the first theatrical piece to prominently invoke Franco. In Chicago, The Gift Theatre presented Under The Gun Theater’s Dear James Franco, an improvised evening of reading celebrity letters in 201, which was reviewed in Chicago outlets, including The Reader. Promotional copy in the Goldstar website read, in part, “Though the night is being called Dear James Franco, the letters are not necessarily written by or to the Pineapple Express actor, but judging by the hilarity of previously published open letters to Franco (as seen in Slate, Gawker and more), it sure wouldn’t hurt.”

But in the meantime, without the means to defend himself or his play, Kevin Broccoli is being – because he’s taking a creative approach in response to censorship he’s not equipped to fight – partially silenced. Perhaps someone or some firm with the legal resources and expertise will step up to challenge Franco, Collier, and his firm, because every time a groundless cease and desist is allowed to curtail the creativity of artists, the whole field suffers.

Of course, Mr. Franco is even a fan of performance art, and given his proclivity for perpetual learning, perhaps he can get a quick law degree and defend Kevin Broccoli from James Franco. That would be justice indeed.

This week, Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s 1990 musical Assassins will have its first major New York performances since the 2004 Roundabout Theatre Company production*, in a concert version as part of City Center Encores!’s Off-Center series. Given the controversy sparked last month by The Public Theater’s Julius Caesar, in which Caesar and his wife were portrayed as analogues of Donald and Melania Trump, prompting the withdrawal of sponsors, sparking disruptions of performances and precipitating threats against the production, the theatre, the artists and the staff, it seemed an appropriate moment to speak with Weidman about how Assassins has been perceived over the past 26 years and how the newest incarnation might be received. Weidman, a former president of The Dramatists Guild, currently serves as president of the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund, founded to, according to the organization’s website, “advocate, educate and provide a new resource in defense of the First Amendment.” This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Howard Sherman: Given the state of discourse about public expression, given what happened with Julius Caesar in Central Park, it seems that putting up this show at this moment carries not necessarily more weight than other times, but that people may bring some other baggage to it in a different way they might have at other times. Back in 1991, it did not move to Broadway, the reason given being it wasn’t the right time, it was the first Gulf War, etc. Then there was the first planned Roundabout production, coming right after 9/11, when you and Steve and others felt it was not the right time to do the show. So is there ever a right time or ever a wrong time to do Assassins?

Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman

John Weidman: I don’t think there’s ever a wrong time to do it.  I think the reception of the first production was honestly more a function of the fact that people did not know what to expect when they came into to theater. They were not prepared for the shock value of the opening number, which was a deliberate choice on our part to kind of knock the audience off balance. I think that, 25 years ago, even though there had been many adventurous musicals that had been done, some people simply assumed that the musical theater was not an appropriate place in which to tackle material that was this fundamentally serious.  I think we’re well past that assumption at this point, given the kind of musicals that have been written in the last 25 years.

When the show was scheduled to be done at the Roundabout, and when we decided to delay the production after 9/11, that wasn’t a good time to do Assassins.  But it wasn’t because we thought people would find the show problematic, that they would resent a show about presidential assassins in that sudden new political moment.  In order to engage an audience, given the way the show’s designed and the way it’s written, it requires an audience which is, frankly, prepared to laugh in certain places, to take the humor on board.  That’s part of the roller coaster ride of the show.  We all felt that at that time, it was unfair to ask an audience which was grieving to come into a theater and to engage this kind of material in a way that was intermittently humorous. The show in that context simply wouldn’t work.  And If it wasn’t going to work, it made sense to delay the production.

As far as now goes?  When the show first opened, we had a conservative Republican in the White House, and then for eight years we had a centrist Democrat in the White House, and then for eight years we had a conservative Republican in the White House, and then we had a centrist Democrat who was black, and now we’ve got this guy.  The show’s been performed continuously over the course of those 25 years in all kinds of different political and socioeconomic contexts.  This is just a different one.

That said, people will obviously come into the theater from a different place, because the world outside the theater is a different place. Which will affect the way in which the members of the audience take the show on board.

But I don’t think it makes it a particularly good or bad time to do Assassins.  Personally, I think it’s always a good time to do the show, because the  show is meant to be provocative, and hopefully people will walk out of the theater talking about it, that it will provoke the kinds of conversations that Steve and I hoped it would provoke when we wrote it.  That should happen now the way it’s happened with previous productions.  They may be different conversations, but that’s what I would hope would happen.

Sherman: Have you and Steve made any changes in the show since it was last seen in New York, since the 2004 Roundabout production?

Weidman: No. The text of the show that’s going to be performed at City Center is exactly the same as the text which was performed at the Roundabout. And the text at the Roundabout was exactly the same as the text that was performed at Playwrights Horizons with the exception of “Something Just Broke,” the song which we added in London. The show’s really been what it’s been since it was first performed 25 years ago.

The 2017 Yale Repertory Theatre production of “Assassins” (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Sherman: Assassins was performed this spring at Yale Rep. Was there a difference in response to the show than for previous productions?

Weidman: You know, I was curious to see if there would be a difference in the way in which the show was received after the last election, and Yale was the first significant production that was available to me.  I didn’t feel, sitting in the audience, as if there was any kind of shift that I was aware of in terms of the way in which the audience was connecting to the material.

Sherman: Speaking to you both as an author of the piece, and also in your role with the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund, it’s fair to say that there was some very heightened conversation, and actions around the Julius Caesar, admittedly by people who didn’t see it, didn’t take the time to understand it or understand its context. In the wake of that, are you concerned at all about how, not even the audience, but how people external to the audience might choose to speak about this piece?

Weidman: The word you used was concerned.  I’m not in any way worried about it.  At the same time, I’m sensitive to the possibility that in this current political climate, there will be people who will react to the idea of a musical about the people who tried to attack the President, that they will react to that in a way which is similar to the way in which some people reacted to the show in 1991, when they hadn’t seen it and weren’t going to see it.  They simply knew what the show was about, and they had a problem with that. That happened then and that could conceivably happen now.

I do think that we’ve had 25 years in which this show’s been performed a lot everywhere, and so people have a better idea of what the show’s ambitions are and what its intentions are.  I’ve got Google alerts set on my computer to Assassins, because I’m always curious to see how the show’s being received. The reviews tend to be really good, which is always nice, but the main thing is people writing about the show all over the country, in a variety of different kinds of publications, seem to understand what Steve and I were intending. That’s really reassuring. People get the show. They can like any show, they can like it a lot or not like it a lot. But they seem to understand what we were doing, and I assume that that will be the case this time around as well.

Sherman: In reading some of the press about the prior productions and some of the commentary, one of the ways in which the show is described is that it’s about, and I’m not quoting here, I’m paraphrasing, it’s about an America that causes people who feel they have no voice to take extreme actions. As we look at politics today, there are those who say that where we are is about people who felt they were disenfranchised from the political system, and that has brought us to the real polarization that we’re at now. Might that affect people’s perceptions?

Weidman: As Steve and I started to talk about this material 25 years ago, I realized at a certain point very early on that what drew me to the material was an attempt to explain something to myself which I had not understood since I was 17 years old when Kennedy was shot. The Kennedy assassination was my first real experience of loss and  it was devastating to me. Two of my friends and I got together and we went down to D.C. and stood on the sidewalk as the funeral cortege went by, and all the subsequent attempts to try make sense of what happened — conspiracy theories. Was it the Cubans, was it the CIA, the FBI?  It all seemed like, on some level, a waste of time to me. The fundamental question was: how could so much grief and pain be caused by one angry little man in a t-shirt with a rifle in Texas?

When Steve and I started to talk about these other personalities who had articulated a variety of wildly different motives for attacking the President, we said, ‘Well if we gather them together and look at them as a group’ – something which had not been done much, even by academics – ‘would some common grievance, some common complaint beyond what they articulated begin to emerge?  And if it did, that would be a useful thing to write about.’  That is at the heart of what the piece explores. The people who, with one or two exceptions, picked up guns did tend to be, when you look at them as a group, people who were operating on the margins,  the fringes of what we would consider a mainstream American experience.

In the last election, a lot of people who you and I would have identified as operating on the margins of a mainstream middle-class American experience, cast their votes in a particular way and elected a particular guy President. That does seem to suggest a different way of looking at the characters on stage in the show.  I’m not quite sure what the change is.  I’m not quite sure what it means in terms of how one observes their behavior and listens to what they have to say.  But we are in a different political moment, and that moment will undoubtedly have an impact on how the audience responds to the piece.

I do think it will probably make for conversations on the way out of the theater which will be different from the conversations people might have had five years ago or ten years ago.  I’m not sure if any of that’s clear. If it’s not, it’s because it’s something I’m still working through in my own head.

The 2004 Roundabout Theatre Company production of “Assassins” (photo by Joan Marcus)

Sherman: Given that the run is sold out, if there is conversation about why this show at this time, and if people choose to try to politicize it, is there something you would like them to know beyond the simplistic plot descriptions of a marketing brochure or a PR release about the show?

Weidman: I have always felt that that it’s essential with this show that it be allowed to speak for itself.  It obviously can only speak to the audience that’s in the building, but that’s true of any theater piece.  You know, somebody can describe to you what Hamlet means, but if that’s all it took to appreciate Hamlet, then you wouldn’t have to waste time listening to Shakespeare’s language for three and a half hours. I think you need to experience the piece itself, and I think that’s true of this piece. That said, Assassins is an exploration of where these vicious acts came from, in an attempt to get a better handle on how to prevent them from happening again in the future.

Sherman: Speaking to your role with the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund: is there any sense that there has been a change in people wanting to assert their own prerogative over what happens on stage? Has that changed in the past six to eight months? Does DLDF have more concerns now than in the past, or is it just consistent with the kinds of challenges that you’ve faced?

Weidman: I’m not aware of any kind of seismic shift, in terms of what people are either attempting to repress or ways in which people are self-censoring, although it would be hard to know about the second one. It may be the decisions at the high school level, it may the decisions at the amateur level, but also at the stock level, that people are making more cautious decisions in terms of what they think a school board or parent body or a subscriber base is going to be comfortable with.  It’s entirely possible that they are shying away from things which they think are likely to be controversial.  I would obviously hope not, because this seems to me a period when it’s important for controversial material to be produced and to become part of the national conversation.

When DLDF gave an award last year to Jeffrey Seller, and Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Thomas Kail, and the cast of Hamilton for the speech that was made from the stage when Mike Pence was in the audience, I wrote the citation and I handed the award to Jeffrey. The point I wanted to make most forcefully was that Mike Pence apparently had stood there and listened and that was fine, but the President-elect the next morning had not only castigated the cast for being rude, but he had instructed them to apologize.  I said if censors tell artists what they’re not allowed to say – here we have someone going beyond that, instructing artists what they’re required to say.  The latter is a genuinely frightening prospect, and I wouldn’t have thought five years ago that it was something we had to be concerned about, but I think we all feel like we’re living in a new world where anything is possible and nothing is surprising.

* There was a one-night reunion concert of the 2012 cast, held as a benefit for Roundabout.

Does anyone remember last summer’s The Taming of the Shrew in Central Park? It opened with an entirely non-Shakespearean beauty pageant and talent show, led by a buffoonish figure costumed to look very much like a billionaire presidential candidate who has owned, and exploited, beauty pageants of his own. Coming in a production in which the entire cast was women, in a play that is widely considered to be misogynist in our era, it was a broad parody, a buffoonish portrayal of a political figure who had yet to consolidate his electoral power. But there was no mistaking that this was meant to be Donald J. Trump.

Now Trump is president and, by all accounts, he is once again on stage at The Public Theater’s Delacorte Theater—or rather Julius Caesar is on stage costumed to evoke the now-president, complete with a fashionable spouse who reportedly speaks in an Eastern European accent. Because Caesar is – as we all know – killed, the layering of present day politics in America over a 400-year old play (set even centuries) earlier is being said by some to have crossed a line. Lumped together with Kathy Griffin’s less classically oriented gory political theatre in which she posed with a bloody head, strongly implied to be that of the president, The Public’s Caesar quickly became a target for such media outlets as Breitbart and Fox News, even drawing a certain Donald Jr. into Twitter commentary.

“I wonder how much of this ‘art’ is funded by taxpayers?,” tweeted the presidential scion. “Serious question, when does ‘art’ become political speech & does that change things?” A Fox News tweet, headlined “NYC Play Appears to Depict Assassination of @POTUS,” was appended.

The tweet itself, for those inclined to look at such things analytically, undermined itself with its intellectual flabbiness. There is no hard line between art and politics, no absolute moment when one becomes the other. The Public Theater is hardly a stranger to melding the two, with shows ranging from Hair in the 1960s to Hamilton in 2015. It staged David Hare’s Stuff Happens and Tony Kushner’s The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide. Always socially minded, it is at least as outspoken as ever under the leadership of Oskar Eustis, the proud and vocal product of a left-wing youth. Indeed, there has been very little at The Public during Eustis’s tenure that hasn’t been easy to examine through a political prism.

Yesterday, when pressure from Breitbart, from Fox, from the Trump family, reached a point when it may have seemed to them politically, corporately, and publicly untenable from a perceptual angle to underwrite (with many others) the production, Delta Airlines disavowed The Public, pulling their support from the theatre entirely. Bank of America followed suit, but somewhat more guardedly, only pulling their support of Caesar itself. In doing so, they gave the production – for which tickets are free – vastly more attention than it had already received. Even as theatre die-hards were focused on The Tony Awards, the story of the Trump-like Caesar exploded in the media.

In statements and tweets, Delta stuck to a singular sentiment:

No matter what your political stance may be, the graphic staging of Julius Caesar at this summer’s Free Shakespeare in the Park does not reflect Delta Air Lines’ values. Their artistic and creative direction crossed the line on the standards of good taste. We have notified them of our decision to end our sponsorship as the official airline of The Public Theater effective immediately.

Bank of America stated:

Bank of America supports arts programs worldwide, including an 11-year partnership with The Public Theater and Shakespeare in the Park. The Public Theater chose to present Julius Caesar in such a way that was intended to provoke and offend. Had this intention been made known to us, we would have decided not to sponsor it. We are withdrawing our funding for this production.

In a report for Deadline, Jeremy Gerard noted that the airline’s support fell in the $100,000 to $499,000 category of sponsorship; airline arts support typically takes the form of vouchers for flights or a bank of so much value that can be used to acquire tickets, though it’s possible that there was cash involved. Certainly, that’s the likely case with Bank of America, which like many corporations has philanthropic arms, though in recent years corporate philanthropy has become inextricably linked with marketing and public relations.

Does The Public have the absolute right to stage the works it chooses and in the manner it sees fit? Yes, it certainly does. It is an independent not-for-profit organization, and what it chooses to produce, to share with audiences, is entirely the responsibility of the staff and, by extension, the board of directors. Does it have an absolute right to sponsorship or donations from any particular organizations? No. That is the result of fundraising, of a cost benefit analysis on the part of any potential sponsor or donor. If they like the work, the mission, the initiatives, of The Public – or any arts organization – individuals, government sources, foundations and corporations may choose to support it.

But there’s no mistaking the actions of Delta and Bank of America as anything but political acts as well, cloaked in the guise of corporate sensitivity. While they have not said exactly what line has been crossed by Caesar, it doesn’t seem that it’s about blood or even gore. Shakespeare is filled with violence and its results, though typically in service of a larger message. But with their decision to publicly pull funding, and even sever a long relationship in the case of Delta, these corporations are saying to those who take offense at an obviously fictional portrayal of Julius Caesar as a Trump stand-in that they don’t countenance such things, that they are shocked, shocked to find politics on stage at The Public, even a mock assassination, and don’t want to be a part of it.

As a number of sources online have noted, Delta’s outrage seems rather selective. In 2012, The Guthrie Theatre and The Acting Company staged and toured a Julius Caesar with a slim black actor being “murdered” in the Senate as Caesar, midway through the Obama presidency. Some critics remarked on the parallel to the then-president, but Delta’s sponsorship there was unruffled. Why was the death of one presidential doppelganger OK while another crossed a line? I suspect the corporate PR department of Delta is unlikely to answer that question.

By pulling their support, have Delta and Bank of America censored Caesar and The Public? Are any First Amendment rights being trampled? On an absolute level – no. Media commentary cuts both ways. The participation of a member of the governing family, however, which has blended the personal and the political in countless ways, is the kernel of official censorship. Yet the show goes on (although it ends its brief run this week) and, so far as any reports have indicated, neither company attempted to get the production altered to make it more palatable to their tastes. Indeed, it’s unclear whether either company has had any representatives see Caesar in the park, or have made their decision, cloaked behind corporate statement, based solely on the media coverage.

Will there be a backlash to the actions of these companies? Will those who support The Public and free expression in the arts now make their feelings known to these companies, and others that might jump on the bandwagon? It’s very likely. It’s also possible that those who support these decisions will affirm it as well. People will refuse to fly Delta and keep their money with Bank of America, even as others will opt in to the carrier and the financial institution. Beyond merely expressing support and dissent, the era of dueling boycotts is probably upon us. Delta and B of A may find they have become the preferred outlets for the right and even the alt-right. By making this choice in their support, and withholding of support, of the arts, they have become politically-tinged corporations, aligned with a certain point of view.

The true danger here is that supporters of the arts will begin to interrogate possible beneficiaries of their intent for each and every undertaking, keeping funds from organizations and initiatives that might be aligning themselves politically by making any comment, right or left, Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative. After all B of A judges that the production set out to “provoke and offend.” No doubt Eustis wanted to provoke, that’s his stock in trade. But offend? That’s less clear.

Will the fear of media backlash force organizations to choose between commenting in any manner through their work on what the prevailing issues of the day may be and gaining public or private funds to do their work? Could this be the harbinger of a forced conservatism in the arts, because so many companies cannot survive without the infusion of donated funds?

It’s worth noting that the National Endowment for the Arts felt it necessary to make clear it had not supported The Public’s Julius Caesar:

The National Endowment for the Arts makes grants to nonprofit organizations for specific projects. In the past, the New York Shakespeare Festival has received project-based NEA grants to support performances of Shakespeare in the Park by the Public Theater. However, no NEA funds have been awarded to support this summer’s Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar and there are no NEA funds supporting the New York State Council on the Arts’ grant to Public Theater or its performances.

The issue evolving with Caesar in Central Park is the canary in the coal mine, and an emblem of the potentially Faustian bargain one strikes when asking for major donations. Fortunately, The Public can sustain itself even with hundreds of thousands of dollars of lost support, but they are among the largest of theatres in the country. Indeed, they may take a page from the political playbook and raise new funds off of this action against their work. But smaller companies might not be so well positioned, resulting in a flight to safer work to avoid what has just happened. Strangely enough, it is the commercial theatre, which relies solely on ticket sales for revenue, which may be in the safer position to make political statements, as was the case with the cast of Hamilton sharing thoughts with Mike Pence. Their contract is directly with the audience, and if the work finds partisans for partisan messages, then the shows will run.

Vastly more people will hear about the Trumpian Caesar than can possibly see it. They will form opinions based on media accounts, and they can and will debate whether it’s right or wrong, proper or improper, wise or foolish to stage a show in which a presidential stand-in in killed, even in the context of a classic work, taught in many high schools, where few will be surprised by the emperor’s untimely end. But the actions of Delta and B of A, especially at a time when the administration in Washington has expressed a desire to shutter both the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, risk being the first steps in a new cultural McCarthyism. That serves no one who believes in free expression, whatever they have to say, no matter how ugly or difficult what they have to express may be to hear, no matter what their politics may be. Everyone should be concerned.

UPDATE: June 12, 2017, 5:30 pm: The Public Theater released a statement this afternoon in response to the controversy surrounding Julius Caesar. It reads, in full:

We stand completely behind our production of Julius Caesar. We recognize that our interpretation of the play has provoked heated discussion; audiences, sponsors and supporters have expressed varying viewpoints and opinions. Such discussion is exactly the goal of our civically-engaged theater; this discourse is the basis of a healthy democracy. Our production of Julius Caesar in no way advocates violence towards anyone. Shakespeare’s play, and our production, make the opposite point: those who attempt to defend democracy by undemocratic means pay a terrible price and destroy the very thing they are fighting to save. For over 400 years, Shakespeare’s play has told this story and we are proud to be telling it again in Central Park.

UPDATE: June 12, 2017, 7:00 pm: The Dramatists Legal Defense Fund has issued a statement of support for The Public Theater. It reads, in part:

Good taste is a matter of opinion and an “intention to provoke” may be an integral part of a play’s mission. The works of Shakespeare are replete with representations of regicide, and potentially objectionable and graphic violence of all sorts, but Delta doesn’t appear to have had a problem with the “values” or “taste” of such depictions before. The fact is that, for hundreds of years, this particular play has been understood to be a critique of political violence, not an endorsement of it.  As director Oskar Eustis explained, “Julius Caesar can be read as a warning parable to those who try to fight for democracy by undemocratic means. To fight the tyrant does not mean imitating him.” So those criticizing this production for endorsing violence against President Trump seem to be willfully misinterpreting it, for their own political ends.

UPDATE: June 13, 2017, 8 am: From Oskar Eustis’s remarks before the opening night performance of Julius Caesar on June 12:

https://www.facebook.com/publictheater/videos/10155353604201241/

Julius Caesar warns about what happens when you try to preserve democracy by non-democratic means and again, spoiler alert, it doesn’t end up too good. But at the same time, one of the dangers that is unleashed by that is the danger of a large crowd of people manipulated by their emotions, taken over by leaders who urge them to do things that not only are against their interest, but destroy the very institutions that are there to serve and protect them. This warning is a warning that is in this show and we’re really happy to be playing that story for you tonight.

What I also want to say, and in this I speak, I am proud to say for The Public Theater past, present and I hope future, for the staff of The Public Theater, for the crews at The Public Theater, for the board of directors of the Public Theater, for Patrick Willingham and myself, when I say that we are here to uphold the Public’s mission, and The Public’s mission is to say that the culture belongs to everybody, needs to belong to everybody, to say that art has something to say about the great civic issues of our time and to say that like drama, democracy depends on the conflict of different points of view. Nobody owns the truth. We all own the culture.