Hearing the word ‘vagina’ aloud before 1996, outside of a medical setting, was a bit startling. Encountering it in an article was likely to cause many readers more than a bit of surprise. Seeing it in newspaper ads, on posters or even on the sides of buses was seen as downright shocking. I remember it well.

Thanks to Eve Ensler’s groundbreaking The Vagina Monologues in 1996, the perfectly accurate, non-slang term for women’s genitalia became part of widely accepted conversation. The play had a long Off-Broadway run, has had countless professional and amateur productions around the world, and through Ensler’s V-Day initiative, The Vagina Monologues has generated more than $100 million for women’s charities internationally. Oh, and the word vagina has been demystified to the extent that you can hear it mentioned fairly regularly on network television comedies, where it clearly comports with network and FCC standards and practices.

But if you happen to be at the city council meeting this coming Tuesday afternoon in Ocala, Florida, you might think the word vagina, and monologues about vaginas, are something to be ashamed of and indeed silenced, attitudes from the pre-1996 era, if not even earlier. That’s because a local businessman named Brad Dinkins has asked and been scheduled to appear before the council to discuss, in the words of his request, “The respective leases between the city (landlord) and The Reilly Arts Center and the Marion Theatre (tenants) … and possible ‘use’ violations per the lease with the tenants. The issues at hand are in regards to questionable performances at each location, scheduled during March, 2016.”

Mr. Dinkins goes on to cite the performances that he believes breach the lease by being “questionable,” specifically a single performance of The Vagina Monologues at the city-owned Reilly Arts Center, which is leased to and operated by the Ocala Symphony, and The Marion at Midnight, a burlesque performance at another city owned and subleased venue, The Marion Theatre. In his request to speak at the council, Mr. Dinkins has lined up a whole team, which he describes as follows in his correspondence with the Ocala city manager:

“Besides myself there will be other local citizen participants, some of which will include Father Don Curran, Rector of Christ The King Church; Mike Sullivan, former PGA tournament golf champion, and Dennis Camp, attorney, who may or may not speak.”

Clearly Mr. Dinkins’s attempt is at least to have the city remedy what he sees as a breach by canceling the performances. In his request to be heard at the city council, he quoted from the lease agreements for the venues, which he asserts are virtually identical.

6.7.   The following guidelines shall govern the performance and other entertainment that may be shown at, or viewed by the public on, the Premises:

6.7.1 Tenant shall not use the Building (by, without limitation, presenting performances or other entertainment), or permit others to use the Building, in a manner that City, in its reasonable discretion, deems inappropriate or objectionable.

6.7.2  Prior to claiming a default under paragraph 6.7.1, City shall notify tenant that it claims a performance, or other entertainment, or use is inappropriate or objectionable, and, if Tenant no longer presents such performance or other entertainment, or permits such use, no default shall have occurred.

If they don’t immediately agree to fold their tents over this action and cancel these events which Mr. Dinkins finds “questionable,” his next step may well be to assert that the Symphony is acting as a poor steward of the Reilly, and that Carmen and Cesar Soto, who have a five-year lease of the Marion through November 2017, are also remiss, and seek to have both operators’ contracts revoked. It’s hard to say. After all, what does a former golf champion have to do with any of this? Who knows what Mr. Dinkins will want next beyond silencing these particular shows?

Based solely on the above, you might be tempted to brand Ocala a hick backwater town that is simply out of step with the times. But in point of fact, this year’s presentation of The Vagina Monologues would be the show’s fourth run in the city, albeit the first at the city-owned O’Reilly. But clearly its prior presentations by the Insomniac Theatre Company at their own venue in 2012 and 2013 and at the The Brick City Center for the Arts in 2014 apparently didn’t violate any community standards of decency. In fact they sold out, raising money for the Ocala Domestic Violence/Sexual Assault Center and the V-Day charity. This year’s presentation is raising funds for the PACE Center for Girls.

As for the burlesque performances, they’ve been taking place at the Marion about three times a year for the past couple of years. Burlesque, of course, has become once again popular and even hip; it’s meant to evoke the tawdry era of burlesque’s heyday, but with a healthy dose of empowerment in performances that are welcoming to all body types and races, and beyond the binary definition of gender. The performances in Ocala are sponsored by, among others, a hair salon, an architecture firm, and a fitness club.

Let’s face it: what on earth does “questionable” mean? How about “inappropriate” or “objectionable”? If no one can agree on exactly what constitutes obscenity, these words are so vague as to very likely be unenforceable. After all, I find a number of the current presidential candidates questionable, but that doesn’t actually say anything about my perception of them. I also find Brussels sprouts objectionable, and the notion that  are appealing to be questionable, but so what? Does that mean if I were an Ocala resident I could attempt to prevent them from ever being served in these venues?

*   *   *

How did this incipient censorship effort reach up to New York? That’s because Chad Taylor, who produced Ocala’s prior productions of The Vagina Monologues and is directing it this year at the Reilly, posted his concerns on Facebook and it spread quickly. In his plea for support (and signatures on a petition), he wrote:

On March 1st at 4 PM at City Hall, this “offended” individual will be speaking before the City Council to get us shut down. He is bringing some “friends” who share his point of view. I don’t ask a lot of out you guys, but I cannot stand by and watch two female-centric shows that empower women be stopped because someone out there has an issue with the word Vagina. We must be heard. For every person who speaks against these shows we must have three voices for them. Let’s pack the place with people who aren’t afraid of giving women a voice OR adults a choice in how they want to be entertained.

It’s worth noting that a new member of the city council, elected in 2015, is Matthew Wardell, the music director and conductor of the Ocala Symphony, which as operator of The Reilly Arts Center is the producer of The Vagina Monologues. While one might make the assumption that he has a conflict of interest in this case, Wardell says he consulted with the city attorney and given that all proceeds are going to charity, he’s in the clear. “I can’t recuse myself,” said Wardell, “because there’s no financial interest.”

Wardell says that he believes the people speaking against The Vagina Monologues haven’t actually read or seen the play. “I don’t think they understand the impact of the piece on women – and men,” said Wardell. “Great art stretches us and and brings us back to a place where we can talk about it together.”

“I just don’t agree that the play is in any way immoral,” he said. “There’s nothing here that’s against the law,” he added, while saying that he didn’t believe anything was going to change the opponents’ minds.

“I err on the side of the First Amendment,” Wardell explained. “When I took the oath to serve on city council, I swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States and you just don’t skip over the First Amendment.”

Wardell cited an event in the past year where the city council agreed to close down an entire city block for a movie promotion: a 50 Shades of Grey “Naught Or Nice” Party. He noted a similar sanctioned event for Magic Mike XXL.

Explaining that he’s not allowed to discuss business with fellow council members outside of actual council meetings, Wardell said that in light of other approved events, “I’d find it objectionable if my fellow council members had any objections.”

*   *   *

In his request to speak, Mr. Dinkins outlines the “meeting intent hoped for”

Following the interaction among the Council members and local citizens, it is hoped the City Council, acting as Landlord of both locations, will take action to investigate and determine if the upcoming events violate the “use” guidelines per their respective leases.

I can only hope that the city council of Ocala will have the good sense to let Mr. Dinkins and his team be heard in accordance with their standard practices regarding time allotted, scheduling and so on, even though Mr. Dinkins has asked to be scheduled early in the meeting for no apparent reason whatsoever other than his own preference. I hope the council insures that the conversation is civil, respectful and entirely fact-based, including recognition of the separation of church and state in all matters. I also hope that equal time will be given to any Ocala citizens who appear and wish to make the case on behalf of these performances, their producers and the venues in which they take place. I hope lots of people appear to speak on behalf of The Vagina Monologues and The Marion at Midnight.

Then I hope the city council will thank all parties and simply go on with the essential business of running Ocala without voicing any opinion one way or another or calling for any vote. They will have already spent far too much time on a retrograde, reactionary effort to deny members of the community access to legal and creative pursuits that they’ve previously enjoyed. I hope the council won’t use some wholly subjective, undefinable words in two lease agreements to dignify a call for censorship. Because that’s what I call, at the very least, questionable indeed.

Update, February 25, 2016, 9 am: Mekaella Lord, also known as Lady Mekaella DeMure, the producer of The Marion at Midnight and other Ocala burlesque events, has posted a Facebook notice of a peaceful protest against the censorious effort that will be brought before the Ocala city council on Tuesday. It reads in part:

This man & his co-speakers will present their case before council that day on our “unwholesome,” “unchristian” and “inappropriate” productions. Myself & others will also be allowed to comment and speak in our defense after his public comment. If you would like to attend, please do. Please keep it civil and polite as we represent an elegant & professional art, let’s keep it that way!
This man seeks to take away something from Ocala. The right to do any art uncensored and to have a voice as women, as artists. This single person is trying to redefine what art is and isn’t and what should or shouldn’t be allowed due to his personal preferences.
Will you allow that?
We are defending a LOT here. Not only our own production & right to work as performers in our own venues that we rented and hometown for our audience, but so much more.
All provocative art is objectionable to someone.
The fact that a person who has not even seen the show has decided to object does not make the show objectionable.
A free society is based on the principle that each and every individual has the right to decide what art or entertainment he or she wants — or does not want — to create & share. We are defending the right for females & artists to have a voice, to exercise their voice/art.

Update, February 25, 6:30 pm: Playwright Eve Ensler sent the following message to the organizers of the Ocala production of The Vagina Monologues, through her V-Day organization, via the Arts Integrity Initiative:

I stand with all of you who are standing for freedom, for theater, for women, for liberation.

The vagina is out of the bottle and she won’t be put back in!

In deepest solidarity,

Eve

This post will be updated as events warrant.

Howard Sherman is the director of the Arts Integrity Initiative. This post originally appeared on ArtsIntegrity.org.

If you’re not familiar with Julia Pascal’s 2003 play Crossing Jerusalem, that’s because the play has only had two productions in the U.S. Or perhaps it is more correct to say that it has had one and a half productions, because the play’s second U.S. run, by J-CAT, the Cultural Arts Theatre at the Michael-Ann Russell Jewish Community Center in North Miami, a community theatre, was shut down by the JCC after giving only half of its scheduled performances.

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The play takes place during the intifada of 2002, and focuses on an Israeli family that chooses to take the risk of crossing Jerusalem to dine at a favorite restaurant to mark a family birthday celebration, a restaurant owned by a Christian Arab (in the script’s description) and staffed by two Palestinian Muslims. The characters represent a microcosm of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as interpreted by Pascal. In 2015, on the occasion of the play’s first London revival, Pascal spoke about her intention in writing Crossing Jerusalem with The Jewish Chronicle Online.

“I think that it’s the playwright’s duty not to take a simplistic line,” says Pascal. “I’ve been examining what plays have been done on Israel [in Britain] over the past 50 years, and almost all of them have been from an anti-Zionist point of view. So, because of who is allowed to write about Israel and who is commissioned to write about Israel, you only get the simplistic Israel-bad/Palestinian-good point of view through the plays we have seen. I fee it’s my duty to show all sides. Whether that’s comfortable or not is another question. It’s the kaleidoscope that’s important.”

Speaking just this week from London, after the J-CAT production was canceled, Pascal said, “Jews told me, ‘You’re very tough on us.’ Palestinians said, ‘You portray us all as terrorists.’ People tend to bring their own attitudes to the play.”

“I see right and wrong on both sides,” Pascal explained, “and I get it in the neck from both sides.”

As to her Jewish perspective, Pascal says, “I think it’s painful to be a Jew, but we have to deal with it. The way the state of Israel was built up was painful and in the long continuum of history, it’s no one group’s fault.” However, she described the media conversation around Israel in England by saying, “The British press is very anti-Israel. That is the default position.”

Ultimately, Pascal says, she wrote Crossing Jerusalem because, “There was no play in England that represented Israel in all its complexity.”

*   *   *

J-CAT’s production of Julia Pascal’s Crossing Jerusalem

It seems clear that J-CAT and the JCC were fully aware of the potential for controversy in producing the play. Program statements from Paul Kruss and Gary Bomzer, the Chairman of the Board and the President and CEO respectively, began as follows:

“Throughout our history of community theatre, it is not unusual to periodically present a play whose content may be viewed as controversial and be a catalyst to stimulate audience discussion after the performance. For us at the MAR-JCC, it shows an openness to present theatre which may not reflect the views or opinions of the MAR-JCC’s lay leadership and staff, but has the potential to serve as an educational opportunity to delve into social, and even political questions and issues that the production raises. Crossing Jerusalem certainly falls into this category…from family dynamics to the Arab-Israeli conflict, Crossing Jerusalem touches upon subject matters that are heavily discussed in Israel’s open and democratic society. And for you, the audience, we invite you to participate in some of this discussion as part of a talk-back at the end of the show.”

The program also carried a statement from Michael Andron, the head of J-CAT, an employee of the JCC and director of Crossing Jerusalem:

“This is a challenging play. Its setting is in one of the most complex places on the planet. If it were easy to ‘show’ all the history and the political problems clearly, perhaps it might be easier to find solutions to them. Clearly, it is not so easy.”

Later in his program note, Andron continued:

Those in our audience who might care to argue that one actor’s statement, or another’s line or stated idea, is inaccurate (or, as in Politifact’s lingo: true, mostly true, mostly false, pants on fire), or that some clear insight or additional point of view is lacking in the play, would miss the point somewhat, I think. We will try, after the show, to add a layer of factual education on some of those issues.

The company’s website noted that the show contained “mature themes and language.”

*   *   *

With all of that understanding up front, how did it lead Bomzer, the JCC president and CEO, to terminate the run after only four of nine performances had been given? On February 16, he wrote to the JCC community:

We have heard the voices of many in our community advocating passionately to put an end to the show because they feel the message is inappropriate and troublesome. Please know that our intentions in presenting Crossing Jerusalem are good ones, and yet we realize that we have unintentionally caused pain to many in the audience; for this we are sincerely sorry.

The vision of the JCAT leadership was to engage meaningfully with each other on Israel, across lines of difference and to build a culture in which complicated questions are ones we can openly discuss. While we were aware that the play deals with some very controversial issues, the last thing we wanted was to alienate members of our community or damage relationships…

We must together devise constructive and participatory ways forward to get at our differences, even when they remain dramatic. Meanwhile, our leadership has made the decision to suspend performances of Crossing Jerusalem in order to avoid any further pain and to engage in rigorous, vibrant conversation that advances our community.

From being aware of potential controversy in his program note to apologizing for that controversy and accepting and advancing the idea that the play was causing pain, Bomzer’s shift in position and tone is significant. Instead of publicly defending the play, JCAT and his own role in seeing Crossing Jerusalem produced, with the intention of starting valuable discussion, Bomzer quickly disowns it, even though his letter acknowledges receiving many communications from people both in support of and against the play.

Michael Andron issued a statement via his Facebook page regarding the cancelation. It reads, in its entirety:

I want to share two thoughts about the cancellation of JCAT’s “Crossing Jerusalem”. (If you haven’t followed it, search it). Ten months ago, JCC CEO Gary Bomzer and I agreed that we would produce Crossing Jerusalem at JCAT as both a gripping drama and as an educational learning opportunity about the Middle East. We determined this should include my playbill director’s notes to the audience, a few brief remarks before the show about the complexity of a play set in a complicated part of the world, Israel, one that we both love and support, and an opportunity for a talkback with the cast and creative team after the show. I proceeded to direct an incredible cast and honored all the plans Gary and I agreed to.

As far as the cancellation is concerned: Personally, of course I would have preferred to continue the show to the end and let the audience decide for themselves. I directed this powerful play to portray all sides and stimulate discussion, education and insights. But insights shouldn’t incite (as I wrote in the playbill) and I feel horrible that they did. I’m saddened for the actors and crew who worked so hard on this production, as well as for those in the community who didn’t get to see the piece and decide for themselves what they felt and thought about it. This my opinion and I am not speaking on behalf of the JCC. But JCAT is part of the JCC and I understand and accept the difficult decision that the organization had to make.

When contacted, Andron declined to answer any questions regarding the cancelation beyond his Facebook post.

*   *   *

I wrote to Gary Bomzer on Sunday asking for an interview, saying that I planned to write about this situation within two days, and he responded just a few hours later, writing, “Thank you for your email. Please send me your questions and I will respond as best as I can.” I sent him eight questions at 8 pm Sunday evening and as I write on Tuesday morning, I have not heard from him again, even having re-sent the questions at 8 am this morning.

Some of my unanswered questions were:

4. The Miami Herald article cites Avi Goldwasser and Charles Jacobs expressing opposition to the play, with Goldwasser having participated in at least some of the post-performance discussions. How did Mr. Goldwasser and Mr. Jacobs, who as I understand it are based in New York and Boston respectively, come to be involved in speaking at and in connection with your production from the moment it began performances? Did members of your community reach out to them and include them in the dialogue before performances had even begun?

5. Corollary to number 4, I have a copy of a document prepared by Mr. Goldwasser which seems to be framed as a rebuttal to sentiments and statements expressed by the characters. Was this document inserted into programs or otherwise distributed at performances? If so, who made the decision to make this material available? Was any other historical or dramaturgical material available in the program or as handouts?

8. Are you concerned that by canceling the remaining performances in this play’s run, you may face situations in the future where members of the JCC community seek to have other cultural offerings canceled because they differ from their own personal viewpoints? Will this potentially limit the range of the JCC’s cultural offerings in the future?

In the various articles that have come out thus far about the cancelation of Crossing Jerusalem at the JCC, all reporters seem to be relying, as I am, on the same documents, statements and Facebook posts. Very little is being spoken aloud. The Miami Herald’s feature on the cancelation contextualized it by citing other conflicts over politics and culture in South Florida, notably over Cuban artists, but that article also mentions the controversy over The Death of Klinghoffer at the Metropolitan Opera in 2014.

In regards to the portrayal of Israelis, Palestinians and Jews (since not all Jews are Israeli), the Klinghoffer example is certainly pertinent. I would add the controversy over the New York Theatre Workshop’s planned production of My Name Is Rachel Corrie in 2006, which was canceled and ultimately produced else where in New York as a commercial production, and the clashes between Ari Roth during his tenure at Theater J, the resident company at the Washington DC JCC, over the content of his artistic choices which included a range of viewpoints about the social and political situation in Israel, which ultimately led to Roth forming his own company Mosaic Theater. A production of Rachel Corrie was also canceled in 2009 at the Mosaic Theatre Company in Plantation FL (no connection to Ari Roth’s new company), a professional company in residence at the American Heritage School prior to production.

Crossing Jerusalem at the MAR-JCC once again raises the question of whether complex, messy portrayals of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the human stories within it can successfully be produced within the context of Jewish Community Centers, or for that matter by artistic institutions in areas with significant Jewish populations. It seems quite possible that based on past examples, JCCs will shy away from this kind of work in the future, lest they be subject to the kind of criticism that has been levied upon the organizations cited above.

Will there be only one kind of approved narrative in the US for exploring this seemingly intractable situation through art? As someone with significant religious training in my youth, I was taught that Judaism is a non-dogmatic religion that values discussion and debate. I do not see those principles being sustained in the censorious actions of the MAR-JCC; I am one of the signatories to a letter developed by the National Coalition Against Censorship urging the JCC to reinstate the canceled performances.

Having read Crossing Jerusalem, I can see why people with strong viewpoints might object to some of the statements and opinions within it, though in my reading every statement is counterweighted by another conflicting one. I have certainly seen plays with which I do not agree, some of which even made me quite angry, but I support their right to be heard and seen by those who choose to attend them. I fear an ever-increasing artistic orthodoxy when it comes to portrayals of Israel in the U.S.

The first step in avoiding a singular viewpoint is for Crossing Jerusalem to be seen and heard once again at the North Miami JCC. If people choose not to attend? That’s OK. If there are protests? Also fine. Based upon my scanning of Facebook commentary, there are plenty of people in North Miami who want to see Crossing Jerusalem, perhaps even more now that it has become a cause celebre. They should have the opportunity to do so, or not, according to their own artistic, political and religious compass. If the play was sufficiently worthy for the JCC to produce in the first place, knowing its potential for controversy, Bomzer shouldn’t be going back on his word now, and should let audiences decide for themselves.

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

Respectful debate on all aspects of this column are welcomed, however comments are moderated.

It’s a reflex action for those in the arts to recoil and get angry when creative work is described as “intolerable blasphemies.” But it’s probably worth giving a small shout out to the America Needs Fatima organization as they protest the production of Colm Toíbín’s The Testament of Mary at the New Repertory Theater in Watertown MA. Why? Because amidst repeated variations of “blasphemy,” “blasphemous” and “blasphemies” in their rhetoric, the group is careful to call for “respectful but firm protest” at one point, and asks that people speak out against the show “legally and respectfully.” I hope that those who hear and choose to answer their call heed those cautions.

America Needs Fatima (ANF) has taken issue with The Testament of Mary before, both in its Broadway production and in a subsequent San Francisco run. They claim that their efforts helped cause the Broadway show to end early and that they prompted many to “turn away” from the San Francisco engagement. Of course, there’s no proof that either is the case. As someone who saw and admired Fiona Shaw’s Broadway performance as well as the play, I recall that it opened during the usual spring crush of new Broadway shows and, without sufficient critical praise, it was indeed closed quickly. But anyone who knows Scott Rudin, the show’s lead producer, knows full well that he wouldn’t back down from protests and his decision was entirely pragmatic and fiscal.

Fiona Shaw in The Testament of Mary on Broadway

For those who don’t know The Testament of Mary, or Toíbín’s book from which it’s drawn, it is a one-person play about Jesus’s mother, who recounts her son’s experiences both of faith and tragedy. It does show the character questioning the motives of some of Jesus’s associates and reacting with great distress to his crucifixion. While it is certainly does not comport with any of the gospels, it is a serious-minded imagining of what might have been her thoughts, rather than a satire or parody of religious issues, like the film Dogma or the musical The Book of Mormon.

ANF managed to get their newest protest noticed by The Boston Globe, which published an account of their efforts on January 21. The article, by Don Aucoin, spoke with Jim Petosa, artistic director of New Repertory and director of the production. It’s somewhat curious that ANF did not make their organization’s director available to Aucoin for comment, which seems pretty basic protest protocol when dealing with the largest newspaper in the region. As the Globe reported, Petosa and the company stand by the decision to produce Testament of Mary, and so the article simply presented the views of both sides as they were available.

However, there was the potential for the article to engender further protest, by bringing ANF’s view of the show to a larger audience. So I asked Petosa about the response since it appeared.

“There’s been more of a positive response from people,” he said. “I’ve gotten e-mails that say things like ‘I’ve been a devout Catholic all my life and I’m glad you’re doing this.’ We’ve gotten more people who are sympathetic than opposed.”

Petosa said that New Repertory’s staff has created a map to show where expressions of support and opposition were coming from, and it shows that there’s local support, with opposition coming from outside the greater Boston area. He observed, “Most of the negative comments are coming from people who couldn’t possibly get to New Repertory.”

I asked Petosa whether he had heard of any plans for in-person protests at the theatre and he said no, but commented, “They’d be more than welcome and we’d invite them in to see the production.”

Petosa chalks the communications against The Testament of Mary up to “a misunderstanding about the intent of the writer and the intent of the theatre,” saying that the goal of the company’s work for audiences was “to enhance their lives, not diminish their convictions.” He also ascribed the rhetoric against the show to being reflective of “the polarity of political discourse,” that it was “born out of orthodoxy.”

Petosa did acknowledge a recurring theme in some communications he’d received opposing the show, saying, “In a couple of letters, there were some intolerant but not surprising statement about Colm Toíbín’s sexuality, but that’s not pervasive. It is people equating blasphemy with homosexuality, revealing their own homophobia.” In one of its online documents about the play, during its Broadway premiere, ANF made a point of noting that it was “being performed and directed by open lesbians.”

The first previews of The Testament of Mary this weekend will overlap with the final performances of New Rep’s production of David Hare’s Via Dolorosa, and Petosa said he wished the two plays could have run concurrently for much longer. “They are thematically connected,” he noted. “They are pilgrimage plays, both journeys to Calvary. I’m eager to see how the dialogue around Dolorosa is affected by Mary, and the other way around.”

ANF’s website asks people to sign a petition urging New Rep to cancel their production, as is their right. But by using their own petition engine, rather than a third party site, it’s impossible to know whether the 30,000 signatures the group claims are genuine, repetitious, or merely coded. In any event, since I first looked at the page several days ago, the signature count is virtually unchanged, so there doesn’t appear to be a groundswell of support for their position.

So ANF will continue to express their opinions against The Testament of Mary, consistent with their past efforts against Taylor Has Two Mommies, Jerry Springer: The Opera and the artist Andres Serrano, among others. As long as they keep their efforts legal and respectful, even an activist with opposing views wouldn’t suggest that they aren’t entirely within their rights, because they are. But perhaps people in the arts community, and in theatre audiences, will drop a note to Jim Petosa and the staff and board of New Repertory, and congratulate them for being unbowed by ANF, and wishing them the best with their newest production.

Thanks to Jacqueline Lawton for her research assistance with this post.

Howard Sherman is director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School College of Performing Arts.

If you are a musical theatre fan in general, and a Rent fan in particular, and you’re going to church in or around Tullahoma, Tennessee this Sunday, there’s a chance you may not like a bit of what you hear said from the pulpit. That’s because there’s an e-mail circulating among the area’s religious leaders alerting them about Jonathan Larson’s Rent, the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical about young lives in the East Village of New York City a few decades ago. Some of the clergy may want to talk about it.

A Tullahoma production of Rent is scheduled to open next Friday, presented by the community company PACT at the South Jackson Civic Center. It’s set for six performances over two weekends and it’s the third time that PACT, which is primarily focused on arts activities for youth (the acronym stands for “Performing Arts for Children and Teens”) has done a show which reaches beyond their usual age group, in this case working primarily with performers aged 18 to 20, but with one as old as 55. Only two performers are under 18, and the parents of both have signed permission slips approving of their children’s participation; those under 18 even needed permission slips just to audition. No one under 18 will be admitted to performances without a parent or guardian present.

Since preparations for the production got underway several months ago, those leading the company say that there have been some minor skirmishes around the show. During the winter, a member of the community circulated an e-mail speaking out against Rent and the leadership and artists of PACT in general, but I’m told it didn’t get much traction. Later, after the show was cast, the actor who was originally to play the character of Angel had to withdraw due to his father’s ire over his participation in the show. But of late, everything was proceeding smoothly for the show, including the recent decision to welcome the company of another Tennessee Rent production, which just closed last weekend in Johnson City, into the Tullahoma ensemble.

*   *   *

However, a few days ago, an e-mail was circulated to church leaders throughout the Tullahoma area. In a communication to his congregation, Pastor L. Wayne Wester of Highland Baptist Church quoted from that original e-mail, identifying the author as “a fellow Tullahoma Pastor”:

I want you to be aware that on July 10, 11, 12 and 17, 18, 19 a theater group in Tullahoma will be performing RENT. You can do your own research on RENT or visit the PACT site on Facebook for a brief description. In short it is a musical about a group of college age students who choose to live a “bohemian” (sexually, morally, and legally permissive lifestyle in New York City. The cast of characters include a stripper, transgender individuals, drug addicts, and many who are battling HIV due to their “bohemian” lifestyle. Several scenes take place in a strip club. While I have no objection to a theater group selecting and performing any musical or play they choose, this is our own (Tullahoma) theater group! What is worse is that this play was selected for PACT. The acronym stands for “Performing Arts for Children and Teens.”

Pastor Wayne, as he signed his communication, added his own thoughts after the quote:

Really? Do you agree with me and many of my fellow Pastors and concerned parents that this is inappropriate for such a group? If you do…speak up about it! If you don’t…shame on you. Jesus should be our moral compass, especially for our young people to see from adults. I would like to know your opinion…one way or the other. Really!

At the top of the message, in red ink, was the phrase “Bus Ministry Possibility – vote on Sunday in PM Service.”

Dr. Wester did not name the pastor who wrote the original e-mail. However, I spoke with Zac Collins, the stage manager for Rent, whose uncle and grandfather are also pastors in the community, who told him that they had both received the original e-mail and said that other pastor friends had received it as well. They told him that it was sent by Jim Zidan, Senior Pastor of Christ Community Church in Tullahoma.

Coleen Saunders and Melissa Shuran, the President and Vice-President, respectively, of the South Jackson Civic Center and co-founders of PACT, told me that while Pastor Zidan had twice visited the civic center seeking e-mail addresses for the leadership, no e-mail or letter expressing concern about or opposition to Rent had ever been received.

*   *   *

I wrote to Pastor Zidan with questions about Rent and his e-mail. Here’s part of his response, verbatim:

I don’t believe or community has an interest or appetite for such fare; particularly for our children.  Our previous PACT productions have been Oliver, Big River, Pinnochio, and Peter Pan.  This is a pretty big deviation from those family friendly productions.  I have attempted to speak to all the leaders of our theater community, including the current leaders of PACT. I even offered to speak on our local community television show to express my concerns and inform the public.  No one seems interested in having this discussion so I have decided to sit and wait.  I may write an editorial for our local paper, but I think I well wait until after the production.  It is not my desire to sabotage this performance.  I think it will fail financially.  We’re it not for PACT money and the accompanying grants (for children’s theater) I don’t think they could even have produced this show.  Ultimately it is up to our parents and local theater leadership; and apparently they are all asleep at the wheel.

I had asked Pastor Zidan whether he had ever seen or read Rent, but nothing in his response to me answered that question. He also did not respond to my question about what he hoped to achieve with his e-mail to his colleagues, or directly acknowledge it.

*   *   *

It’s impossible to know how pastors in the Tullahoma area are responding to Pastor Zidan’s message. Some may choose to speak against the show at services this weekend (or vote about it, in Pastor Wester’s case); others may wish to speak in support of Rent. It’s impossible to know whether any of them are personally familiar with the show itself. Consequently, in the hope that this essay might find its way into the Tullahoma community and beyond, a few words in support of Rent, PACT and the cast and team behind the upcoming production – or any production, for that matter – seem warranted.

Rent is a modern classic  Rent premiered in New York in 1996 at the Off-Broadway New York Theatre Workshop, where it was such an immediate sensation that it moved to Broadway only a few months later, where it won, as mentioned above, the Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize, the highest honors in American theatre. It’s notable that the Pulitzer is rarely awarded to musicals; it occurs roughly once every 10 years. Rent ran for over 11 years on Broadway, playing to an audience of over 5 million people, and untold millions more on tour and in regional, amateur and school productions since then. It was made into a film and its final Broadway performance was recorded widely sold on DVD.

Rent is universal  The reason Rent is still being performed almost 20 years after it was first produced is because while it is set very specifically at a moment in time and a particular place among a small group of young people in New York, it speaks to people from around the world. Every community is a mix of different races, ethnicities, sexualities, religions, strengths and weaknesses; Rent’s success is because so many people can find themselves or their own families and friends on that stage. It can simply be embraced for what it is, exuberant and moving entertainment, or it can be used as a point of departure for conversations about ambition, family, illness, acceptance and loss.

Rent was born amidst tragedy  Rent was the breakthrough work by the talented young writer Jonathan Larson – who didn’t live to see its success. Jonathan died suddenly of a rare heart condition just after seeing the final dress rehearsal of the show. He never saw it with an audience and was never able to experience its success. Rent was Jonathan’s gift to a world he left prematurely, at the age of 35.

Rent is about love  Rent is the story of people who gather together to create, to share and to form their own family born of love and care for one another. Musician or stripper, performance artist or filmmaker, they travel the journey that so many young people travel, as they find themselves and their place in the world. Some are lost along the way, and we never know what happens to others after the play stops, but it is a show about seeing people lovingly for who they are, not judging them for their choices or even failings.

Creative artists deserve the opportunity to grow  While PACT was begun with a focus on those under 18, it’s not unusual to find artists wanting to spread their wings beyond a previously defined mission, which most recently at PACT included a version of Robin Hood this spring. With the majority of the current cast between 18 and 20, PACT is giving young adults an opportunity to stay involved in the arts, and the leadership of the group the opportunity to explore even more of the theatrical canon. They have made it very clear that this is not their typical fare, so no one is surprised, with their intentions reinforced in the local press. As an independent organization, they have they right to determine their creative direction, with the ultimate arbiters of their work being their audience.

There are no scenes set in a strip club  Just FYI.

*   *   *

That the message from Pastor Zidan came out only this week would seem rather late in the game, with the show starting performances next week. In any event, I think it’s important to say that of course the pastors in Tullahoma have the right to communicate with one another and to preach as they see fit. I hope and trust that their messages are of love, acceptance, and understanding, not just for their parishioners, but for all people, including those who might mirror the characters in Rent, as well as those who want to see it or participate in it.

I also hope that those who might hear or read pastoral messages against Rent will take the time to read more about it, to listen to its songs, to consider its words as well, should they be pressed to judge it in advance. Most importantly, I hope everyone will remember that they have the absolute right to speak their minds, but that should the situation rise to the level of trying to stop Rent, which Pastor Zidan says is not his intent, they might keep in mind that those creating and participating in the show have the right to tell that story and to sing those songs for those who wish to experience it. Before any of us begin thinking to try to silence any voices, we must think about how we would feel if someone attempted to silence our own.

Rent may have, to some, a squalid setting, but is about struggle, friendship, community, equality, love, sacrifice, life and death, and even redemption. Those seem like themes worth exploring and embracing in every city and town, every day, in places of worship, in theatres and beyond.

*   *   *

Disclosure: as I have noted in my writing in the past, I did not know Jonathan Larson, but came to know his parents and sister through my work at the American Theatre Wing and its assumption of the grant programs originally undertaken by the Jonathan Larson Foundation.

Note: I welcome respectful dialogue about this in the comments section of this site, however I will remove any personal attacks or rude remarks. This is not censorship; it is my right as the author of this post and the operator of this website to insure that dialogue remains constructive.

Howard Sherman is director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at the New School for Drama.

When it was all said and done, three student-written short plays, part of an evening of playlets, monologues and songs, went on as scheduled at Cherokee Trail High School in Aurora, Colorado. But in the 10 days leading up to that performance, the students claim they were told the plays and one student-written monologue were canceled. The students successfully garnered the attention of a local TV station, the National Coalition Against Censorship, and the Arts Integrity Initiative at the New School for Drama over the impending cancelation.

However, the school claimed the shows were never canceled and that the students misunderstood, but first delayed the performance of the pieces in question and then rescinded that delay, which would have pushed the plays to a later date. The school cited lack of proper process for approval, issued permission slips to the parents of all participating students and sent a broader memo to parents regarding the content of the pieces, defining them as “suitable for mature audiences.” Amidst this, rumors suggested that some contemporaneous school vandalism was the work of the drama kids. One student-written monologue was canceled entirely because the student’s parents reportedly denied approval for it to be performed.

What precisely triggered all of this activity around brief student-written plays? LGBTQ subject matter.

*   *   *   *

The cast and creators of “Evolution” at Cherokee Trail High School

Students in Cherokee Trail’s Theatre 3 class developed the “Evolution” evening under the banner of their student-run Raw Works Studio, working on them both in class and after school for more than a month. According Theatre 3/Raw Works students – including Josette Axne, Kenzie Boyd, Brandon McEachern, Dyllan Moran, and Ayla Sullivan, with whom I shared phone calls, texts and e-mails at various times beginning April 16 – they were informed by the school’s Activities Director Christine Jones on April 15 that because of the LGBTQ content in the student written works, the pieces could not be performed and would be excised from the pending performance set for April 24.

The students immediately took action, reaching out to the local media, setting up a Facebook page called “Not Original,” contacting the National Coalition Against Censorship (which in turn contacted the Arts Integrity Initiative), all over their understanding that the plays were being cut from the performance. After first speaking with Axne, I spoke and corresponded primarily with Sullivan in the first few days.

By the time Channel 9 in Denver, NCAC and Arts Integrity made contact with the school’s administration on April 16, Principal Kim Rauh had prepared a response, which portrayed the situation in a different light. It read, in part:

The student written plays will be performed at Cherokee Trail High School. The decision that was made was to postpone the date of the performance to allow our theater process to be completed.  Students were invited to meet with us to work through the process and give the necessary time to work through all of the “what ifs” and attempt to be proactive as opposed to reactive and to plan for success. With every production there is an element of both directorial and administrative review and approval. The plays were submitted after the due date for final approval for the original performance date.  We have extended the process timeline to allow the plays to be performed at a later date at Cherokee Trail High School.

Channel 9’s account of the situation, the only significant local news story, was reported on the evening news on April 16, stating that the pieces would now be performed on May 9.

*   *   *   *

“Not Original”’s Facebook post about school vandalism

On Friday morning April 17, shortly before 8 am Colorado time, I received, in the space of ten minutes, an e-mail and phone call from Ayla Sullivan. She was deeply concerned that an act of vandalism at the school overnight was being attributed to the Theatre 3 students, even though she said it had been covered up before students arrived at the school that morning, so that not only were she and her classmates not involved, they didn’t even know the nature of the vandalism. Sullivan asked how the drama students should address this, and I advised them to tell the truth and make clear their position about whatever had occurred. Ten minutes later, the following message was posted, as a screenshot from a cellphone, to the “Not Original” Facebook page:

The vandalism we are now aware of that happened earlier this morning was not done by any member of Raw Works Studio and is not affiliated with the Not Original Movement whatsoever. Due to none of the members even seeing this vandalism, we do not know what it says and if it is even related to us. Whatever the markings say, we can not see it because it was covered as early as 6:45 this morning.

If someone wrote something that is related to Not Original through vandalizing public property, we absolutely oppose it. We do not support vandalism, violence, or hate speech. We do not support this action. We are, and have always been, a peaceful movement.

This is not the way towards change. This is not acceptable.

To date, the students say they haven’t heard anything more about the vandalism. It was a brief source of anxiety, but not central to the dispute.

*   *   *   *

On April 17, I sent a series of questions about the events of the past two days to Principal Rauh, copying Tustin Amole, the director of communications for the school district. It was Amole who responded, very promptly. Describing the reasons and process for what was happening with the plays, she explained:

All student performances are subject to administrative review prior to rehearsals beginning. The teacher is responsible for submitting material for consideration. I do not know how soon prior to that the students finished the plays. Regardless of when the materials are submitted, there is a long-standing process which must be followed.

In cases where the material may be mature or sensitive, the school meets with the parents of the students involved to make sure that they have permission to participate. We would then inform the broader community so that they are aware of the subject matter and can make a decision about whether they want to come and perhaps bring younger children.

Because I had pointed out that the new date set for the student written works (all of the other pieces were to be performed as originally scheduled) conflicted with tests for Advanced Placement and the International Baccalaureate, Amole wrote me:

In our effort to ensure that the students have the opportunity to perform the plays, we selected a date that allowed time for the process. We understand concerns about the timing, but this is the only available opportunity before school ends.

Following this exchange, I wrote again to Amole, inquiring as to the school’s specific concerns about the material, which had gone unmentioned. She replied:

The plays concern some issues around sexuality and gender identity. We would not censor the subject matter, but do work to ensure that all parents were informed and give consent for participation, and that attendees know the nature of the material. In other words you would not take children to a movie without knowing what it is about, nor are you likely to allow children to participate in an unknown activity. In the Cherry Creek School District, parents are given the option of reviewing activities, books and other materials and asking for alternatives if they object to what is assigned.

As for when the review process had begun, she responded:

The conversations with the students began when the material was submitted to administrators for review. We were looking for alternative dates to complete the review process when some of the students decided to call the media. Because they did not have that class yesterday, they were unaware that a new date had been determined. Had they waited to talk to their teacher during the next class, they would have been informed. They also always have the option of coming to the principal to express their concerns and they chose to call the news media instead. We regret that they chose not to work through our long established process.

That same day, the students told me, there were two meetings with Christine Jones, who outlined for them the plans for going forward.

*   *   *   *

After all of this, imagine my surprise when, just before 5 pm Colorado time on Monday, April 20, the NCAC and Arts Integrity Initiative received the following e-mail from Ayla Sullivan:

We have officially gotten our show back! Thank you so much for your help and support. Your belief in us is the only reason we have this. Thank you.

I wrote Rauh and Amole minutes later, to find out how the timetable had been restored to the original date. Amole replied two days later, sharing the communication that was going out to parents that day, which read in part:

I wanted to take this opportunity to communicate an update regarding the Theatre 3 production at Cherokee Trail High School, Evolution. Evolution contains a series of vignettes including songs, original student works and published scenes centered around the theme of love, some of which contain topics that may be considered best suited for mature audiences.

Because we are not putting topics on the stage, but rather actual students with actual feelings it was our desire to ensure that we had the time to adequately communicate the nature of the production with our parents and community members to help ensure the safety and well-being of all involved. The events of the past week have allowed us to do so and as such the administration, director and students have determined that we can perform the show on the originally scheduled date of April 24.

In response specifically to me, Amole added:

As of now, we do not have permission from all of the students’ parents to participate. While we continue to work to obtain the required permissions, we will honor the parent’s wishes, as per district policy. The performances of those students who do have parent permission will go forward.

*   *   *   *

Graphic design for “Evolution” at Cherokee Trail High School

On April 24, the following student written pieces were performed as part of “Evolution”: A Tale of Three Kisses by Kenzie Boyd and Brandon McEachern , Roots by Dyllan Moran, and Family: The Art of Residence by Ayla Sullivan and Brandon McEachern. The evening was, in the words of Dylan Moran, in an interview with KGNU Radio that he gave the day of the performance, about “how love evolves, both through time and within ourselves.”

On April 29, five days after the performance, I spoke with the students to ascertain how the performance had gone. They reported attendance in the neighborhood of 300 people, which while it only filled the orchestra section of their theatre, they said was comparable with other performances of this kind, and they seemed satisfied with the turnout. But had there been, when it was all said and done, any censorship of the work?

Brandon McEachern replied, “The only thing that was asked to be changed was certain curse words. There was no content change. It was just not having the word ‘shit’ or something like that. Those are the only changes they asked for the shows.”

“Certain words were allowed to fly in certain shows that weren’t allowed in others,” Moran continued. “It was very touch and go. There wasn’t any set rule. We’d be performing and it was like, ‘That one’s not OK,’ and we’d move on. Life Under Water did have changes, not as extensively as the original ones, probably because it had already been produced.”

I wondered, given the representations of Amole on behalf of the school district, whether the students had in fact misunderstood their conversation with Jones on April 15, given all that had transpired since. The unanimous reply of Boyd, McEachern, Moran, and Sullivan was that they hadn’t.

“It was very clear to us, on the day, that the show would not be happening,” said Moran. “There was no editing, there was no pushing it to a later date, there was no discussion about it. It was only when we got involved with the media that they changed their story and said, ‘No, we are going to push it back. We told them we were going to push it back, they just didn’t listen to us’.”

Sullivan continued, “There was also the sense of, when we were approached later, that Friday, which was April 17, by our activities director, that we were being guilt tripped, that we didn’t give her the benefit of the doubt and we immediately met with the media outlets and tried to make this a bigger thing than what it was – that it was our fault for misunderstanding, which never happened. It was very clear.”

When asked if it was made clear to them why there was concern over the material, Sullivan said there was a single reason given, that it was about “how the community would react to LGBT representation.” The students said it was on Friday that they were told by Jones that if they could meet all the necessary requirements by Monday, in terms of parental permission, the school leadership would reconsider the May 9 plan.

Had the students anticipated any pushback against the student written shows? “When we were going through the entire process,” McEachern said, “I didn’t think the school would tell us that these were controversial issues and it would make people uncomfortable. I just thought it would go on like a regular show. I didn’t think there would be any backlash.” Sullivan added that once the news broke, “there was nothing but support.”

Referring to sentiment within the school, Boyd said, “I think immediately, as soon as we found out, that there was an immediate buzz on Twitter, everyone from school and even from out of state, that were talking about this and how disappointed they were in the school. I think it was definitely at first – the whole situation is definitely a lesson for schools in general and even for society in general, to really look at people and look at what they’re saying versus what they’re doing. Because everybody’s always talking about equality, equality, equality but then when they actually get the opportunity, it gets shut down pretty fast. So I think it’s a big lesson, but I also think that in a positive manner other than just lessons, it really brought everyone together, because I’ve never seen this school so united.”

*   *   *   *

But what of the student-written monologue, Ever Since I Was A Kid? The students I spoke with, who explained that it had been cut because the parents of the student author had declined to give permission, spoke freely of the piece. They shared that it was a personal account of a teen who was in the process of gender transition. It suggests that this piece was, at least in part, what Amole referred to on April 22 when she wrote me that not all permission slips had been received.

I must note that I spoke to the author/performer of “Ever Since I Was A Kid” on April 20, before it was clear that  parental permission was being withheld and that the piece in question would not be performed. Because the situation had changed and I was not able to speak with this student again, I have withheld the content of our interview because, despite sending messages through the other students, I could not confirm whether the author was still comfortable with my using our conversation. The students I spoke with said their classmate was permitted to perform in other parts of “Evolution,” just not with the original monologue.

*   *   *   *

As much as I have tried to reconstruct the timeline of this incident, it is clear that the students’ account and that of the administration differ. The students say they were told originally, in no uncertain terms, that the student-written pieces were being cut. The school maintains that they simply needed time to put the work in context.

Missing from this report is any account of the circumstances from either the Theatre 3 teacher, Cindy Poinsett, or the Activities Director, Christine Jones. Because it is typical in most schools that faculty and staff do not speak to the press without approval, and because after the first response to my inquiry to the principal, all responses came from the school system’s spokesperson, I did not attempt to contact either Poinsett or Jones. Should either of them choose to contact me directly, I will amend this post to reflect their input.

I have to say that throughout this period, the students I spoke with were remarkably poised in their accounts of what took place. While as I noted, the school was very responsive to my inquiries, there is one notable shift in the timeline they created: on April 16 they said it would take three weeks to put everything in place in order to allow the student written pieces to be performed. Two business days later, everything had been accomplished that allowed the pieces to go forward as originally scheduled.

That the original “solution” would have excised these pieces from the April 24 performance and isolated them as their own event, that May 9 was initially the “only” possible date on which they could do so, suggests that the administration was responding on the fly, in response to external inquiries. If the students had misunderstood what they were originally told, why on April 15 didn’t the school simply say that all would go on as planned if the students brought in signed permission slips by April 20, as they ultimately did, instead of promulgating a new date?

I also have to wonder why, as has so often been the case when potential incidents of censorship arise in high schools, was the initial reason given for the action the assertion that an approval process had not been followed? The students say they had been working on the pieces for more than a month and were never given any deadline or reminded to get their materials in by a certain date. Is Principal Rauh suggesting that the students and their teacher had been keeping the work under wraps? Was there a disconnect between the teacher and the activities director, or between the activities director and the administration?

At the root of this incident remains the skittishness that schools have regarding any public representation of LGBTQ issues and lives to their community at large. While opinion polls show that six out of every ten Americans support marriage equality, that percentage jumps to 78 percent for people under 30. Presumably that is at least the same for the general acceptance of LGBTQ Americans overall, although to quote a New York Times editorial, “being transgender today remains unreasonably and unnecessarily hard.”

So it seems that whatever precisely took place at Cherokee Trail, it derives from the students having a more evolved attitude towards equality than the school fears the local adult community may hold. How long will students be required to get permission before they can tell true stories of their own lives and the lives of those around them? When will all schools stand up for student expression of their lives and concerns on the stage from the outset, and stand firm against those who continue to oppose the tidal wave of equality that will inevitably overtake them?

*   *   *   *

I asked several of the students what the ultimate takeaway was from their experience.

Sullivan said, “We got a lot of positive support and had a positive show, but my biggest concern is that now that our department has made a name for itself for doing original content, the administration is going to create a harder process, a new deadline. I’m concerned that student-written work will not be able to be performed the way it should, that now they will have something of a deadline process to fall back on and use that to censor other voices and censor experiences in that light. That kind of worries me, because we’ve already seen an attitude of they don’t want this to continue and they don’t want to have to deal with this again.

“I definitely feel that our principal and our activities director have found that this has created such a mess that they don’t want student-written work to continue, that they don’t want Raw Works, the studio itself, to be representative of the theatre department anymore and that they don’t want student-directed student works.”

Boyd picked up that thread, saying, “I don’t think it’s as much concern about it continuing, as much as they’re going to make it so hard to continue that we’re going to have to stop ourselves. I definitely think there’s been so much backlash on them now that they can’t just say no more original work, but I do think that the process next year is going to be a lot harder to the point that it may be impossible to put on original works.”

When I pressed the students on whether anything explicit had been said about the future for student written work, McEachern said, “Right now, it’s just a concern of ours. They have not said anything.”

In my last communication with Tustin Amole, I asked whether the events surrounding “Evolution” would have any impact on the Theatre 3 class, Raw Works or student written plays in the future, and received the following reply:

Our process will remain unchanged. As I have already explained, it is the standard process that has worked well for us for a long time.

The class also will be unchanged. Students will be able to write and perform their own work.

So for now, all we can do is watch and wait until next year, to see what stories get told at Cherokee Trail.

Howard Sherman is director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School for Drama.

Students watching The Last Days of Judas Iscariot outside at the Florida Thespian Festival

A theatre scene performed al fresco on a spring Florida evening sounds idyllic. But when Tomas Roldan and Matthew Ferro, juniors at New World School of the Arts High School, took their award-winning scene from Stephen Adly Guirgis’s The Last Days of Judas Iscariot to a plaza outside the Florida State Thespian Festival in Tampa on March 28, they weren’t doing so seeking charm or fresh air. They made the performance choice as a third option after being given two official choices by festival leadership: alter Guirgis’s words or don’t perform at all.

*   *   *

The Florida State Thespian Festival is the largest such gathering in the country. Over a long weekend, high school students gather for talks, workshops and competitions all focused on theatre; in Florida, there are more than 7,000 people in attendance from the large state’s 16 designated districts. This year’s festival included full productions of, among others, Ragtime, The Great Gatsby, Night of the Living Dead, The Threepenny Opera, Violet, Pippin, and Seascape; there was even a concert by The Skivvies, the musical theatre duo known for their talent, their wit and their commitment to performing in their underwear.

Woven throughout the festival are the competitions, where students from schools across the state perform short scenes from a wide range of shows, assembled into groups of competitors so that one set of adjudicators can make decisions on those competing in that defined grouping; the festival is simply too large, and too brief, to allow for an American Idol-type winnowing to a single champion, so each group produces its own winners. Ferro and Roldan received a Critic’s Choice honor for their scene between Jesus and Judas from Guirgis’s play, which Roldan said had been their goal from the time he and Ferro started working on their scene, nearly a year earlier.

The winners of Critic’s Choice in each group are invited to perform in the Critic’s Choice Showcase on the final evening of the festival. Given the number of winners, it is held in segments (or acts) throughout Saturday night in the largest venue used by the festival, the Straz Center’s main hall, seating nearly 3,000. The audience is made up of students, teachers, parents and family. Because competitions are happening on a rolling basis throughout the weekend, the run of the evening is still coming together even as the first performers come to the stage at 6 pm.

*   *   *

It is the policy of the Educational Theatre Association, which runs the International Thespian Society, not to censor the work of writers. The director of the Florida chapter, Linday M. Warfield Painter, echoed that sentiment, saying, “I don’t condone the changing of a playwright’s language any more than the next person.”

In Florida, students competing with scenes that may have potentially controversial or even offensive content are asked to “asterisk” their scenes, noting what some might find problematic. This doesn’t preclude their competing, but serves as notice for those attending the competitive rounds that if they wish to avoid such material, they should step out before the scene is performed. Roldan and Ferro’s scene was duly asterisked for its language – the scene contains iterations of the word “fuck” some dozen times – and for its contemporary portrayal of religious figures Jesus and Judas. The Florida guidelines also require that school principals sign off on the choice of scenes to be performed by their students – except for schools in Miami-Dade County, where a teacher’s approval is sufficient. New World School of the Arts High School is part of the New World School of the Arts, an arts university in Miami affiliated with Miami-Dade College and the University of Florida.

The asterisk system, implemented less than a decade ago partly in response to consternation at the state capitol over content seen at the festival, apparently works well enough in the many small competition rooms, but it becomes problematic, and even irrelevant, at the critics choice showcase. Given the size of the theatre and the numerous brief scenes being performed, the policy is that the audience cannot come and go as they please, so there isn’t a steady attrition of audience once the students they come to see have completed their scenes. If an audience member exits at any point during one of the acts, there is no readmission. So it’s not feasible to offer the audience the opportunity to leave if a scene might offend them, leaving the asterisk process in the dust.

As a result, after winning in their group, the winners have to perform one more time, for adjudicators who will determine whether the scene is appropriate for the large audience. That’s where Roldan and Ferro said they were surprised.

“They knew our piece was asterisked for religious content and for language,” recalls Roldan. “They asked us how severe the language was and we said we drop, we have a few f-bombs in there. Then they told us OK – well we’ll listen to it and tell you what we can do about the language. So we performed the scene again and they told us, ‘Wow, that’s a really great scene, except you guys curse way too much and there’s too many f-bombs in the piece. So you guys have to fully, completely clean it up or you wouldn’t be able to perform it’.”

Ferro, interviewed separately, described the process similarly, saying, “We performed it for the two people who were running the show, the Critics Choice show. And it was almost right then and there that they were like ‘We love the piece, we really do. But the language is an issue.’ From the get go, those two people, Ed and I think it was Amy, said ‘We’re going to fight for you. We want you guys to perform this, but we have to find a way.’ So originally they gave us options like changing the language; then it was how about we perform at the very end and we’re going to caution people about our content. Then it was like, ‘We’re going to roll the dice and we’re going to ask our bosses what they think we can do’.”

Both Ferro and Roldan say they were urged to get dinner while the issue was explored, which they did. “When we came back,” continued Ferro, “they had already spoken with their bosses, the person who was running the whole thing and they told me and Tomas that we could not perform with the language. We had to change it or just go on stage and tell them that we couldn’t.”

In response to an inquiry about what transpired, Painter said, “I wasn’t in the screening room for this event. I had entrusted other volunteers within the organization to do that for me and they had asked, ‘We’ve got 12 f-bombs dropped in the piece.’ I can see why the two teachers screening it said, ‘Guys, can we clean that up a little bit just for this one moment [the showcase].’ I don’t think that has been – I’m positive that’s not the first time that’s happened, that they’ve been asked to clean up language. As far as whether or not a piece – they weren’t asked not to perform. They were given the option, so it wasn’t like, ‘No, you have bad language, you may not perform.’ The option was there.”

Asked to clarify who is in attendance at the showcase, Painter explained that it is not a public event per se. “We have a mixed crowd as far as different communities from across the state,” she said. “We have Christian schools, we have private schools, we have different schools that are from more conservative communities across the state that are all packed into the 2800 people house. That’s really the reason that we do any kind of screening. And the screening is just, that’s all they’re looking for, if it is an asterisked piece, what is it asterisked for? If it’s something that it’s a simple matter of staging that we could restage really quickly without compromising the integrity of the acting and all that. This piece was probably, had I known ahead of time, that the judges did not give us an alternate, I probably would have suggested it not even necessarily be – just to save them the heartache of having to go through that moment. It’s just because of the content, there’s so much of the language issue with it.

“I can tell you that my community I’ve gotten away with all sorts of shows at my school, I’ve done Rent and Threepenny Opera and Cabaret, even my community wouldn’t be OK with a bunch of f-bombs being dropped on stage. It’s a tough one.” At another point, she said, “For that general audience, they were asked to remove at least a few of the f-bombs to take it down from a “rated R” to at least as PG or PG-13 for the general audience. And they refused to do so, which is their prerogative and their right as artists. I respect that, but we couldn’t out it on our stage in front of a general audience.”

Recalling the scene backstage, as she argued on behalf of the students, one of Ferro and Roldan’s teachers, Annie McAdams, recalls one of the adjudicators for the Showcase saying to her, “’Look, it’s just the word “fucking,” we can’t have “fucking” on this stage, it’s too big a house.’ I said, ‘That doesn’t make sense, how come we have asterisks? What if they say we can let the lights up and everyone can leave if they don’t like it?’ And they said, ‘No, we can’t do it. It’s OK in the little rooms, but it’s not OK in this big room.’ Oh, and they also said that the adjudicators know that and they are not supposed to advance material that will be offensive, they are not supposed to do this. Then I said, ‘Well why do we have that policy if it doesn’t matter? Why do we say that they can do this material if in fact they’re not going to get advanced, they’re not going to be considered?’ So how many other students haven’t been considered? And they never knew.”

*   *   *

Michael Higgins was the director of the Florida State Thespians for approximately 17 years (he didn’t recall exactly); his tenure concluded in 2010 and Lindsay Painter’s began in 2013. Last week, he spoke of what was happening with the language in competing scenes when he first took on his role. He had not attended the 2015 Festival.

“At the time it was not regulated as far as any kind of censorship issue,” said Higgins. “Then, as all things do, it became more and more of an issue as students were choosing that adult material and more than that it was getting inordinate positive response by the judges. My feeling at the time was since you were trying to get a monologue performed in two minutes, oddly enough the shock words gave you more punch and power in those two minutes and got you more notice than perhaps a much better written monologue, but it didn’t have such immediate punch that you could get in 90 seconds or two minutes. So unfortunately it moved a tide toward more adult language and away from what was much better material without that.”

After a staffer in the lieutenant governor’s office attended a showcase some 15 or so years ago and voiced language and content concerns to Higgins, as did some letters he received, he said the state board of the Thespians moved to address the issue.

Higgins explained, “At the state level we were told that we could not edit these Miami-Dade kids at all or offer any roadblock to their performing because if we did, that county, which was the biggest participator of the state festival would pull out. Then we thought we needed a merger of these ideas here, how could we accommodate what at that time was a quite liberal south Florida from what’s always been a quite conservative north Florida, especially northwest Florida.

“We weren’t going to get into that game of saying one word’s bad or another situation’s bad. What we were going to do was create an asterisk, essentially putting the responsibility back on the artists, saying, ‘Artist, you want to do something that may offend some people for whatever reason. You have a responsibility before your piece to inform your audience that there is something that maybe some would consider objectionable, give a very brief synopsis of what that may be and then allow time for anybody who chooses not to be part of that to get up and leave the space before you do your material,’ putting the onus on the actual performer.

“That worked well for many, many years. It became a bit of an issue when at big events like closing ceremonies, Critic’s Choice when all the winners were showcased and we were doing these in big theatres, 1,000 seats theatres and then on practical terms when Susie got up to do her monologue and said before it, ‘it contains objectionable material’ that the audience was in no way going to be able to make a choice to leave or stay. So we had to address that concern now. Do you only select Critic’s Choice pieces that are suitable for the quite conservative or do you say to heck with everybody and allow every piece to go and just field the complaints of those who are troubled by it?

“The solution that was found at that time was that I as state director took the responsibility on myself as head honcho and I would watch all of the pieces and I would let the piece know ‘this does contain some objectionable material.’ Do you want to edit out these couple of words or option two, not perform it but still get your notice, awards, prizes and mentions at the festival? But now you as the artists have got to understand that you have an audience that is mixed in their liberal/conservativeness, they do not have the option to exercise their right to exit and not participate in theatre, so in order to preserve the festival there is something greater than your free choice at this adolescent age and you must work for the greater good. That worked for quite a while with some groups deciding I don’t want to be censored, so they didn’t perform yet won all of their awards and bells and whistles, and others saying, ‘oh sure, if it’s a matter of getting rid of the word fuck twice I can say that is not really a big deal to me and I understand that the audience has changed from what happened in a small room of 30 people to an audience now that has 10,000 people with young children and families and all kinds of people.’ The switch is for the audience, just like good old theatre.”

*   *   *

The Guirgis scene was suggested to Ferro and Roldan by one of their teachers, Elena Maria Garcia, an adjunct at New World School with 14 years experience.

Stephen Adly Guirgis

“I love [Guirgis’s] work,” said Garcia, “and I said to the boys, ‘If there’s anybody in this class who will really understand this piece, and just be able to play it, not for the shouting or any of that stuff, because it’s really easy to do that, but for the compassion and the struggle – really what that scene is about between Judas and Jesus. I said you guys can pull this off.’ They struggled a lot but they finally got it and it was just glorious. It was just one of those moments that you go ‘Wow, this is why I teach. This is why I sit in traffic ever day.’ When you see moments like that you go, ‘Damn’.”

Annie McAdams, a faculty member at NWSA, was new to the school and the world of Thespian competition at the start of the current school year. Asked whether she had any initial concerns about the scene being in competition, given the language, she said, “I was not worried about the content of their scene. I wondered if the Thespians would like the content of their scene, and it occurred to me that it might be a hard piece to win a festival with because of the content. Not only that it had profanity but also the subject matter – that it’s Jesus and Judas arguing. I moved to Florida from New Jersey which is a blue state. Everyone feels that Florida is liberal, but I’ll tell you, it’s not as liberal as the northeast. So yes, it occurred to me that they might not win with it, but I knew that they could compete.”

When asked about their awareness of any guidelines about content or performance, both Garcia and McAdams cited the asterisk rule. McAdams said she didn’t know of more, while Garcia said she knew there were some for the state festival, but deferred to McAdams as the official head of the troupe.

Asked about this, Painter cited the following guidance on the Florida Thespian website:

The board wishes to restate its position that the sponsor and student should choose material that they would feel comfortable sharing in front of their peers and their school.  The material chosen should match the community standards of your school district and your town!  There should NEVER be an attempt to choose material for competition that you would “never be able to do on your own stage.”   There is no shortage of prize-winning, world-class drama that would be acceptable in any high school in the state!

To this end, you will find the following statement in the registration for state.  Both you, the sponsor, and the principal* or his/her designee are asked to sign the following:

The board requests that you verify that each piece which will be performed representing your school has been screened by the sponsor and endorsed by the principal or his/her designee.  We ask you to certify that each piece meets your community standards and the standards set by your school and your school board. We also understand this caveat will not guarantee that all material presented will fit the guidelines of all schools. To that end, we will continue to use the asterisk as a further means of denoting material which might be considered sensitive for some viewers. 

*NOTE: In Dade County the teacher, not the principal will be asked to certify that the piece meets community standards.

Set off separately, the statement continues:

Florida State Thespians does not pre-approve the material which is presented at this conference. The individual director is the ultimate judge of what is suitable for his/her students to perform for their home school audience. They are also responsible for placing the asterisk on any of their entries which might be questionable in nature. All material performed at this conference has been approved by the principal of the originating school. That approval indicates that he/she attests that the pieces submitted from that school would be suitable for general audience presentation at the school from which it came.

Even with these warnings and precautions, we realize that some of the more mature material may trouble some of our audience.  We have endeavored to forewarn by the use of the asterisk and, at the Closing Ceremony, by identifying edgy material prior to its presentation. Should any member of our audience be offended by any performance, we encourage them to voice their concern to the State Director who has been directed by the State Thespian Board to forward those letters of complaint to the administrator involved. The administrator who approved the material in the first place is the person who should be able to defend his/her choice.

We cherish the right to free expression, but we also understand that, as educators, we have a responsibility to use that freedom wisely.  We have tried to differentiate between words which might offend and ideas which might make the audience uncomfortable. Theatre, at its highest, may create dissension and make people examine their beliefs. Blasphemy and blatant sexual references are not suited to this conference. We have encouraged everyone to be sensitive to them starting at the district level. Discussion of contemporary issues and problems are the stuff of real theatre and deserve a place on our stages. Community standards differ widely in our state and this is a thorny issue we do not take lightly. As theatre educators, we cannot solve the problems of society by refusing to give a platform where those problems can be examined in an intelligent and forthright manner. We feel giving audience members the opportunity to challenge some of the choices local administrators make will give a greater voice to everyone in our large and extremely diversified audience.

Julie Cohen Woffington, executive director of the Educational Theatre Association said that there are no such restrictions on the national festival. As for guidelines for each state group, she wrote, “We have suggested guidelines for the individual events program that are available online, but they do not refer to choice of material or language.” Asked about any policy regarding the alteration of texts for competition or performance at the national festival, Woffington replied, “We have a statement on Freedom of Expression on our website. We also have information in the individual events guidelines that require securing performance rights.”

*   *   *

Returning to the night of the showcase, Roldan describes his reaction at the Sophie’s Choice he and Ferro had been given: remove the language or forego performing.

“At that moment, I was kind of disappointed,” Roldan said. “I was pretty sad. It was heartbreaking to hear that we would have to clean it up or not perform. The thing is, we always thought that the words were put in there for a purpose and they do have a meaning in the piece. So you might be able to change a few but even if you do the piece might lose some of its importance and some of its value.”

Asked if they had given any thought to changing the piece, Ferro said, “I was considering it. Tomas was calling Garcia – we were both shocked a little bit. So he called Garcia and I was thinking maybe we should change it. I just wanted to perform it. It was Tomas, who after he hung up with Garcia, who turned to me and said I guess we can’t perform it. He had already kind of made the decision. That’s how me and Tomas work, we kind of take turns making big things like that and I agreed with him completely. I don’t even know what I was thinking. You’re right, we shouldn’t perform it.”

McAdams recalls asking the students, “Are you sure you don’t want to just change the language? So that you can perform? I knew they were so proud, and I knew they had worked so hard, and honestly I didn’t think they had a chance of winning really because of Jesus and Judas, more than the profanity.  So I really wanted them to have that experience of performing in front of their peers on that big stage. They said absolutely not.”

With McAdams’s help, Roldan and Ferro crafted a brief statement, which they read from the stage during the Showcase instead of performing their scene. It said:

Today we will not be performing a duet scene from The Last Days of Judas Iscariot by Stephen Adly Guirgis. We were thrilled to be awarded the Critic’s Choice for our category. We chose a scene we love by an artist we respect. The scene is asterisked for language and content. Tonight Florida State Thespians is asking us to alter our scene by removing the offensive language. We feel as young artists that this language is an integral part of the author’s intention in the scene. Rather than censor our scene, we have chosen to perform our piece outside. In 15 minutes we will be outside by the steps to perform. Please join us to support Art.”

*   *   *

I’d like to make some observations about what transpired in Florida two weeks ago.

It is clear that the state organization does have guidelines for performances at the showcase which differ from the guidelines that apply to competing works. It is certainly unfortunate that Garcia and McAdams were either unaware or not fully aware of them. While Lindsay Painter admitted to me that, “I don’t think it’s terribly easy to find and obviously after this conversation and this issue this year, we will make sure that’s easier to locate,” the way events unfolded for Roldan and Ferro might have been anticipated had they seen that language or been advised of it. That said, it’s worth noting that according to the young men, at no point in the adjudication process, either at their district level (where they did not receive an award and so were not eligible to perform) or the state level did anyone affiliated with the competitions make Roldan and Ferro aware of the potential restrictions on their performance until after they’d won and were at the final screening.

But perhaps it’s a good thing that things fell this way, because it reveals the strain of censorship that does affect the public performances at the Festival. Deploying language about “blasphemy and blatant sexual references” in performance, it is clear that the Florida festival is exercising judgment over what is permissible and what isn’t, and doing so rather late in the game to boot. There is no way of deciding definitively what is or is not blasphemy or blatant sexuality, even if you’re willing to grant that such a restriction is appropriate; it’s always going to be a judgement call. It’s worth noting that while a synonym for “blasphemy” is “obscenity,” “blasphemy” in its primary usage refers to “impiety” and in some cases irreverent behavior towards anything held sacred, not simple cursing. In the scene from Guirgis’s play, the word “fuck” or “fucking” is used as an interjection or adjective; at no time does it refer to a sexual act.

If in fact scenes that aren’t “appropriate” for the final showcase are being scored poorly to avoid the sort of conflict that arose over the scene from Judas Iscariot, that’s a black mark on the entire adjudication process. Not only did McAdams say that she had been told this was the case, but let’s also recall Painter’s slightly ambiguous, halting, “This piece was probably, had I known ahead of time, that the judges did not give us an alternate, I probably would have suggested it not even necessarily be – just to save them the heartache of having to go through that moment.” That can be construed to corroborate what McAdams heard about judging, although it stops short of being explicit.  [Updated: please see addendum below with Lindsay Painter’s clarification of position on the issue of instructions and process for adjudication.]

I should note that late in our conversation, Painter introduced the idea that the reason Ferro and Roldan were not permitted to perform was because of how they behaved when given their choice, suggesting they had “started harassing other troupes and other humans.” I suspect that teenagers hearing such news for the first time may well have acted out in some way, though Ferro denied it and McAdams said she saw no such behavior and was told of no such behavior when she arrived backstage. I was surprised when Painter raised it 22 minutes into a 29 minute conversation; if it was central to the decision, it seems it should have been brought up as a factor much sooner.

Because of the Festival’s policy of placing the responsibility for the scenes chosen on school officials, with Miami-Dade having a different policy than the other districts, there has always been the potential for crossing some invisible line as Ferro and Roldan did. But by actively urging them to alter the author’s language, the festival applies censorship pressure as a prerequisite for performing some winning “asterisked” work, and based on the accounts from both Painter and Higgins, this is common practice. That is a poor example to set for students, teachers or parents – the work of authors cannot and should not be altered to meet the perceived need of an audience. That the festival has codified such actions in order to defend the festival against those who would dictate content to all is troubling, to say the least.

I will acknowledge that the State Festival organizers have challenges, not least the huge scale and popularity of their successful event. More importantly, they grapple with the reality that few states or even individual towns have unanimity about what is blasphemous, blatantly sexual, or obscene, and they’re trying to maintain an event statewide. But I think it’s fair to say that even the most liberal school has a sense of what is appropriate for their students, and by leaving the content, and quite explicitly any blame for that content, to the schools, the Florida festival must find a better solution to its current practice of altering content and staging to suit a homogeneous audience in an effort to minimize complaints. Perhaps “asterisked” scenes should be adjudicated together and have a defined portion of the showcase evening, while the self-identified inoffensive material is gathered separately at all stages. In that way, students whose schools permit them more latitude will be assured of both fair judging and the opportunity to perform. But altering a playwright’s words violates copyright law, and doing so in order to placate sensibilities remains censorship, no matter how it is rationalized.

I have written before that I believe that school theatre is first and foremost for the students – not for their parents, their siblings or the general public. Students should have the opportunity to take on challenging work, contemporary as well as classic work. If that work contains “strong” language but is within the education parameters of their school, so be it. “Protecting” the students, or an audience, from words or ideas should not drive education or school-related activities.

*   *   *

Ferro and Roldan both cite the idea of performing their scene outside as having come from one of the same adjudicators who gave them the “censor or don’t perform” ultimatum, saying he seemed genuinely sympathetic to the decision they faced. I asked them both how the impromptu performance went.

Roldan said, “Well at that point we were all adrenaline, I would say, especially Matthew. He really got on board and once he got on board he was completely on the bull and he was just going at it. We just performed it, a whole lot of people came and it was a great experience. The scene itself, I felt that while we did it outside, it wasn’t the best we did it, because at that point we were doing it now out of frustration and we had all those emotions inside of us, so I felt that maybe made us deviate from the scene. It still came out great, but not as good as it came out when we showed the piece for the first time in the competition.”

Ferro also felt the scene lost something. “I gotta be honest, it wasn’t the same,” he said. “For myself, I wish it hadn’t gone down that way because I feel like the whole point was kind of lost, the whole point of just doing the scene, the beautiful scene, was lost. I wouldn’t say it was because of Tomas. I kind of blame myself because I was so amped up on trying to get the crowd to listen to me and I was very energetic, I don’t think I was able to calm down and perform the piece like we’d rehearsed a thousand times. I don’t know. For me, it’s sad that the piece wasn’t as good as we had done it a million times before.”

Garcia viewed it very differently. “I’m thinking, OK, because there’s a massive dance where these teens go to right afterwards to celebrate the end, I said to them, I think you might get a few [people to watch]. I don’t think you’ll get that many kids because they’ll want to go to the dance. How wrong was I? There were over 200 kids standing on the lawn in their beautiful gowns and high heels going into the soil. They didn’t care, they were all there in silence watching these boys do their piece. It was right out of a movie. I was like, I can’t believe, they will never forget this. This is such a wonderful moment right now. I just thought Guirgis would be, ‘My god, they’re still hearing my work.’ These kids are anti-censorship and they kept hugging the boys and saying, ‘Thank you so much for doing the right thing. This is what its about – we’re artists and we shouldn’t have to change our work.’ It was beautiful.”

Though the young men refused their achievement prizes that night, McAdams brought them home, suspecting they’d ultimately want them, and both Ferro and Roldan expressed regret that they hadn’t ultimately accepted the recognition that evening, that they hadn’t respected the Festival more even at a moment of crisis.

When asked whether she might recommend different material for students in the future as a result of what transpired, McAdams said, “I guess there would be a discussion I would have with the kids: ‘Look, if you want to win, here are the parameters you need to be in.’ But as a teacher, I would say, ‘Pick material you respond to, pick material that you are passionate about. Pick writing that’s good’.”

Ferro, asked if he had known all that was going to happen, would he have chosen a different scene, said simply, “No, I really wouldn’t have.”

I’m pleased that Ferro and Roldan are juniors, not only because they will have the opportunity to compete and perhaps win one more time (Garcia says she’s pointed them towards True West) but because it gives the Florida Thespian Festival the opportunity to right a wrong – and I believe it is a wrong, regardless of the forewarning on their website. Roldan and Ferro should be given the opportunity to perform their scene from The Last Days of Judas Iscariot on the main festival stage next year, all “fucks” intact.

And, of course, they still have a shot at the National Festival in June. I’m rooting for them.

*   *   *

Addendum, April 15, 3:50 pm: Upon reading this post, Lindsay Painter asked me to include the following information regarding the adjudication process.

The judges are not encouraged or told to be concerned about the asterisks when providing a score and feedback. In fact, when I meet with them each morning of the festival, it is one of my main points I make. The students of Florida should be receiving honest non-bias feedback from the professionals we hire to adjudicate. To suggest otherwise, in regards to how our organization has been handling the showcase is faulty. The judges have nothing to do with the showcase. They give us their picks for who the best in the room was, (all regards to content aside) and that makes-up the list for showcase. But, they have nothing to do with our asterisks system or the system we’ve had in place for preparing the showcase presentations.

Painter further requested that the following distinction be made, and because I write in the interest of constructive dialogue on these issues, I share it as well:

This is a Theatre Festival, not a competition. There is no prize, no winner. Each performance is provided an assessment. We showcase one piece from each room as a way to celebrate the work the students of Florida have brought to the festival. It’s not a thing to win or not win. And if they are not able to perform, an alternate does. This is the spirit of the festival. There is no placing or winning of the Florida State Thespian Festival. Only of presenting, receiving valuable feedback, and celebrating the work of the student artists. These students were not impacted in any way in the feedback or rating they received by the judges. They were given their superior. That is the highest honor they, or any student at the festival, can hope to achieve.

Correction, April 15 3:45 pm: This post originally stated that Michael Higgins was Lindsay Painter’s direct predecessor. That was incorrect, and is now accurately reflected above.

Correction, April 16, 11:30 pm: This post has been corrected to reflect that New World School of the Arts is affiliated with the University of Florida, not Florida State University, as previously stated.

Full disclosure: I delivered a keynote and conducted a workshop on the subject of school theatre censorship last summer at the Educational Theatre Association’s annual teacher’s conference. EdTA paid me an honorarium and provided me with round-trip travel to Cincinnati and accommodations while there.

Howard Sherman is director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School for the Arts.

Jerry MacKinnon in This Is Modern Art at Steppenwolf Theatre

If, like me, you’re connected to members of the Chicago theatre community on social media (I’m NYC based), you’ve certainly seen an outpouring of reaction to two major reviews of the new Steppenwolf for Young Adults show, This Is Modern Art (Based On True Events). Since all perception of what’s being said on any subject in social media is mediated by who you ‘follow’ and who you ‘friend’ and what you like and retweet, I can’t possibly tell you what the prevailing sentiments are overall, online or in Chicago theatre lobbies. But I will say this: my connections are very unhappy, and in some cases enraged. Among their charges are that the reviews are deeply insensitive to a story about young people of color, and by extension the lives of all people of color, and that they condescend to the work from a place of privilege.

Chris Jones of the Chicago Tribune and Hedy Weiss of the Chicago Sun-Times both gave what I would characterize as predominantly negative reviews of the production. Both shared a common theme: that the play, about graffiti artists, celebrated their work without making sufficiently clear, to the critics’ minds, that the majority of graffiti art is also illegal vandalism. Jones calls graffiti “disrespectful”; Weiss calls the characters “urban terrorists.” The play is based upon a true incident in Chicago, when elaborate graffiti was created on the exterior of the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago, so it summons shared Chicago memories, beyond the writers’, readers’ or audiences’ personal experiences.

From the reviews, I offer two excerpts (with links to the complete pieces):

“But here is what “This is Modern Art” barely even mentions: Graffiti comes at a price. It can be invasive, self-important and disrespectful of the property of others — and plenty of struggling folks have had to clean graffiti off something they own or love. Graffiti can be inartful, for goodness sake. More importantly yet, graffiti had the effect of making people feel unsafe in the city. It terrified people. It was only when public officials declared themselves determined to wipe it out that cities finally came back to life, with broad benefits.

You wanna go back to riding public transportation in New York or Chicago in the 1980s? I do not. You do not have to be conservative or somehow not down with youth to think it reprehensible that these issues do not have a place in a show for schools that is quite staggeringly one-sided.”  – Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune

“To start, a hypothetical question addressed to the powers that be at Steppenwolf Theatre: How would you react were you to arrive at work one morning only to discover that the entire facade of your theater had been spray-painted with graffiti, and that the message left behind went like this: “All the world is OUR stage.”

I pose the question after having just seen “This Is Modern Art,” the wildly misguided new Steppenwolf for Young Adults production written by hip-hop artist Idris Goodwin and “Louder Than a Bomb” founder Kevin Coval, and directed by Lisa Portes.

Clearly the play is meant to be a provocation and a catalyst for controversy and discussion among the many high school groups that comprise the principal audience for this series. And no one would deny that in terms of its fine acting and knowingly “hip” writing and design this is an entertaining and “artful” production. But “This Is Modern Art” also sends out a slew of profoundly misguided messages to its impressionable viewers. And no politically correct review to rationalize it will appear here.”  – Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times

Now before I go on, I should point out that I write about this issue is as a middle-aged, Caucasian, cisgender, heterosexual Jewish male raised in and around New Haven, Connecticut. Many could say I write from a position of privilege as well; that’s their right. But I cannot be anyone but who I am and, as a longtime follower of theatre criticism, I would hope that all critics would write openly and honestly about their perceptions, with their biases out there for all to see and take into account. In the interest of full disclosure, I should also mention that I’ve known Chris Jones for more than a decade professionally; I’ve never had any occasion to meet or communicate with Hedy Weiss.

This Is Modern Art at Steppenwolf Theatre

With all of that out of the way, I have to say that I find both reviews limited. Not because I disagree with their opinions of the play – I’ve not seen it or read it, so I can’t – but because the reviews fail to give me sufficient information about the play that might allow me to draw any conclusions of my own. So much of the bodies of the two reviews are devoted to condemning graffiti and vandalism, and taking the play to task for not sharing that perspective, that it’s very difficult for me – and I would assume most readers – to assess whether the play might be something I want to see, which a daily review should do, even a negative one.

Presumably Chris and Hedy could have noted their displeasure with the play’s perspective while still attending more fully to the details of the play and the production, which they fleetingly praise. Subsequently, as senior critics, they could have easily then written separate essays in which they explored their political and personal reactions to graffiti as vandalism, and question Steppenwolf’s responsibility in presenting the work if they wished, instead of forcing such op-eds into the confines of a standard review.

Inevitably, some of the rhetoric surrounding these reviews has addressed the role of the critic, always a charged discussion but one that must be considered in the context of the diminishment of arts coverage in legacy mainstream media. Nationally, critics remain in their positions for as long as they’re able, even as positions are cut and newspapers constantly seek buyouts that target veteran employees (read older, better paid) in an economic version of Logan’s Run. But with limited alternatives, few critics are opting out voluntarily, and so it’s not entirely surprising to find that many “major” critics mirror the demographics that prevailed decades earlier: largely white and mostly male. That can set up a division with both artists and audiences who make up the more diverse America of today (though the field of theatre still has a great deal of work to do on diversity and equity in its own ranks as well), since they find work, often as not, being judged publicly by people who may not mirror them in any way or share or understand their experiences. When I started in theatre, for example, I wondered where the young critical voices were in the major media; remarkably, 30 years on, I still wonder (though I know I can find those voices online, in many cases working for free).

Kelly O’Sullivan and Jerry MacKinnon in This Is Modern Art at Steppenwolf Theatre

In the case of This Is Modern Art, a work explicitly created for teen audiences, I would suggest that the arts or features editors at the two Chicago papers missed an opportunity. While absolutely still affording Chris and Hedy their primacy as the papers’ critical voices, wasn’t this the moment to offer more diverse staffers the opportunity to weigh in? While This Is Modern Art does have evening performances for the public, the majority of the schedule is daytime shows, presumably for students and youth groups, and therefore deserving of viewpoints that might in some aspect approach greater commonality with the expressly targeted audience. Admittedly, it would be impossible to check off a series of demographic boxes on any critic that would fulfill the wishes of every reader and every artist on every show, but the paper might have made an effort when reviewing a show for youth to acknowledge that the seemingly monolithic role of critics doesn’t always serve readers, by adding diverse voices here (and, when appropriate, in the future). Op-ed pages have multiple voices, not just one.

In concluding her review, Hedy appears to try to trump any criticism of her perspective, as follows, “Really, what could Steppenwolf have been thinking? Now, I just hope local politicians will not jump on the bandwagon and, as the ultimate hypocrisy, make this play their ‘cause.’” She has presumptively critiqued those who might disagree with her, which strikes me as unfortunate. Professional critics have every right to state their opinion boldly, but preemptively challenging those with other opinions seems unnecessary.

In his review, Chris notes “the authority figures like police officers (mostly played by Chris Rickett) are either inept or bumbling or misunderstanding — certainly they never are allowed to make any kind of sympathetic point,” and later declares, “By all means, connect the city’s kids to this artistic tradition, but I say there is a moral obligation to make them think about the price we all pay.” I will only say that West Side Story also portrayed the police as ineffective and a source for ridicule (“Gee, Officer Krupke”) and that there are countless works of theatre that don’t pretend to balance – where, for example, in Grease do we find an appealing, highly respected honor student to counter the allure of Danny Zuko?

J. Salomé Martinez in This Is Modern Art at Steppenwolf Theatre

Mind you, like Chris and Hedy, I’m not saying that I want to see our cities riddled with graffiti the way they were in the 70s and 80s. But I am open to seeing a story that attempts to explore what might have motivated some of the people behind it, then or now. Both reviews assert that because the show is targeted at students it is therefore irresponsible in its sympathetic perspective. While I doubt any young person is unaware of the potential consequences for the defacement of public property, especially those being taken to the theatre by teachers or counselors, the Steppenwolf study guide (available to all online) spells it out:

“For these artists…their art form is worthy of the likes of Caravaggio and Escher, but to the city it is defined as “the criminal defacement of property with paint.” The consequences are severe: $750 to $1,500 in fines, felony charges and possibly prison time for the offenders. And it can mean a big bill for the city: Chicago has spent nearly $5 million dollars in graffiti removal in this year alone. Although the protagonist of our story, Seven, is motivated by a desire to gain recognition for his art and an evolution of what the public views as ‘high art, fine art, worthy of being in a museum’ the Art Institute bombing comes at a cost. Not only to the Institute, which had to remove the paint, but also for the artists who committed the crime and, who, nearly five years later, still face felony charges if their identities are revealed.”

And while I was unsuccessful in securing a copy of the play to read, the study guide suggests that the show’s protagonist does not get away consequence-free:

“As for Seven, at the end of the play, he is left grappling with whether or not what he did was worth it; after all, he now has no crew, no girlfriend, no graffiti.”

The experience of theatre for young people taken to it is rarely confined to just watching a play. It is typically contextualized through conversation, both before and after seeing a show, at the theatre and at schools and youth organizations. The evening performances reportedly had those same opportunities, although they’re certainly not compulsory. But for the ostensibly impressionable young seeing This Is Modern Art, the play is not presented in a vacuum, which these reviews seem to presume it is.

In reading commentary about the reviews on social media, I found the personal attacks on Chris and Hedy extremely distasteful; I applaud those who sought to temper that unacceptable rhetoric. The conversation now should be a greater one than simply these reviews and this play. Hopefully this incident will provoke some genuine consideration and conversation – which includes Chris and Hedy and some of the artists expressing concern about these reviews – about what voices are given the platform to judge work, the need for not just critics but their editors to open new avenues to diverse voices and critical responses, and the necessity for work to be judged on its own terms, not just on the basis of what others think it should be, whoever the work is “for.”

Howard Sherman is director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at the New School for Drama and Senior Strategy Director at the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts.

There were, in my estimation, many interesting people at the first performance of Almost, Maine in Hickory NC this past Thursday night.

Almost, Maine program cover for Hickory NC

To begin with, there was the author, John Cariani, who had come out to support the production, something he can’t do very often given how frequently his show is produced around the country. There was Jack Thomas, who produced the New York City premiere of Almost, Maine a decade ago. There was the doctor who had helped to found OutRight Youth of Catawba Valley, a support center for LGBTQ young people in this rural North Carolina region, which the performances, in part, benefited. There were the two women who were part of the local “Friends of the Library,” who knew little of the show but just wanted to support the effort. There was a high school drama teacher from the Raleigh-Durham area who had driven two and a half hours to see the show – and had to drive home that very night.

Oh, and there was the guy out on the street as I entered the building who was carrying a cross and shouting about how we were all going to hell for supporting homosexuality, and that God had very specific intentions for how humans should use their genitalia in relation to one another – though he was somewhat less circumspect than I just was in his phrasing.

Blake Richardson and Jonathan Bates in the scene “They Fell” from Almost, Maine

This production of Almost, Maine in Hickory was originally to have been produced at Maiden High School in nearby Maiden NC, but the show was canceled, after rehearsals had begun, when the school’s principal buckled to complaints about gay content and sex outside of marriage, reportedly from local churches (one made itself known publicly shortly before performances began). Due to the determination of Conner Baker, the student who was to have directed the show at the high school and ended up performing and co-directing, and with the tireless support of Carmen Eckard, a former teacher who had known many of the students since she taught them in elementary school, the show was shifted to Hickory, where it was performed in the community arts center’s auditorium.

Ci-Ci Pinson and Nathaniel Shoun in “Where It Went” from Almost, Maine

There were shifts in casting due to schedule changes, due to the show no longer being school-sanctioned, due to the need to travel 15 miles or so to and from Maiden to Hickory. But nine young people, a mix of current and former Maiden High students and a few students from local colleges, made sure that Catawba County got to see Almost, Maine, the sweet, rueful comedy that is hardly anyone’s idea of dangerous theatre.

Save for Cariani and Thomas, I hadn’t anticipated knowing anyone at the show that evening, though I had been in communication with Eckard and Baker since the objections first arose at Maiden High. But I was very pleased to spot Keith Martin, the former managing director of Charlotte Repertory Theatre, now The John M. Blackburn Distinguished Professor of Theatre at Appalachian State University, who I knew from my days as a manager in LORT theatre, but hadn’t seen or spoken with in more than a decade. Keith’s presence had a special resonance for me, because nearly 20 years ago, before the cast of Almost, Maine was born, he had been at the center of one of the most significant and ugly efforts to censor professional theatre in that era, namely community and political campaigns to shut down Charlotte Rep’s production of Angels in America, a national news story at the time which saw lawsuits, injunctions, restraining orders and even the de-funding of the entire Charlotte Arts Council, all in an effort to silence Tony Kushner’s “Gay Fantasia on National Themes.” The efforts failed, but left scars.

Keith Martin

I spoke with Keith a few nights after we saw Almost, Maine, and even as he recounted – and I recalled – the fight over Angels, he told me of two other censorship cases in North Carolina in the 1990s. The first, with which I was familiar and which played out over much of the decade, began in 1991, when a teacher named Peggy Boring was removed from her school and reassigned due to her choice of Lee Blessing’s play Independence for students, which was deemed inappropriate by administrators. Boring didn’t accept the disciplinary action and brought suit against the school system, which went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ultimately let stand a lower court decision which said that Boring’s right to free expression did not extend to what she chose for her students, an key precedent for all high school theatre and education.

The second occurrence which Keith told me about took place in 1999, when five young playwrights won a playwriting contest at the Children’s Theatre of Charlotte – but only four of the pieces were produced. The fifth, Samantha Gellar’s Life Versus the Paperback Romance, was omitted to due its inclusion of lesbian characters. The play was ultimately produced locally under private auspices and also got a reading at The Public Theater in New York with Mary-Louise Parker and Lisa Kron in the cast, but in the wake of the Boring case and Angels in America, it couldn’t be seen in North Carolina in a public facility or produced using public funds.

As we talked, as he told me firsthand accounts of situations both known and unknown to me, Keith was very concerned that I might focus too much on him when I sat down to write. It’s hard not to want to tell his story – or, perhaps, his stories – in greater detail. But since we both went to Hickory to celebrate Almost, Maine and the people who made it happen, here’s just a handful of the very smart and pertinent thoughts he shared.

Why had he made the hour-long trip to Hickory? Because, he replied, “When one of us is threatened, we as a theatre community are all at risk.”

Why is this important even in high school? “Teenagers aged 13 to 17 are, I believe, among the most marginalized voices in America today,” said Martin. “It’s ironic, because they’ve developed a sense of place, they have a spirit of activism, but they’re not yet of a legal age to give voice to their passion.”

Regarding efforts to minimize controversy in theatre production, Keith said, “Theatre has always been the appropriate venue for the discussion of difficult subjects and it provides a respectful place where people of goodwill who happened to disagree about different sides of an issue can see that issue portrayed on stage and then have a healthy, informed debate.

Is there something special about North Carolina that led to these high profile cases emerging from the state? “Angels in America was portrayed as having happened in a southern, bible belt town. But what happened after that?” Keith asked me, going on to cite the controversies and attempts to silence Terrence McNally’s Corpus Christi at Manhattan Theatre Club and My Name is Rachel Corrie at New York Theatre Workshop.

The team behind Almost, Maine in Hickory NC, including playwright John Cariani

As I said at the beginning, there were many interesting people at the opening of Almost, Maine. I suspect the students in the show didn’t know, or even know of, Keith Martin, and this post is one small way of putting their work in a broader context that he embodies in their state. I have no doubt that there were other people with personal experiences and connections relating to what the students had achieved, and it’s pretty much certain that neither they nor I will ever know them fully. But just as Keith said to me in our conversation that, “these kids need some recognition that their efforts have not gone unheard,” it’s important that they know that their theatrical act of civil disobedience does not stand alone, be it in North Carolina or nationally. The same is true for everyone who had a hand in making certain that Almost, Maine was heard over the cries of those who wanted it silenced.

In one of my early conversations with Conner Baker, as we discussed her options, her mantra was that, “We just want to do the play.” She and her classmates and supporters did just that, in the least confrontational way possible, but in doing so their names belong alongside those of Peggy Boring, Samantha Gellar, Keith Martin and many others in the annals of North Carolina theatre, at the very least.

I’ll leave you with one last connection between Keith Martin and Almost, Maine. The SALT Block Auditorium where the show was produced is located in an arts center which is the former Hickory High School. Keith Martin attended that very school decades ago and performed on the stage where Almost, Maine was produced last week. The role he recalled for me when asked? The title character in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I suspect that even James Thurber’s famous daydreamer couldn’t have imagined the controversy surrounding Almost, Maine…or its happy ending. Maiden’s reactionary, cowardly loss was Hickory’s heroic gain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eve Ensler (Photo by Brigitte Lacombe)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*  *  *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*   *   *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ari Roth

I have never attended Theater J in Washington DC. I have become increasingly aware of its work as controversy over that work has risen in recent years, while at the same time I have become aware of the high regard in which the company and its longtime artistic director, Ari Roth, are held by many theatre professionals I admire and call my friends. That Roth was fired this week after nearly two decades is simultaneously shocking and wholly unsurprising, as the theatre seems to have been on a collision course with the Washington DC Jewish Community Center, of which Theater J is a resident program (as opposed to a tenant), for some time over work that some in the Jewish community perceived as anti-Israel and therefore not deserving of a place in a JCC.

I cannot judge the work itself, because I have neither seen nor read it. I cannot be seen as impartial, at least by some, because I am a theatre professional who regularly speaks out against censorship, and because I am a Jew who does not believe that my religion requires unquestioning support of the State of Israel and its political, social and military policies. I do believe in the importance of Israel for the Jewish people and its right to exist, but I also believe in the rights of Palestinians to their own homeland as well, and the right and necessity of both populations to live in peace.

So rather than opine at length, I choose to share with you excerpts from many stories about Theater J, with links to the full reports, which in turn link to yet more. I decry the pressure that Theater J has been subjected to and the manner of Ari Roth’s firing. I believe that Roth’s artistic vision will ultimately be best served at his planned new company Mosaic Theater Company – a name I love for its ability to invoke both the Moses of biblical times, as well as the ancient art form of arranging multi-colored tiles to create art, suggesting the coming together of many fragments to make a larger and more cohesive whole. As for what happens to Theater J now, I hope it doesn’t become a home for only feel-good Jewish stories, but manages to sustain itself as a place that challenges those who attend and fosters debate among them, characteristics that I was taught from a very early age were a central part of Judaism.

From “Theater J incident illustrates larger dialogue on Israel at Jewish institutions” by Peter Marks in The Washington Post, August 6, 2011:

Andy Shallal, an Iraqi-born Muslim, was deeply proud of the open conversation channel he had maintained with Ari Roth, longtime artistic director of Theater J, a highly regarded branch of the D.C. Jewish Community Center. Together with another local theater lover, Mimi Conway, they’d created the Peace Cafe, an after-play forum, complete with plates of hummus and pita bread supplied by Shallal’s popular Busboys and Poets dining spots, that had become a mainstay of Theater J’s programming.

The makeshift cafe — established 10 years ago, during the run of a politically charged solo play about the Mideast by David Hare — has been important as an outlet for debate over issues raised in Theater J’s sometimes provocative repertory, especially for an outsider such as Shallal. “It was an emotional experience for me, to walk into a Jewish community center, to grow up as a Muslim, thinking of Israelis as really scary people,” he says. “I walked through that door, and it was a very beautiful experience.”

Then, suddenly, a few months ago, a curtain was drawn. The community center’s then-chief executive officer, Arna Meyer Mickelson, told Shallal that the Peace Cafe could no longer use the facilities of the center, at 16th and Q streets NW. “She said, ‘We appreciate what you’ve done, but we can’t have Peace Cafes at Theater J anymore,’ ” Shallal recalls. “I think she was waiting for the right moment to cut the strings.”

From “Heated Dialogue, Onstage and Off, at Theater J” by Lonnie Firestone in American Theatre magazine, February 2012

Maybe it’s the temperature, maybe it’s the politics—but there’s something about plays from the Middle East. Ask Ari Roth, artistic director of Theater J in Washington, D.C., who has produced more plays from that region than any other theatre artist in America. Roth can attest that the dialogue in plays from this part of the world is “more scalding than subtle. But that’s good, arresting theatre.”

Heated dialogue has become a Theater J trademark, both during the plays and at post-show talkbacks. A focus on Israel and the Middle East is one surefire way to attract passionate audiences (and occasional detractors). Since taking the helm of Theater J in 1998, Roth has been as avid about producing work that engages with Israeli life, culture and politics as he has about producing plays about American Jewish life.

From “Where do Jewish federations draw the ‘red line’ on opinions about Israel?” by Jason Kamaras on JNS.org, September 23, 2013:

Ari Roth, artistic director of Theater J, told JNS.org that “The Admission” is all based on “actual research done by three historians,” rather than implying the “fictitious 1948 massacre” that Young Israel’s Levi described in his letter. “The Admission” was also featured in an April 2013 workshop that was underwritten by the Israeli Consulate of New York, which Roth called an Israeli “hechsher” on the play.

COPMA does not acknowledge Theater J’s slate of more than 35 plays and workshops relating to Israel over the last 16 years, said Roth, who among other plays the group has performed cited “Dai” (“Enough”), which details the experiences of 14 different Israelis in the moments before a suicide bombing.

Theater J also never actually produced “Seven Jewish Children,” explained Roth. Instead, the group held a “critical dissection” of the play, featuring readings of “Seven Jewish Children” and response plays, as well as a talk to start the event that included “what troubled me about the play,” Roth said.

The DC federation, in an April 2011 statement, said it would not fund “any organization that encourages boycott of, divestment from, or sanctions against the State of Israel in pursuit of goals to isolate and delegitimize the Jewish State.” Theater J “stands squarely” against the BDS movement, Roth told JNS.org.

“We are all about bringing Israeli art over here, engaging with Israel,” he said. “We are a leading importer of Israeli cultural talent to Washington.”

Hanna Eady, Elizabeth Anne Jernigan, Leila Buck, Danny Gavigan, Pomme Koch, Kimberly Schraf, and Michael Tolaydo in The Admission (Photo by C. Stanley Photography)

From “Theater J Scales Back Show as Pro-Israel Critics Pressure Washington D.C. Troupe” by Nathan Guttman in the Jewish Daily Forward, October 9, 2013:

In an apparent bow to the right in the Jewish culture wars, Theater J, a celebrated theatrical group housed at Washington’s DC Jewish Community Center, will not produce a play set to open this spring that has been denounced by critics as anti-Israel.

The troupe will instead run a workshop on the play and a moderated discussion. . .

The compromise reached between Theater J and the DCJCC will likely not put an end to the heated political debate about the play. Activists from a group called Citizens Opposed to Propaganda Masquerading as Art, which organized the pressure campaign, have made clear they will not discuss anything short of removing the play altogether. The group’s chairman, Robert Samet, told the Forward earlier that he would accept only the play’s cancellation.

Carole Zawatsky, CEO of the DCJCC, told the Forward that the decision to cancel the full production was not a result of the outside pressure. “This had nothing to do with COPMA,” she said. “COPMA is trying to shut down the conversation and we are trying to broaden it.”

The DCJCC explained the decision as stemming from their “guiding principle” that plays from Israel should be done in partnership with Israeli theater companies. And since a planned partnership did not materialize, Theater J will not present a full production in Washington. The workshop, Zawatsky said, will include the play’s author, Motti Lerner, alongside other historians, artists and political figures.

The controversy surrounding production of The Admission is only the latest in a series of attacks against the capital city’s Jewish theater company involving plays related to Israel. Theater J rejected the earlier rounds of criticism, insisting on its right to stage the plays in question as a matter of artistic freedom.

This time, however, the debate was deepened by a call from the theater’s detractors to withhold donations from the city’s Jewish federation because of its support for the artistic group.

From a letter by The Dramatists Guild and the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund to the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington and the DC JCC, January 27, 2014:

We understand that a group that calls itself Citizens Opposed to Propaganda Masquerading as Art has been formed to discourage Theatre J’s production of The Admission by advocating a boycott of your organizations and other intimidating tactics. Yes, private citizens have a right to object to the plays you produce by not funding you, and no, their actions do not constitute “censorship” in the strictest sense, but the bullying tactics of this group in order to impose their political worldview on the choice of plays you present must not succeed. As the representative of writers of all political persuasions, religious beliefs, etc., the Dramatists Guild strongly opposes their actions and agenda.

We find it ironic that COPMA’s wish to stifle the play is purportedly in defense of Israel, yet the Israeli minister of Home Security himself has said: “In the past, some plays by Motti Lerner have created stormed discourse … This discourse is taking place in the public sphere and that is where it should be. The State of Israel is proud of the freedom of expression in the arts in it and especially the freedom of expression in the theater.”

Should the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington and the DCJCC have a lower standard for the freedom of expression than Israel? Surely if a state under siege since its founding can withstand criticism in the form of drama, so can your audiences.

From “For Jewish groups, a stand-off between open debate and support of Israel” by Marc Fisher in The Washington Post,” May 28, 2014:

The D.C. Jewish Community Center runs a popular music festival featuring klezmer, a cappella, Broadway, liturgical and classical sounds. This year, they invited a Brooklyn feminist punk rock band called The Shondes — Yiddish for “disgrace” — to join the lineup.

Weeks later, the center uninvited The Shondes because the band’s leader had made public statements questioning whether Israel should exist as a Jewish state.

The JCC has staged an “Embracing Democracy” series over the past year, tackling tough issues with speakers on American Jews’ relationship with Israel and the birth of the Jewish state. David Harris-Gershon was asked to speak on his memoir about how he changed after a Palestinian terrorist’s bomb in Jerusalem seriously injured his wife.

But the JCC withdrew Harris-Gershon’s invitation after discovering that he had written a blog post sympathetic to the boycott and divestment movement against Israel. . .

“A wonderful aspect of Jewish tradition is healthy debate,” says Stuart Weinblatt, rabbi at Congregation B’nai Tzedek in Potomac, Md. “But ultimately, a big tent does have parameters. It’s not inappropriate for the JCC or any institution to ask, ‘Does this play or speaker convey a narrative that helps people understand Israel’s ongoing struggle?’ There are plenty of venues willing to host productions critical of Israel. The Jewish community doesn’t need to be that place.”

“You have to push the envelope, you have to challenge,” says Gil Steinlauf, senior rabbi at Adas Israel Congregation in the District. “This is the essence of what it means to be Jewish: We welcome dissent. And I do see a move away from that welcome in the Jewish community.”

From “DCJCC Cancels Theater J’s Middle East Festival, Prompting Censorship Debate” by Nathan Guttman in the Jewish Daily Forward, November 25, 2014:

Theater J, a nationally acclaimed group under the auspices of the Washington DC Jewish Community Center, is battling a decision by the JCC to cancel its annual Voices From a Changing Middle East Festival. The theatrical festival, which in the past has included works critical of Israeli policy, was asked to accept a rigorous vetting process of artists this year to limit that criticism.

“Increasingly, Theater J is being kept from programming as freely, as fiercely, and expressing itself as fully as it needs,” the artistic director, Ari Roth, wrote to the company’s executive committee in September, in an internal document obtained by the Forward. “We find the culture of open discourse and dissent within our Jewish Community Center to be evaporating.”

Theater J and the DCJCC are not the only institutions caught between donors concerned about negative depictions of Israel and creators arguing for artistic freedom; New York City’s Metropolitan Opera is still reeling from the protests against its decision to produce “The Death of Klinghoffer”; the JCC in Manhattan came under fire in 2011 for partnering with progressive organizations, and in San Francisco, the Jewish film festival was the first, in 2009, to face pressure from donors to change its programming.

“It’s pervasive,” said Elise Bernhardt, former president and CEO of the now-defunct Foundation for Jewish Culture. “At the end of the day, they are shooting themselves in the foot.” Bernhardt said that attempts to censor Jewish art will only deter young members from being involved in the community.

From an e-mail sent by DCJCC Executive Director Carole Zawatsky to the DC JCC board on December 18, 2014:

I am writing to let you know that Ari Roth will be stepping down as the Artistic Director of Theater J. Ari has been a great leader of our theater program for the last 18 years and has grown Theater J into an award-winning and groundbreaking destination for our community. Under his guidance, Theater J has become the premier Jewish theater in the country and has gained national critical acclaim. We are so proud of the heights we have reached with Ari at the helm. While Ari will no longer be the Artistic Director of Theater J, we have offered Ari the opportunity to continue to curate the Voices From a Changing Middle East Festival and use its branding wherever his next endeavor shall be.

To all the people who have worked most closely with Ari to make Theater J the incredible success it is today, I want to assure you of our continued commitment to Theater J’s mission of presenting thought-provoking, engaging theater. While a search is underway for a new Artistic Director, Theater J will continue operating under the leadership of two people you already know well: Managing Director Rebecca Ende and now Associate Artistic Director Shirley Serotsky.

From “Artistic director Ari Roth is fired from Theater J” by Peter Marks in The Washington Post on December 18, 2014:

Ari Roth, longtime artistic director of Theater J, an organization he has built over the past 18 years into one of the city’s most artistically probing and ambitious theater companies, said he was fired Thursday. Roth said notice of his dismissal was delivered by Carole R. Zawatsky, chief executive officer of the DC Jewish Community Center, of which Theater J is an arm. The cause given, he said, was insubordination, violating what he called the JCC’s “communications protocol.”.  .  .

On Thursday night, the DCJCC released a statement quoting Zawatsky as saying: “Ari Roth has had an incredible 18-year tenure leading Theater J, and we know there will be great opportunities ahead for him. Ari leaves us with a vibrant theater that will continue to thrive.”

Roth and Zawatsky, who was hired by the JCC in 2011, clashed repeatedly over some of Roth’s programming choices, particularly as they concerned the Middle East. Earlier this year, Theater J’s world premiere of “The Admission,” a play by Israeli dramatist Motti Lerner about a purported massacre of Palestinian villagers in 1948 by Israeli soldiers, was downgraded by the center from a full production to a workshop. That occurred after a small local activist group’s campaign to stop the play asked donors to withhold funds from the JCC’s parent body.

The group, calling itself Citizens Opposed to Propaganda Masquerading as Art, launched a similar effort in protest of a Theater J offering in 2011, “Return to Haifa,” a play that featured Arab and Israeli actors. From the highly regarded Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv, Boaz Gaon’s drama — adapted from a novella by a spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, later assassinated — portrayed a Palestinian family returning to the home it had fled in 1948 that was occupied by Israeli Jews.

The latest and apparently final dispute was over the fate of Theater J’s Voices From a Changing Middle East Festival, an ongoing series of which “Return to Haifa” and “The Admission” were a part. Last month, the Jewish Daily Forward reported that the DCJCC was eliminating iterations of the festival. Roth said his commenting to the media after the article appeared was the reason given to support the charge of insubordination.

From “Ari Roth’s Firing From Theater J Is Part of a Larger Conflict About Jewish Criticism of Israel” by Benjamin Freed in the Washingtonian on December 19, 2014:

But the aggressive pushback that Israel’s critics like Roth and Judis from their fellow Jews isn’t a recent phenomeon, says Alan Elsner, the vice president of communications for J Street, a left-wing Middle East policy organization that calls itself pro-Israel and pro-peace. The group was founded in 2008 because the subject of Israel “had become so toxic that institutions, people, synagogues felt they couldn’t discuss it intelligently anymore,” he says.

Elsner believes the loud, hawkish voices that attack people like Roth are a slim portion of the the American Jewish community, but they do include some wealthy donors flexing their political clout. But those reactions, Elsner says, come at the expense of the Jewish population’s future.

“It’s a formula for driving away young people, driving away people who love Israel, but are not supportive of the settlements, and see the current government destroying the country,” he says. “The right has been in power in Israel with short breaks since 1977, and they’ve pursued building settlements and had three or four wars. The problem is, how do American Jews who support Israel and love Israel engage in a meaningful dialogue with Israel without being cast out of the tent?”

From “Ari Roth’s swift departure from Theater J follows a tumultuous tenure” by Peter Marks in The Washington Post, December 19, 2014:

As Ari Roth, Theater J’s longtime artistic director, recalled it, he sat down over a couple of lunches with Rabbi Bruce Lustig of the Washington Hebrew Congregation and the JCC’s chief executive, Carole R. Zawatsky, in an effort to undo the ire and mistrust that had soured his dealings with his boss.

“We went to marriage counseling,” is how Roth wryly describes those attempts. “We worked on our relationship.”

The meetings apparently came to naught, for on Thursday, Roth was fired by Zawatsky from the job he had held for 18 years, a tenure during which he built Theater J into one of the leading Jewish theaters in the country and one of the most important outposts for plays about Israel and its neighbors. His termination came after he refused to sign a severance agreement that would have given him six months’ salary and required that he keep quiet about the nature of his exit.

The firing, which was greeted with expressions of disbelief and widespread condemnation by everyone from Washington actors, directors and artistic directors to playwright Tony Kushner, was in point of fact the culminating event of a difficult, years-long struggle between Roth’s company and those in charge of the august Jewish institution on 16th and Q streets NW that housed it. Furious over some of his programming decisions — including producing a play based on a novel by a onetime spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and a staged reading of another playlet, Caryl Churchill’s “Seven Jewish Children,” labeled by some as anti-Semitic — activist groups and others had exerted pressure on the JCC to try to stop them.

The dismissal, though, was not merely the wrenching end to a long-simmering personnel matter involving a headstrong staffer. It was also an illustration of a growing rift in the Jewish community, over what kinds of dialogue concerning Israel can be tolerated at a multipurpose Jewish organization — and whether, in fact, programming perceived as critical of Israeli policies has any place at a center for Jewish culture.

“The work that Ari’s been doing isn’t more or less controversial than it was 10 years ago, but the atmosphere for airing different voices has changed,” said Joshua Ford, who was the DCJCC’s associate executive director until leaving in March. “That’s in part because there’s a perception that Israel is more besieged than ever, and that’s a perception with some reality to it. And part of it is that it’s very, very hard for artists and institutions just to get along in general.

“Artists need to be artists,” Ford added, “and institutions need to answer to more than just their artistic impulses.”

From “Ari Roth, Director of Jewish Theater, Is Fired” by Michael Paulson in The New York Times, December 19, 2014:

Under Mr. Roth’s leadership, Theater J has periodically produced work that has tested the Jewish Community Center. This year, the agency scaled back a production of “The Admission,” which depicted a disputed incident of Israeli soldiers killing Palestinians in 1948, and canceled a Middle East festival; in 2010 the theater scuttled a production of a play about Bernie Madoff after objections from Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and writer; in 2009 there was controversy over a play by Caryl Churchill that some saw as anti-Semitic.

Mr. Roth said he was fired after unsuccessful efforts to negotiate an agreement to allow him to do some of his most contested work as a freelancer, or to make Theater J, which is producing six shows this season and has a $1.6 million budget, financially independent from the Jewish Community Center. He said he had recently been reprimanded for speaking to the news media without permission, and that he believed the J.C.C. wanted him gone to eliminate a possible source of concern for donors during a coming capital campaign.

“This was a long time coming, but it was becoming clear that for the theater to fully express itself, not just on the Middle East but on a whole range of issues, there was a growing artistic impasse,” he said.

Tony Kushner’s The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide… at Theater J

At the conclusion of Friday’s evening’s performance at Theater J, the following statement from playwright Tony Kushner was shared with the audience, read by members of the company of Kushner’s The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, Theater J’s current production:

We know it’s been a long evening of theater, but we’d like to take one more moment of your time. We wouldn’t be standing here tonight without the hard work and fierce dedication of our friend and colleague, the artistic director of Theater J, Ari Roth. Yesterday, Ari was fired by the CEO of the Washington, D.C. Jewish Community Center in consultation with the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of this center. This decision is of grave concern to theater artists and audiences alike. Ari wasn’t fired, as the executive committee has claimed, because of ‘insubordination.’ That is a preposterous and cowardly whitewashing of the truth. Ari was fired because he believes that a theater company with a mission to explore Jewish themes and issues cannot acquiesce to demands for an uncritical acceptance of the positions of the Israeli government regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, or to an insistence on silence. Ari was fired because he refused to surrender to censorship; he was fired because he believes that freedom of speech and freedom of expression are both American values and Jewish values. “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide” has 3 more performances. We can’t continue without expressing our shock and dismay at this violation of principles we cherish. Theater artists and administrators across the country are already speaking out in protest. We join them, and we hope you’ll join us. We call on the full Board of the DCJCC to renounce the action its executive committee has taken, and by renouncing it, demonstrate its support for theater that engages with contemporary reality in all its complexity, free of the fear of censors. Thanks for listening, thanks for being a great audience, and Ari, thanks for everything–shabat shalom, Godspeed, and good night.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqTCWWaH7r0

In a New York Times Magazine article, “Can Liberal Zionists Count On Hillary Clinton?” published on Sunday, December 21, 2014 and wholly unrelated to the firing of Ari Roth at Theater J, one paragraph struck me as particularly apt to the themes and reality surrounding the theater and its place in discourse about Israel and the Middle East, echoing the observations of others:

“In many segments of American Jewry,” Zemel said, “one is free to disagree with the president of the United States, but the prime minister of Israel is sacrosanct. How patently absurd!” Zemel’s criticism of the current Israeli government pivoted to a discussion of how the Holocaust and that summer’s flare-ups of anti-Semitism in Europe reminded them all that Israel was existentially necessary. “We must love Israel even harder,” he concluded, quoting from the Israeli national anthem. “Od lo avda tikvateinu. We have not yet lost our hope.”

From “An Interview With Former Theater J Artistic Director Ari Roth” on HowlRound.com, December 21, 2014:

If you look around the country, how many plays are there on an annual basis that touch on the Middle East conflict? And then you think it’s such a rich source of drama and there are so many talented people writing about it, why aren’t they touching this subject? I don’t think they should use my example as a cautionary tale, they should use my example as a reason to do more of it. I shouldn’t be one of the only TCG theater artists engaged in this issue. It’s inexplicable to me that we don’t have a dozen other theater companies engaging in this theater subject. It isn’t the third rail, it isn’t that volatile or lethal. There’s not that much paranoid Jewish money that is so concerned about this issue being voiced. I think artists ask themselves how much do they know, how much more could they learn about the conflict and what’s my responsibility to reflect that on our stage? A lot of people could be doing this work and should be.

Via Twitter, a final observation from The Washington Post’s Peter Marks:

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Update, December 22, 2014, 1 pm: The artistic directors of a broad cross-section of U.S. theatres have sent a letter regarding Ari Roth’s firing to the Board of Directors of the Washington Jewish Community Center. It reads:

We, the undersigned Artistic Directors, are outraged by the action of the JCC in Washington DC in summarily dismissing the long-serving Artistic Director of Theater J, Ari Roth, on the morning of December 18.

The stated cause was ‘insubordination’, and it is absolutely clear that Roth was fired because of the content of the work he has so thoughtfully and ably championed for the last two decades.

Ari Roth is a capable, brilliant and inspiring leader of the American non-profit theater. The actions of the JCC, in terminating him for blatantly political reasons, violate the principles of artistic freedom and free expression that have been at the heart of the non-profit theater movement for over half a century. Such actions undermine the freedom of us all.

A free people need a free art; debate, dissent, and conflict are at the heart of what makes theater work, and what makes democracy possible. We deplore the actions of the JCC, offer our complete support for Ari Roth, urge the American theater community to protest these events in all possible ways, and call upon the full Board of the JCC to renounce this action of the Executive Committee of the JCC.

Update, December 28, 2014 11 am:

From “D.C. Jewish Community Center head details ‘insubordination’ of Ari Roth” by Peter Marks in The Washington Post, December 26, 2014:

The battle over the firing of Theater J artistic director Ari Roth took another bitter turn this week, with the circulation of remarks by his boss at the D.C. Jewish Community Center, Carole R. Zawatsky, accusing him of “a pattern of insubordination, unprofessionalism and actions that no employer would ever sanction.”

That pattern, Zawatsky charged in a letter sent by e-mail Wednesday to “Members of the Israel arts community,” included an attempt “to force the DCJCC to give up Theater J to his sole control.” She added that after that failed to occur, “he had begun to work on a new venture, while still employed by DCJCC,” and that “despite clear and written warnings” he “continued to disregard direction” from his superiors.

“Ari Roth,” she contended, “was not fired because of his politics or because of outside pressure.”

From “The Facts on the Ground at Theater J” by Isaac Butler in American Theatre magazine, December 28, 2014:

In their own ways, both Zawatsky and Roth’s versions of the story identify the same problems: an untenable relationship between the theatre and the center, mirrored or manifested by their own untenable relationship; a document outlining possible ways those relationships could change; and Roth’s future plans for a new company and decision to leave. But both use these points of evidence for radically different, somewhat incompatible interpretations of the last few years.

And if you assume the politics of Israel-related programming was the cause of Roth’s firing, a few additional ironies seep into the story. For one, Roth is hardly a radical leftist on Israeli politics: He is instead a mainstream, left-of-center, two-state-solution-supporting moderate. He has said, both in his interview with HowlRound and with me, that he willingly embraced the DCJCC’s “red line” about work that promotes BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, a movement that tries to use economic and cultural pressure to end Israeli occupation of Palestinian land).

What’s more, the work that actually landed him in hot water in the first place was a staged examination of whether or not a play by the greatest living English-language playwright was anti-Semitic—and then two plays by Israeli Jews attempting to reconcile with the events surrounding their nation’s founding.

But the past is prologue. Leaving aside the trail of events that brought Roth, Zawatsky, Theater J and the DCJCC to this impasse, the question is: What now?

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I will continue to add to and amend this post if I discover thoughtful and pertinent information I believe to be constructive to the narrative and the issues.