For those unfamiliar with “Times Square Weirdness,” my series of photos of the odder denizens of Times Square, shared frequently on my Facebook page, you may be surprised to learn of my familiarity with the Elmos and Spider-Men that people The Crossroads of the World. One by-product of this frivolous pastime is that whenever a new “character” appears, I note it almost immediately and, whenever possible, record it for posterity.

Today I was surprised to encounter a nattily attired, white-haired gent calling himself “Mike Hot-Pence,” playing off the name of our Vice-President-elect, to whom the man bore a strong resemblance. He was, according to the sign on his back and the jar in his hand, collecting funds to support Planned Parenthood, an act of admirable yet relatively subtle political theatre.

The name, you ask, why the name? Oh, I neglected to mention: he was nattily attired from the waist up, but wearing only tight, bright blue shorts on a day that was in the mid-40 degrees.

Within 90 minutes of posting my best photo of Mr. Hot-Pence on Facebook, a mutual friend revealed H-P’s true identity: Glen Pannell, a graphic designer, actor and activist. As the photo spread quickly, I disovered other mutual acquantances. Consequently, I am pleased to offer the very first interview (conducted via e-mail) with Pannell about his new persona, on his very first day in character.

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HES: When did you become aware of your resemblance to Mike Pence? And when did you first find out who Mike Pence was?

Pannell: Shortly after the Republican convention over the summer, a few people remarked on my resemblance to Pence. My sister joked with me about it, a friend posted on Facebook, somebody at work made a comment – it all seeemed to happen at the same time, and then more and more people started asking, “Do you know who you look like?” I think I was aware of the resemblance too, but I become more fully conscious of it the more people called attention to it.

I have family in Indiana so I knew that Pence was governor. But it wasn’t until he signed the anti-gay Religious Freedom Bill last year that I really started paying attention to him. I’m gay so that made me sit up and take notice. And it’s those kinds of policy decisions that are energizing my activism now.

HES: How did you conceive of your alter-ego, Mike Hot-Pence? Did you come up with the name yourself?

Pannell: I did come up with name myself! A friend suggested I dress as Mike Pence for Halloween. But a straightforward Pence costume seemed a little lazy. I was also concerned that people might take it as an endorsement of the Trump-Pence ticket. So I decided to have some fun with it and dress as “Sexy Mike Pence.” Once I decided on jacket and tie for the top half and short shorts for the bottom half, the “Hot-Pence” moniker popped into my head. And that’s the origin story of Mike Hot-Pence.

HES: It’s already pretty chilly out. How long do you see yourself seeking funds in Times Square?

Pannell: I’m a wimp about the cold so I’d like to look at some other locations, preferably indoor, so that MHP makes it through the winter months with all his fingers and toes intact. But I won’t let the weather stop me. It may just mean layers and lots of coffee. I found on my first outing that Times Square has some other challenges regardless of the weather. There are a lot of costumed characters competing for attention, all in their Designted Activity Zones, so breaking through that noise and getting people to pay attention is tough.

HES: In addition to Planned Parenthood, are there other charities you want to use the character to raise funds for?

Pannell: Absolutely, For the next few weeks, I’d like to raise money for Natural Resources Defense Council, The Trevor Project, and International Refugee Assistance Project, among others. I want to concentrate on charities that support people and causes that may be especially vulnerable under a Trump-Pence administration.

HES: I read on Facebook that some people may have been less than gracious to you in this persona. Are you concerned about people not caring for your persona, especially since it seems to be getting lots of traction very quickly?

Pannell: I can only control what I put out there, not how people receive it. I’m trying to provide as much transparency for the fundraising part of it so that people know it’s legit. 100% of the money I collect goes to the charity. Some people might not care for it or may think I’m being opportunistic. Yes, I am being opportunistic! I’m using this opportunity to raise money for people that will really need it over the next couple of years. I do promise to heed Michelle Obama’s words, “When they go low, we go high.” And that was tested on my first fundraising outing. Even with the short shorts, Mike Hot-Pence is a classy guy at heart.

HES: If you could say one thing to VP-elect Pence, what would you like to ask or tell him?

Pannell: Just one? I’ll keep it short: You have to represent all people, not just the ones that look like you. And me.

Follow Mike Hot-Pence on Twitter. He’ll keep everyone posted there about his appearances and the funds raised.

Photos © Howard Sherman

Jonathan Larson’s Rent at PACT in Tullahoma TN (photo by Howard Sherman)

I honestly wish I could figure out what makes one blog post a roaring success, and another a blip on the radar. Certainly the topic under discussion has some impact, but readership seems just as likely to be affected by the title, a photo, the Facebook algorithm, the timing of a tweet, what else is happening in the world, and so on. In short, I have no idea.

In looking over my most-read posts of 2015, I do know which ones took a great deal of research and time, and which were dashed off in under an hour. I know which ones were written after a great deal of consideration, and which were wholly reactive to something I read or heard. They don’t necessarily correlate to readership at all.

I am surprised by the way in which my most-read posts were grouped in the latter half of the year, with seven coming since October 29. Is there any correlation with the fact that I began regularly working out of The New School Drama offices starting in early October, in my new role as director of the Arts Integrity Initiative? I think it’s just coincidence, but it’s possible that the new environment meshed with some significant incidents to yield my most successful writing.

While it may seem paradoxical to offer up my most-read work once again, I have no doubt that there are plenty of people who didn’t read one or more of these when they were first posted, and perhaps there are a few people who would like to catch up with them now. You’ll note I’m not providing them in order of popularity, because it’s not a contest, but I can say that even within these ten, there’s a differential of some 10,000 views.

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July 3: Preparing For Anti-“Rent” Messages From Tennessee Pulpits

I had spoken with the leadership of the PACT community theatre in Tullahoma, Tennessee when they first began experiencing resistance to their production of Rent, but they decided that they’d prefer to try to address the opposition on a local basis. But ten days before performances were to begin, they learned of a letter in opposition to the show that was being circulated to the local clergy, and felt it was time for me to take up their cause and make it a national issue. I traveled to Tullahoma for the opening night, where I was welcomed by numerous members of the community, including the mayor, but the opposition had failed and the show played to an enthusiastic crowd. A prayer circle outside the theatre, in quiet protest of the production, drew only four people, including the two pastors who had been most opposed to the show.

August 1: Disrespecting Playwrights And Their Words with Young Players in

Minnesota

Words Players Theatre found itself in the midst of a firestorm when several bog posts, mine among them, questioned their practice of soliciting plays for production with their teen actors, but saying that the director had the final word over the show, contrary to the tenets of The Dramatists Guild. I stand by what I wrote at the time, but I was troubled by the degree of vehemence that some directed at the company, which didn’t necessarily seems the best way to educate students, their parents and the company’s leadership about respect for scripts in production. I ultimately wrote a second post, trying to walk back some of the rhetoric that surrounded this situation, not just mine, by the way.

September 15: Putting On Yellowface For The Holidays With Gilbert & Sullivan & NYU

I was far from the only person to speak out against the archaic, stereotypical use of yellowface in a production of the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players production of The Mikado, but I was among the first, with my blog post going online alongside two others on Tuesday, September 15. The groundswell of reaction grew very quickly in subsequent days, and advocates against the practice of yellowface awoke three days later to find, with great surprise, that the production had been canceled. NYGASP says they will return with a reconceived Mikado that’s appropriate to 21^st century America. Perhaps I’ll be writing about that in 2016.

October 29: When A White Actor Goes To “The Mountaintop”

It took three weeks after the production closed for word of Katori Hall’s Olivier Award-winning play being produced with a white actor as Martin Luther King to find its way to general awareness, but once it did, it brought great scrutiny to this production, at a community theatre based out of Kent State University’s Department of Pan-African Studies. What was even more remarkable, and remains still less known, is that the concept of having white and black actors each do four performances as Dr. King never happened – the white actor played the role for the entire run.

November 1: She Has A Name: Casually Diminishing Women In Theatre

I wasn’t exactly mystified as to why an interview with Pam MacKinnon carried a headline that mention her collaborators Al Pacino and David Mamet, both more famous, but it didn’t seem right that the person the paper actually spoke with was subordinated in this way. Intriguingly, not long after I posted my piece, the headline was altered, removing Mamet and Pacino – but it still didn’t mention MacKinnon by name. I was intrigued to discover that in coming up with a headline, I had birthed a Twitter hashtag: #SheHasAName.

November 2: A Seattle Theatre Critic Flies Past An Ethical Boundary

Critic offers his extra complimentary press ticket for sale, via the personals section. This one pretty much wrote itself. But I have to say that I quickly came to regret the tone of this piece, because I let myself succumb to snark precisely because it was so easy in this case. I should have stuck to the facts and let the story speak for itself. My feelings about what this critic did (or tried to do) haven’t changed, but I should have done better.

November 13: Erasing Race On Stage At Clarion University

Coming on the heels of the Mountaintop situation at Kent State, this dispute over racial representation in a college production of Jesus In India at Clarion University led to playwright Lloyd Suh pulling the rights to the show. There was a backlash against Suh from those who didn’t understand, or didn’t wish to understand, what it means to have white actors, even students, playing characters of color. Statements from university figures to the press only fed the uproar. But it has led to multiple offline conversations between Suh and the professor who was directing the show, and between the professor and me as well. Suh and I will be visiting the KCACTF Region 2 festival in a few weeks where we’ll meet for the first time and discuss the issue with the college students and their professors in attendance.

December 2: What Is Being Taught About The Director-Playwright Relationship?

After the heated dialogues that both The Mountaintop and Jesus in India engendered, on social media, in comments sections and in direct correspondence, I was moved to wonder aloud about how the playwright-director dynamic was being addressed in college training programs, both undergraduate and graduate. It prompted yet more comments and e-mails, and frankly helped me to learn a great deal more and provide the basis for further exploration. The post became the basis for a panel added to the KCACTF Region 3 festival, and I’ll be headed to Milwaukee to participate in the conversation right after the first of the year.

December 3: What Does “Hamilton” Tell Us About Race In Casting?

With Hamilton being cited as a reason why white actors should be permitted to play characters of color, I took the opportunity of a previously scheduled and wholly unrelated interview to ask the show’s writer-composer-star Lin-Manuel Miranda for his take on race on stage, both in his own work and the work of others. He was, as always, thoughtful and eloquent, during his dinner break on a two-show day.

December 9: Black Magic Crosses Directing & Design Line in Connecticut

When a community/semi-professional theatre in Connecticut staged a production that looked startlingly like a professional production that had been stage nearby three years earlier, it was an opportunity to address the issue of appropriation from other productions and what constitutes originality in directing and design. While the company in question suspended performances within 24 hours, and have subsequently restaged the show on a new set, the outpouring of anecdotes (and expressions of frustration) about productions that have slavishly copied others came pouring out. I expect to write more on this subject.

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October 16: When A Facebook Comment Says More Than a Long Blog Post About Diversity

While it didn’t make the list of my ten most read posts, top on my list of posts that I wish had been more widely read is this one. Written on a day when a combination of medications for an infection laid me low and found me laying on my sofa most of the day, an array of tweets and comments roused me to string together a few sentences which were probably my only coherent thoughts until the drugs wore off. Even if you don’t read the whole post, take a look at the italicized midsection, which is what I actually wrote that day; the rest is subsequent framing.

June 9: If The Arts Were Reported Like Sports

Truth be told, this was one of my ten most read posts of 2015, but that has little to do with what I actually wrote and everything to do with the video I’d discovered and embedded, once again with framing material that isn’t essential to enjoying the video. My greatest contribution was a snappy title. But if you haven’t seen it and need a laugh at year end, this vid’s for you.

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My thanks to everyone who read, commented, shared, tweeted or wrote to me in connection with my writing this year, and special thanks to those who brought situations to my attention so that I could explore them and share them even more broadly. You all have my very best wishes for a safe, happy, arts-filled 2016.

Howard Sherman is director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School College of Performing Arts and interim director of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts.

Please consider the following two statements.

1. In a description of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado: “The location is a fictitious Japanese town.”
2. “There are no ethnically specific roles in Gilbert and Sullivan.”

The conflict between these two statements seems fairly obvious since even in a fictitious Japanese village, the residents are presumably Japanese, and that is indeed ethnically specific, even if they are endowed with nonsensical names that may have once sounded vaguely foreign to the British upper crust.

The NYGASP Production of The Mikado

Now one could try to explain away this dissonance by saying that the statements are drawn from conflicting sources, however they are both taken from the website of the New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players. The company, which has been producing the works of G&S in Manhattan for 40 years, will be mounting their production of The Mikado at NYU’s Skirball Center from December 26 of this year through January 2, 2016, six performances in total.

It is hardly news that The Mikado is a source of offense and insult to the Asian-American community, both for its at best naïve and at worst ignorant cultural appropriation of 19^th century Japanese signifiers, as well as for the seeming intransigence of 20^th and 21^st century producers when it comes to attempting to contextualize or mitigate how the material is seen today. Particularly awful is the ongoing practice of utilizing yellowface (Caucasian actors made up to appear “Asian”) in order to produce the show, instead of engaging with Asian actors to both reinterpret and perform the piece. Photos of past productions by the NY Gilbert & Sullivan Players suggest their practice is the former.

“History!,” some cry, “Accuracy to the period!” That’s the same foolish argument recently spouted by director Trevor Nunn to explain why his new production of Shakespeare history plays featured an entirely white cast of 22. “But The Mikado is really not about Japan! It’s a spoof of British society,” is another defense. But it has been some 30 years since director Jonathan Miller stripped The Mikado of its faux Japanese veneer and made it quite obviously about the English, banishing the “orientalist” trappings from 100 years earlier. Besides, reviews of prior NY Gilbert & Sullivan Players productions note that the script is regularly updated with topical references germane to the present day, so claims to historical accuracy have already been tossed away.

Looking at the New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players (NYGASP) cast on their website, it appears that the company is almost exclusively white. While our increasingly multicultural society makes it difficult and reductive to assume race and ethnicity based on names and photos, I noted a single person who I would presume to be Latino among the 70 photos and bios, and seemingly no actors of Asian heritage. While I should allow for the possibility that there may be new company members to come, it seems clear that the preponderance of The Mikado company will be white.

Was it only a year ago that editorial pages and arts pages erupted over a production of The Mikado in Seattle precisely because of an all-white cast? Is it possible that in the insular world of Gilbert and Sullivan aficionados, word didn’t reach the founder and artistic director of NYGASP, Albert Bergeret? I doubt it. In Seattle, the uproar was sufficient to warrant a gathering of the arts community to air grievances and discuss the lack of racial and ethnic awareness shown by the Seattle troupe. That it followed on another West Coast controversy, a La Jolla Playhouse production of The Nightingale, a musical adaptation of a China-set Hans Christian Andersen tale that utilized “rainbow casting,” rather than ethnically specific casting, only added fuel to the justifiable controversy.

This year, The Wooster Group sparked protest on both coasts with its production of Cry Trojans, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida that had members of an all-white company in redface portraying Native Americans and appropriating Native American culture, as viewed through the wildly inaccurate prism of American western movies. Yet in a victory for ethnically accurate casting earlier this year, a major Texas theatre company recast its leading actor in The King and I when it was made abundantly clear by the Asian American theatre community that a white actor as the King of Siam simply wasn’t acceptable.

The NYGASP production of The Mikado (photo by William Reynolds)

That NYGASP will be performing on the NYU campus makes the impending production all the more surprising. It is highly doubtful that the university’s arts programs would undertake an all-white Mikado any more than they would do an all-white production of Porgy and Bess (although copyright probably prevents them from attempting the latter). College campuses are where racial consideration is at the forefront of thinking and action. Is it possible that The Mikado is in the Christmas to New Year’s slot precisely because school will not be in session and the university will be largely vacant, mitigating the potential for protest?  Without school in session, NYGASP can’t even take advantage of the university community, if both parties agreed, to contextualize this production as part of a broader cultural conversation, not to explain it away, but to interrogate the many issues it raises.

“We can’t find qualified performers in the Asian-American community,” is another one of the frequent defenses of yellowface Mikados. After 25 years of countless productions of Miss Saigon, a revised Flower Drum Song with an entirely Asian-American cast, and two current Broadway productions (The King and I and the impending Allegiance) with largely Asian casts, it’s not possible to claim that the talent isn’t out there. Excuses about training or worse, diction (which is noted on the NYGASP site), are utterly implausible.

Admittedly, even with racially authentic casting, The Mikado is a problematic work, since it is rooted in ignorant stereotypes of Japan and not in any real truth. Does that make it unproducible, like, say The Octoroon (as explored by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s revisionist An Octoroon), or any number of early musical comedies which traded in now-offensive racial humor? No, as Jonathan Miller proved 30 years ago. And while it seems contradictory, even if the text and characterizations of The Mikado are retrograde, if it is to be done, at least it should be interpreted by Asian actors, who are afforded too little opportunity in theatre, musical theatre, operetta and opera as it is. There are any number of Asian performers who will discuss their reservations about Miss Saigon as well, but at least it affords them work, and the chance to bring some sense of nuance and authenticity to the piece. The same should be true of The Mikado.

The upset surrounding The Mikado at the Skirball Center has just begun to bubble up, originating so far as I saw with Facebook posts from Leah Nanako Winkler, Ming Peiffer, and Mike Lew; Winkler has already posted a blog in which she speaks candidly with NYGASP’s Bergeret and Erin Quill has a strong take as well. Hopefully a great deal more will be said, with the goal that instead of keeping The Mikado trapped in amber as G&S loyalists seem to prefer, it will be brought properly into the 21^st century if it is to be performed at all. In a city as large as New York, maybe there are those who see six performances of The Mikado as being insignificant and not worthy of attention. But in a city as modern and multicultural as New York, can and should a yellowface, Causcasian Mikado be countenanced? Now is the time for the last (ny)gasp of clueless Mikados.

Update, September 16, 2 pm: NYGASP has replaced the home page of their website with a statement titled, “The Mikado in the 21st Century.” It reads in part:

Gilbert studied Japanese culture and even brought in Japanese acquaintances to advise the theater company on costumes, props and movements. In its formative years, NYGASP similarly engaged a Japanese advisor, the late Kayko Nakamura, to ensure that our costumes and sets remain true to the spirit of the culture that inspired them. We are dedicating this year’s production of The Mikado to her memory.

One hundred and forty years after the libretto was written, some of Gilbert’s Victorian words and attitudes are certainly outdated, but there is vastly more evidence that Gilbert intended the work to be respectful of the Japanese rather than belittling in any way. Although this is inevitably a subjective appraisal, we feel that NYGASP’s production of The Mikado is a tribute to both the genius of Gilbert and Sullivan and the universal humanity of the characters portrayed in Gilbert’s libretto.

In all of our productions, NYGASP strives to give the actors authentic costumes and evocative sets that capture the essence of a foreign or imaginary culture without caricaturing it in any demeaning or stereotypical way. Lyrics are occasional altered to update topical references and meet contemporary sensibilities; makeup and costumes are intended to be consistent with modern expectations.

Update, September 16, 4 pm: Since I made the original post yesterday, several other pertinent blog posts have appeared, and I wanted to share them as well. There are many aspects to this conversation.

From Ming Peiffer, “#SayNoToMikado: Here’s A Pretty Mess.”

From Melissa Hillman, “I Get To Be Racist Because Art: The Mikado.”

From Chris Peterson, “The Mikado Performed In Yellowface and Why It’s Not OK.”

From Barb Leung, “Breaking Down The Issues with ‘The Mikado’”

Update, September 17, 7 am: NYGASP has posted the following message on their Facebook page:

Update, September 18, 8 am: Overnight, NYGASP announced that they are canceling their production of The Mikado at the Skirball Center, replacing it with The Pirates of Penzance. A statement on their website reads as follows:

New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players announces that the production of The Mikado, planned for December 26, 2015-January 2, 2016, is cancelled. We are pleased to announce that The Pirates of Penzance will run in it’s place for 6 performances over the same dates.

NYGASP never intended to give offense and the company regrets the missed opportunity to responsively adapt this December. Our patrons can be sure we will contact them as soon as we are able, and answer any questions they may have.

We will now look to the future, focusing on how we can affect a production that is imaginative, smart, loyal to Gilbert and Sullivan’s beautiful words, music, and story, and that eliminates elements of performance practice that are offensive.

Thanks to all for the constructive criticism. We sincerely hope that the living legacy of Gilbert & Sullivan remains a source of joy for many generations to come.

David Wannen Executive Director New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players

Update, September 18, 3 pm: The NYGASP production of The Mikado was scheduled to be given a single performance on the campus of Washington and Lee University this coming Monday evening, September 21. As of this afternoon, the production has been replaced with the NYGASP production of The Pirates of Penzance.

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Howard Sherman is the interim director of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts.

“You can’t draw sweet water from a foul well,” critic Brooks Atkinson wrote of his initial reaction to the musical Pal Joey. I don’t know whether Christopher Hart of The Sunday Times in London knows this famous quote, but it certainly seems to summarize his approach to reviewing the London premiere of Stephen Adly Guirgis’s The Motherfucker With The Hat, which one can safely say is light years more profane than the Rodgers and Hart musical.

Alec Newman, Ricardo Chavira & Yul Vázquez in The Motherfucker With The Hat at the National Theatre

“A desperately boring play,” “an absolute stinker of a play,” “untrammelled by such boring bourgeois virtues as self-restraint or good manners,” “turgid tripe,” and “a pile of steaming offal,” are among the phrases Hart deploys about Guirgis’s Hat. While I happen to not agree with him (and admittedly I saw the Broadway production, not the one on at the National Theatre), he is entitled to these opinions. It may not be particularly nuanced criticism, but it’s his reaction. There are other British critics with opposing views (The Guardian and The Independent), and some who agree (Daily Mail), so there’s no consensus among his colleagues. But within his flaying of the play, Hart reveals classist, racist and nationalist sentiments that, however honestly he may be expressing them, prove why he is unable to assess the play on its own terms, empathizing with its flawed characters, as any good critic should endeavor to do.

Take this example: “Like the white working class in this country, the PRs in America have picked up a lot of black patois.” Even allowing for differences in language between England and the U.S., referring to residents of Puerto Rico and “the PRs” is patently offensive, and also hopelessly out of date, all at once. The statement also suggests that Puerto Ricans are in some way foreign, when the island itself has been part of America for more than a century; it’s perhaps akin to saying “the Welsh in Great Britain” as if they’re alien. When he parses “black patois” as the difference between saying “ax instead of ask,” Hart presents himself as Henry Higgins of American pronunciations, which I strongly suspect he picked up from watching American television and film, without any real understanding of racial culture or linguistics here – and he generalizes condescendingly about a huge swath of the British populace for good measure.

Hart also refers to the “very brief entertainment to be had in trying to work out” the ethnic background of the character Veronica, first musing that she might be “mixed race African American” but acknowledging her as Puerto Rican “when her boyfriend calls her his ‘little taino mamacita’.” I don’t know why he was fixated on this issue, presumably based on a parsing of the skin color of the actress in the role, especially since the play provided him with the answer (though the same problem has afflicted U.S. critics encountering Puerto Rican characters as well). Would that he were more focused on the character and story. He briefly describes the plot as being about “one Veronica, who lives in a scuzzy apartment off Times Square, snorts coke and sleeps around. Oh, and she shouts a lot.” In point of the fact, the play is an ensemble piece, and if any one character dominates, it’s Jackie, the ex-con struggling to fight his addictions and set his life straight.

After going off on a tear about the play’s profanity, Hart makes a comment about the play’s dialogue, saying, “A lot of it is ass-centred, in that distinctive American way.” As an American, I have to say that I’m unfamiliar with our bum-centric obsession, outside of certain pop and rap songs, even if Meghan Trainor is all about that bass. But hey, I’ve only lived here my whole life, and spent 13 of those years living and working in New York, a melting pot of culture and idiom. What do I know?

I don’t happen to read Hart with any regularity, but my colleague at The Stage, Mark Shenton, has noted his tendency to antagonistic hyperbole in the past, having called Hart out for separate reviews of Cabaret and Bent which both seem puritanical and, in the latter case, homophobic. While I peruse a number of UK papers online, both via subscription and free access, even my limited exposure to Hart’s rhetoric suggests that The Sunday Times is an outlet whose paywall I shall happily leave unbreached.

I was actually going to shrug off the ugliness of the Hat review, but only about an hour after I read it, I came across some letters to the editor in The Boston Globe, responding to a review of A. Rey Pamatmat’s Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them at Company One Theatre. While I don’t think the critic in this case, Jeffrey Gantz, was trying to be inflammatory (as I’m fairly certain Hart was), he revealed his own biases in seemingly casual remarks. Noting that two of the characters are Filipino-American, he wrote:

They make the occasional reference to their favorite Filipino dishes, but I wish more of their culture was on display, and it seems odd that they have no racial problems at school.

Maria Jan Carreon and Gideon Bautista in Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them at Company One Theatre

Not every character with a specific racial or ethnic origin need demonstrate it for our consumption on stage; it may not be germane to the play or perhaps the characters created by Pamatmat are more steeped in American culture than Filipino. The statement is the equivalent of saying about me, were I a character, that though I mention matzoh ball soup and pastrami, it would be nice if I spoke more Yiddish, wore a yarmulke, or waxed rhapsodic about my bar mitzvah. My grandparents were all immigrants to the U.S., so I’m only second generation American, not so far removed from another culture and schooled at length in my religion, but I don’t constantly remind people of those facts.

As for not experiencing intolerance at school, Gantz must have a singular idea of what every young person who is not white experiences on a daily basis. That’s not to say that there isn’t ugliness and ignorance directed at people of color far too regularly at every level of American life, but perhaps that isn’t germane to the story Pamatmat wants to tell or part of the personal experience he draws upon (he’s from Michigan, incidentally). It’s not as if “racial problems” for students of color are an absolute rule of dramaturgy that must be obeyed.

That said, it’s ironic that Gantz criticizes the play for taking on “easy targets, notably bigotry and bad parents.” The fraught relationship between parents and children has been the fodder of drama since the Greeks, and it seems an endlessly revelatory subject; as for bigotry, if it is perceived as an “easy” subject, then perhaps Gantz, despite wishing “racial problems” on the characters, has no real understanding of the complexity of race in America and the many forms bigotry can take, enough to fuel 1,000 plays and playwrights or more. But he’s complaining that Pamatmat hasn’t written the play that Gantz wants to see, rather than assessing the one that was written.

I can’t speak to the general editorial slant of The Sunday Times, so while Hart’s recent rant may be in keeping with the paper’s character, I don’t think the implicit racial commentary of Gantz’s review is consistent with the social perspective of The Boston Globe. That leads me to wonder, as I have before, what role editors play when racial bias appears in reviews, such as in a Chicago Sun-Times review that appeared to endorse racial profiling. Yes, these reviews are each expressions of one person’s opinion, but they are also, by default, opinions which are tacitly endorsed by the paper itself. Reading these reviews just after following reports from the Americans in the Arts and Theatre Communications Group conferences, which demonstrated a genuine desire on the part of arts institutions to address diversity and inclusion, I worry that if the arbiters of art continue to judge work based on retrograde social views, it will only slow progress in the field that, as it is, has already been too long in coming.

 Howard Sherman is director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School College of Performing Arts School of Drama and senior strategy consultant at the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts.

Hannah Cabell and Anna Chlumsky in David Adjmi’s 3C at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater (Photo: Joan Marcus)

Seen any good productions of David Adjmi’s play 3C lately?

Sorry, that’s a trick question with a self-evident answer: of course you haven’t. That’s because in the two and a half years since it premiered at New York’s Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, no one has seen a production of 3C because no one is allowed to produce it, or publish it. Why, you ask? Because a company called DLT Entertainment doesn’t want you to.

3C is an alternate universe look at the 1970s sitcom Three’s Company, one of the prime examples of “jiggle television” from that era, which ran for years based off of the premise that in order to share an apartment with two unmarried women, an unmarried man had to pretend he was gay, to meet with the approval of the landlord. It was a huge hit in its day, and while it was the focus of criticism for its sexual liberality (and constant double entendres), it was viewed as lightweight entertainment with little on its mind but farce and sex (within network constraints), sex that never seemed to actually happen.

Looking at it with today’s eyes, it is a retrograde embarrassment, saved only, perhaps, by the charm and comedy chops of the late John Ritter. The constant jokes about Ritter’s sexual façade, the sexless marriage of the leering landlord and his wife, the macho posturings of the swinging single men, the airheadedness of the women – all have little place in our (hopefully) more enlightened society and the series has pretty much faded from view, save for the occasional resurrection in the wee hours of Nick at Night.

In 3C, Adjmi used the hopelessly out of date sitcom as the template for a despairing look at what life in Apartment 3C might have been had Ritter’s character actually been gay, had the landlord been genuinely predatory and so on. It did what many good parodies do: take a known work and turn it on its ear, making comment not simply on the work itself, but the period and attitudes in which it was first seen.

Enter DLT, which holds the rights to Three’s Company. They sent a cease and desist letter to Adjmi back in 2012 claiming that the show violated their copyright; Adjmi said he couldn’t afford to fight it. Numerous well-known playwrights wrote a letter in support of Adjmi and the controversy generated its first wave of press, including pieces in The New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Over time, there have been assorted legal filings by both parties, with another wave of press appearing last year just about this time, when Adjmi sued for the right to reclaim his play for production, with commensurate press coverage once again from the Times and Studio 360, among others.

Why do I dredge this all up now? Because the bottom line is that DLT is doing its level best to prevent a playwright from earning a living, and throwing everything they can into a specious argument to do so. They say, both in public comments and in their filings, that 3C might confuse audiences and reduce or eliminate the market for their own stage version (citing one they commissioned and one for which they granted permission to James Franco). They cite negative reviews of 3C as damaging to their property. And so on.

But while I’m no lawyer (though I’ve read all of the pertinent briefs on the subject), I can make perfect sense out of the following language from the U.S. Copyright Office, regarding Fair Use exception to copyright (boldface added for emphasis):

The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: “quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author’s observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.”

As someone who has gone out on a limb at times defending copyright and author’s rights, I’d be the first person to cry foul if I thought DLT had the slightest case here. But 3C (which I’ve read, as it’s part of the legal filings on the case) is so obviously a parody that DLT’s actions seem to be preposterously obstructionist, designed not to protect their property from confusion, but to shield it from the inevitable criticisms that any straightforward presentation of the material would now surely generate.

Rather than just blather on about the motivations of DLT in preventing Adjmi from having his play produced and published, let me demonstrate that their argument is specious. To do so, I offer the following exhibit from Mad Magazine:

What’s fascinating here is that Mad, a formative influence for countless youths in the 60s and 70s especially, parodied Three’s Company while it was still on the air, seemed to already be aware of the show’s obviously puerile humor, was read in those days by millions of kids – and wasn’t sued for doing so. That was and is a major feature of Mad, deflating everything that comes around in pop culture through parody. The fact is, Adjmi’s script is far more pointed and insightful than any episode of Three’s Company and may well work without deep knowledge of the original show, just like the Mad version.

The most recent filing in the Adjmi-DLT situation comes from the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund, an offshoot of The Dramatists Guild. Like all of the filings in this case, it’s very informative about copyright in general and parody in particular, and it spells out the numerous precedents where the use of a prior work was permitted under fair use, with particular attention to the idea that when the new work is transformative – which 3C surely is – it is permitted (read the complete amicus curiae brief here). In addition to their many examples, I would add from my own misspent youth such works as Bored of the Rings, a 1969 book-length parody of Tolkien by some of the people who would go on to create the National Lampoon, where incidentally, DLDF president John Weidman exercised his own comic skills) and Airplane!, which took its plotline (and punctuation mark) of a poisoned airline crew directly, uncredited, from the 1957 film Zero Hour! More recently, the endlessly touring Potted Potter has successfully run without authorization, though clearly derived from the works of J.K. Rowling and prior to any authorized stage interpretation.

It’s been months since there have been filings for summary judgment in the case (August 2014, to be precise), and according to Bruce Johnson, the attorney at Davis Wright Tremaine in Seattle who is leading the fight on Adjmi’s behalf, there is no precise date by which there will be a ruling. Some might say that I’m essentially rehashing old news here, but I think it’s important that the case remains prominent in people’s minds, because it demonstrates the means by which a corporation is twisting a provision of copyright law to prevent an artist from having his work seen – and that’s censorship with a veneer of respectability conferred by legal filings under the umbrella of commerce. There may be others out there facing this situation, or contemplating work along the same lines, and this case may be suppressing their work or, depending upon the ultimate decision, putting them at risk as well.

We don’t all get to vote on this, unfortunately. But even armchair lawyers like me can see through DLT’s strategy. I just hope that the judge considering this case used to read humor magazines in his youth, which should provide plenty of precedent above and beyond what’s in the filings. 3C may take a comedy and make it bleak, but there’s humor to be found in DLT’s protestations, which are (IMHO) a joke.

P.S. I don’t hold the copyright to any of the images on this page. I’m reproducing them under Fair Use. Just FYI.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

May 5: On Stage In Milford, With Sweet Understanding

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

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

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

March 3: When A Theatre Review Condescends

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

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

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

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

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

June 3: When The Audience Bellows Louder Than Big Daddy

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

June 13: Into The Woods With Misplaced Outrage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We all know that web traffic is the lifeblood of online media, giving rise to such essential reporting as “Which Game of Thrones Character Are You?,” “Which Breakfast Club Character Are You?” and every imaginable variant on this gambit. It is, of course, clickbait, designed to get you to interact with a site and see some advertising and increase page views, engagement time and other such metrics. Frankly, after finding out which Muppet I am (Beaker, if you must know), I stopped taking the bait.

But there’s some more high-minded clickbait out there, and The Hollywood Reporter is engaging in it right now. Via SurveyMonkey, THR is asking people to vote for what they think are the Best Drama Programs, at the high school and collegiate level (there’s no distinction between undergraduate and graduate for the latter). While I couldn’t find the survey on their website, it was being tweeted around, so I have the survey sans preface, sans methodology, sans everything. The fact that the schools you can choose from are pre-selected could be the top results of a larger study, but as it travels the tubes of the Internet, there’s not necessarily any way to know. (If there is any science behind this, I challenge THR to append it to their survey, and I’ll amend this post accordingly.)

To put it simply, I think this is preposterous and rather insidious, because when the resulting article comes out, a number of aspiring young theatre artists just might think it’s based in some degree of expertise, rather than the result of a narrowly defined popularity contest. A few schools might even cite it in promotional materials, and you can be sure the results will go zipping around with both pride and dismay.

So I’d like to say simply this: if you come across it, ignore it. Don’t fill it out. Don’t share it. Don’t comment on the results when they appear. Recognize it for the clickbait that it is, far beneath the sometimes excellent reporting that has been a part of the truly resurrected THR. If they exist to report on the industry, then they surely could commission a real study, or build a special section about drama education, not exploit us for our eyeballs. Offering a list of schools (and classes and even summer camps) with a slight nudge towards the fame of a few graduates (mostly actors, some of whom graduated decades ago) isn’t designed to inform anyone, it’s designed to get people to read and talk about The Hollywood Reporter. It doesn’t even offer the opportunity for write-in candidates, which would at least make it a fairer popularity contest. And who thinks the resulting article, revealing the skewed results, is likely to come out right around The Tony Awards, when theatre’s profile, like it or not, is at its highest nationally? I sure do.

What’s the harm, I hear some of you say? Isn’t it just another benign internet survey? No, because it will be the basis of boasting, of decision making, of aggravation, depending upon who you are and how you relate to the results.

While I’ve reproduced the survey, you’ll notice I haven’t linked to it. I won’t give them the satisfaction. I hope you won’t either. And if you want to give them a piece of your mind, tweet them at @THR.

P.S. I don’t mean to suggest that THR is the only site to do such spurious surveys. There are others. But this one is happening right now.

Arizona State University’s Gammage Auditorium

[This post has been updated twice since it was originally published. I urge you to read it fully before drawing any conclusions.]

Rent is at the center of an academic controversy again, with a few twists. This time, it’s not the whole show, it’s just one song, “La Vie Boheme.” It involves multiple high schools and a college simultaneously. The performance is over and done. But the song echoes.

Here’s the gist, summarized from video and written reports from AZcentral.com: earlier this month, students from Arizona high schools attended the Arizona All-State musical festival on the Arizona State University campus, under the auspices of the school’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. While there, they attended a performance made up of various pieces by the university’s performing arts groups, across many disciplines. The Lyric Opera Theatre program performed the aforementioned number from Jonathan Larson’s musical. Reportedly some of the students were uncomfortable with the content and physicality of the presentation and decided to leave during the performance, some fairly quickly. They shared their feelings with their teachers and their parents.

Subsequently, the Herberger Institute sent an e-mail to the music teachers of the groups in attendance. It read, in part:

“We sincerely apologize for the poor programming and lack of communication that led to the presentation of an inappropriate scene from the musical Rent at our host concert. I apologized directly to your students in each ensemble rehearsal on Friday afternoon, but I wanted to make sure you know that the entire School of Music community feels remorse over this unfortunate decision.

We have addressed this situation with those responsible. I assure you that we will implement a new protocol for the review of performance material so that this does not happen again.”

A similar but not identical statement was issued to the media. It read, in part:

“The faculty member who coordinated the host concert trusted that those planning the musical theatre portion of the concert would make appropriate decisions regarding the selection from the musical Rent. Unfortunately, this did not occur and an inappropriate scene was presented. The poor decision made by our Lyric Opera Theatre faculty marred the experience for many. The Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts recognizes an audience’s right to choose what they come to a concert space to see. Unfortunately, the audience was not given a choice as our program contained no warning about the adult content that was presented nor was an announcement made from the stage giving them the opportunity to choose to stay for the performance or not. 

The concerns of parents and directors were taken seriously with personal emails and phone calls made immediately, and a process has been put in place to reconfigure the leadership and organization of the Lyric Opera Theatre program so this does not happen again.”

The media message finished with “The School of Music deeply regrets this situation.” Both messages were issued by Associate Dean and Interim Director of the School of Music, Heather Landes.

Here’s what we don’t know: did “rows and rows” of students exit the auditorium, as one parent asserts? It’s unclear if that parent was even in attendance, or characterizing a situation based on hearsay. Considering that news reports say the school received 14 or 15 calls about the incident, it’s hard to tell how many of the several hundred students were troubled by the performance, though the calls could have come from teachers, rather than parents. We also don’t know what the staging of the scene was precisely, so a characterization of it as being “pornographic” is most probably hyperbolic (and catnip to TV coverage, as well as a caption writer who declared “an extreme performance … left the students shocked and disgusted”), even if a bare behind was flashed. I certainly hope the staging was exuberant and enthusiastic, as the show calls for. [I did attempt to get more details, but save for the prepared statements, received no other response to my inquiries to Prof. Landes and two separate staffers in the Herberger School of Music’s communications office.]

It does appear that the high school teachers who brought their students to the event didn’t know what the programming would be, and it turned up without the context of a full production. While I wouldn’t bat an eye at high schoolers seeing a discrete performance of that song, I grant that some parents and teachers might not condone even a flash of partial nudity or simulated intimacy. Because high schools do have a supervisory right and responsibility over what their students see while under their care, especially when away from school, I agree that somewhere along the way, a step was missed. A heads-up wouldn’t have been out of line, though an actual warning would have been. Although unless these schools have private showers for gym class and school sports, someone’s butt wouldn’t exactly be a revelation. Some pelvic thrusts or a bit of groping? Like it or not, par for the course in so many aspects of our popular culture, familiar except in the most sheltered of teen lives. I’m speculating now, but shudder to think that the portrayal of same sex couples could have brought on such swift disapproval by the offended teens.

A mistake was made, students made a choice not to watch once they saw a glimpse something they preferred not to sit through, no one was harmed, and given what ensued, it’s highly unlikely that such a thing would have ever happened again. The rather profound mea culpas – remorse? really? – that were issued strike me as a bit much, especially with emphatic statement about new protocols and reconfiguring. The disavowal of the scene from Rent is overboard, unless the production went way overboard. Given that mooning provoked the complaints, it’s perhaps a bit glib to say now that the statements suggest asses were being covered, but I can’t resist.

But there’s more. I turn your attention to a statement issued jointly last night by Acting Dean Landes and Dr. William Reber, Director of the Opera and Musical Theatre training programs since 1991 at the ASU School of Music, announcing that Reber would no longer lead the Lyric Opera Theatre program.

“Dr. Reber made the decision to step down from his administrative role as director of the Lyric Opera Theatre program voluntarily, and we respect his decision. He remains a faculty member of the ASU School of Music; where he has served the students of ASU for more than 23 years and will continue to do so. Our school and our students have greatly benefited, and will continue to greatly benefit, from his creative spirit, his commitment and his love and passion for music…

Leadership in the arts requires both artistic vision and difficult work. It also requires the willingness to take responsibility for how that work is presented and communicated. This incident was important enough to the school and its relationship with the Arizona community that Dr. Reber felt he needed to accept responsibility, and he has chosen to use this as a teaching opportunity for his students about the role and responsibility of an arts leader, not just to the organization he leads but also to the community at large.”

I’m not so sanguine about Dr. Reber “needing to accept responsibility” in the way that he did; one never knows the behind the scenes pressures that lead to such a prepared, jointly-issued set of remarks. I can’t help but think that the university felt it needed someone to take blame for this, needed someone publicly shamed, and this was the solution worked out. While I applaud Dr. Reber for not throwing anyone under the bus, it troubles me that the university couldn’t absorb this gaffe and maintain intact a program that was, apparently, working just fine save for this one-off gaffe. Dr. Reber protected his staff, but couldn’t ASU have found a way to fully protect its faculty and programs? 

Unlike a content controversy in a high school alone, where all the stakeholders are close by, a university setting is rather different. In the case of ASU, it’s a public university, so there’s all kinds of governmental politics that come into play. I have no idea what the ASU town-gown situation is, and how that may have affected into this. ASU’s students certainly aren’t necessarily all from Tempe, where the school is located, nor were the high school groups, so this is a statewide issue. But the strongest constituency for a school, its alumni, could be scattered across the country. I fear that a vocal minority has prompted swift results while the majority of Dr. Reber’s potential supporters didn’t even know that a problem existed.

So here’s the deal. If you live in Arizona and believe that Dr. Reber should still be running the Lyric Opera Theatre program (without having his hands tied over the work he does for the university’s students), start writing to the school’s president Dr. Michael Crow (Michael.Crow@asu.edu). Don’t call him names or presume anything about his personal beliefs and politics, just speak out in support of a vital theatre program and urge him to reinstate Dr. Reber to the Lyric Opera Theatre. Do the same if you’re just a supporter of quality arts education, for both high school and college students, no matter where you live. If you’re an alumnus or alumna of ASU, write to Dr. Crow as well, but you might also want to include R.F. “Rick” Shangraw Jr. (rick.shangraw@asu.edu), the head of the ASU Foundation, on your note, and mention whether these circumstances will have any impact on your future donations to the school. That can get a university’s attention.

Early reports and an online petition, since amended, incorrectly had it that Dr. Reber resigned or was forced to resign. He’ll remain on faculty and teach, but it still seems a shame that he’s been separated from the Lyric Opera Theatre program he ran. While some parts of the local community may be satisfied by this outcome, it’s worth noting that such events could cast a pall over the creative arts on campus. To insure that ASU can be a strong resource not only for its current students, but for students who may want to attend in the future, ASU should be standing behind Dr. Reber, acknowledging the error but not bending over backwards to placate the public. Because let me tell you, if aspiring theatre students, if aspiring arts students, hear that at Arizona State, Rent is something to apologize for, they may well think twice about where they want to go to school.

P.S. It may interest you to know that the incoming dean of the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, Steven Tepper, is the author of the book Not Here, Not Now, Not That: Protest over Art and Culture in America, which by coincidence is on its way to me from Amazon as I write. I’m dying to know what he makes of all this.

Update, April 24 1 p.m.: On Facebook, I saw the following statement shared, which adds very important perspective to this discussion. It is a personal statement from Dr. David Schildkret of the ASU School of Music, and in no way an official one from the school, in response to the online petition:

“A petition is circulating that castigates ASU for allowing Bill Reber to step aside as Director of Lyric Opera Theater. Earlier this month, LOT presented a portion of Rent to high school students without warning of adult content. It was part of an ASU School of Music showcase for the Arizona All-State music festival. Bill, recognizing how damaging this is to our school, has chosen to step aside. I believe the petition, while well-intentioned, is misguided. I posted this on their Facebook page. I am speaking for myself, at no one’s urging, and in no official capacity. Here is the post.

Friends: I speak as a friend and colleague of Bill Reber who deeply admires what he has done. I feel that this petition fails to recognize the honor and nobility Bill has shown by his actions.

Please understand the incident. Students participating in the Arizona All-State came to a concert that was meant to showcase our School of Music. An excerpt from Rent was offered as part of that. The excerpt, “La Vie Bohème,” included explicit language and highly suggestive staging. It was NOT appropriate for a general high school audience, and there was no warning of that. (When the same excerpt was presented in a preview for the Lyric Opera Guild, the staging was toned down. That didn’t happen when the same material was performed for 14-year-olds, and even Bill was surprised by that.)

The students in the audience did not come to see Rent. They did not know (none of us did, in fact) that material that was not school-appropriate would be presented. About a quarter of them left the hall and returned after the Rent excerpt ended.

This is not about a few offended parents. It is about the responsibility of artists to know their audience. It is about what we were trying to present to students and teachers at All-State. The question is not whether Rent itself is problematic. The question is whether this was the suitable occasion for this particular performance. (“Seasons of Love” would have been touching and appropriate and would have caused no such difficulty.)

Make no mistake, this damaged the ASU School of Music. You may not like that, but it is the reality. It undid work to build bridges to local schools that many of us, including Bill Reber, have undertaken with zeal and passion for years.

If in fact the university had caved to a few cranky parents, I would sign the petition in capital letters. But people were legitimately and justifiably offended at an occasion that was meant to be anything but offensive. That is their right.

Please give Bill Reber the credit he deserves. He did not succumb to strongarm tactics: he is more powerful than that. He felt that a wrong choice had been made and took responsibility for it. He has stepped up to say that he recognizes that we accomplish most when we respect our audience. He has stepped up to say that there were better choices to be made and that he could have seen to making them.

I deeply admire Bill for this. He is a model for all of us. By all means, send him letters of affection, thanks, and support: he deserves them. But don’t dishonor him by trivializing his very courageous and noble actions.”

I wish the school had been more forthcoming from the start with this kind of clear information. It mitigates a good deal of what I’ve written, and provides essential context, but I leave my post intact rather than remove or alter it. Thank you, Dr. Schildkret.

Update, April 24, 4 p.m.: Dr. Schildkret has written me directly to respond to something which I questioned in my original piece. He says:

“Rows and rows of people really did walk out of the performance on 4/11. About 25% of the audience left for that piece. Some of that was teachers taking their classes out en masse so that the teachers wouldn’t get in trouble.”

Once again, my thanks to Dr. Schildkret for straight answers to important questions. From here on, I leave everyone to draw their own conclusions.

Timberlane High Performing Arts Center

I have just returned from a trip to Plaistow, New Hampshire, where I went to support students, parents, alumni and members of the community who wanted to speak out against the cancelation of a production of Sweeney Todd at Timberlane High School, announced for production a year ago, but scheduled for 2015. In the wake of the response to the cancelation, the school scheduled an open forum to hear from the community on the issue. This was an important and rare step, since each and every decision of school administrators cannot possibly be opened to organized public discussion, with the media present as well.

But in creating the opportunity, the administrators of Timberlane opened the door to two-and-a-half hours of speaker after speaker extolling the caliber of the show, the importance of theatre in their lives, and how deeply connected they are to the school’s arts program.  Despite the opportunity, no one spoke up against the show. Even though some apparently made their feelings known privately to the administration, or in letters to local papers and on blogs, none would stand to say so in front of their peers in a public setting.

Because I don’t like to give speeches except when I’m invited to do so, I spoke at the session off the cuff, based on what I’d learned about the issue and the community in the days and hours leading up to the event in the high school cafeteria, attempting to address concerns specific to Timberlane. I want to share my remarks with you, with all of the imperfections of impromptu speech. I hope I spoke some sense and maybe even some truth.

The superintendent indicated he would render his decision very shortly, and as I write, a community awaits, as do I.

*   *   *

Into the woods – you have to grope
But that’s the way you learn to cope
Into the woods to find there’s hope
Of getting through the journey.
Into the woods, each time you go
There’s more to learn of what you know…

Those are the words of Stephen Sondheim. Stephen Sondheim is the greatest composer of musical theatre in the past 50 years and possibly in the history of the American musical theatre. His work deserves to be seen and while his work has never been known to as somebody to easily please audiences, the challenge that he presents to every audience is a special challenge for students.

I’ve come up from New York to represent to you that there are people far beyond this community who care about each and every student who wants a great experience in the arts. I don’t do it because I believe that every student in every drama club will go on and become a professional artist. Indeed, I suspect most of them won’t. I come here because I want better audiences for the arts and by being involved in the most challenging work at this stage in their lives, those who take part in his work, those who see this work, become better audiences so that we can have better arts.

You have an extraordinary performing arts center – I’m still in awe of that turntable, I’ve never seen anything like it – and with a facility like that you should be able to use it to its fullest.

No, you can’t please everyone all of the time. I’m amazed to find the number of performances that you have here. In the case of this show, it will not please everyone, it never has. But it is a masterwork of musical theatre. The original cast recording was just announced to be inducted into the Library of Congress today.

People like to focus on the more lurid aspects of Sweeney Todd. But Sweeney Todd is not about its actions; Sweeney Todd is about morality, about justice, about the lengths people will go to and the lengths they’re driven to when they face injustice.

No, I would not bring a seven year old to Sweeney Todd. But I believe and I am told that there are many other opportunities in this community for people of all ages at different times to have different experiences. This is not – and I do know this script, I know this script particularly well – that you are not proposing to do the original script. Stephen Sondheim has authorized a school edition of Sweeney Todd which removes some of the material which would be difficult for high schools to endorse or for students to perform. It’s not neutered but it is toned down. Countless high schools do this show every year across the country. The students here should be able to have the opportunities that their peers, who they will be facing when they go on to college, had at their schools.

There are many stories of school shows which are canceled at the last minute. This is by no means the case – you have a year. You have a year to place the show in context, to inform not just in the students in the drama club, but all of the students, all of the parents, all of this community, through a range of educational activities that can be put into place. Other schools have done it. I pledge myself as a resource to help you find what’s been done elsewhere, what’s been successful and even people who can come in and help with those programs. Nobody would walk into this show and be surprised by what is happening. Frankly, given what has surrounded this in the past week, I think we’re past that.

Fundamentally, I believe student theatre is first and foremost for the students who make it and then if there is there is the opportunity for people beyond their family members to come and see it, that’s fantastic. But the experience is for the students. That’s what school is for.

I truly hope that a year from now, I will be driving back up from the city to see Sweeney Todd.

Stephen Sondheim is a vastly smarter man than I am, so I will finish again with his words.

Careful with what you say,

Children will listen.
Careful you do it too.
Children will see.
And learn.
Guide them but step away,
And children will glisten.
Tamper with what is true,
And children will turn,
If just to be free.
The more you protect them,
The more they reject you.
The more you reflect them,
The more they respect you.

Thank you very much.

*   *   *

Update, April 10: I am delighted to report that late this afternoon, Dr. Earl Metzler of the Timberlane School District reversed the decision to cancel Sweeney Todd and the show is now back on the Timberlane High schedule for 2015. The decision came about thanks to the respectful yet passionate efforts of the students and parents of Timberlane and members of the greater Plaistow community. I look forward to seeing them once again, and my favorite musical, a year from now.