There’s a high school musical in jeopardy? Quick, to the Howardmobile.

I’m kidding, of course. But when I got an e-mail at 11:30 a.m. yesterday, saying that parents and groups were going to protest a production of Sweeney Todd at Amity Regional High School in Woodbridge CT at that evening’s board of education meeting, I was extremely, nerve-janglingly upset. While I have spoken out against censorship of high school productions before, most vocally in Waterbury CT, and written about other such efforts as well, this threatened action struck a bit too close to home.

Howard’s back. And this time it’s personal.

Amity was my high school, where I acted in six shows between 1977 and 1980, where I was recognized for my professional work in theatre by being inducted into the school’s “hall of fame.” I was still in high school when I saw the original Broadway production of Sweeney Todd with a group of friends, chaperoned by one of our English teachers. Second only to Buried Child, Sweeney was a major part of why I chose a career in the theatre.

I happen to have Angela Lansbury right here.

I immediately reached out to the drama teacher, the school’s principal and a member of the school board. My instinct was to rush up to the meeting to speak on behalf of the show, but I didn’t want to inflame the situation, or be seen as an outsider, carpetbagging my way into a local issue. I also didn’t want to go if I wouldn’t be allowed to speak. In the meantime I thought, ‘Dammit, if only I had a day’s notice. I would call Hal, I would try to reach Mr. Sondheim, to gather letters of support. I even checked my “world clock” to see what time it was in Australia, where Angela Lansbury is currently performing in Driving Miss Daisy. Alas, she was presumably asleep, and likely wouldn’t rise before the board of ed meeting; otherwise, she is a rapid e-mail responder.

What we have here is a failure to communicate

When I was told by the school board member who I had contacted that my voice would be welcomed at the meeting, I did rush to rent a car. While the bright blue Honda hybrid from Zipcar was hardly the Batmobile, it whisked me to Connecticut, filled with a sense of purpose, as I thought all the while of what to say. I hadn’t had time to write anything; I was going to have to wing it. ‘Avoid inadvertent puns,’ I told myself. ‘Remember you can’t say that the opposition is half-baked, or that this is an issue of taste. You can’t risk inadvertent laughter. Listen and respond to the other speakers. Don’t talk about yourself. This is about the show, the school and the kids.’

No man is a failure who has friends

Thanks to Twitter and Facebook, there was rapid circulation of the situation among many people with whom I went to high school, and though I drove up on a lone mission, I was ultimately joined at the meeting by one of my drama club friends and by my sister, whose older daughter is a senior in the school. My brother, with whom I was not on speaking terms during high school, apologized that he couldn’t be at the meeting to support me and support the production. I learned that one of the “parent liaisons” to the drama club was the sister-in-law of one of my very closest friends and she welcomed me with a hug; her daughter is the stage manager for Sweeney Todd. The Facebook network reached out into the Connecticut media, resulting in a TV crew from the NBC affiliate; my own tweets and Facebook notice alerted The New York Times to the story.

They agreed to a sit-down

The meeting about the drama group was, ultimately, not one of high drama. A member of the clergy spoke first, saying her reservations arose from an interfaith leadership meeting two weeks prior, at which there was discussion about how to curb representations of violence, in the wake of the Newtown massacre. Several parents questioned the choice of the play and wondered whether there weren’t other vehicles available. One of those parents had a child in the show, and she wasn’t pulling her child from it, despite her own reservations. Others spoke of the story’s long history, of the musical’s fame, of the high regard in which Stephen Sondheim is held. So even when I stood up, with notes scribbled moments before, I was not in a lion’s den, but in the midst of a respectful exchange of ideas. (A balanced report appeared in The New Haven Register this morning.)

And so, from my off-the-cuff, at times ungrammatical, remarks: “Stephen Sondheim, who has already been lauded here, is very famous for a song that he wrote in another one of his other musicals in which we hear the line ‘Art isn’t easy.’ Creating art isn’t easy and the content of art isn’t easy…Sweeney Todd can create a learning opportunity. The responsibility of schools is to create a context for young people to understand the world around them and as much as we may want to keep that world away for as long as possible, it is not possible. While we can choose to do other works of literature, to read other books, to sing other songs, we are denying them the opportunity to learn.”

Stand down, but remain alert

No one demanded that the show be stopped. No vote was asked for or taken, and the board listened without response, since the whole discussion was not on the official agenda, but was merely part of “public comment.” To call it civil suggests a frostiness I did not feel, to call it polite suggests underlying anger. Might there be repercussions down the line, as some seek to exert authority over what can and can’t be performed in future years? That’s possible. If so, if welcome, I’ll be at those meetings as well.

I noted in my remarks that this was not an isolated incident, that censorship of high school theatre happens all too often. Some may dismiss it as merely a school problem, but it is important to anyone who loves theatre or believes in the value of the arts. Yes, I have taken up the cause of allowing students to grapple with challenging material before, and while yesterday struck particularly close to home, I’ll speak out in support of threatened high school drama whenever I hear about opposition (sorry, no Grapes of Wrath paraphrase at this point).

But I have only one hometown, one high school. The only way we can insure freedom of expression, freedom in the arts in teens – who will be our future artists and our future audiences – is if we are all aware of what is taking place near us, or back home, and if we speak out.

*   *   *

Addendum, March 16, 10 am: On the Friday immediately following the Board of Education meeting described above, which took place on a Monday evening, Dr. Charles Britton, principal of Amity Regional High School, sent the following e-mail to the district. I hope it becomes a model for other schools that face such challenges:

“This past week, the media widely reported some objections that have been raised against this year’s spring production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Some members of the Amity community and parents believe this production is too graphic for a high school audience. The administration and Drama Department at Amity High School respectfully disagree with these objections. The production is PG-13 and designed for a high school level audience. The show is produced in high schools across the nation. When carefully considering all academic material for Amity students, the faculty and administration at Amity never select material that is gratuitously violent or purposefully titillating in nature. All material is selected for the deeper meaning and value of the work of art, literature, or related academic resource. In the hands of talented teachers and directors, this academic material engages students more effectively and promotes our efforts to stimulate critical and creative thinking.”

*   *   *

Addendum, March 16, 3 pm: I have discovered some additional local reporting on the Sweeney Todd discussion, and will provide links with no comment, other than to say that it is worth reading not only the articles, but the comments that follow each of them. It is also worth noting which outlets reported from the event, and which reported solely from other news reports.

“Controversy Over Sweeney Todd: Let’s Take a Breath Here,” from The Naugatuck Patch, March 11

“Sweeney Todd Pros and Cons Aired at Amity High,” from The Orange Patch, March 12

“Sweeney Todd Protest: Residents Denounce Staging of Violent Musical at Connecticut High School,” from The Huffington Post, March 12, updated March 14

Perhaps you were asleep. Or drowsy. Or buzzed from a drinking game.

Perhaps you were focused on the dress. You were comparing it to all of the evening’s other dresses.

Perhaps simply didn’t want to watch and stuck with your regular Sunday evening diet of zombies.

But the fact remains that a U.S. viewing audience second only to that of the Super Bowl (in most years) heard a clear, passionate and full-throated statement in support of the arts and arts education during the Oscar broadcast. The First Lady of the United States delivered it, as she does so much, flawlessly.

She said, as midnight drew close on the East Coast, “Every day, through engagement in the arts, our children learn to open their imaginations, to dream just a little bigger and to strive every day to reach those dreams.”

It’s pretty unbeatable, no?

Now we could debate whether it was appropriate for the First Lady to appear on the Oscars at all. I’ve seen arguments against bringing politics into the show (because now even the appearance of the President or First Lady must be political, and of course politics has no place in The Oscars, he said with a straight face) and in favor of her presence (the movies are one of America’s greatest international exports). I would prefer to leave those aside.

I am more concerned about the optics of the situation for the arts themselves. Coming after almost 3 and ½ hours that included jokes about President Lincoln’s assassination, a nine-year-old’s eligibility to date George Clooney, and especially a rousing musical number entitled “We Saw Your Boobs,” this terrific message was at the tag end of an evening that hadn’t made much of a case for children and art.

Mrs. Obama reminded me of Sister Sarah Brown in Guys and Dolls, who managed to fill her mission only as a result of a gambling bet, one of the many sins she inveighed against. It saved the mission, but through questionable means. I don’t know if anyone, or any arts program, was saved last night.

Maybe I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Mrs. Obama’s words were clear, unequivocal, passionate and elegant. I hope she keeps saying those words, and urging legislators to do something about them, at every opportunity. And since I am the first to say that we can’t speak only to the converted, talking endlessly among ourselves, that same message would mean much less on a program with a smaller audience, which spoke not to the fans of mass entertainment, but to existing arts aficionados.

At the same time, I can’t help but wonder whether by appearing on a show that is being pilloried for misogyny and racism (see The Atlantic, Salon and New York), Mrs. Obama made a devil’s bargain, appearing to lend her legitimacy to messages elsewhere in the evening that shouldn’t be condoned, in order to make a valiant statement on a cause I hold close to my heart.

I heard her words clearly, because I was primed to hear them. I pray they actually registered on millions of people in the U.S. and abroad who weren’t terribly interested. However, they’re not in headlines today, and there’s no apparent follow-up; there’s no website to visit, no initiative announced. I wonder if they featured in even a single news cycle.

If The First Lady genuinely sparked something last night, even in a miniscule portion of that vast audience, then it was worth it. But I worry it may have been a castaway in a sea of self-congratulation, marketing, offense and inconsequence. Which is a shame, because short of an arts message during the Super Bowl, which I suspect is not in the cards,  last night was the biggest chance to speak to America about the value of the arts that we get this year. And I fear it had no impact.

As I write late in the evening prior to the second TEDx Broadway conference, I find myself wondering how much the presentations tomorrow will focus on plays, which have become the poor stepchild of The Great White Way.

Over the summer, I wrote about Narrow Chances For New Broadway Musicals and considered Do Revivals Inhibit Broadway Musicals? I counted the most produced playwrights in recent years in The Broadway Scorecard: Two Decades of Drama and, responding to what I saw at a glance as some misguided copy in the promotion of tomorrow’s event, I spoke out strongly with the declaration False Equivalency: Broadway Is Not The American Theatre.  Embedded in these posts were data, analysis — and my opinion — depicting Broadway as it is, not as some might perhaps wish it would be. As I noted in these posts, musicals dominate Broadway, both new and revivals, with roughly 80% of all Broadway grosses coming from musicals, even if the number of plays produced in most seasons outnumber new musical productions. Plays are admired, but when it comes to defining Broadway, the musicals by and large grab the lion’s share of money and attention.

That said, there’s one more, rather simple, data set that’s worth having in mind as tweets, blogs and news reports slice and dice tomorrow’s event (and I’ll be among those doing so). Here’s a listing of the Pulitzer Prizes for Drama and the Tony Award winners for Best Play, from 1984 to the present. I’m not suggesting that these awards are the final word on plays of quality, and awards success hardly guarantees box office success, but the two prizes provide a manageable universe for study. Why 1984? It’s an arbitrary choice, to be sure; it’s also the year I graduated college and went to work in the professional theatre, a microcosm of the celebrated plays of my theatrical career.

The honored plays above, shorn of duplicates as well as the years the Pulitzers honored musicals, make up a total of 43 different works that were recognized for achievements in playwriting in 29 years. Only nine works appear on both lists and The Pulitzers are only for American plays, which helps to reduce duplication.

Now here’s the key question: how many of those works actually had their world premieres on Broadway? The answer: only five. Those plays were Rabbit Hole, Lost In Yonkers, The Goat, The Last Night Of Ballyhoo and M. Butterfly. The others all began in not for profit U.S. venues, as close as Off-Broadway or as far as Seattle, or in subsidized or commercial venues in Ireland, England, and Europe. That’s not to say that there weren’t worthy plays that weren’t recognized which may have been produced directly on Broadway, but the ones that reaped the conventionally accepted big awards didn’t begin there. In the Pulitzer list, there are many that never played Broadway, at least in their original incarnations, as I discussed in At Long Last Broadway.

So as the future of Broadway is a subject on many minds in the next 24 to 36 hours, it’s worth remembering that strikingly few new plays debut there, as they commonly did in the days before the resident theatre movement really bloomed. If plays are to make their marks in Broadway history under the existing models of production, they need to be discovered, birthed and nourished elsewhere. National and international recognition may still be New York-centric, but the most honored works start overwhelmingly just about everywhere other than Broadway. Could that ever change? Should it? And if the answer is yes, then how?

I wanted to title this particular post, “Theatres: Hotbeds of Disease,” but that seemed, after due consideration, to be a bit alarmist and a potential deterrent to attendance. That is not my wish. However, it is extremely apt that just as I prepared to write this, I retrieved a message from my friend Mark, who referred to coming into New York as ‘entering a giant petri dish.’ Not a quote for the tourism posters, to say the least.

We are, as the news has been alerting us hourly, in the midst of a significant outbreak of the flu, which, when it was called influenza in the books we read as young adults, seemed more appropriately alarming. The contagion has blanketed the country and wherever you go, you hear people talking about feeling like they’re getting sick or how sick they were, accompanied by tweets and posts from people in the throes of illness.

Any place where people gather carries enormous risk for the uninfected and residual risk for the uninoculated: theatres certainly fit the bill, but so do schools, offices, mass transportation, stores and, worst of all, doctors’ waiting rooms and hospital ER’s. Anyone remember the rather horrifying scenes of microscopic droplets entering the noses and mouths of a movie theatre audience in the film Outbreak? Maybe it should be required viewing just about now.

We’re told, again and again, that the best deterrent is frequent hand-washing with soap and warm water. But while countless public places offer touchless Purell dispensers, I have been struck in the past couple of weeks by how many theatres, live and movie both, seem to have taken the Victorian workhouse approach to manual hygiene. Put more simply: why don’t they have, now or ever, warm water in rest room sinks?

In my highly unscientific study, not one venue restroom offers sink water above a temperature that might be politely called frigid. Dual faucets seem to simply mock us, each producing the same icy stream; the increasingly prevalent motion sensor faucets offer us no thermal options and dispense water somewhat arbitrarily.  This strikes me as a major break in the chain of public health and personal hygiene.

Mind you, I understand that people are unwilling to stay home when they have tickets for a live performance, especially when no exchange or refund is offered. I can’t hit the, “if you don’t feel well, stay home” note very strongly, as it falls on deaf ears (though we can dream). However, in my more controlling moments, I do wish we could require anyone who coughs or sneezes more than once during a performance or screening to wear a surgical mask; if we go masked at Sleep No More, why should there be any stigma about obscuring one’s nose and mouth in public for the benefit of others (I once saw a show which passed medical masks out to the audience, but for effect, not prophylaxis). And while we all wish the coughers in particular would stay home, as they disturb both the audience and performers in live theatres, I recall in years past Ricola sponsoring bins of cough drops at classical concert venues; perhaps that effort could be renewed or expanded in an effort to silence those around us.

But let’s start with the basics. Even though the production of hot water has a real expense, I think theatre owners and operators might push the thermostat on the hot water heater up to a minimally therapeutic level (whatever that may be) during a national epidemic, at least. Aside from helping to stem disease, which is no small matter, you’ll please your patrons and keep theatres busier because, as someone surely said at some point: warm hands, warm hearts. And I imagine we’d all rather be producing hits instead of illness.

“She nailed it! She nailed it! What a spectacular pirouette, Biff, wouldn’t you agree?”

While the idea of all-arts talk radio, modeled on sports talk radio, may strike one upon first thought as rather absurd, I think my friend Pia Catton is really on to something in her enthusiastic pitches for just such a thing both this week and last week in her “Culture City” column at The Wall Street Journal.

Frankly, whether it’s sports, politics or, for that matter, car repair, we’ve been shown time and time again that there are people who are drawn to listen to, and participate in, audio conversations for hours on end. NPR’s Car Talk managed to attract listeners who didn’t even own cars, because the program was simply so entertaining. Now, while the Magliozzi brothers weren’t on a 24-hour car talk network (they had to make room for things like Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and All Things Considered), their 30 year run is a testament to the idea that good talk makes for compelling listening, no matter what the subject.

So even as yet another arts television network heads towards rocky shoals (Ovation just lost the significant access to the pool of Time Warner Cable subscribers), maybe it’s time to realize that arts TV may be too expensive to sustain. But talking is considerably cheaper to produce, even when done truly well, and if Twitter, Facebook, chat rooms and the like are any evidence, there’s an audience for talking about the arts.

Certainly one fear is that it would quickly devolve into debates about which recording of La Boheme is best, or whose Mama Rose was definitive. I wouldn’t have much patience with such circular argument. But shrewd hosts could prevent repetitive (and insoluble) contretemps in favor of variety, and daily topics and special guests could focus the discourse. This is a little trick known as producing, and while it seems invisible when it comes to talk radio, it’s essential. They’re rarely just turning on a mike and letting some personality do whatever they want, which explains why Keith Olbermann keeps getting fired – he doesn’t want to be produced, but let free to roam wherever he sees fit and get paid for it.

One hurdle to be conquered by arts talk radio is the hyperlocal nature of the performing arts. While the entire country can share movies, recorded music and books, even the most successful Broadway show might be seen by say 500,000 people in a year, meaning that if an arts show is national, you may have trouble finding enough people who have seen any given piece to fuel a great conversation. Though there may be original sports talk radio in many markets, I suspect it corresponds with those markets which have major league teams, even though thanks to broadcast, cable, satellite and the web, sports are accessible across the country as never before.

Because of Pia’s ambition, I’m not prepared to theorize about arts talk radio that only serves New York, Chicago and London even at the start; its greatest service to the arts would be if it was national or international, connecting often disparate arts communities into a single conversation. Where I would moderate her vision is length. A daily show or weekend programming block would be a good place to start and test things out, without round-the-clock pressure and expense.

Another staple of most talk radio is opinion, which can fall somewhere between loud argument over the holiday dinner table and outright character assassination. That worries me. I would have trouble listening to people, whether host or caller, tearing down any artist, even when I agree that their work is negligible. That, of course, is because I come from inside the field. Perhaps, just as with many people’s reactions to the Bros on Broadway on Theatremania, it’s the reflex of the dedicated arts aficionado, protecting the artists and the art, and if arts talk radio is to attract an audience beyond the already-converted, maybe some feelings will have to get hurt, beyond bad reviews.

A number of years ago, I read a fascinating speech given at an arts journalism conference in which the speaker/writer said that if the performing arts want more coverage, more attention and perhaps more acceptance, they need to – to use the sports analogy – let the arts media into the locker room. We are, as a rule, profoundly careful about access to artists and process, so we should be surprised if our coverage is limited to one feature story and one review per outlet. While post-game interviews and sports press conferences are remarkable for their ability to say very little, they create the veneer of connection; if they didn’t, they’d have been axed by editors and producers long ago.  Even in film, there are both prepackaged behind the scenes featurettes and set-visits for select outlets, whether high-brow (Vanity Fair) or low (Access Hollywood and the like). Maybe arts talk radio can open up those avenues.

Yes, social media has been used creatively by some celebrities to build the bond with their fans, but most theatre folk don’t manage to reach a critical mass or approach social media all that creatively (on Twitter, Lin-Manuel Miranda offers a great template for artist-fan interaction). They need a platform that goes beyond their own efforts.

Would I have called into arts talk radio when I was 20? Probably so often that I’d have gotten a nickname and become a recurring voice (or gag). Would I do it now? Probably only to play a similar role to that which I play on Twitter: fact-checker, conversation starter, and mild wit. Of course, at this stage, after seven years helming “Downstage Center,” I’d apply for a hosting job in a flash. Frankly, I think Pia and I would make a great duo. And with Car Talk off the air, maybe an arts talk call-in show is just what’s needed. Hmmm.

So I’ve gotta go. Need to find the number for the heads of programming for some radio outlets. NPR, WNYC, WBEZ and WGBH, you’re on the top of the list. Go arts, go arts, gooooo arts!

Yes, the eagle is missing and it’s drained of color. Intentionally.

Trustworthy? Loyal? Helpful? Friendly? Courteous? Kind? I don’t think so.

I think the leadership of the Boy Scouts of America has abandoned its right to claim these words that are part of their “law,” with their actions both today and in the past. The failure to protect boys from sexual predators in their midst, the dogged refusal to reveal information about those crimes until forced to do so, and the emphatic stand against gay scouts and leaders combine to make this an organization that has successfully managed, at its top levels, to destroy its honored traditions.

While those who know me as an adult find something incongruous in the fact that I was a Boy Scout, I was one for many years. I started in Cub Scouts, participated in the oft-forgotten Webelos, and then spent much of my junior high and high school years as a full-fledged Boy Scout, holding pretty much every leadership position at the youth level. I even spent several summers at Boy Scout camps, including a strange but rigorous stint in their leadership training course.

I began to drift away from active scouting beginning in 10th grade, when I fully discovered my love of performing, specifically theatre. Monthly camping trips came into conflict with drama club performances, as well as chorus concerts. Of course, I was not simply trading one activity for another. I was gravitating towards my true calling in life, equipped with some of the knowledge and experience I gained from Boy Scouts.

During my days in the Scouts, I have to confess to an almost complete lack of knowledge of homosexuality; “gay” wasn’t in my vocabulary when it came to sexual orientation, though it was a word of undefinable denigration. No one I knew was “out”; such a thing was invisible if not inconceivable in suburban life in the mid-1970s. In hindsight, surely there were young men in my scout troop struggling with their sexuality in those still deeply repressive days; meeting some of them later, as adults, has made clear that there had indeed been gay young men beside me.  Though I wasn’t an antagonist to them (at least I hope not), I wish I knew and understood then what I know now, so that I might have been a better leader for everyone, and a better friend.

But to be honest, sexuality was irrelevant to the activities of scouting. There was no merit badge for picking up women, no rank that required knowledge of strictly traditional sexual matters. We were there to learn about the outdoors – hiking, camping, orienteering – but there was recognition for writing, reading, music and drama as well. Only now, looking back at an oath I used to recite often do I spy the language of restriction and oppression. Obey? Morally straight? The seeds were always there, but I was too naive to understand.

As for sexual assaults by leaders on Scouts, revealed in files kept by national Scout organization, acts which took place during the time I was a scout? Of course we now know that such violations were sadly too common in both rigidly hierarchical structures and in family rec rooms. At the time, I never heard even a whisper of such things. The adult leadership of my troop, including my own dad, were role models, men I cared for deeply, all gone now. I believe they were there with the best of intentions, and nothing has ever suggested otherwise. But I shudder to think what was kept from view in the national “perversion files,” even if my troop was free of assault.

Early yesterday, there were news reports of a California Scout council going against the national prohibition on gay Scouts and gay adult leaders by recommending an openly gay former Scout for the vaunted rank of Eagle. It gave hope to many like me who revile the organization’s anti-gay stance. By last night, those hopes were dashed as the national council denied the award, destroying the brief chance of finding a chink in the armor of prejudice that has come to represent this organization that once meant so much to me.

Growing up, my parents largely let me find my own way in life, because I was so self-motivated in all things, and fairly immovable about the things for which I had no affinity or interest. However, I do recall my father lobbying me, without subtlety, in an effort to get me to achieve the rank of Eagle Scout. “I know men who talk about being an Eagle Scout as being one of their proudest achievements in life,” he’d say. “You’re so close to getting it, How, don’t miss out. I don’t want you to regret it.”

In point of fact, I have never regretted not making Eagle Scout. That is, until now.

I wish I had that symbol of the ultimate achievement, that silver eagle hanging from a tiny banner of red white and blue. Because I would take it, put it in an envelope, and send it back to National Boy Scout Headquarters, in the most concrete rejection of the Boy Scouts that I can imagine. If I was unaware as a youth to the organization’s insensitivity, I can legitimately claim naïveté. But as an adult, I have only contempt for this profoundly blind group which had abdicated any claims to the words I once knew so well. As for learning that the national organization protected criminals? That effort was reprehensible, as was the ongoing coverup.

So I have nothing to throw back at the Boy Scouts of America but my disdain and my words, and that’s hardly enough. I know there are individual troops and councils that ignore the reactionary policies of the Scouts, standing first and foremost for each and every kid. I applaud them, but they must do more than dissent, they must actively reject, lobby against and if need be withdraw, to create a new world of scouting. They should not stand against hate while wearing its uniform. Those of us on the outside, alumnae or not, must act as well.

Scouting should stand for friendship, acceptance, inclusion, protection and support, not knot-tying and bigotry. Only then might I be proud of my history with them. But not a moment before.

Update 4:30 pm 1/9/13: A reader of this post shared with me information about the organization Scouts For Equality. If this essay motivates you to want to effect change in the Boy Scouts, this appears to be the perfect group through which to do so. There may well be others, and I hope to learn about them as well.

My mother was trained as an elementary school teacher. She got her degree in the 1950s, at New Haven Teacher’s College. When she graduated, she taught in the New Haven school system. When she had the first of her three children, in 1960, she stopped teaching to raise us, returning to teaching in the mid-70s, once again in New Haven.

A lot had happened to New Haven in the interim, as white flight had shifted the student demographic radically. Even my family had moved out to the suburbs, precisely because of the decline and perceived danger of junior and senior high schools in the city. But my mom commuted in daily, because to her, all eight year olds were the same, and they needed her. I didn’t understand why she didn’t teach in a suburban school, but no doubt she still had friends in the New Haven system, and maybe she regained some seniority and benefits despite her hiatus.

As a small child, it was not unusual for me to be with my mother as a stranger approached her, tentatively asking, “Excuse me, are you Miss Gerard?” This was her maiden name, and when she said she was, these strangers would effusively tell her how wonderful she had been to them, and how much she meant to them. These were her former students. It was not like being the child of a celebrity, but it was evidence that my mom had a life before she’d had children, and it was a pretty significant one, too.

Her second round of teaching lasted  perhaps another 10 years. She left ostensibly to be closer to my dad, who retired early due to multiple medical issues, and she worked perhaps another two decades, up until her death in 2004, as a medical office assistant. She worked in the very office that tended to my father’s various and often serious issues.

But I know the real reason my mom stopped teaching these kids she loved; “her kids,” in the language I imagine every elementary school teacher uses. My mom burnt out. She was constantly buying classroom materials out of her own pocket. She would come home at night and tell us the sad stories of children who had slept alone in their cold apartments the night before, because their parents, or parent, never came home.

She would bake for them several times a week. “Don’t touch those,” she would say as I approached a warm tray of brownies, “They’re for my kids.” She would take every bit of our old clothing to school for her kids, or older ones, who might need it. Perhaps there was actual danger that she confronted, but my mother would have never told us about that.

I had been blessed to have teachers like my mom, and I believe that the vast majority of our school teachers are exactly like this. Dedicated, loving, talented people who want to help children succeed, at any age, of any race. They’re not the money-grubbing hacks that politicians now portray; if that was true, they wouldn’t have gone into teaching. Sure, some weren’t so great, but every profession has its lesser practitioners. I think teachers are pretty marvelous, and they’ve been getting a terrible rap of late.

The tragedy in Newtown may quell some of that rhetoric for the time being, as we’ve learned about teachers who were explicitly heroic in terms everyone can understand. Unfortunately, that very commitment in the face of absolute terror has given rise to a vocal contingent who are now advocating arming teachers and school administrators in order to prevent or quickly end such future tragedies. And only yesterday did I think of what this premise would have meant to my mother.

If you had told my mother, who I believe would have laid down her life to protect any child, to carry and learn how to use a gun as part of her teaching duties, she would have walked out the door and never come back. She had not attended Teacher’s College and Shooting Academy. When my mother was deeply angry, her response was to write long, guilt-inducing letters. She would not ever use a gun. In fact, when she and my dad married, she insisted he give up his job, as a bail bondsman, because she wouldn’t have a gun in the house and didn’t want him carrying one.

Of all the responses to the unspeakable horror of Newtown, the idea that it might give rise to armed teachers is the most wrong-headed, preposterous, impractical, dangerous thing I’ve ever heard. If it should come to pass, it would devastate teaching throughout the country more than any other initiative thrown at a beleaguered but essential and admirable profession. As my mom would have done, many teachers would just walk away from such a new requirement. America would never recover from the loss of their talent, and successive generations would suffer.

My mom was, I know, a very good, caring teacher. She was but one of thousands upon thousands, all special. If schools must be protected, then do so. But don’t do it by turning teachers into weapons. Do it by turning the weapons into plowshares, or memories.

“Can you imagine the readership if our critics exuberantly hated LOTS of things?”

To begin with, I would like to stipulate that I read Pete Wells’ now-legendary New York Times review/take-down of Guy Fieri’s Times Square restaurant and I found it, as so many did, a striking and funny piece of writing. I read it, I imagine, with my mouth agape, but not watering. I also suspect, based solely on my own street-side reading of the restaurant’s menu before The Review had appeared, that Mr. Wells had more than sufficient grounds for his opinions of the fare. Donkey sauce, indeed.

With that out of the way, I would also like to say that I found The Review inappropriate as journalism, critique or opinionated analysis for the venue in which it appeared. It was, perhaps, more akin to a “Shouts & Murmurs” piece from The New Yorker, fact stretched to its satirical limits. After the first few paragraphs, the point had already been made, but Wells was allowed to go on, and on, to no other end than to demonstrate how skilled and witty a writer he was, and to insure that his evisceration of the establishment left no possible doubt as to how much he had not enjoyed his multiple dining experiences there.

So I was startled when The Times’ public editor Margaret Sullivan, who I have admired greatly since she arrived at the paper, took time to write a Sunday essay which was a full-throated defense of “Reviews With ‘All Guns Blazing’,” because it struck me as just a bit more piling on by the paper of record (yes, I still view The Times that way) without in any way grappling with the deeper ramifications of reviews which don’t merely damn their critical victims, but gleefully turn the knife. Sullivan’s citation of Dorothy Parker’s famed quip about Katharine Hepburn is ironic, because while Parker needed only a few well chosen, subtle words for her takedown of Hepburn, Wells needed, or at least took, paragraphs, when perhaps two would have sufficed. (Sullivan’s defense was also slightly redundant, since her predecessor wrote a piece on the prerogatives of Times critics one day before his departure and her appointment were announced in July; I registered dismay then as well.)

I stand with critics for their right to say what they think, but when that tips over into being clever or cutting for its own sake, I’d like to lobby for erring on the side of restraint. I’m surprised that Ms. Sullivan doesn’t share that view. Reviews occupy a funny place in papers: they’re opinion pieces, although they’re not corralled on the op-ed page; they’re analysis, but based solely on the aesthetic values of the assigned writer, not any defined criteria; they’re consumer reportage unmoored from a narrowly defined constituency. While those in the profession being reported upon can clearly distinguish between a review and straight news or feature coverage, my own anecdotal experience has shown me time and again that average, casual readers often fail to make that distinction. The Times becomes The Borg for so much of its content.

I have read many famous and scathing reviews of theatre productions over the years and they are etched in my brain; Frank Rich on Moose Murders and the musical A Doll’s Life, both read when I was in college, are two that have stuck with me. But once reviews of that type were targeted at my colleagues and my friends as I became a theatre professional, I lost my taste for them; with the benefit of hindsight, of course, I take greater pleasure going over famously misguided reviews. By way of example, time has proven that one can frequently “draw sweet water from a foul well” in the theatre, even though no less than Brooks Atkinson thought it suspect after seeing Rodgers & Hart’s Pal Joey.

I’m even more concerned about the aftermath of The Review: how it “went viral”; how it generated enormous press coverage about the review itself and therefore The Times; how it is now the standard for critical disdain, waiting to be topped by an even more withering and witty assault. In an era when newspapers struggle for relevancy and attention, will the Wells review send the wrong message: that in order for old-line media to break through in the new media paradigm, it needs to become sensational? I’m not suggesting that The Times is about to become a tabloid, but when we start reading about how much of the paper’s web traffic was generated by that review, it’s impossible not to wonder whether some latter-day Diana Christensen isn’t calculating what periodic salvos like Wells’, skipping from department to department, might do for business. Also, with The Times a flag bearer for top-quality journalism, reviews like Wells’ give license to critics at other outlets to make their own writing more outrageous and attention-getting when possible, quite possibly without the talent the Fieri review employed.

“Is it ever really acceptable for criticism to be so over the top, considering that there are human beings behind every venture?,” writes Sullivan. “I think it is. That kind of brutal honesty is sometimes necessary. If it is entertaining, all the better. The exuberant pan should be an arrow in the critic’s quiver, but reached for only rarely.”

I can support brutal honesty. I cannot support gleeful cruelty. Inventive? Sure. Over the top? Too much for a generally sober-sided publication. Piercing arrows in critics’ quivers? Yes. Thermonuclear weapons? No. And who is patrolling the armory at The Times, to insure this isn’t an incipient trend? It wasn’t Arthur Brisbane and apparently it’s not going to be Margaret Sullivan, at least insofar as criticism is concerned. And while it’s hard to muster enthusiasm for standing in any way on the side of Guy Fieri and his emporium, I have to. I may gag at the thought of Donkey Sauce as a food item, but if it were the title of a play or a painting or a book, I’d want that work treated honestly, directly, vigorously, creatively — and negatively if a critic warrants — but not excessively.

UPDATE November 26 at 3:15 pm: After posting this piece, I learned that less than a week ago, The New York Times‘ veteran book critic Michiko Kakutani had written a review of Calvin Trillin’s Dogfight in which she mimicked the book’s own verse scheme, reinforcing my thesis about critics going awry when they work to show their own cleverness rather than attending to the work at hand. Kakutani’s device is hardly groundbreaking; I see it often for works in rhyming couplets both in print and on stage, most notably Moliere and Dr. Seuss. In a bit of irony, she criticizes Trillin’s “unnecessarily blah” rhymes, but apparently sees no problem with her own ostensible rhyming of “shrub” and “flubs” or “oops” and “moose.” Having run only days after The Review, my concern about criticism that values novelty over insight is only reinforced by Kakutani’s poem.

Do Kevin Conway and Mercedes Ruehl look liberal or conservative to you?

There is an oft-repeated cry from certain corners of the creative community lamenting the lack of political theatre on our stages. Yet I seriously doubt that the Republican Theatre Festival is what they had in mind.

I say this not to criticize the festival, currently on in Philadelphia, but because the conventional wisdom is that theatre is almost exclusively a liberal art. Those who want more stage politics presumably seek more activism on the part of left-leaning artists, not right wing-rhetoric.

Personally, I think there’s a place for theatre that addresses opinions across the political spectrum. But first and foremost, it needs to be good theatre, and I’m not sure that proclaiming theatre as liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, right or left wing does the work any favors either. Those labels are most likely to limit potential audience, rather than letting the work on stage speak for itself, artistically and politically. I don’t advocate telling any audience precisely what they should think of what they see, regardless of its content.

I can easily identify some well-known works of theatre that could be, at least on their face, considered conservative. In Annie, doesn’t the mega-rich Oliver Warbucks (wonder how he made his fortune, given that Dickensian last name) use his wealth to manipulate the Democratic administration to aid him in his efforts on behalf of a single child, while thousands go homeless? Doesn’t Our Town promote an idealized vision of a bygone era, leaving us longing for the simpler days when small town life was a microcosm of the world at large? How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying may poke fun at corporate ideals, but it seems to retain healthy affection for the very thing it gently satirizes.

These are, of course, simplistic and selective viewpoints presented for effect, not out of conviction. So let me turn to a popular play of almost 25 years’ vintage that can legitimately be viewed as conservative, or Republican, in its values, yet was a significant popular hit in its day: Jerry Sterner’s Other People’s Money.

OPM is the story of a privately-owned wire factory that becomes the subject of a takeover by a corporate raider, pitting the business mores of the 1980s against a small firm that is, in the view of the predatory protagonist, “worth more dead than alive.” It ran for several years Off-Broadway, played in numerous regional and stock productions and even spawned a Danny DeVito movie of the same name. At no time do I recall it being taken to task for its politics, even as limos lined up on narrow Minetta Lane before and after performances on behalf of the Wall Street crowd that embraced it; its dramaturgy was oft-questioned, but not its worldview. I was paying close attention, because the production that played in New York had originated at Hartford Stage while I was its public relations director.

I recall observing, and running, some of our post performance discussions of OPM in Hartford, where the audience consistently sided with Garfinkle, the raider, against Jorgensen, the factory owner, deriding the latter as out of touch and deserving of what came his way. I remember the line of businessmen at our box office windows at lunchtime, overturning the perception of women as theatrical decision makers and ticket buyers in their households. I watched throughout the brief Hartford run and lengthy New York run as a previously unknown playwright because a favored speaker at corporate annual meetings and business gatherings.

Coming at the end of the Reagan presidency and playing well into that of George H. W. Bush, OPM was an emblem of its era. But, cloaked in the comforting guise of a boulevard comedy, it was dismissed by serious critics for perceived theatrical deficiencies – although audiences lapped it up – allowing it to stealthily spread the philosophy of Milken and Boesky far and wide even as their era of rapaciousness began to wane.

I have often spoken of OPM with affection, for a variety of reasons – it was the first successful commercial transfer with which I had a role (albeit small); it gave me a chance over its long run and subsequent productions to see how a play changed every time a different actor went into the same production; I grew very fond of the show’s lead producers, who belied any stereotype of that profession. It is only in retrospect that I have considered the show’s messages, both implicit and explicit, more deeply.

But the play serves as a superb example of catching more flies with honey when it comes to disseminating a specific philosophy in the realm of theatre. The production didn’t shy away from trumpeting the bold-faced business names that attended with regularity, or its business setting, but it didn’t label the show as being for any particular segment of the audience either. In one of its slogans – “Greed. Lust. Power. Laughter. Nightly.” – certainly exploited some deadly sins, but I daresay that could have been applied to many shows, including those seeking to denounce those principles.

I have no qualms about the current Republican Theater Festival, especially since it may introduce some previously unheard voices to mainstream theatre and I applaud it for attempting to bring infrequently heard theatre viewpoints to light, even if I might not agree with them at all. As the now archly conservative David Mamet recently said of avowedly liberal Tony Kushner, “I’ll let [him] work his side of the street and I’ll work mine.” Indeed, there are two sides to every street, but all of those roads lead us to the theatre, where art trumps didacticism every time, no matter the perspective.

What if there were more commandments, but only beyond a paywall?

I have lost the Globe and Mail, and it hasn’t simply been buried under a stack of old magazines. Next week, I lose The Chicago Tribune. I have already begun to mourn.

My losses are not because these newspapers are going out of business. It is because they are moving behind paywalls, as many other papers have done to insure their online content isn’t being read for free, as these companies struggle to remain solvent. Having spent a certain amount of time every morning for the past few years seeking out theatre and arts stories to share on Twitter, I know that the loss of these two outlets will shrink the pool of intelligent coverage from which I can draw. Still, I am sympathetic to the papers, because as I have said before, if we want quality journalism – and I believe we need it – we have to be prepared to pay for it.

But…

Over the past 20 years, long before my Twitter curation, I’ve found the online access to arts coverage from around the country, and the world, to be an enormous asset in my continuing professional education. Indeed, where my only sources for arts news outside of my local paper (wherever I was living) were The New York Times and USA Today (and occasionally The Wall Street Journal), the advent of online newspapers and magazines enabled me to read features and reviews as never before. Yes, Variety had reviews from around the country and a handful of weekly feature stories, the accelerating decline of that publication sapped it of its once essential nature. I suspect I am hardly alone.

Arts coverage on the web eliminated the inefficient need to ask for, or send, coverage around by fax, a highly inefficient samizdat network of like-minded individuals who already knew one another. More importantly, with the rise of social media, it enabled the broad-based sharing of coverage, helping to bring arts aficionados closer with the opportunity to discover and discuss subjects raised in the press regardless of geography and without skipping from website to website in hope of finding worthwhile material.

So how do I reconcile this cognitive dissonance, this belief in paying for good journalism and a passion for access to arts coverage from wherever it may be found?

I’d like to suggest that arts coverage remain free online, unlike the rest of a newspaper’s content. Even as such coverage has diminished and remains under threat (one of the country’s largest cities, Philadelphia, no longer has a full-time theatre critic at any daily paper in the market), newspapers are the last bastion of mainstream arts coverage, long ignored by television locally or nationally.

Precisely because the media has demonstrated or declared time and again that arts coverage does not drive their revenues, I think it should remain free for all, whether to support the groups in its local market or facilitate a national conversation. The Wall Street Journal, despite its trendsetting paywall success, maintains its arts blog, “Speakeasy,” outside of access restrictions, and while I would like more of its arts content readily accessible, they’ve at least set a precedent, with no apparent financial harm.

Even as a die-hard consumer of arts coverage, I’m not about to pay $10 or $15 per month to read about what’s happening in Chicago or Toronto in these paywalled publications, especially if I can’t share it. I’ll find at least some of that news through other sites. But as someone living hundreds of miles from these cities, if outlets are fundamentally opposed to any free access, I can’t help but wonder whether something equivalent to sports broadcast blackouts could apply; you pay if your IP address is located within 90 miles of the publication’s base, but those outside that circle have vastly less expensive access.

There’s a double-edged sword to hiding arts coverage behind paywalls. On the one hand, the publication may be securing its revenue base (although it may be forcing people to unprotected news resources elsewhere in the market). But in the case of arts coverage, it may well drive the growth of new online-only resources, creating a viable market for arts-specific sites – thereby advancing the irrelevancy of what the paper is providing for a steadily diminishing audience. That will then serve as the excuse to further cut arts coverage.

Am I anti-blog or online magazine? Hardly. But outside of a handful of online publications that do include arts and culture coverage (Slate, Salon and Grantland come first to mind), the majority of what is out there isn’t economically viable, and therefore relies on unpaid (read volunteer or self-produced) coverage, limiting its long-term prospects. Are there superb blogs? Absolutely. But when they write about anything beyond their own immediate vicinity, they’re predominantly relying on other outlets for the news upon which they then re-report or opine.

It’s ironic that I write this while living in New York City, which offers more variety of daily and weekly arts coverage than most cities. But as I hope I’ve shown in my writing, I don’t consider New York as the be-all and end-all of the arts; there’s superb work worth seeing, or at least knowing about, everywhere. Yet with each paywall announcement, I feel my world narrowing, headed backwards to the pre-internet era, and it troubles me greatly.

I urge those who have or would have paywalls to continue to treat the arts as a loss leader and maintain that coverage online for free or almost free, outside of local and national news, business coverage and sports. You’ll keep America’s arts healthy by providing the raw material of national conversation and you’ll make sure that we’re talking about you, too. Because you want to remain part of the conversation too, don’t you?