Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes, authors of “In The Heights” (photo courtesy of New Dramatists)

The casting of the upcoming production of In The Heights at Porchlight Music Theatre in Chicago, in particular a non-Latinx actor in the leading role of Usnavi, has provoked a great deal of comment and controversy. On August 9, Victory Gardens Theatre hosted a public forum, “The Color Game: whitewashing Latinx stories,” which drew a full house and an even larger online audience to explore the issues of race, ethnicity, authenticity and representation provoked by the Porchlight casting and an earlier production of Evita in Chicago; reporting from the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Reader on the forum expanded its reach yet further). The event had been preceded by multiple online essays on the subject, including posts by Trevor Boffone, Tommy Rivera-Vega and Jose T. Nateras, as well as two reports (here and here) from Arts Integrity as the situation unfolded, and a commentary by me, writing in my capacity as interim director of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts.

On Sunday evening, August 14, Victory Gardens artistic director Chay Yew shared, via Facebook, a post that was headed, “Just Got this from Lin-Manuel and Quiara.” Readers have noted that it seems to be coming from a single voice, but Hudes’s preface addresses that:

I will be swamped returning from vacation and may not get a statement out, I wanted to forward you my email interview thread with Diep Tran for American Theater at the end of July when this happened. Lin stood behind my comments in this thread then, and I assume that still stands. Here are some of my most relevant comments, cut and pasted for continuity which I am comfortable with them being posted publicly, in the context of “excerpts from her interview with Diep Tran for American Theatre Magazine.”

For those seeking more clarification about Miranda’s position, I was in touch with him with him following the publication of the American Theatre article; he had been on vacation when the controversy over Porchlight’s casting emerged. Responding to an offer to add his own thoughts, he wrote, referencing Hudes’s comments in the the article, “I honestly can’t improve on her words. She speaks for us both.”

Hudes’s full statement to Yew is as follows:

I am not familiar with Porchlight but based on them being Equity, then I can only assume this is a professional theater company. Within the context of professional productions, casting the roles appropriately is of fundamental importance.

The fact is that creating true artistic diversity often takes hard work. Concerted, extra effort. It takes time and money. You cannot just put out a casting call and hope people come and then shrug if they don’t show up. You may need to add extra casting calls (I do this all the time), to go do outreach in communities you haven’t worked with before. You may need to reach out to the Latino theaters and artists and build partnerships to share resources and information. You may need to fly in actors from out of town if you’ve exhausted local avenues, and house them during the run. When faced with these expensive obstacles, an organization’s status quo sometimes wins because it’s cheaper and less trouble. The Latino community has the right to be disappointed and depressed that an opportunity like this was lost. It can be very disheartening, as an artist and as an audience member.

The sad fact is that even in New York, where we Latinos abound, the theater world often reflects a much more closed system. I’m talking onstage and off.

For decades, the vast majority of Latino roles were maids, gang bangers, etc etc. It’s demoralizing, obnoxious, and reductive of an entire people. It’s a lie about who we are, how complicated our dreams and individuality are.

Chicago has a historic Puerto Rican and Latino community. Its history as a hub of Latino migration is beautiful and robust. I’ve had the honor of working in Chicago numerous times and getting to know a deep pool of diverse talent there. Artists like Eddie Torres founded Latino theater companies to create opportunities where there were none. The Goodman houses a Latino theater festival frequently, and they did a beautiful job casting my play The Happiest Song Plays Last. DePaul recently hosted the Latino/a Theater Commons festival. Chicago is poised to be at the forefront of these issues!

I am proud to have written complex roles for actors of many ethnicities: Latino, African-American, White, Asian-American, Arab-American. I have stumbled at times. But I continue to commit to nuance and specificity as the core of the dramatic impulse, and the gateway to the human experience.

I have been in a lot of rooms where people give lip service to being committed to diversity. But that’s different than doing the hard work that it often involves.

I do not hold these views as strongly with educational and non-professional productions. I’m happy for schools and communities who do not have these actors on hand to use In the Heights as an educational experience for participants of all stripes.

I have had the pleasure of working with directors of many backgrounds on my work. Women and men, Latin@, Asian American, African American, bicultural, and white. I have purposely tried to work with the widest range of directors possible, aesthetically and culturally speaking, and this broad group of collaborators has enriched my vision as an artist.

I have chosen directors based on many considerations: aesthetics, artistic mission, their connection with a given script, their history of excellent casting and designer collaborations.

Rather than demand a particular background for a director of my work, I try to encourage Artistic Directors and producers to consider hiring woman directors and culturally diverse directors THROUGHOUT their season–not just for the “Latino” play or “women’s” play. Directors of color should be hired to do EVERYTHING. They should be directing Shakespeare and Moliere and Ibsen and Cruz. Not just Cruz.

This post, in a slightly different form, first appeared on the website of the Arts Integrity Initiative.

The casting of the upcoming production of In The Heights at Porchlight Music Theatre in Chicago, in particular the hiring of a non-Latinx actor for the leading role of Usnavi, has provoked a great deal of comment and controversy in that community and beyond. In response, on August 9, Victory Gardens Theatre hosted a public forum, organized by ALTA, the Association of Latinx Theatre Artists of Chicago, “The Color Game: whitewashing Latinx stories.” It drew a full house and an even larger online audience to explore the issues of race, ethnicity, authenticity and representation, provoked by the Porchlight casting and an earlier production of Evita in Chicago; reports from the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Reader on the forum expanded its reach yet further. The event had been preceded by multiple online essays on the subject, including posts by Trevor Boffone, Tommy Rivera-Vega and Jose T. Nateras, as well as two reports from Arts Integrity (here and here) as the situation unfolded, and a commentary by Arts Integrity director Howard Sherman, writing in his capacity as interim director of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts.

On Sunday evening, August 14, Victory Gardens artistic director Chay Yew shared, via Facebook, a post that was headed, “Just got this from Lin-Manuel and Quiara.” Readers have noted that it seems to be coming from a single voice, but Hudes’s preface addresses that:

I will be swamped returning from vacation and may not get a statement out, I wanted to forward you my email interview thread with Diep Tran for American Theater at the end of July when this happened. Lin stood behind my comments in this thread then, and I assume that still stands. Here are some of my most relevant comments, cut and pasted for continuity which I am comfortable with them being posted publicly, in the context of “excerpts from her interview with Diep Tran for American Theatre Magazine.”

For those seeking to clarify Miranda’s position, Arts Integrity was in touch with him following the publication of the American Theatre article; he had been on vacation when the controversy over Porchlight’s casting emerged. Responding to an offer to add his own thoughts, Miranda wrote, referencing Hudes’s comments in the the article, “I honestly can’t improve on her words. She speaks for us both.” Additionally, Yew reports that he had received an e-mail from Miranda backing the statement.

Hudes’s full statement, the excerpts from her American Theatre interview, as she provided it to Yew, is as follows:

I am not familiar with Porchlight but based on them being Equity, then I can only assume this is a professional theater company. Within the context of professional productions, casting the roles appropriately is of fundamental importance.

The fact is that creating true artistic diversity often takes hard work. Concerted, extra effort. It takes time and money. You cannot just put out a casting call and hope people come and then shrug if they don’t show up. You may need to add extra casting calls (I do this all the time), to go do outreach in communities you haven’t worked with before. You may need to reach out to the Latino theaters and artists and build partnerships to share resources and information. You may need to fly in actors from out of town if you’ve exhausted local avenues, and house them during the run. When faced with these expensive obstacles, an organization’s status quo sometimes wins because it’s cheaper and less trouble. The Latino community has the right to be disappointed and depressed that an opportunity like this was lost. It can be very disheartening, as an artist and as an audience member.

The sad fact is that even in New York, where we Latinos abound, the theater world often reflects a much more closed system. I’m talking onstage and off.

For decades, the vast majority of Latino roles were maids, gang bangers, etc etc. It’s demoralizing, obnoxious, and reductive of an entire people. It’s a lie about who we are, how complicated our dreams and individuality are.

Chicago has a historic Puerto Rican and Latino community. Its history as a hub of Latino migration is beautiful and robust. I’ve had the honor of working in Chicago numerous times and getting to know a deep pool of diverse talent there. Artists like Eddie Torres founded Latino theater companies to create opportunities where there were none. The Goodman houses a Latino theater festival frequently, and they did a beautiful job casting my play The Happiest Song Plays Last. DePaul recently hosted the Latino/a Theater Commons festival. Chicago is poised to be at the forefront of these issues!

I am proud to have written complex roles for actors of many ethnicities: Latino, African-American, White, Asian-American, Arab-American. I have stumbled at times. But I continue to commit to nuance and specificity as the core of the dramatic impulse, and the gateway to the human experience.

I have been in a lot of rooms where people give lip service to being committed to diversity. But that’s different than doing the hard work that it often involves.

I do not hold these views as strongly with educational and non-professional productions. I’m happy for schools and communities who do not have these actors on hand to use In the Heights as an educational experience for participants of all stripes.

I have had the pleasure of working with directors of many backgrounds on my work. Women and men, Latin@, Asian American, African American, bicultural, and white. I have purposely tried to work with the widest range of directors possible, aesthetically and culturally speaking, and this broad group of collaborators has enriched my vision as an artist.

I have chosen directors based on many considerations: aesthetics, artistic mission, their connection with a given script, their history of excellent casting and designer collaborations.

Rather than demand a particular background for a director of my work, I try to encourage Artistic Directors and producers to consider hiring woman directors and culturally diverse directors THROUGHOUT their season–not just for the “Latino” play or “women’s” play. Directors of color should be hired to do EVERYTHING. They should be directing Shakespeare and Moliere and Ibsen and Cruz. Not just Cruz.

If you’re looking for critical consensus, you won’t find much of it in the new book The Critics Say…: 57 Theater Reviewers in New York and Beyond Discuss Their Craft and Its Future (McFarland & Company, $35). That’s because the critics interviewed for the book by Matt Windman, himself a critic, have a wide variety of opinions about what it is they do, how they do it, why they do it and whether it will continue to be done.

Rather than devote a chapter to each critic, Windman organizes the book topically, so that even while the interviews were discrete, the critics’ thoughts begin to engage with one another on subjects from “Why We Exist” to “Regrets and Advice” through devised interplay. That’s useful, because transcribed speech often isn’t compelling to read, so by extracting themes, Windman is constantly changing up who is “speaking” at any given moment, creating rather more of a narrative than would otherwise be the case. Windman certainly threw out a wide net and reeled in many of the biggest fish, including both Ben Brantley and Charles Isherwood from The New York Times.

If you go looking for gossip and backbiting in the book, you won’t find a great deal of it. Yes, Isherwood chides “those crazy queens on All That Chat,” and Brantley, who doesn’t use social media opines that it is “largely about” self-promotion. But the book is much more concerned with a sober-sided consideration of the place of the critic in the arts and journalism culture of today, and it provides a strong primer in the thoughts of those who practice criticism – or at the least what they’re willing to share on the record. Oh, there is a brief chapter devoted entirely to Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, but even there, the critics use the show as a pretext for discussing the power of critics, or lack thereof, in today’s society.

The book contains countless revealing insights into the minds of the people who shape public opinion of theatre, available almost by opening the book randomly to any page at all. A few choice thoughts:

“The critic is part of the theatre community, but he is the annoying guy at the part who’s telling everybody, ‘You look like shit.’” – Rob Weinert-Kendt, editor of American Theatre

“I tell students it’s a marvelous hobby, but I do not encourage them to pursue it as a career.” – Alexis Soloski, The New York Times, on advice to aspiring critics

“When I was on the Obies committee, I was told (though I think this was tongue-in-cheek) that the standard for conflict of interest is whether you slept with the person. Mine is that I can’t have been invited to their birthday party.” – Helen Shaw, Time Out New York

“One of the hardest critical jobs is the correct appropriation of praise and blame. Did this actor do this? Was it a directing choice? Did this flow from the play? Was the director absolutely doing that? A critic does not see the production process. To some degree the critic is trying to imbue the process.” – Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune

“If there weren’t critics, people would have to depend on advertising. And advertising, by definition, almost always lies…” – John Simon, Westchester Guardian

Having begun my career as a publicist, albeit one who worked mostly in Connecticut, which short stays in Philadelphia and New York, I’ve had the occasion to know a great many critics, and the majority of the individuals in the book I know at least from reading, many from professional interactions and a few I consider friends. I’ve had the chance to discuss, debate and sometimes profoundly disagree with some of the critics in the book. Consequently, I can say that they come across just as they have across telephone line, social media and even a dinner table. Because of the timing of the book in 2016, I do find myself missing the presence of some of the critics with whom I worked most directly, and spoke with most often, from whom I learned so much, all of whom have now passed away: Mel Gussow of The New York Times, Howard Kissel of the New York Daily News and Michael Kuchwara of the Associated Press.

While their absence is inevitable, there are a few major voices missing from the book, for reasons unknowable. While print may be shrinking or even dying, and online reviews are now widely accessible, making more criticism available to more readers than ever before, Mark Kennedy’s voice at the Associated Press has significant amplification and reach, through the many outlets that carry AP copy; he’s not in the book. On the west coast, which is generally underrepresented in the critical mix of the book, Charles McNulty at the Los Angeles Times is a major and influential writer about theatre not only in Los Angeles, but frequently in San Diego and New York as well. And Michael Feingold, the long-time – and once again – critic at the Village Voice has a historical perspective that is unfortunately not heard.

There’s one other voice I wish were included, that of Frank Rich, the former theatre critic of The New York Times, who is named multiple times in the book. Frank, unlike Gussow, Kissel and Kuchwara, is still with us, having gone on to write for the editorial pages of the Times and now as a political columnist for New York magazine (as well as being an executive producer of the TV series Veep). While his days as a designated critic may be gone, theatre has remained a part of Frank’s writing in the two decades since he left his post. His insight would have only added value to Windman’s book.

The book is not wholly New York-centric, with critics from the Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, Toronto Star and Austin Chronicle included, but it certainly skews to the America’s northeast. So while it’s problematic to draw any definitive conclusions about the critical community from the 57 critics represented, it’s worth noting that there are only nine female critics among the 57, and only two critics within – to the best of my knowledge – who are persons of color, highlighting the lack of gender and racial diversity in the critical ranks overall. The interviews don’t skirt this fact (though one critic mistakenly declares that Hilton Als is the only black theatre critic anywhere), but as an area of inquiry, discussion of how the lack diversity among critics affects audiences and artists is limited. It seems a missed opportunity.

Have I spent too much time talking about what I miss, rather than what’s in The Critics Say? I am perhaps guilty of doing so, but only because I have had the privilege of such conversations throughout my career and the book prompts me to want to ask yet more questions, both with the people in the book and those who aren’t. But that’s where Windman’s effort pays off, in assembling provocative conversations with people inaccessible to most readers and creating a strong platform for yet more discussion. In his preface, Windman cites two previous books that spoke with critics, from 1993 and 2004, but just as I miss hearing the opinions of those no longer with us and those who didn’t participate, perhaps this form of inquiry deserves to be undertaken once every decade or so, for the historical record, as criticism, theatre and the media continue to evolve.

Whatever the fate of theatre criticism is in the next ten years or the next hundred, The Critics Say is a worthy time capsule of where things are right now, and surely required reading in arts journalism and arts management classes. And for those you read theatre reviews and find yourself saying, “Who the hell wrote this?,” Windman’s book offers some answers about who did, and why.

Promotional image for thatswhatshesaid (photo by Tim Summers)

There’s nothing quite like getting a cease and desist letter.

It may be commonplace if you’re an attorney and you’re receiving a cease and desist claim on behalf of clients, but for artists and arts administrators, at least, there’s a particular chill that accompanies opening a letter (or e-mail) that informs you that if you plan to present, or are currently presenting, a work that the sender feels is in violation of their rights and you don’t stop right away, you’re going to be subject to an assortment of penalties, typically not specified in the first salvo. Cease and desist letters are rather blunt instruments, and unless the artists or companies that receive them had an inkling that what they were doing might tick someone off, they can be quite disorienting, especially if the artists and/or companies don’t have an attorney on speed dial who can help them to determine the best course of action and the ability to pay said attorney to advise them and defend their interests.

According to a report by Rich Smith for Seattle’s The Stranger, Erin Pike, Courtney Meaker and Gay City Arts in Seattle, or some combination thereof, received a cease and desist late yesterday (Friday), demanding the immediate suspension of performances of Pike and Meaker’s thatswhatshesaid, which had given the first of four scheduled performances at Gay City Arts on Thursday evening. Thatswhatshesaid is a two-act theatre piece, performed solely by Pike, which is constructed out of dialogue and stage directions given to women in the 11 most produced plays in the country in 2014-15, as determined by American Theatre magazine. The works on that list include Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike by Christopher Durang and Sondheim and Lapine’s Into The Woods. Earlier, briefer versions of thatswhatshesaid have been performed in Seattle, Portland and Minneapolis.

The cease and desist correspondence came from Samuel French, the licensing house which represents some of the works on the American Theater list and are therefore excerpted in the production; Smith’s report doesn’t say whether Dramatists Play Service or Music Theatre International, which also represent some of the works utilized by Pike and Meaker, have taken any action against thatswhatshesaid. Smith’s report also seems to indicate that French’s letter concerns only the use of material from Bad Jews by Joshua Harmon, even though the newly devised work also contains material from Tribes by Nina Raine and The Whipping Man by Matthew Lopez, which are is also represented by French.

The report in The Stranger quotes a segment of French’s letter and it seems to be fairly standard cease and desist boilerplate, with the appropriate parties’ names plugged in:

Any such program, publicity, production and/or presentation by you and/or permitted by you constitute and shall constitute the intentional infringement of the copyrights, trademarks and or other rights of our author and subject you and any and all other persons and/or firms involved with the publicity, presentation and/or production to the civil and criminal penalties specified under applicable law.

Should you or any of you permit these unlicensed programs and/or performances to take place and/or be performed, whether at a venue leased, owned or operated by you or otherwise, you and all involved personal shall be held fully liable and accountable as infringers and/or contributory infringers as specified under applicable law.

Accordingly, formal demand is hereby made that you immediately cease and desist from any and all such action by the end of business today, Friday, February 5, 2016, and you confirm that you will not conduct, publicize and/or present and/or permit to be conducted, publicized and/or presented any such program and/or performances.

Failure to do so will expose Gay City Arts, and all individuals acting in concert with these parties, to actions for willful copyright and trademark infringement and other legal claims.

Daunting, no? Enough to scare off lots of those accused of infringing, especially those with limited means, without a fight, right?

Now if Pike were simply standing on stage and sequentially reading every bit of dialogue and stage directions involving the female characters from each play, then what’s going on might be perceived as simple appropriation of copyrighted material, though even that’s not remotely a definitive determination. However, even with male roles excised, the sum total of that dialogue and stage directions could amount to seven or eight hours of stage time. Smith’s review of thatswhatshesaid for The Stranger, posted only seven hours before his report about the legal action, didn’t suggest he’d been at a marathon, but rather that Pike and Meaker had selectively chosen pieces of the various works and woven them into a quilt that yielded commentary on both the specific works, as well as the prevailing attitudes towards women being advanced in American theatre today.

So this seems the appropriate time to bring in the concept of “fair use.”

Your eyes may glaze over the moment someone suggests a primer in the fair use provision of U.S. copyright law, but it’s extremely pertinent here. Copyright law is designed to insure that original works remain the property of those who own them, for a defined period of time, so that they can derive revenue from the material without having it simply taken by others for their own benefit. It is why, simplistically, someone cannot simply retype a novel and publish it as their own work, or why plays can’t be performed without appropriate royalties due to the playwright.

But fair use keeps that ownership from being absolute in all cases. Because fair use allows for parody, Mad Magazine or Saturday Night Live or Key and Peele don’t need to pay the authors of creative works they might riff on. Because fair use acknowledges the value of education, teachers don’t need to pay royalties when their students simply read a play aloud in class. Fair use permits quotations from an original work in reviews and critical pieces about that work, and the same holds true for scholarly works. Fair use also considers whether new work that is in some way drawn from or inspired by an earlier work or works is sufficiently transformative of, and distinct from the original(s) as to constitute a sufficiently original work in and of itself.

But here’s the tricky part about fair use: while there are general guidelines as to what is protected under the fair use provisions, there is no absolute determinant that can be applied in all cases. That’s where lawyers and judges come in and that’s what helps to keep the field of intellectual property law perpetually active.

In Smith’s second report, he indicated that Pike had a plan as to how to proceed in the face of French’s cease and desist letter. That should prove fascinating. But it seems clear that if Pike and Meaker wish to mount future productions of thatswhatshesaid, or publish it, or have it licensed so that others may perform it, they’re going to have to challenge French’s assertions that their piece does violate the copyright protections afforded to Bad Jews, and presumably the other 10 works represented in the piece as well.

*   *   *

I haven’t read or seen thatswhatshesaid, but like many people to whom I’m connected on Facebook, I’d really like to. I wonder whether anyone from French has read or seen it, or if they’re just responding to The Stranger’s coverage of it. Smith’s review was zipping around on my timeline yesterday afternoon between theatre practitioners from all over, and I have to admit that the moment I read it, I thought, ‘Wow, this is going to be an interesting copyright test.’

Without having firsthand knowledge of the piece, or a legal degree, I can’t even hazard a guess as to whether thatswhatshesaid is, even just in my opinion (which counts for absolutely nothing legally), seemingly allowable under fair use, or if the situation is somewhat muddier or even a definitive violation. What I do know is that unless Pike and Meaker themselves were to agree that they were knowingly skirting copyright violation, I’d like to see them pursue their rights to the new work, at least so far as getting good legal counsel about their creation.

In this instance, the new work is using verbatim quotes from other copyrighted works, by authors I admire and several of whom I know, rather than just a general outline of a dramatic/comedic premise, but I can’t help but wonder whether this newly coalescing dispute is in some way akin to what befell David Adjmi and his play 3C. That work was a dark parody of the sitcom Three’s Company, which was proscribed from production or publication for three years until a judge determined that it was permitted under fair use.  That said, there may be a corollary here to the disputes over sampling in music, which in many cases have found that the original creators are due income from the subsequent work since their original material was taken directly, even if it was incorporated into something new.

Some might wonder how, given my advocacy for the rights of playwrights to control their work, I can also express support for what Pike and Meaker have reportedly done. My answer is that we’re dealing with artists on both sides of this issue, and if thatswhatshesaid is genuinely transformative, if it is a critical assessment of those original works achieved through theatrical means, if it parodies those original works by mashing up and using their own words against them, then perhaps it should be allowed to have its own life. I doubt, even without having seen it, that thatswhatshesaid will undermine the value of or confuse audiences about the original works excerpted and collaged within it. I appreciate French’s position in defending their clients, but I’d like to see Pike and Meaker have an equally strong defense too.

Update, 12:30 pm February 6, 2015: I’ve stumbled onto the Twitter account of Courtney Meaker and I’d like to selectively quote from her posts regarding how they proceeded with the second performance of thatswhatshesaid. I share them in chronological order, but not every single post:

• The show went on.
• We redacted all the offending text per the cease and desist letter.
• There will be more thoughts and likely a long essay to be written by me, but I want to say that[…]
• […]as a playwright, I would be 100% on board with someone using my work in this way.
• We held a completely subjective lens up to the work of the top ten most produced plays.
• If my work was ever so lucky as to reach that spot, I would welcome someone dissecting it and taking it out of context.
• I would want to know what someone thinks I’m saying about women using my own words.
• I’m not perfect. I’m not a perfect feminist playwright. I’m me. And I would want to know.

Update, Monday February 8, 12 noon: Rich Smith of The Stranger has continued to pursue the story of thatswhatshesaid and the cease and desist letter issued by Samuel French. He interviewed French’s executive director Bruce Lazarus about their action, the play and the possibility of the piece being permissible under fair use.

I told him that in my review I described the work as a parody and a collage that draws from several plays, and asked if he considered the play fair use.

“That’s your interpretation. Because you call it a parody doesn’t make it so,” he said. Then he added, “Fair use is a defense, and if proved it’s perfectly fine and within the law. But it’s a judge’s determination as to whether [That’swhatshesaid] constitutes fair use. Not having seen it, not having read it, I couldn’t tell you if it was fair use or not.”

When asked whether he’ll act on his claim to “go after” Gay City Arts knowing that That’swhatshesaid ran with lines from Bad Jews redacted, Lazarus said it was up to Harmon and all the other authors “whose rights are potentially being infringed” to decide whether they want to pursue legal action.

I posited this story as a David and Goliath situation. Here you have a big publisher coming down on a tiny theater presenting a self-produced play. Did he consider the fact that the artists might not have enough money to retain a lawyer? “For all I know, the author of this play has the wherewithal and the resources to hire an attorney to do this play,” he said, “And our author has the wherewithal to hire an agent to enforce his rights.”

Update, Monday February 8, 11 pm: The Stranger’s Rich Smith continues to report on thatswhatshesaid, with a post from this afternoon citing the receipt of a second cease and desist letter by the show’s creators. It came from Samuel French specifically on behalf of Matthew Lopez in connection with his play The Whipping Man, which was included on American Theatre’s list. However, as Smith notes, The Whipping Man contains no female characters [the text in the original post above has been struck out to reflect that fact]. The only material in thatswhatshesaid pertaining to the play is the sound of performer Erin Pike riffling through the 72 page script.

Update, Thursday February 11, 3:30 pm: In a new report in The Stranger, Dramatists Play Service has now issued a cease and desist letter to thatswhatshesaid on behalf of five of their authors: Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike by Christopher Durang, Venus in Fur by David Ives, Tribes by Nina Raine, and Outside Mullingar by John Patrick Shanley.

This post will be updated as new information warrants.

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

Ari Roth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Update, December 28, 2014 11 am:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aside from being the month of copious pumpkin flavored foodstuffs, October also brings two perennial theatrical top ten lists that are worthy of note: American Theatre magazine’s list of the most produced plays in Theatre Communications Group theatres for the coming season and Dramatics magazine’s lists of the most produced plays, musicals and one-acts in high school theatre for the prior year. They both say a great deal about the state of theatre in their respective spheres of production, both by what’s listed explicitly, as well as by what doesn’t appear.

In the broadest sense, both lists are startlingly predictable, although for different reasons. If you happen to find a bookie willing to give you odds on predicting the lists, here’s the trick for each: for the American Theatre list, bet heavily on plays which appeared on Broadway, or had acclaimed Off-Broadway runs, in the past year or two. For the Dramatics list, bet heavily on the plays that appeared on the prior year’s list.

But in the interest of learning, let’s unpack each list not quite so reductively.

American Theatre

As I’ve written in the past, what happens in New York theatre is a superb predictor of what will happen in regional theatre in the coming seasons, especially when it comes to plays. Any play that makes it to Broadway, or gets a great New York Times review, is going to grab the attention of regional producers. Throw in Tony nominations, let alone a Tony win – or the Pulitzer – and those are the plays that will quickly crop up on regional theatre schedules.

Anyone who follows the pattern of production would have easily guessed that Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike would proliferate this year, being a thoughtful, literary based comedy with a cast of only six. That American Theatre lists 27 productions doesn’t even take into account the 11 theatres that did the show in 2013-14, and certainly there are non-TCG theatres which are doing the show as well. It’s no surprise that Durang has said he made more money this past year than in any other year of his career; it’s a shame that financial success has taken so long for such a prodigiously gifted writer and teacher.

In general, shows on the American Theatre list have about a three year stay, typically peaking in their second year on the list, but this can vary depending upon when titles are released by licensing houses and agents to regional theatres. 25 years ago (and more significantly years before that) theatres might have had to compete with commercial tours, but play tours are exceedingly rare birds these days, if not extinct.

Perhaps this rush to the familiar and popular and NYC-annointed is disheartening, but it’s worth observing that the American Theatre list notes how many productions each title gets, and that after the first couple of slots, we’re usually looking at plays that are getting 7 or 8 productions in a given season, across TCG’s current universe of 474 member companies (404 of which were included in this year’s figures). Since the magazine notes a universe of 1,876 productions, suddenly 27 stagings of a single show doesn’t seem so dominant after all. Granted, TCG drops Shakespeare from their calculations, but even he only counted for 77 productions of all of his plays across this field. So reading between the lines, the American Theatre list suggests there’s very little unanimity about what’s done at TCG member theatres in any given year, a less quantifiable achievement but an important one.

Dramatics

While titles come and go on the American Theatre list, stasis is the best word to describe the lists of most produced high school plays (it’s somewhat less true for musicals). Nine of the plays on the 2014 list were on the 2013 list; 2014 was topped by John Cariani’s Almost, Maine, followed by A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the two titles were in reverse order the prior year. The other duplicated titles were Our Town, 12 Angry Men (Jurors), You Can’t Take It With You, Romeo and Juliet, The Crucible, Harvey and The Importance of Being Earnest.

Like the American Theatre list, the Dramatics survey doesn’t cover the entirety of high school theatre production; only those schools that are members of the Educational Theatre Association’s International Thespian Society have the opportunity to participate, representing more than 4,000 high schools out of a universe of 28,500 public, private and parochial secondary schools in the country. Unlike the Dramatics list, there are no hard numbers about how many productions each show receives, so one can only judge relative popularity.

Almost, Maine’s swift ascension to the top rungs of the list is extraordinary, but it’s due in no small part to its construction as a series of thematically linked scenes, originally played by just four actors but easily expandable for casts where actor salaries aren’t an issue. Looking at recent American Theatre lists, they tend to be topped by plays with small casts (Venus in Fur, Red, Good People and The 39 Steps), while the Dramatics list is the reverse, with larger cast plays dominating, in order to be inclusive of more students (though paling next to musicals where casts in school shows might expand to 50 or more).

The most important trend on the Dramatics list (which has been produced since 1938) is the lack of trends. Though a full assessment of the history of top high school plays would take considerable effort, it’s worth noting that Our Town was on the list not only in 2014 and 2013, but also in 2009, 1999 and 1989; the same is true for You Can’t Take It With You. Other frequently appearing titles are Arsenic and Old Lace, various adaptations of Alice in Wonderland, Harvey, and The Miracle Worker.

No doubt the lack of newer plays with large casts is a significant reason why older classic tend to rule this list; certainly the classic nature of these works and their relative lack of controversial elements play into it as well. But as I watched Sheri Wilner’s play Kingdom City at the La Jolla Playhouse a few weeks ago, in which a drama director is compelled to choose a play from the Dramatics list, I wondered: is the list self-perpetuating? Are there numerous schools that seek what’s mainstream and accepted at other schools, and so do the same plays propagate themselves because administrators see the Dramatics list as having an implied educational seal of approval?

That may well be, and if it’s true, it’s an unfortunate side effect of a quantitative survey. But it’s also worth noting that many of these plays, vintage though they may be, have common themes, chief among them exhortations to march to your own drummer, to matter how out of step you may be to the conventional wisdom. They may be artistic expressions from other eras about the importance of individuality, but in the hands of teachers thinking about more than just placating parents, they are also opportunities to celebrate those among us who may seem different or unique, and for fighting for what you believe in against prevailing sentiment or structures.

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Looking at musicals on the American Theatre list is a challenge, because their list is an aggregate of plays and musicals, and while many regional companies now do a musical or two, it’s much harder for any groundswell to emerge. In the last five years, only three musicals have made it onto the TCG lists, each for one year only: Into The Woods, Spring Awakening and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. That doesn’t mean there’s a dearth of musical production, it simply shows that the work is being done by companies outside of the TCG universe.

Musicals are of course a staple of high school theatre, but the top ten lists from Dramatics are somewhat more fluid. While staples like Guys and Dolls, Grease, Once Upon a Mattress, You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown and Little Shop of Horrors maintain their presence, newer musicals arrive every year or two, with works like Seussical, Legally Blonde, Spelling Bee, and Thoroughly Modern Millie appearing frequently in recent years. At the peak spot, after a six-year run, Beauty and the Beast was bested this year by Shrek; as with professional companies, when popular new works are released into the market, they quickly rise to the top. How long they’ll stay is anyone’s guess, but I have little doubt that we’ll one day see Aladdin and Wicked settle in for long tenures.

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When I looked at both the American Theatre and Dramatics lists over a span of time, the distinct predictability of each was troubling. Coming out when they do, before most theatrical production for the next theatre season is set, I’d like to see them looked at not as any manner of affirmation, but as a challenge – whether to professional companies or school schedules. I admire and enjoy the plays that are listed here, and nothing herein should be construed as critical of any of these shows; audiences around the country deserve the opportunity to see them. While I do have the benefit of living in New York and seeing most of these popular shows there, I must confess that I am most intrigued by the theatre companies and school groups that might just say to themselves, ‘Let’s not do the shows, or too many of the shows, that appear on these lists. Let’s find something else.’ Those plays may never appear as part of any aggregation, but I suspect the groups’ work will be all the more interesting for it, benefiting both artists and audiences.