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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Minnesota

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

November 13: Erasing Race On Stage At Clarion University

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

June 9: If The Arts Were Reported Like Sports

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

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

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

“Is there a link for this so I can read the whole thing if there’s more?”

“Maybe this wants to grow up and become a blog post?”

“I’ve been encouraging him to do so!!!!”

“This, I feel, is not just a statement for theater folk, but a life statement, a ‘how are you living in the world’ statement.”

The quotes above have all been written in the past 24 hours or so in response to a comment I made on Facebook – not a blog post, not an essay, but a comment, although admittedly not a short one. The response is gratifying, even as I feel awkward about repeating some of the positive remarks it engendered.

I share them because there’s been a lot of likes and shares and comments for a short burst I essentially blurted out on Wednesday afternoon, after seeing an array of responses to American Theatre editor Rob Weinert-Kendt’s apology for aspects of his Monday post about The Mikado and the heinous practice of yellowface. My comment was not about either of Rob’s pieces, but rather some of the defenses of yellowface that they elicited, and outright attacks on those who seek to abolish it. I stand, as I made clear several weeks ago in my own blog post, with the latter group.

Much as I stare at my comment, I don’t see how I can expand it. It addresses multiple issues on which I speak and write frequently, composed directly in one of those Facebook comment boxes, borne of anger and empathy, effective in its terseness. I feel that trying to elaborate upon it will only reduce it, though I appreciate the appeals of those who would like there to be more. I have to thank my friend and colleague Jacqueline Lawton, who lifted it out of the comments section and reiterated it as a Facebook post on her timeline, for getting it more attention that it would have otherwise received.

Because the Facebook algorithm is a mercurial beast, and it’s impossible to know who may have seen the comment, or how long it will be floating around in people’s feeds, I share it now, unedited, primarily as a means of preserving a relatively off-the-cuff cri de coeur – despite my concerns, that in my haste, I did not properly differentiate between my use of the terms “race” and “ethnicity,” even though I should know better.

“One of the great fallacies employed by those who resist making the American theatre more diverse is that when opening up traditionally or even specifically white roles to people of color, it should be a two way street – that if black, API, Latino, and Native Americans can play Willy Loman or Hedda Gabler, white actors should be able to perform in the works of August Wilson. That’s nonsense. The whole point of diversifying our theatre is not to give white artists yet more opportunities, but to try to address the systemic imbalance, and indeed exclusion, that artists of color, artists with disabilities and even non-male artists have experienced. Of course, when it comes to roles specifically written for POC, those roles should be played by actors of that race or ethnicity – and again, not reducing it to the level of only Italians should play Italians and only Jews should plays Jews, but that no one should be painting their faces to pretend to an ethnicity which is obviously not theirs, while denying that opportunity to people of that race. To those who would claim that our theatre isn’t centered around white men, look no further than the results of the Dramatists Guild’s The Count, which shows that four out of every five plays produced in America is by a white man. As for those who charge racism on the part of people striving for equality in the 21st century, I would suggest you don’t fully appreciate the racial struggles that have been part of this country’s original sin since Europeans began eradicating Native Americans and forcibly bringing Africans to these shores as slaves. Perhaps those in theatre can’t ever hope to directly redress this history, but we can at least seek to model a better world in our work and on our stages. And certainly we can do better than to engage in ad hominem attacks and threats against others in our field who seek equality.”

Will I say more on this subject? Absolutely. It’s become very central to my belief about the world of the arts, and the world at large. But as someone who usually goes on too long about just about everything, I’d like to stick with atypical brevity, hoping it provokes more conversation, more writing, more thinking about how we can all do better at embracing everyone who seeks a role in the arts. And if my few sentences above prove at all useful, they’re yours to employ in the good fight for diversity and inclusion.

P.S. Because advocates can have a tendency to become single-minded and even humorless in their pursuits, I must share with you my favorite response to my squib of a doctrine, among the many I read, courtesy of the dreaded auto-correct: “Wow! That’s it in a buttshell!!”

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

If you have any interest in the subject of diversity in entertainment, no doubt you’re aware of the firestorm kicked off last week by TV editor and co-editor-in-chief of the entertainment website Deadline, Nellie Andreeva. An article/op-ed under the headline “Pilots 2015: The Year of Ethnic Castings – About Time Or Too Much Of A Good Thing” was taken by many (myself included) as an insensitive response to a greater commitment by TV networks to casting new shows with actors representing a wide swath of racial diversity.

What you may have missed was Deadline’s apology for the article, and most specifically the headline, which was altered the next day in response to the criticism leveled at the site. In his weekly colloquy with his former Variety colleague Peter Bart on the site, Andreeva’s co-editor-in-chief Mike Fleming Jr. stated the following:

“I wanted to say a few things to our core readers who felt betrayed. That original headline does not reflect the collective sensibility here at Deadline. The only appropriate way to view racial diversity in casting is to see it as a wonderful thing, and to hope that Hollywood continues to make room for people of color. The missteps were dealt with internally; we will do our best to make sure that kind of insensitivity doesn’t surface again here. As co-editors in chief, Nellie and I apologize deeply and sincerely to those who’ve been hurt by this. There is no excuse. It is important to us that Deadline readers know we understand why you felt betrayed, and that our hearts are heavy with regret. We will move forward determined to do better.”

That’s a clear statement, and admirable, but I have lingering questions, about both the form and the content of the apology itself.

1. If Andreeva and Fleming recognized the problems quickly, why did they wait five days before apologizing, and only then via comments in a piece headlined, “Bart & Fleming: A Mea Culpa; Frank Sinatra Re-Cast; Tent Pole Assembly Line”? If they feel so strongly, why wasn’t this a standalone statement signed by both editors-in-chief, clearly marked as such, rather than included in a tete-a-tete that discussed other, irrelevant matters?

2. If Andreeva apologizes for the handling of the subject, why hasn’t she linked to the Bart & Fleming piece with the apology from her Twitter feed (for a start), where a link to the original piece, under its original headline remains if you scroll back a few days? Why hasn’t she taken any ownership of “her” apology? By not doing so, it’s easy to wonder about the sincerity, and even the source, of the apology.

3. Fleming responds to a question from Bart about why the piece wasn’t taken down, saying:

“It was 12 hours before I awoke to numerous e-mails, some by people of color who are sources, who trust us, who were rightfully incensed. At that point, the damage was done. I don’t believe you can make an unwise story disappear and pretend it didn’t happen.”

However, while Fleming acknowledges the change of headline, he fails to comment on internal edits to the piece, which included moving the third and fourth paragraphs much deeper in the article, perhaps putting them in better context. I also noted the addition of a phrase about “a young Latina juggling her dreams and her heritage” which I hadn’t spotted in the original. Why aren’t those changes made clear in the note on the bottom of the original piece? It seems an effort to say that all that was wrong was the original headline.

4. While it’s commendable of Fleming to not pretend that the original article never happened, I’m surprised that if you read the piece online now, there’s no evident link to the apology. To leave the article standing without that context, given how it is supposedly perceived internally at the site per Fleming’s own account, once again suggests that the apology is something less than thorough.

I have no doubt that people will be scrutinizing Deadline’s coverage of diversity, especially when Andreeva writes about it, for some time to come. Giving Fleming the benefit of the doubt as to his intentions, he needs to take a few more steps to demonstrate the depth of his commitment – and Andreeva needs to stand up and take responsibility for what she wrote and acknowledge the flaws. Otherwise, she’s left her partner to clean up her mess, and we’re all still wondering where her heart really lies.

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

The issue, to me, is not whether Peter Pan is played by a man or a woman. The issue is whether Peter Pan has to be white.

Perhaps I should back up.

Mary Martin as Peter Pan

On Sunday afternoon, via tweets (and later articles) resulting from the semi-annual Television Critics Association press conferences in Los Angeles, NBC announced that the follow-up to their ratings hit The Sound of Music Live would be Peter Pan Live, utilizing the stage musical from the 50s which had already been performed live on NBC a half-century ago, in 1955, 1956 and 1960. As it had on stage, the production starred Mary Martin in one of her several signature roles.

The announcement set off a wave of dream casting on Twitter; I was one of many who called for thoughts, as did Scott Heller, deputy arts & leisure editor at The New York Times. The suggestions came quickly. “Bieber!” was shouted repeatedly, apparently with no one thinking about his recent erratic behavior and how that might work in a live scenario. Journalist Mark Harris jumped in with “Chris Colfer, call your agent,” which in the immediate rush struck me as a pretty good idea. One shrewd person proposed Taylor Mac, a fascinating thought. Elisabeth Vincentelli wrote a piece for the New York Post in which she suggested, among others, Hayden Panettiere, Daniel Radcliffe and Katy Perry; inviting comments separate from Elisabeth’s article, The Post asks, “Do you think America’s ready for a boy Peter? A tattooed one?” avoiding the more pressing question I ask.

I have no doubt there were many other ideas bandied about. But I never saw a single suggestion of a performer who was not white.

Jefferson Mays as Peter Pan at Centerstage in Baltimore (Photo by Richard Anderson)

It’s interesting that no one felt bound by gender in their musings, even though the slightly pre-adolescent Peter is typically played by an adult woman. That sense of traditionalism went right out the window (though hardly for the first time, since men have played the role before, mostly in the non-musical version). But if the Mary Martin-Sandy Duncan-Cathy Rigby dynasty was certainly up for reinvention within minutes of the announcement, why didn’t racial diversity come to anyone’s mind? Does no one remember Brandy as Cinderella in the 1997 TV movie of the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, playing opposite a Filipino prince?

Granted, NBC wants a major star with the drawing power that Carrie Underwood brought to Sound of Music. If talent were the sole criteria, two performers who I think might be terrific in the role are Nikki M. James and Krysta Rodriguez. I’ve read that NBC would like to cast a male actor as Peter, and I’m sure there are countless famous choices who would suit – I wonder what Bruno Mars might do with the role.

Audra McDonald & Carrie Underwood in The Sound of Music

Of course, this breadth of thinking need not apply only to Peter: since Sound of Music and the 1999 TV movie of Annie were wise enough to cast Audra McDonald without getting tangled in the net of perceived historical accuracy (these are musicals, not textbooks after all), perhaps the Darling family and Captain Hook need not be staunchly Victorian white.  I have no doubt that the corps of Lost Boys and pirates will be cast multiculturally (the Spielberg film Hook helped set that standard more than 20 years ago), since that’s the “easy” route, but it’s the leads that must show the wider world.

Brandy and Paolo Montalban in Cinderella

On a related note, I am concerned about the play’s retrograde (albeit fantasy) version of Native Americans. Having never seen the Peter Pan musical (NBC is showing a remarkable knack for picking shows that highlight gaps in my theatergoing, or perhaps my childhood, as I was also new to Sound of Music), I do wonder how the character of Tiger Lily and the songs “Indians!” and “Ugg-A-Wugg” play today, not unlike Annie Get Your Gun’s now often-excised “I’m An Indian Too.” I must leave that to those better versed in the material. And don’t get me started on how it portrays Captain Hook, one of dramatic fiction’s better known disabled characters.

Obviously I didn’t see every fantasy casting tweet, and even within the 1,000+ folks that I follow, I may have missed suggestions of actors of color. Yet the reflex of those around me, one of which I quickly endorsed, were all monochromatic suggestions, and that’s where my concerns lie. Many years after repeatedly hearing of Michael Jackson’s dream of playing Peter Pan (admittedly with a troubling overlay unique to that man), we revert to the dominant race in England from the era when the play was first written, rather than flying towards a spectrum of color on our way towards the third star to the right and straight on ‘til morning.

Breaking down blinkered thinking about race is an enormous opportunity, especially when the vehicle for doing so is a beloved family musical. The ball’s in your court, NBC – and in the court of all you dreamcasters too.

Gender and racial diversity in the arts has been a topic of discussion for as long as I can remember. But the ongoing inequities in the American theatre have been simmering for a long time. Intermittent signs of progress – Garry Hynes and Julie Taymor winning Tonys in 1997, dual firsts for women; the rich cycle of plays by August Wilson that brought a black voice to Broadway and stages across the country; the current Broadway season which featured two new plays by black female writers – are received with attention and even acclaim. Yet overall, there is general consensus that these constituencies are profoundly underrepresented.

While dissatisfaction can be directed at the commercial theatre, it is decentralized; each production is its own corporate entity and producers do not consult with all of the other producers. When it comes to new plays, as it happens, a majority of the work seen on Broadway (if not from England) has emerged from not-for-profit companies. Consequently, the publicly-funded resident theatres have become the locus of attention on these issues and, accelerated by social media, the continuing lack of meaningful process may be coming to a head.

The underrepresentation of women and racially-diverse authors on our stages has come into sharp relief recently as a result of the season announcement by The Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, one of our oldest and largest companies. In announcing a season of 11 productions thus far, there are no plays by female playwrights (although a Goldoni adaptation is by Constance Congdon), no plays by any writers of color, and only one project with a female director (more accurately, a co-director, with Mark Rylance). In the outcry that ensued, it was noted that almost 10 years ago, while rallying support and funding for The Guthrie’s new home, Dowling had specifically said the new venue would allow for a greater variety of voices; responding to current criticism, he stoked the flames by invoking and decrying “tokenism.”

This prominent example generated press coverage beyond the Minneapolis-St. Paul market, let alone an ongoing rumble of dismay across blogs and Twitter. Perhaps it was Dowling’s defensiveness that made The Guthrie situation so volatile. After all, this past season, Chicago’s acclaimed Steppenwolf Theatre mainstage season featured plays only by men (one an African American), and this from a theatre with a female artistic director; I don’t remember comparable outcry. Was this tempered by the season including several female directors? Or has the Guthrie flap made it easier to raise these issues?

Now each new season announcement is being held up to an accounting, not necessarily in its own board room, staff meeting or local press, but by activists seeking to lay bare this congenital issue. In 2012-13? Arizona Theatre Company: Six plays, all by white males. Seattle Rep: Eight plays, two by women, one of them African American. Alley Theatre in Houston: 11 productions, 2 by women (one of them Agatha Christie) and one by an Asian American man. Kansas City Rep: seven shows, six by men and one developed by an ensemble. Obviously I cannot go theatre by theatre, and I think more detailed data will be gathered, but underrepresentation of works by women and writers of color (of any gender) prevails. What of Steppenwolf? Their next five play season includes plays by one woman and one African-American man.

Is it fair to apply what some might call a quota system in assessing the diversity work on American stages? I would have to say, as so many of our resident theatres are on the verge of celebrating their 50^th anniversaries in the next few years, that a public declaration of these figures is not only fair, but necessary. Theatres have been asked by foundations, by corporations, by government funders to break down their staffs and boards by gender and race for years, and knowing that they were under scrutiny may have caused many companies to diversify internally more, or more quickly, than they might have otherwise. Actors Equity has conducted surveys of seasonal hiring, broken down for gender and race, for a number of years – another watchful eye. Now the focus must shift to the writers of the work on our stages if progress is to be made.

It is ironic that the civil rights movement in America is perhaps most associated with the 1960s, followed closely by the feminist movement — the very same period that coincidentally also saw the bourgeoning of the American resident theatre movement. How unfortunate that some of the language associated, for good or ill, with the first two efforts (tokenism, quotas) are even relevant in discussion of artistic breadth of the latter half a century later.