Given the disastrous reduction in live theatre that has marked the pandemic since March of 2020, one might assume that incidences of high school shows canceled over content concerns would have been curtailed as well. But as lockdowns have been lifted and as theatre educators have devised creative means to produce safely, production shutdowns have followed. However, the reason for the cancelations that have risen to public awareness is not typical of what has come before.
Over the past decade, when school theatre productions have been shut down, it is typically because of parents or community members who object to the content of the shows, with particular sensitivity to the representation of LGBTQ lives (Rent, The Laramie Project), the slightest hint of sexual activity (Almost, Maine), violence (Sweeney Todd), or the occasional profanity. The object has ostensibly been to “protect” the students – those in the show, their classmates, and even their younger siblings from engaging in such topics. The intent has been suppression of subjects and themes, all of which the students are most assuredly aware.
What of the recent cancelations?
In late February, McCaskey High School in the Lancaster PA school district canceled the spring production of Hairspray because of students who were troubled by language they found offensive regarding Black and Hispanic characters and people with disabilities. An email from a group of students to their principal was forwarded on to the superintendent, who made the decision to cancel the show.
In March, The Chadwick School, a private school in Palos Verdes Peninsula CA, shut down a planned production of the school edition of Avenue Q. A message from the administration to parents said that while “the musical had the full support of the administration…elements of our community felt uncomfortable, based on principle, with some of the tone, timing and content of the show.” The message went on to say, “The original work has been praised for its irreverent and provocative approach to themes such as race and sexuality,” but that while “theater is an effective forum to explore important topics such as these, we also believe it is important to respect the perspectives of the individuals who raised concerns.”
This week, the Hunterdon Central Regional High School canceled plans to produce South Pacific because staff and students were concerned about the show’s treatment of race. According to NJ.com, citing the district superintendent, “the district believed [South Pacific] was ‘important and relevant,” but also that “the district was aware the musical featured stereotyped characters and dialogue, and originally intended to offer a concert version that ‘significantly reduced the dialogue’.” There is no indication whether or not Concord Theatricals, which licenses the Rodgers & Hammerstein catalogue, had approved of the concert-style cutting of the show.
While the specifics at The Chadwick School are somewhat vague in the administration’s statement, and it’s unclear where the objections originated, at McCaskey and Hunterdon the source is apparent: it’s students who wanted to see the shows shut down or replaced, specifically because they felt that portrayals and dialogue were insensitive and offensive to often marginalized communities. These incidents echo what transpired at Ithaca High School in 2018, when students pushed for the shut down of a production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame after a white student was cast in a role that had been played in prominent professional productions by a BIPOC actor.
In the wake of the heightened awareness surrounding discussions of race engendered by the Black Lives Matter movement, and perhaps influenced by the advocacy of such groups as We See You White American Theatre and the Broadway Advocacy Coalition, it should not be surprising that high school students are not simply aware of, but motivated by, such concerns. Given that the racial reckoning of the past couple of years mirrors the societal upheaval around civil rights and, on its heels, youth culture in the 1960s, activism by high school students is far from surprising, especially when one considers the greater sophistication of teens in comparison with those over 50 years ago.
When the Ithaca students spoke out in 2018, their efforts yielded death threats over their fight for representation, spurred on by right-wing sites like The Daily Caller. This week, Fox News, already deeply engaged in spreading the canard of cancel culture in relation to Dr. Seuss and the Warner Brothers characters Speedy Gonzales and Pepe le Pew, have embraced the South Pacific situation as merely another example of what they decry, namely the ostensible disappearing of material that they consumed in the days before distinct communities (women, BIPOC, disability) communities were afforded a voice to express the offense given by certain portrayals and the increasing willingness of both individuals and corporations to avoid slurs.
Adults of a certain age may not even understand where the offense lies in the Dr. Seuss books withdrawn, or appreciate how an aggressively romantic skunk might echo sexual harassment or worse. Some of that comes from being brought up in an era with different mores or only remembering the barest outlines of material they consumed decades ago. They may further be confused by the weaponization of these stories being treated as examples of yet more “political correctness,” another catch-all term, like “cancel culture,” both applied to denigrate present-day sensitivity to and concern about works which once punched down at certain people with impunity.
There is no question that given only a cursory glance, the suspension of certain high school productions looks like censorship – it is, in the case of public schools at least, government officials ending a form of expression. When it rises to that level, it is very difficult to countenance, even when done in order to avoid perpetuating harm through uncritical representations of misogyny, racial bias and the like.
So the first question to be asked of the faculty and administration is, “What was the rationale for selecting this show?” “How were its dialogue and themes considered in light of present-day viewpoints on how some works may have grown dated?” “Does this material still say what it intended back in its original era?” While some of these questions may seem absurd with such modern material as Avenue Q or Hairspray, it’s worth remembering that both are around 20 years old. South Pacific is considerably older.
The next question is whether, in recognizing what some may view as problematic material, any effort was made to contextualize it for students and even the larger community. Some may object to the use of the n-word in certain texts, but does that mean the works of August Wilson shouldn’t be studied or performed in a high school setting? How, and by whom, students are led to understand certain material can have a significant impact or the repertoire open to schools. While Wilson’s estate will not permit the alteration of his texts, that is not always the case for all works in high school settings. If a handful of words render a work ostensibly unperformable, the author(s) or their estate(s) may grant dispensation for certain changes.
That it was the student version of Avenue Q that raised objections in California is interesting in that the text and lyrics had already been altered to render it more fit by some for school performances. Perhaps it is due for another review. Yet at the same time, it may reach a point where the bowdlerization of the material renders it so unrecognizable that it becomes a different work altogether. The degree to which that does or does not occur is entirely at the discretion of its creators.
It is important to note that unlike some high school shows that were shuttered specifically to suppress ideas like racial, gender and sexual equality, the decision in Lancaster over Hairspray was not shrouded in short, blunt statements. Instead, the superintendent, Dr. Damaris Rau, wrote a blog post fully explaining her decision. She wrote in part:
I also believe context matters. Our country has gone through some horrific events, including the murder of George Floyd. I know many of our students participated in the social justice marches this summer. We know mental health issues of adolescents have grown and intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic. The language and portrayals in the show risked further discomfort—and potentially trauma—for students facing the harsh reality of racism in our country. In addition, many families bring their younger children to see our musical.
In light of this current environment, the calls for social justice, and the written concerns of the students, I believe this is the best decision at this time.
In emails with Arts Integrity, Dr. Rau elaborated that in addition to specific dialogue in the show, the students had expressed concern that Hairspray is a white savior narrative. She went on to talk about the in-school training around implicit bias, equity, and diversity, which began two years ago.
The objections to South Pacific may prove most surprising because it was written specifically to decry racism – witness “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught.” But in its portray of Bloody Mary and Liat weren’t they also deploying stereotypes that have become more and more obvious as racial awareness has evolved over the past 70 plus years? Those who believe vintage anti-racism texts can’t possibly become problematic need only look to another musical from roughly the same era, Finian’s Rainbow, which used blackface in order to fight racism.
Nothing herein should be considered to advocate for the alteration of texts to avoid any and all offense; we will not benefit from the homogenization of culture. The state of copyrighted texts is the sole purview of creators or their estates, and even if changes are authorized individually or enshrined globally, it is vital that the original versions are retained and preserved, since we should never be comfortable with the permanent erasure of history. But if the Seuss estate decides that it’s works no longer are fit for purpose and withdrawn from commercial circulation, that is their absolute right and represents an understanding of societal change, not cancelation but consideration.
Consideration of texts for school theatre is essential as well. Just because educators have always loved a show from their youth doesn’t necessarily make it the best choice for today or for their target audience. By the same token, a flight to safety will not serve either, because theatre is indeed a place where hard issues should be on the table, but only when properly contextualized for those putting on the performance and those who are intended to see it.
It serves no one to have shows shut down. Before a show is announced or auditions held, work must be chosen in the very best interest of the students, with the goal of a fair and equal society, work which does not demean but educates and even lifts up. When it comes to how works of prior eras are perceived today by their students, even teachers may have to be carefully taught.
Despite its origin in a 1988 film from John Waters, the underground master of camp, shock and transgression, the story of Tracy Turnblad, as told in multiple iterations, has become wholly mainstream. Thanks in large part to the 2002 stage musical version, Tracy’s story of leading an effort to integrate a local TV music program in Baltimore has had America singing and dancing along for years now. Beyond its more conventional musical numbers, it offers up a craven TV producer who laments her salad days as “Miss Baltimore Crabs” and teens miming the crushing bugs as part of a dance craze. Indeed, the mildly subversive tone of the musical, while significantly less spiky than the original film, is set by Tracy’s buoyant paean to her home city, which includes shout outs to the rats on the street and the local flasher.
In spite of its popularity and its pro-integration narrative (the show is set in 1962), the musical has been been criticized by some as advancing a white savior narrative, since it portrays a white girl, albeit one who is ostracized for her weight, taking the initiative and risk to make “every day Negro Day” on The Corny Collins Show, the musical’s American Bandstand analogue. Given that it’s explicitly about the crossing of the racial line between blacks and whites, a certain amount of disbelief met the news in 2012 that one Texas high school did the show with an all-white cast, seemingly deracinating a story about race and posing a particular challenge to truthfully representing the narrative.
Consequently, the casting of a March production of Hairspray at Princeton University, in which Tracy was played by a biracial student and her mother, Edna, was played by a black student, was both surprising and informative. It demonstrated how this musical about integration can be explored anew, 15 years after its debut and 30 years after the original film. The production, which played for five performances in a studio theatre on the campus, was the senior thesis project of two students, Alex Daniels, who played Tracy, and AJ Jones, who directed (only her second time directing). Princeton does not have a theatre major, but does offer theatre certificates for a concentrated course of study. The production was entirely student driven, except for its musical director and its sound designer.
In an interview with Arts Integrity subsequent to the run, Daniels, who describes herself as ethnically biracial and racially black, and Jones, who identifies herself as white, explained the thinking behind their production.
Daniels began by saying, “When I was a freshman, way back when, I was having a conversation with someone about dream roles of mine and I mentioned that I really loved Tracy and that she would definitely be a dream role. That person was like, ‘That’s not possible. You’re not white. You could never play Tracy.’ And so that comment really hit me in a not so great way. Why should the color of my skin limit me from any possibilities? I brought it up with AJ and from there we thought, why not? This script and this show seem to be catered to having a person of color in this position struggling with these issues.”
Expanding upon the inception story of their Hairspray, Daniels said, “When Alex told me about this comment, I started thinking more about Tracy possibly being biracial and it made a lot of sense, especially given her role in the show, bringing these two groups together. It changes the relationships with all of the characters in the show and gives them all a little more depth as well.”
In the production, Daniels appears in facial makeup that is noticeably lighter than her own skin tone. The rationale for this was described by Daniels as addressing, “How is Tracy going to fit into this world when she very clearly is not white? I personally cannot pass as white. Then we had the conversation about what if she’s trying to pass. What if she’s using makeup to lighten her skin, using whiteface in order to make it through every day in this community. So that’s where this conversation came in. We also just felt that the story of passing was something we wanted to talk about, the extent to which African-American, biracial females, and definitely men as well, went to belong in this community to reap the benefits of being white.”
Jones noted, “We spent quite a bit of time testing a lot of different types of makeup. We decided to have it only on her face because we wanted to make it clear to the audience that she’s not white, that she’s passing as white. We discussed whether other characters in the show know that Tracy’s trying to pass, and we came to the conclusion that yes, they have to be suspicious, but they can’t really know for sure, they can’t really say anything about it, because of the power of this white face that she has on.”
* * *
At this point, it would be fair to question whether this color conscious casting of the roles of Tracy and Edna was contrary to the authors’ intent for the show. Arts Integrity asked that very question of Music Theatre International, which licenses the show, specifying what the production had done in regards to those roles. In reply, MTI president Drew Cohen said that the company does not place casting restrictions according to race on its customers, and pointed out specific material answering questions about racial casting for Hairspray, in the form of a letter from the four authors of the show, as well as John Waters. It reads, along with instructions for using it, in its entirety, as follows:
The use of make-up to portray black characters in your production (e.g., blackface) is not permitted under this Production Contract. By signing below, you agree to inform the director of your production that such use of make-up is strictly prohibited.
If your production of Hairspray features actors who are portraying characters whose race may be other than their own, you may elect to include the below letter from the creators of Hairspray in your program. You are not permitted to edit the letter in any way.
Dear Audience Members,
When we, the creators of HAIRSPRAY, first started licensing the show to high-schools and community theatres, we were asked by some about using make-up in order for non-African Americans to portray the black characters in the show.
Although we comprehend that not every community around the globe has the perfectly balanced make-up (pardon the pun) of ethnicity to cast HAIRSPRAY as written, we had to, of course, forbid any use of the coloring of anyone’s face (even if done respectfully and subtly) for it is still, at the end of the day, a form of blackface, which is a chapter in the story of race in America that our show is obviously against.
Yet, we also realized, to deny an actor the chance to play a role due to the color of his or her skin would be its own form of racism, albeit a “politically correct” one.
And so, if the production of HAIRSPRAY you are about to see tonight features folks whose skin color doesn’t match the characters (not unlike how Edna has been traditionally played by a man), we ask that you use the timeless theatrical concept of “suspension of disbelief” and allow yourself to witness the story and not the racial background (or gender) of the actors. Our show is, after all, about not judging books by their covers! If the direction and the actors are good (and they had better be!) you will still get the message loud and clear. And hopefully have a great time receiving it!
Thank You,
Marc, Scott, Mark, Tom & John
While Cohen did not respond directly to the query regarding the specific color conscious casting at Princeton, where certainly white students were available, his pointing out of the letter, and his comment about not imposing racial restrictions, strongly indicate that such casting is permissible. In a separate piece of correspondence, Cohen stated, “The key is that the show must be performed as written and the characters should be portrayed as written.” He also clarified that while the authors’ letter singles out high school and community theatre productions, it is applicable to university productions as well.
* * *
So what was the effect of this concept of Hairspray? It seemed, as the thesis students intended, to deepen the story, and staging decisions only enhanced that. “Good Morning, Baltimore” was played slowly, more like a sad ballad, suggesting that Tracy’s everyday routine was not a joyous leap from bed, but rather the start of a new day of struggle. When the perpetually panicky Prudy Pingleton commented to Edna, her laundress, about “colored music,” it read as more pointed than ever before, and Edna’s dismissal of the characterization read as self-negating. When Velma von Tussle humiliates Tracy at her dance audition, it ceased to be solely an attack of her weight but also decidedly racial. When first encountering Edna and Tracy together, Velma’s already ugly sizeist comment “I guess you two are living proof that the watermelon doesn’t fall too far from the vine,” became doubly ugly. That all of the female characters are released from jail after the altercation at Motormouth Maybelle’s save for Tracy, a particular focus is placed on the continued imprisonment of a young woman who is biracial, while the black characters and white characters are all freed.
At the same time, the friendship between Tracy and Penny came across as particularly special, since clearly Penny – in and out of the Turnblad house like any teenager – surely had no questions about Tracy’s mixed parentage, but ignored the racial faultlines of the day. When Seaweed declares that, “Detention’s a rainbow experience,” he negates any concerns about racial divisions or conflicts as well for Tracy, who has been trying to pass as white. Detention becomes, in effect, a racial safe space.
By consciously altering the racial dynamic of Hairspray through only two characters, albeit leading roles, it is fair to suggest that the story of racial acceptance, integration and diversity became possibly even more resonant than the original portrayal as defined by the Broadway production. While the authors’ letter permitting cross-racial casting may have been intended primarily to address situations where there aren’t sufficient performers of color available, it laid the groundwork for Daniels and Jones’s interpretation, even though they asked the audience to engage directly with their color conscious casting, rather than suspending disbelief over it.
* * *
It is unfortunate to report that Cohen’s statement, common to all licensed productions, that “the show must be performed as written” was not fully adhered to when it came to the text. Daniels and Jones acknowledged that they had made small changes and excisions, such as changing the song “Big, Blonde and Beautiful” to “Big, Black and Beautiful,” as their Motormouth Maybelle wore her hair more naturally. Perhaps most significantly, in “You Can’t Stop The Beat,” a late segment involving the Von Tussles, both mother and daughter, in which they are encouraged to join the full on party, initially resisting and then ultimately joining in, was gone. They were denied their redemption as the authors intended.
Because Daniels and Jones did not request permission to make these changes, and perhaps other smaller ones that went unnoticed, they were violating the authors’ copyright and the licensing agreement. While their production may have been a student thesis and part of their academic work, it was publicly presented, and for multiple performances, so the legally standard practices should have applied. That they felt the need and the freedom to reauthor any of the show is a shame, since the casting, direction and performance had already been transformative, while still working within the existing text and the leave granted by the authors regarding race.
* * *
It is the right of Tom Meehan, Marc Shaiman, Scott Wittman, John Waters and the estate of Mark O’Donnell to determine what may be done in productions of Hairspray that go beyond the existing casting template, and they’ve offered up their thoughts for producers and directors to consider. This mirrors Lin-Manuel Miranda’s statements regarding the racial casting of In The Heights, where he has made clear that in high school productions, the cast need not be Latinx, in whole or part, so long as the performances are respectful of the Latinx identity. But it’s important to remember that this guidance is specific to these shows by these authors about their own work, not a policy applicable across the literary spectrum. Texts should remain inviolate without express permission, which may be hard to secure, but is nonetheless legally and ethically required.
While the criteria for evaluating the Princeton students’ thesis academically is unknown, they did achieve two silent but memorable moments that have not typically been part of productions of Hairspray, but are both worth remembering. The first came midway through Act II when Tracy, inspired by “I Know Where I’ve Been,” wiped away the makeup which had been used to indicate that as a biracial teen, she was trying to pass as white, and would no longer. She becomes secure with her racial identity, even if it means more struggle in that community in that era.
The second memorable invention came in the very final moments of the show when, after the joyous and victorious refrain of “You Can’t Stop The Beat” hit its final peak, there was not the customary blackout. Instead, the cast (sans the Von Tussles, as noted previously) were arrayed in a straight line across towards the rear of the stage. Maintaining the rhythm of the now ended song, they stepped forward in unision, in unity, to the beat, beat, beat, and the dance party was transformed into the front lines of a civil rights march, of the fight for racial equality that would extend far beyond the integration of a single teen TV show.
Almost as quickly as the Into The Woods trailer appeared, my social media feeds were filled with an anguished refrain: where are the songs? Yes, the core audience felt betrayed, even though I suspect every person who was moved to write already knows the score by heart.
What those of us who love theatre in general, musicals in particular, and Sondheim most of all have to remember is that, sadly, we are not representative of the majority of moviegoers, and movie marketers have to throw a wide net. Those of us who flock to watch the trailer of Into The Woods are already committed to seeing it, no matter how much we may want to grouse about it. The film studios are trying to reach a much wider crowd, for whom the sight of stars singing may be off-putting, strange as such a thought may be to those of us who are ready to belt out a show tune at the slighted prompting. It’s also possible that we’ll get a more representative trailer as the film draws closer.
Minimizing the musical theatre connection has certainly been true for movie musicals for some time. It’s almost as though marketers are trying to slip the fact that people sing past potential audiences. Unlike Into The Woods, which does seem more like a moody tour of the film’s production design than anything, music is prominently featured in countless trailers, even for non-musical films, and sometimes with music that isn’t ever heard in the film. But when it comes to seeing people sing, let’s keep that quiet, shall we? We can hear singing in trailers, and see people moving their lips, but not in sync. Take a look at the trailer for Hairspray as an example.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ53mRO80c0
Dancing, apparently, isn’t so problematic. The Dancing with the Stars effect has probably only increased its appeal. Another example is Mamma Mia! which looked as if it was a romantic comedy with a bunch of Abba songs on the soundtrack, rather than a story told using Abba songs. One can understand why they wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see and hear Pierce Brosnan warbling, but the sight of master thespian Meryl Streep going to town on some Swedish pop might have added some appeal in its very incongruity.
Maybe Paramount knew the theatre purists were already on edge when they cut the trailer for Sweeney Todd, given the relative musical inexperience of the main cast (which many feel lived down to their expectations), which keeps vocals to a minimum. Despite that, more than most musical trailers, Sweeney actually gave us a real look at a bit of a song, “Epiphany,” spoke-sung by Johnny Depp (although we were halfway through the trailer before it was deployed). However that could easily be recognized as a fantasy sequence and seemingly not the style of the whole film. Overall the trailer hewed closer to the Hammer Films homage that director Tim Burton had appropriated for the Grand Guignol tale, and maybe a few Fangoria devotees were lured into a musical they’d have avoided otherwise.
It’s not that we don’t get a few glimpses of people singing in some trailers, but in the quick-cut style that brings them flash and energy, there is a certain “blink or you’ll miss it” quality, even when the making of music is central to the plot, as in the Dreamgirls trailer, where one would think performance footage of a superstar like Beyoncé would actually be a plus.
The incongruity of Eddie Murphy singing may be why we saw a bit of exactly that in Dreamgirls, and the same rationale may have applied to Depp in Sweeney, as well as Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renee Zellwger as the merry murderesses in the trailer of Chicago. For Zellweger, the singing was new; for Zeta-Jones it was part of her professional background, but before she became a star. Perhaps singing from people we least expect to sing has marketing value.
Mind you, this fear extends to movies that aren’t musicals but tell musical stories and in which the main characters are known to us precisely because they’re singers. The flash of the trailer for the just-released Get On Up, about James Brown, gives us glimpses of his energetic performances and we hear his music along with narration and dialogue, but lips actually moving along with the songs go largely unseen. Of course, given the subterfuge with which actual musicals are being marketed, I can’t help but wonder whether some audiences see this and think, “Uh, I dunno. I think they’re trying to slip one of those durned musicals by us.”
As much as we purists might be desperate to see musical scenes as quickly as possible, we can be fairly sure that the film itself will be a musical, even if it has been adapted and altered from its stage version. The example of Irma la Douce, one of the very few musicals to be adapted for the screen without the songs, is unlikely to recur.
So what about original musicals for the screen? To be fair, original live action film tuners are scarce, except for animation, where, since Disney’s The Little Mermaid, a mini-song score seems de rigeur. But is that a selling point? On the basis of the trailer for Frozen, which ultimately drilled Idinia Menzel’s “Let It Go” into the brains of millions of kids and their parents worldwide, even Disney wasn’t sure that the massively successful score was going to bring in the crowd. The film seemed to be the story of one girl, one boy and one talking snowman. However, to be fair, even though they hid it, the word got out about the exceptional songs.
The trailer for Les Miserables did show us Anne Hathaway as the doomed Fantine singing “I Dreamed A Dream,” in fact it’s all we hear as we watch that trailer – all of the other visuals that are laid over it could easily come from a non-musical. No warbling Wolverine here. Perhaps, to the handful of people in the world who have managed to escape any knowledge of the stage musical, this one song could be an isolated case. But this trailer more than any demonstrates the marketing tactic that prevails: don’t make it look too much like a musical in the hope of capturing some people who may not like musicals, and as for the core audience, we’ll throw ‘em a bone.
I wish I could recall which Twitter wit I read who compared movie trailers without songs to foreign film trailers without dialogue, since I would like to credit them for that very astute observation. But it’s worth noting that foreign films are financed and produced abroad, then picked up for distribution over here; the Hollywood studios shoulder vastly greater risk when they release musicals. While I’m fairly grouchy about the studios these days, with the endless remakes, sequels and films from dystopian young adult novels (thanks Mark Harris for that), I really am willing to give them a lot of leeway on musicals, to a degree on how they adapt them, but certainly on how they sell them. For perspective: if a musical sells 600,000 tickets in a year, it’s a smash; if a movie musical sells 600,000 tickets in its first week, it’s a disappointment. And after all, if a trailer whets our appetite for a movie musical, we can always fire up the iPod, or our Sondheim channel, and listen and sing along to our heart’s content until the movie comes out. After all, haven’t we been doing that already?
Incidentally, we’re getting two musicals this Christmas. In addition to Into The Woods, everybody’s favorite orphan is back, and on the basis of the trailer, while it’s hard to know what’s been done with the story and most of the score, at least we know it will still be a hard knock life tomorrow, though we may not be entirely sure of who’s singing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrxc8rS2W2E
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Howard Sherman.
