Željko Ivanek, Zakes Mokae and Danny Glover in the 1982 U.S. premiere of Athol Fugard’s “MASTER HAROLD …and the boys” at the Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Gerry Goodstein)

After its US debut at Yale Repertory Theatre in March 1982, and before it opened on Broadway in early May of that year, Athol Fugard’s MASTER HAROLD…and the boys played a one-week engagement at the Annenberg Center in Philadelphia. During that brief run, one critic wrote of the play, in part:

Fugard, who also directed the Yale Repertory Theater production, has fashioned a play of compactness and clarity. Running without intermission for a rapid one-and-three-quarter hours, the play manages to develop and destroy this idyllic refuge for Hally while still taking time to comment on the human condition. To Fugard, life is a ballroom dance, but the humans who are on the floor are often tragically unaware of the steps.

The cast is exemplary. Danny Glover, with a minimum of dialogue, creates in Willie an admirable man whose emotions are obviously trapped by the racial system that restricts him. As Hally, Lonny Price captures the essence of a youth caught between two fathers and the pains of growing up. Price, who has replaced the explosive Željko Ivanek from the original Yale production, brings a gentle and more melancholy tone to the character of this young and misguided protagonist.

Dominating the show is Zakes Mokae as Sam. Mokae provides an ideal father figure for Hally, a man who painfully endures the insults of his “son” in an attempt to salvage the boy’s self-respect.

I recall this review distinctly because I wrote it. I also remember fighting angrily to insure that it appeared in The Daily Pennsylvanian, my college newspaper, because having seen the original run at Yale, I believed Master Harold to be a major work of theatre that students should know about. However, because my actual “beat” was writing theatre and film reviews of activities off-campus for the weekly entertainment magazine, 34^th Street, shows at the on-campus Annenberg Center were the purview of others – though no one had asked to or been assigned to cover Master Harold. In some ways, it was a conflict of interest for me to write about Annenberg shows, because my work-study job was in the box office there, and in addition I had taken over running the Center’s post-show discussion series.

My fight to write about Master Harold was less because I was so eager to opine on it, but because I thought better me than no one. That’s not to say the play was struggling up from obscurity. On the same page where my review appeared there was an ad for the production, noting positive reviews by, among others, Frank Rich and Mel Gussow of The New York Times, Jack Kroll of Newsweek and Douglas Watt of the New York Daily News. But I doubt many Penn students at the time, even the theatre crowd, had read those.

I met Fugard that week in 1982 when he was on campus, albeit briefly, when I led a post-matinee discussion with him (two years earlier, also at Yale Rep, in a fleeting opportunity for me, he had signed my copy of A Lesson From Aloes). The event was to a degree derailed, first by the retirees in attendance, who used the opportunity to chastise the many high schoolers present for their inappropriate behavior during a pivotal moment in the play. Then more responsible students then took offense and spoke out to distance themselves from their less mature peers. Let’s just say I had no quality time with Athol on stage or off, as he disappeared immediately after the talk, which had squandered his presence.

It would be 28 years before I had the opportunity to speak with Fugard again, occasioned by my podcast “Downstage Center.” I had long wanted to talk with him, to revisit the Master Harold that I had seen both in New Haven and Philadelphia, and later on its national tour. Despite the fact that Fugard continued his relationship with Yale Rep into the latter part of the 80s, even as I began to work at Harford Stage, our paths never crossed, until October of 2010 for the podcast session.

Based upon what I had seen in 1982, I had been harboring a long unanswered question. However, what I wanted to discuss was so specific, that I didn’t bring it up during the 65 minute interview (which you can listen to here), because so few listeners might be interested. But once I turned off the recorder, I finally had my chance. I asked Fugard if he minded answering a very particular question almost three decades on, and he generously encouraged me.

As it was widely acknowledged, at the time and ever since, Ivanek could not stay with Master Harold because he was already committed to appear in a movie, The Sender, his first significant film role. Lonny Price, as he told me himself both back in 1982 at the Annenberg Center and again when we met as adults years later, had gone into the show with only 10 days preparation.

But as I intimated in my review, there was a shift in the play with the change from Ivanek to Price. Specifically (and if you don’t know the play, you may want to stop reading now), at its climax, Hally (as Harold is called throughout the play), spits on Sam, his surrogate father, and the two must confront the anger and shame that brought them to that moment and its aftermath. The play ends relatively quickly thereafter, with Hally making an emotional departure from the tea room where the play is set.

“When Željko played the role,” I related to Fugard in 2010, “it felt to me like there had been an irrevocable break. That Hally had become his father, embittered and racist, and that his friendship with Sam would never be repaired. With Lonny in the role, the moment seemed to be one that was more ambiguous, more confused, and even though he stormed off, you had a sense that they might work things out. Was that,” I then asked, “simply the result of the differing nature of the two actors, or was it a change in the intent of the moment and the play?”

“Well, the second way is truer to what really happened,” Fugard explained. As he had said previously in interviews over the years, he was Hally and there was a Sam. However the actual incident had taken place when Fugard was younger, a pre-teen, as opposed to the older teen as portrayed in the play. “We did become friends again,” he said.

“But,” he mused, “what you say is very interesting. Because what we ended up showing may have been the truth, but what you saw originally may have actually been the more dramatically interesting choice. I didn’t necessarily see it, because I knew what happened and that’s what I wanted to show. But perhaps I missed an opportunity.” And with that, since I had already kept Fugard past my allotted time, he was whisked off to some event where he was slated to put in an appearance.

I tell this story in part because while my question was birthed in 1982, it was with perseverance and luck that I was able to get an answer in 2010 – and because that’s an awfully long time to walk around with what was, in essence, a burning dramaturgical inquiry. But I also tell it because, for the first time in some 30 years, I’ll be seeing MASTER HAROLD…and the boys later this week at Signature, in a production once again directed by Fugard. Having seen it so often, and done so well, in the first half of the 1980s (including with James Earl Jones as Sam in the national tour), I have shied away from subsequent productions – and I wasn’t yet living in NYC when Lonny Price directed a revival for Roundabout in 2003. I’ve also never seen the TV version with Matthew Broderick, John Kani and Mokae from 1985 or the 2011 film (directed by Price) with Ving Rhames and Freddie Highmore.

It is now six years since I interviewed Athol, 34 years since I first saw Master Harold, and a few days before I see the play again. Perhaps Athol will be lurking at the back of the house, since I’m seeing a late preview; even if he is, I doubt he’ll remember me after our three brief meetings spread over so many years. I find myself wondering about what Hally I’ll see: the one who eventually reconciles with his friends or the one hardened into racism fueled by apartheid, or someone in between. But no matter what, I’m ready to spend an afternoon in the tea room with Willie, Hally and Sam, all of whom were theatrical mentors to me, teaching me how much one actor, and a shift in emphasis, can so change a play.

To be clear from the very start, two points. Judi Honoré, the owner of Shakespeare Books & Antiques in Ashland, Oregon, has every right to display anything she chooses in the window of, or for that matter anywhere in, her store. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, also located in Ashland, Oregon, has every right as an organization to express its institutional opinion about events locally or nationally as it sees fit, and to align its business practices accordingly.

These rights, however, came into conflict this summer, when a window display of banned books at Shakespeare Books & Antiques, which has been in place (albeit with rotating inventory) for the past several years, was perceived by members of the OSF company as making a racial commentary about a current OSF production. Specifically, the origin of the dispute arose from the juxtaposition of an edition of Little Black Sambo to a collection of L. Frank Baum’s Oz books, while OSF was producing The Wiz, the retelling of The Wizard of Oz with an all-black cast.

The controversy has extended throughout the summer, and continues to simmer. OSF is still developing plans for a town hall meeting intended to allow members of the community to share their opinions of what has emerged from expressions of discomfort over the window display and its significant aftermath. But before that happens, on Monday October 31, Shakespeare Books & Antiques will close. So how did this come to pass, that ideals of social consciousness and free speech became seemingly oppositional positions?

*   *   *

For those unfamiliar with the children’s story Little Black Sambo, it recounts a simple, non-realistic tale of a child who is sequentially threatened by a group of tigers into parting with all of his clothes, then driven up a tree, after which the tigers fall to squabbling and end up chasing one another by their tails at the base of the tree until they somehow melt into butter, which is then brought home by the child and used by his mother to make pancakes for the family. The book, by Helen Bannerman, first appeared in 1899 in England, and has been republished and retold in numerous editions ever since.

While the original preface stated that it was written by “an English lady in India, where black children abound and tigers are everyday affairs,” some versions employ illustrations more evocative of Africa, while others conflate the two.  The depiction of Bannerman’s little boy and his family has also varied widely, from relatively realistic to grossly stereotypical, with some editions employing iconography more akin to those often seen in the early 20th century American South, as also seen in a 1935 animated short based on the story.

Within decades of its appearance, LBS, while one of the relatively few children’s books with a black protagonist, was increasingly perceived as racist. Langston Hughes cited the book as being of the “pickanninny variety,” writing that the name “Sambo” was “amusing undoubtedly to the white child, but like an unkind word to one who has known too many hurts to enjoy the additional pain of being laughed at.” Even after LBS began to be removed (and banned) from schools and libraries, the name was taken up by a chain of US restaurants, started in California in 1957 as their brand, growing to more than 1,100 outlets by the 1970s before collapsing (after an attempted rebranding) in the 80s.

New editions of LBS have continued to emerge, with some making efforts to address the racial portrayals, particularly with regards to the illustrations, including some which have sought to more accurately bring accuracy to the setting of India. But the name remains a racial slur in the minds of many people, as it already was when the book was first published.

*   *   *

Portion of banned books display at Shakespeare Books & Antiques in Ashland, Oregon in September 2016

The context for the display in the Shakespeare Books & Antiques (SBA) window is provided by two signs. The first, shown within a frame in the display itself, reads:

BOOKS REFLECTING THE HISTORY OF RACISM IN THE UNITED STATES

Our position is that these books should still be available to read during these critical time [sic]. As Scott Parker-Anderson so eloquently wrote for the Library of Congress, “The truth about the past can make people uncomfortable, but it does not change the truth. There were slaves, they were treated horribly, and called horrible names. Those are the facts, that cannot be changed. REMEMBER, those that forget the past are doomed to repeat it.”

The second sign, affixed to the window, reads:

BANNED BY SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE, SOMETIME

We believe attempts to censor ideas to which we gave access, whether in books, magazines, plays, works of art, television, movies or songs are not simply isolated instances of harassment by diverse special interest groups. Rather, they are a part of a growing pattern of increasing intolerance which is changing the fabric of America. Censorship cannot eliminate evil, it can only kill freedom. We believe Americans have the right to buy, stores have the right to sell, and authors have the right to publish constitutionally protected material.

In a photo of the SBA window dating from the start of the dispute, two LBS books can be seen: one an edition of the original story, the second an apparent sequel by a wholly different author and illustrator, Little Black Sambo and the Monkey People. It is the former which is placed adjacent to the Oz books and a framed list of the many Oz titles. Also visible, but only by their spines, are Uncle Tom’s Cabin and a collection of the Uncle Remus stories.

Describing other parts of the display, Honoré, in an interview, said, “The Color Purple may have been there at the time, but I’m really not sure.” She went on to list the aforementioned books, as well as two copies of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill A Mockingbird.

The placement and proximity of LBS and the Oz books first came to light when four ASF company members, including actors from The Wiz company, which at the time was still in rehearsal, went to speak with Honoré in June. The accounts of the conversation given by Honoré and Ashley Kelley, one of the actors present, are fairly similar.

In Honoré’s description:

Middle of July, four actors were outside looking in my window. I didn’t know they were actors, they were just four black people. I went outside like I usually do and said, ‘Can I explain to you why any of these books are banned?’ and they said, ‘We’re actors in a play called The Wiz, which is playing here, and it’s an all-black cast and we object to the fact that you have Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Little Black Sambo, Huck Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, these books right next to the Wizard of Oz book. Why do you have them that way? What kind of message are you trying to send?’

I said, ‘I’m not trying to send any message, they’re all just banned books. They said, ‘Well, we feel you’re trying to send some kind of a message,’ but I still don’t know to this day what kind of message I was supposed to be sending. I honestly don’t. But they saw me sending some horrible message by having them in that order. So I said, ‘Why don’t you come in and what we’ll do together is we’ll move them. If you’re that offended and you feel bad about it, we’ll move them together.’

Honoré notes that in moving the books, they were never removed from the window, but merely relocated away from the Oz books.

Via e-mail, Kelley described the encounter with Honoré as follows:

We went inside to talk to Ms. Honoré and we proceeded to have a peaceful conversation. We asked her what the inspiration was for the display and she began explaining the history of the books, not understanding what we meant. I told her specifically that I’m sure it wasn’t intentional but unfortunately the display as it stands is making negative commentary about the people in her community. Still not understanding, I explained to her that The Wiz was happening across the street which is the African American version of The Wizard of Oz.

She claimed she didn’t know there was such a version or that OSF was doing it. I told her that THAT was why we are offended by the display, the placement of these books that exploited African Americans next to the entire Wizard of Oz collection. I stressed again that I didn’t believe it was intentional but that unfortunately whether she knew or not it was making a statement. She kept defending why she had the black books to us and I in turn responded by telling her it wasn’t about the fact that she had those books and that I understand why she has them in the first place. My only issue was that they were next to all the Oz books…that’s all.

She finally understood and asked me what to do. Then SHE came up with an idea to move the books from the window and asked us if we would like to help. We said yes, walked inside with her and helped her move the books elsewhere. After that we stood with her for a while talking about her background and had a very pleasant conversation. We introduced ourselves. I thanked her for listening and for talking to us. We hugged and left her store.

After this, I sent an email to my cast to tell them about the positive experience I had with Ms. Honoré and that it was a very proud moment especially with all the horrible things happening with people of color all over the country and even in our town.”

*   *   *

Shakespeare Books & Antiques (from their website)

If that had been the end of the issue, with hugs, it would indeed stand as a positive moment for all concerned. But things quickly became complicated.

Ashley Kelley expressed surprise as to the fallout, writing:

It was brought to my attention weeks later that the display had been put back and that Ms. Honoré was upset with me for telling people what happened at OSF…which I didn’t understand because the email was a positive representation of her and the bookstore because we were able to peacefully talk and come to a solution. Then all of a sudden there were SO many people involved and the story seemed to shift to “we asked her to remove the books from the store.” which was NOT the conversation at ALL.

I was honestly very disappointed in how such a positive moment turned sour based off of lack of communication it seems. I was under the impression that everything was handled after my initial encounter with her. Little did I know there were more conversations, other emails, letters, etc. that I had no involvement in.

Claudia Alick, the community producer at OSF, who also chairs the company’s Diversity and Inclusion Planning Council, said in an interview that after learning of the encounter, she had discussed the conversation at the bookstore between the company members (three of whom were actors and one staff member, per OSF’s press office) and Honoré in a “healthy conversation” with Cynthia Rider, OSF’s executive director, who indicated that she wanted to speak with Honoré. Alick said she then went home to prepare an agenda for that conversation.

That same day, Rider called Honoré, asking to meet and discuss what had occurred. Honoré says that Rider said, “I’d like to discuss with you your banned book — she didn’t say banned book, she said your public window display — and protecting my staff. That was her exact language.” Honoré then describes her decision not to wait for a meeting with Rider at the store, and instead closing the shop and heading straight to OSF to ask for an immediate meeting with Rider. She ultimately met with Rider and with general manager Ted DeLong in an impromptu session. Alick had already left the OSF campus.

Julie Cortez, communications manager of OSF, relating Rider’s impression of the meeting, wrote that, “While Cynthia says Judi seemed upset when she arrived, by the end of the meeting their relationship seemed cordial.” Honoré describes the meeting as more problematic, saying, “I knew I was in deep trouble when Ted DeLong [OSF’s general manager, who also attended] said he thought Huck Finn was a horrible book.” Honoré says she was asked to remove the books from the window.

Further describing the meeting, Honoré recalled, “I said, ‘If you have a group of students and they’re really dumb and you keep telling them they’re really smart they will become smart. Vice versa if you have a group of students who are really smart, you keep telling them they’re dumb they will become dumb. If you have a sweet little town like Ashland and you keep calling us racist, it will become racist. I think the positions you guys have been taking have been incorrect.’ I don’t think they appreciated that much.”

*   *   *

Some may recall that Ashland and Oregon Shakespeare Festival were in the news this summer for another racially based incident, which was widely shared on social media and subsequently reported in mainstream media outlets. In that case, a man verbally attacked a black actor in the OSF company as she walked down the street, shouting, “It’s still an Oregon law. I could kill a black person and be out of jail in a day and a half. The KKK is still alive here.”

News reports indicated that the man who threatened the actress was likely a local homeless man who was known to the Ashland Police for other aggressive actions. The police determined, according to a report in the Mail Tribune, that “no crime had been committed,” even as they were “decrying this hateful speech.”

Asked about that incident, vis a vis the conversations over her window, Honoré was dismissive, saying, “One black actress was apparently yelled at by our town schizophrenic who said horrible things, but he yells at everybody, including me. If I don’t give him a dollar, he’ll say something like, ‘I’m going to kill you.’” She went on to volunteer, “They said the police officers were picking them up for no reason whatsoever, and they had to ride around in a car with a white person or they felt like they’d be targeted and get picked up. None of that is true. I mean I know our little sweet town and that doesn’t seem to happen here. And then they also said that if they go into a store and they’re asked more than once, ‘Can I help you,’ they’re being targeted for shoplifting.”

However, that incident happened in late June, subsequent to the meeting between Rider and Honoré, but before the dispute between SBA and OSF became widely known.

*   *   *

Immediately following the meeting between Honoré and Rider, Honoré says she went back to her store, upset at learning about the e-mail that was circulated and Rider’s original request to come to the bookstore and discuss the display. So she returned LBS to its original location in the window.

“Honestly, I felt like I was either sandbagged, slapped in the face or backstabbed, when they went back to OSF after I felt I had done something really nice for them. After I had temporarily moved it, then I put it back where it was. But that was for maybe a day, and then I thought better of it and I moved them way to the end again.”

Claudia Alick subsequently visited the store and had her own conversation with Honoré, who Alick says recounted her studies in college (Honoré attended UC Berkeley in the late 60s and early 70s, where she wrote her thesis on sexism and racism in textbooks) and repeatedly protested, “I am not a racist.”

Alick says that after listening to Honoré for ten minutes, she interjected, “I never said you were a racist. Nobody said you were a racist. Those words haven’t come out of anybody’s mouth. I just wanted to know what was the decision made, because I think that I might have a different understanding of that decision, because you put the display back and I’m confused by that. And so then there was another ten minutes where she finally admitted that she was pissed and those were her words. She was pissed at the actors for – and in her words it was for – ‘sending nasty e-mails about me.’”

In a separate interview, OSF artistic director Bill Rauch spoke to the issue of leveling charges of racism at anyone:

[LBS] is a much beloved story for many, many people, especially older people who either had it read to them by their parents or read it to their own children. That’s come up again and again and again. Some of the emotion people have felt has been that by OSF saying, ‘We do not support the juxtaposition of those original racial caricature drawings on the cover of that book being juxtaposed next to The Wizard of Oz,’ they felt that we were personally attacking a story that was a beloved part of their childhood and therefore somehow calling them racist for liking that story.

Alick says she informed Honoré that, “It’s interesting that you said those e-mails were nasty. I can share with you that it was just them sharing their own personal experience and they didn’t say anything that was negative or nasty about anyone. It was actually pretty generous and kind framing and language that was used to describe what happened.”

According to Alick, after further conversation with Honoré about how the display might prove troubling not just to artists but to any persons of color walking down the street, Honoré asked, “What do you want us to do?” Alick says she responded, “No, we’re not going to tell you what to do. I just wanted to get clarity about what you were doing. You get to decide what you’re going to do.”

Alick says she was aware of other OSF staff members having one-on-one discussions with Honoré, emphasizing that they were private, personal communications. But Alick says that, “[Honoré] started coming to the festival, and stopping people of color and – I’m going to use the word harassment – harassing them, saying ‘Aren’t you in The Wiz? Well this, this and this.’ She did the same thing to me, where she stopped me on the street and had just a really kind of gross exchange with me that wasn’t kind, that was so problematic. And so organizationally, people of color asked essentially, ‘Hey, would you please do something?’ We’re like, ‘Well, the only thing we can do is let her know privately we won’t be doing business with you. We won’t be investing in your services in the future because you’re treating our company members this way.’ It wasn’t a comment on her public display. It was a comment on her direct behavior with our company members.” She later added, “We didn’t do anything public.”

Honoré recounts writing a letter to Rider on July 18, in which she set out the events regarding the window display and all that had transpired much as described here, adding her account of a positive conversation with another OSF actor of color regarding the display, which had prompted her decision to once again shift the Sambo book away from the Oz books. She also expresses deep upset with all that has occurred, including being called a racist by someone she describes as an OSF actor. She concluded the letter by writing, “In my opinion, Ashland, and this includes our residents and our police department, are profoundly inclusive and make every effort to reach out to everyone, as are the merchants of this very special small town.”

*   *   *

On July 26, Rider sent the following letter to Honoré:

I am in receipt of your letter of July 18 describing your recent experiences with OSF staff and actors regarding your display window.

For myself, my colleagues in senior management, and those most deeply involved in the work of expanding diversity, equity, and inclusion here at OSF and in Ashland, the most important facts, which you allude to in your letter, are as follows:

1. You received feedback from various OSF staff members, who are by definition your fellow community members, that your window display that included blackface caricatures was hurtful and offensive due to their racist origins.
2. You removed the display.
3. You heard reports that emails were circulating at OSF regarding this chain of events, and decided to reinstall the display.

Through these events, you have demonstrated a distinct lack of empathy for the experiences of the people of color who brought this matter to your attention and their reactions to your display, and reinstating the display caused continued pain to those individuals and by extension to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Because of this, I am by this letter informing you that Artistic Director Bill Rauch and I have given instruction to our staff not to patronize Shakespeare Books & Antiques for any Festival-related goods or services until further notice.

*   *   *

On August 4, the dispute between Honoré and OSF went fully public, in an article in the Daily Tidings (reprinted the following day in the Mail Tribune), resulting from Honoré sharing Rider’s letter with the paper. This marks the first time the word “boycott” appears to have been used in connection with the situation. The article also mischaracterizes Rider’s letter as a “ban on OSF staff purchasing items from the store,” instead of the actual language, which only proscribed staff from making purchases on behalf of OSF at the store. This occurred despite the article later quoting a letter to the editor from Rider and OSF artistic director Bill Rauch clarifying that they had not called for a boycott. But that became the prevalent narrative for the ensuing weeks.

While various letters to the editor played the dispute out in the local papers, as people took sides, the next major account of the situation came slightly less than four weeks later, when on August 30, the Daily Tidings reported that Honoré had decided to close her store, giving two months notice to her landlord for a closing on October 31. Honoré attributed the closing to a significant drop in business in the month of August, as well as the stress of responding to the conflict that had arisen with OSF. She said that in contrast to typical summer months, when her business averaged $20,000, her first 12 days of August yielded on $2,355 in sales and that on August 22, her total sales were $59.

In that article, the reporter John Darling included a statement from OSF, quoting it as follows,

If Judi is seeing a reduction in her business, that is either occurring for unrelated reasons or due to her decision to go public in the media and in her store windows,” the email said. “Given that OSF has only made one or two small purchases for Festival use at Shakespeare Books & Antiques over the years, the decision … was not about causing Judi financial hardship, but about communicating to our colleagues of color that we believe them and stand with them.

While Honoré in an interview described a seemingly dictatorial rule by the leadership of OSF over its staff (“She tells them what to do over there apparently and they do it,” Honoré said, referring to Rider), she was not able to provide any evidence that the OSF staff had been ordered away from her store for personal purchases. She affirmed that OSF had not revealed anything publicly about its communications with her, saying “They didn’t go public, I went public, and they’re calling the conversation I had with them a private conversation. Nobody told me that it was private.”

OSF shared with Arts Integrity a short memo they had given to “front line staff” to help answer questions from patrons about the situation, but the theatre’s first sustained public communication to the community, signed by Bill Rauch, headed, “A response to the ‘bookstore story,’” wasn’t issued until September 2.

It read, in part:

OSF has never sought publicity or media attention for its ongoing discussions with Judi about her window display. We intended privacy for all of our communications, written and verbal, prior to Judi reaching out to the Ashland Daily Tidings (a publication for which Judi’s husband is a columnist). I would like to emphasize that not once has anyone at OSF called for a public boycott of Judi’s bookstore. Our employees are, of course, always free to shop anywhere for their personal purchases, and before today we had never brought up this subject in any communications with our patrons or membership.

I stand by our decision not to do business with a person who has treated members of our company and community with disrespect. Since Judi went public about OSF’s decision, we’ve received numerous reports from staff and patrons about problematic and insensitive interactions in and outside of her store and on the OSF campus. Our attempts to continue the dialogue with her—with a mediator, if she would prefer—have gone unanswered.

Separately, Honoré said that she had asked Rider to visit the bookstore – Rider’s original intent in requesting a meeting with Honoré – but that Rider declined.

In the next to last paragraph of his community letter, Rauch wrote:

Free speech is necessary, but not all speech is neutral; all language, images and symbols are not equal. The fact that speech can be damaging must be acknowledged. As an institution and as individuals, how we use our right of free speech is a moral choice. It is not neutral to propound messages that deepen the isolation and oppression experienced by members of groups that have been historically marginalized. Propagating images that were historically stigmatizing to black people and that some people continue to experience as hurtful and stigmatizing is not a neutral act. In my view, we grow most when we listen with empathy and curiosity to all those who are different from us about their own life experiences.

*   *   *

It’s worth recalling Ashley Kelley’s comment about what has transpired in Ashland, “I was honestly very disappointed in how such a positive moment turned sour based off of lack of communication it seems.” In conversation and written material, both Honoré and the OSF leadership expressed the feeling that each “side” was not listening to or understanding the other. That is the very definition of a lack of communication.

The situation escalated not because of the conversation between the four company members and Honoré, but only when Rider asked to arrange to meet with Honoré, who then opted to precipitate an immediate conversation. Rider perceived that meeting as having begun in conflict but concluding well, however Honoré’s takeaway was both frustration with Rider (who she called “elitist”) and anger that the conversation about the window display had gone beyond herself and the four actors, causing her to reverse the results of that meeting.

While the original conversation between Honoré and the four company members, and the meeting between Honoré and Rider, occurred first, the late July exchange of letters between Honoré and Rider occurred after the incident in which a black actor at OSF was verbally abused. An atmosphere of concern over the treatment of people of color in Ashland had been heightened as the bookstore dispute played out over a number of weeks. As in all cases, a specific event shouldn’t be the pretext for diminishing the rights of others, but the bookstore situation was thrown into sharper relief by the intervening incident.

Bill Rauch noted, “I do think that for members of our community who feel Ashland is such a progressive community, that there can be no racism in our town, that if a person of color says they’ve experienced racism in our town that it’s the problem of the person of color, that they’re oversenstitive, that they’re being overly cautious and that the racism is not real. I think the juxtaposition of these things has triggered a lot in terms of the community response as well.”

Honoré cites Rider’s letter of July 26 as having prompted the precipitous drop in her business, claiming that other internal e-mails, which she could not produce, went beyond Rider’s instruction that staff should not do business with Shakespeare Books and Antiques. However, when she by her own admission went to the press for the story that first appeared on August 4, there was no mention of any impact on her business, only her unhappiness over what she characterized as a call to boycott her store.

Reading Rider’s letter carefully, one could argue that the language about ceasing to do business with SBA might have been somewhat differently structured. If one doesn’t read the entirety of this closing phrase – “I have given instruction to our staff not to patronize Shakespeare Books & Antiques for any Festival related goods or services until further notice” – one might only take away “given instruction to our staff not to patronize.” A statement affirming staff members’ own unfettered right to patronize the store would have been useful.

But regardless of how the letter was read, it was internal to OSF, yet Honoré says it resulted in a roughly 85% drop in business. If the staff of OSF was Honoré’s overwhelming customer base, then regardless of whether one agrees with the request to alter the display, Honoré’s choices influenced the purchasing decisions of her customers. In seeing the situation as one of social consciousness and sensitivity, OSF was well within its rights ito decide what vendors it chose to do business with, and that wasn’t a secret within the organization.

Honoré claims that in her one meeting with Rider, she was told, “Take the books out of your window or we’re going to boycott your store.” Rider denies having made such a statement. Asked whether her communication regarding OSF-related purchases wasn’t in fact an implicit message to the OSF community to not patronize the bookstore, Rider said, “That certainly wasn’t my intention.”

Was OSF advocating censorship, which presumably they would fight were such an effort directed at their own creative work? Given that they had no control over Honoré’s store, it’s hard to accept that they were, especially since the conversation only was about the placement of the books, not over whether Honoré should carry them at all. OSF was advocating to Honoré, according to their institutional imperatives and as a part of the Ashland community, sensitivity to members of the OSF company – both full time staff and guest artists – that escalated over a communications impasse. Rider observed, “Freedom of speech doesn’t mean you get to say whatever you want and nobody can tell you they’re upset about it.”

Because so many of the interactions within this dispute were person to person, it is difficult to pin down many absolutes, especially since the different parties offer differing impressions of the same event. In the fraught communications, it’s unfortunate that one possible rapprochement doesn’t appear to have been discussed. Might it have been possible for SBA and OSF to collaborate on further contextualizing the window display, so that it was clear the presence of LBS (and books like the Uncle Remus stories) was not to advance racially negative text or imagery? While Honoré absolutely has the right to display any books as she wishes, and there is no question that the books she displayed have all been officially censored at one time (or many times), a store window is not a museum or school, where history and education about featured items would usually be more fully explained.

While Shakespeare Books & Antiques will close on Monday, Honoré said that she does plan to reopen, after resting up from the stress of the past few months and getting a new business of hers, a furniture store, fully up and running. Saying that she has three times as many books warehoused as she was able to display in the shop that’s closing, she said she’d be back in a larger space. She felt some distance would put an end to the many people who were coming into her store to discuss the dispute with OSF, but not making purchases, noting that business only began to pick up when she announced she was closing.

As for further dialogue in Ashland through a town hall, which at one point was considered for Saturday, October 29, Julie Cortez of OSF said in an e-mail, “We are in discussion with the members of SOEDI (Southern Oregon Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Collaborative) about the best date to hold this community conversation, and we will keep people informed of what plans are made.” It’s too bad that the community still has to wait to process this situation together, openly, but hopefully they’ll get there soon in a way that helps everyone involved, directly or as observers, to fully appreciate and respect what’s being said and shown and read, on stage and off.

Long after I stopped acting in school productions (which was November 1981 at the University of Pennsylvania, to be precise), my mother would periodically say how much she wished that my shows had been preserved on video, so she could see them again. It’s important to understand that my performances were in the pre-home video era, before every parent had a video camera to capture every precious moment, let alone a pocket-sized phone with a digital video camera within it. The idea of YouTube was unimaginable.

I always said to my mom that I was grateful that there’s no video of me as Will Parker, as Colonel Pickering, as Juror Number 3. Why? Because it allowed me, my friends and indeed my mom to recall the performances, and the productions, as the magical experiences they were at the time. With a recording, my performances might have been revealed as subpar and amateurish, especially as my own highly self-critical faculties developed.

But as I’ve told people about this over the years, I have omitted a key piece of information – though I’ve never lied. For the past nine years, hidden in the dark recesses of YouTube, there has been footage of teen-aged me in performance, during my senior year of high school, if I recall correctly. It is not, however, of me in a school show, or community theatre, but rather as the top-billed “star” of a short film made by my friend Dan Karlok, the one true moviemaking buff I recall encountering as a teen. It should be noted that when I say moviemaking, I mean on film, that forgotten material that had to be sent off and processed, edited by hand, and so on.

To further set the scene, I must explain that in 1980 when the short film below was made, today’s zombie obsession among horror buffs was still very much a cult, built largely upon just two movies: George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead. There was no The Walking Dead regularly serving up horror on basic cable (there was barely basic cable for most people), let alone the final installment of Romero’s trilogy, Day of the Dead, which came out in 1985, the same year as The Return of the Living Dead, Dan O’Bannon’s riff on Romero’s universe.

So coming way out ahead of the trend, Dan Karlok rallied a significant number of my high school cohorts (mostly drama and band kids), as well as the distinctive figure of his burly and bearded older brother Andy, for the mini-epic which he wrote, scored, edited, shot, and pretty much everything else too: Dawn of the Night of the Dead: The Musical, almost 25% of which is credits. If you don’t recognize me, I’m the guy in the Boy Scout shirt and top hat.

Now I should mention that for people perhaps aged 45 and up, this film may prompt some distant memory. That’s because through circumstances entirely unknown to me, Dan sold the film to the USA Network in its very early days, to use as interstitial material on its “Up All Night” and “Night Flight” schlock movie fests that ran on the weekends in the very wee hours back in the latter half of the 1980s. It also appeared a few times on Connecticut Public Television. Yes, you may have seen me once upon a time, but I forgive you for not remembering the face or name.

Dan has gone on to a career in film and television, having spent several years in the lighting department in the early days of Law & Order; he most recently directed and executive produced the documentary Joan Rivers: Exit Laughing. I don’t see him much, but outside of his film work, he can be spotted around the northeast fronting The Eugene Chrysler Band, a rockabilly combo.

Some may wonder why I haven’t revealed this bit of my performing past until now, since it has been hiding in plain sight since 2007 according to YouTube. Well, I just never thought it the right time. But after shamelessly launching myself back on stage for the first time in 35 years earlier this month, and having a blast doing so, I thought I might as well show all. While I suspect you may get a chuckle out of how ridiculous I am in this, keep in mind that it’s also a time capsule for me of many friends from my youth, some with whom I’m still in touch, and at least one who passed away a number of years ago.

I shall now be adding this to my “reel,” along with my appearances on Cupcake Wars and Law & Order: Special Vctims Unit. Agents, casting directors, producers and directors: I await your call. In the meantime, happy Throwback Thursday and Happy Halloween!

P.S. True zombie buffs may note that in Romero’s Day of the Dead, the zombie named Bub is played by a very fine actor named…Howard Sherman. That is his real name, but he now uses Sherman Howard professionally. No relation. And I got to the zombie game first!

P.P.S. I did one other film with Dan, a stop-motion animated film, the name of which I simply can’t recall. I voiced two characters: a James Bond-esque villain and one head of a particularly dimwitted two-headed dragon.The plot was so convoluted, that Dan typically had to explain the premise, in detail, before showing the film. Only Dan would know whether it has been lost to time, is in the filmic equivalent of witness protection, or lurks somewhere in YouTube, just beyond my reach.

In reporting on the dispute between Ars Nova and Howard Kagan, a lead producer of Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, both The New York Times and the New York Post have seemingly reduced the dispute, at times, to three words or two words, respectively. They’re not wrong about this being triggered by “a mere three words” in the language of the Times report. But there’s really something deeper going on that such diminishment does not fully convey.

For those who have not read about this situation previously, here’s a precis. Ars Nova, a small company well known for staging inventive new works, including not only Great Comet, but Jollyship The Whiz-Bang, Small Mouth Sounds and the current Underground Railroad Game, among others, staged the premiere of Great Comet in 2012. With Howard and Janet Kagan leading the producing team, along with Paula Marie Black, the show transferred to a tent, dubbed Kazino, under the High Line in 2013, later moving to an empty lot on 45^th Street near Eighth Avenue. It then was produced at American Repertory Theatre in late 2015 before the current Broadway production began previews at the Imperial Theatre last week, for a mid-November opening.

According to reports, Ars Nova learned two weeks ago that instead of receiving its contractually agreed upon billing on the title page of the Great Comet Playbill, which was to read “the Ars Nova production of,” only their name appeared, as the last in a list of above the title producers, albeit on its own line and immediately before the title of the show. The bulk of the producers were shown in a fairly standard block arrangement, with American Repertory Theatre also afforded its own line after that block, and before Ars Nova. The Kagans appear in first position. The title page also contains language, in much smaller type at the bottom of the page, stating “Originally commissioned, developed, and world premiere produced by Ars Nova,” accompanied by similar language noting ARTS’s contributions.

To date, Howard Kagan and the Great Comet production have issued no statement regarding the billing change, and Ars Nova has only issued a general statement and shared information with the Times. However, the Times report affirms the contractual language that Ars Nova says has been breached, and the company’s managing director, Renee Blinkwolt, says that Kagan began to seek a billing change on October 9, but no such alteration was agreed upon. Press representatives from both Ars Nova and The Great Comet have declined to answer any questions from Arts Integrity.

“The Great Comet” at Kazino in 2013

The implication that this dispute over billing is somehow petty, because it involves only three small words, including “the” and “of,” belies the importance of such a credit to a not-for-profit organization, especially one as small as Ars Nova. While the company may have built a strong reputation in a relatively short period of time, Great Comet is their first show to reach Broadway, and the number of people who will see it nightly will outstrip the number of people who could see any show in their home theatre on 54^th Street in a week. This could result in more people taking an interest in seeing work at their home base, in addition to raising their profile in the funding community. Because the current billing now equates them with ART, and denies them a possessory credit, their primary role in fostering and premiering the work is diminished, with any lost impact unknown.

One can only guess at Kagan’s rationale for the unilateral change in the credit. But perhaps given the show’s growth and transformation from Ars Nova to Kazino to ART to Broadway, Kagan feels that the show has developed far beyond what was first seen at Ars Nova, and that with his leadership and financing, it is a transformed production. But ultimately, that doesn’t matter. There is – so far as we know – a contract in force, Kagan was unable to renegotiate it, and neither he nor the current production have the legal right to ignore its terms, regardless of how large or small the alteration.

The Times report included mention of potential legal action by Ars Nova, noting that the theatre’s attorney, “accus[ed] Mr. Kagan personally of breaching his fiduciary duty as an Ars Nova board member by threatening to initiate “a smear campaign in the press in order to irreparably harm Ars Nova’s reputation” as well as by harming its gala.” In a seemingly retaliatory step, the production scheduled its recording session opposite the Ars Nova gala, where the Kagans were to be honored and the Great Comet cast was to perform.

The matter of fiduciary responsibility is not small. While most often thought of as a financial responsibility, the term is really more expansive. According to law.com, a fiduciary is “a person (or a business like a bank or stock brokerage) who has the power and obligation to act for another (often called the beneficiary) under circumstances which require total trust, good faith and honesty.” Board members of corporations, not-for-profit or otherwise, have a fiduciary responsibility to that organization, and it is understood (and often spelled out in writing) that they will operate in that entity’s best interests.

In not-for-profit management, it has become increasingly common for conflict of interest policy to be included in board guidelines, and even for board members to annually sign a disclosure form delineating any possible conflicts of interest. Whether Ars Nova has such a policy or not, the conflict as it is publicly known suggests that by putting any aspect of the commercial production ahead of the interests of Ars Nova, a breach may indeed have occurred.

Howard Kagan is hardly the first board member of a not-for-profit to play a role in taking a production from a company in which they are involved into the commercial arena. Whether as producers or investors, it’s often a matter of pride for board members to participate in the future life of a project. But such relationships require greater scrutiny by the board of directors or trustees (regardless of the term used) to insure such conflicts of interest don’t arise. Even if there is an annual questionnaire, even if it is properly vetted by a board committee empowered to do so, circumstances can arise which change the equation. It is incumbent on board members to disclose even the potential of such situations as they emerge, as well as for boards to seek out such information.

Brittain Ashford and Denée Benton in “The Great Comet” at American Repertory Theatre in 2015 (Photo by Gretjen Helene)

It’s worth noting that this is not unique to board members. In the case of Great Comet, the company’s artistic director, Jason Eagan, is fifth billed on the production, alongside Jenny Steingart, president and co-founder of Ars Nova; Eagan himself is also listed as a board member of the organization. This presents yet another somewhat incestuous relationship between Ars Nova and the Broadway Great Comet, even if it is clear from his public stance that Eagan is clearly acting first and foremost in the interest of defending the company position, rather than the wants or needs of the Broadway run. The Times noted that board members with financial interest in Great Comet were recused from discussion of these issues.

There is also a fiduciary responsibility for the lead producers of Broadway productions, since they have managerial control of the limited liability corporation established to produce any given show. Depending upon the outcome of the current dispute and the legal expenses which accrue to the production, other producers and investors might wonder at the wisdom of the approach that has been taken, since it adds expense that might otherwise have been used to benefit the production, or be returned to those who have a financial interest in the show.

While in Michael Paulson’s Times report, he notes, “The dispute does not affect the financial agreement between the commercial producers and the nonprofit,” that’s somewhat premature. Even with participation in the gross weekly box office receipts, the Times story came out one day after the first preview was performed. No financial distributions would have been made until at least yesterday, and for a show in its first week, even that would be extremely fast. It remains to be seen whether the conflict extends to other contractual terms as well.

This is an evolving situation and hopefully the original contract between Ars Nova and Kagan will be honored, unless the parties come to mutually agreeable new terms. But even if this is all resolved today, it will remain an object lesson for not-for-profit boards and companies about the pitfalls that arise when shows move into commercial production, with key players at the original company taking leadership and financial roles. While it no doubt starts with the best of intentions on everyone’s part, conflicts can arise. Only with disclosure and scrutiny can all parties ultimately come out winners.

Update, October28, 2016: The New York Times reported early this evening that Ars Nova has filed complaints with the American Arbitration Association and the New York State Court over the denial of its contractual billing and Howard Kagan’s breach of fiduciary duty as a member of the board of directors of Ars Nova. It included quotes from a statement by the producer of Great Comet on Broadway:

Ms. Blinkwolt [managing director at Ars Nova] said the two sides had attempted to reach a compromise that would settle the dispute, but those talks broke down.

In a statement, the producers of the show expressed their respect and gratitude for the nonprofit and said they were surprised to hear that the nonprofit had filed suit because they thought the talks were continuing and had made great progress.

The producers said “our understanding is that we are still in discussions. We continue to work toward a swift resolution of this matter for the sake of everyone involved in the show, and we hope that those discussions can continue privately.”

A Facebook post signed by “Jason, Renee and the Gang at Ars Nova,” also posted this evening, read in part:

It has truly taken a village to get The Great Comet to land on Broadway. If you were to remove the contributions of any one partner along the way, we couldn’t be in previews on Broadway today. And yet with no explanation, the proper recognition of our contribution has been taken away. We believe that the show currently on Broadway started at Ars Nova. That it grew and grew and grew until it was a big, beautiful Broadway musical. That narrative – that the show people are seeing on Broadway is, at its core, the show that started at Ars Nova, is extremely valuable to Ars Nova’s past, present and future, and is communicated to the tens of thousands of people seeing The Great Comet on Broadway each week only through our title page billing.

With seemingly no other alternatives to seeking remedy for this lost value, our Board voted unanimously last night to file suit for breach of contract to compel the commercial producers of The Great Comet to honor their contractual obligation to bill the show as “The Ars Nova Production Of.” We are devastated that it has come to this, but steadfast in our belief that the billing we are owed is both valuable and deserved.

This post will be updated as circumstances warrant.

The final scene of March of the Falsettos & Falsettoland at Hartford Stage, 1991 (Photo by T. Charles Erickson)

When I speak about it with people who saw it, the phrase that comes up most often is, “It was life-changing.”

When I speak about it with people who have read about it, but didn’t see it, the question that inevitably arises is, “What was the ‘coup de theatre’?”

When I speak about it with people who knew nothing of it, they profess surprise that it existed.

I’m speaking of the Hartford Stage production of March of the Falsettos & Falsettoland, the first time the two shows were produced as a single evening. Directed and choreographed by the marvelous Graciela Daniele, the shows were playing exactly 25 years ago as I write this, in a 41 performance run in Hartford Stage’s 489 seat theatre in October and early November of 1991. At most, 20,049 people saw the production; it was at least a few hundred less because, to the best of my recollection, the previews weren’t sold out.

I was the theatre’s public relations director at the time, and it was one of the more ecstatic times in my career. From the moment that artistic director Mark Lamos informed us we would be doing the show, I was thrilled. Though I did not see the original March of the Falsettos in 1981, I played the vinyl cast recording (owned by one of my college roommates, in those pre-digital days) incessantly in my junior year (1982-83), almost as a nightly ritual. When Falsettoland debuted at Playwrights Horizons in 1990, I made sure not to miss it.

I have to credit Bill Finn and James Lapine’s musicals with helping to form my perception of gay life. I was a straight, cisgender kid from a Connecticut suburb in an era and area when one didn’t encounter adults who were out, let alone high school students. I don’t remember any particular fear of or enmity toward gay students on my part, and I hope my memory is correct, but I also don’t ever remember the topic coming up until I got to college.

The humor and sincerity of March, from the opening of “Four Jews in a Room Bitching” to the simple closing of “Father to Son” left me wanting to march along with Marvin and Whizzer and Jason (and Mendel and Trina and Cordelia and Dr. Charlotte) because love, as far as I was concerned, was love. I sang that message over and over in my off-campus room, embedding it in my everyday life as I came to know and love gay men and lesbians as my world expanded through theatre. I should probably give a small shout out as well to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which broke down barriers about sexuality and gender fluidity for straight suburban kids as much as anything we encountered in the late 70s.

It may be difficult to understand today, but producing a musical about a man who leaves his wife for another man, yet attempts to retain family ties, was still an edgy step outside of a major city in 1991. The politics of “outing,” naming someone as gay in the media even when they had not declared themselves to be so, was hotly debated. Gay-Straight Alliances hadn’t really reached northern Connecticut, only 120 miles from New York City, though AIDS certainly had: my first landlord in Hartford died from it in the late 80s.

In marketing the show, the direction I was given was not to confront the subject matter directly, but only to entice people enough to want to see it, and allow the story to reach them once they were in the door. It didn’t hurt that at the time, subscription tickets filled some 75% of the total seating capacity for the run. A lot of people were coming no matter what I did.

Because we had begun using marketing tag lines, aping film advertising, I cobbled together something to the effect of, “It’s about parents, children, love, sex, baseball and bar mitzvahs.” Our graphic imagery in ads was utterly abstract, saying nothing overt at all. Because this was in many ways an experiment, the show’s title remained the unwieldy March of the Falsettos & Falsettoland; the condensing came later.

I knew something special was going on when I would visit the rehearsal hall, whether to track down an actor for a program bio or to accompany a journalist who was doing an interview during a lunch break or at the end of the day. What struck me most was that whoever was in the room during a rehearsal was, as far as Graciela Daniele was concerned, part of the rehearsal. I remember her calling out questions to me as I sat on the sidelines; curious about bar mitzvahs, she became the only person to ever listen to the audio recording of my own bar mitzvah (including me). There were no barriers in Grazie’s space – only inclusion.

Once the show was in the theatre, audiences responded very favorably, with cheering and weeping. If there were letters of complaint over the subject matter, I either never knew of them or have long forgotten them. One staff member, while out to his friends and co-workers, was so moved after seeing a preview that he promptly came out to his family, as he proudly told us all. On matinee days, many of us would slip into the theatre at certain times for particularly memorable moments: we were often there together as Barbara Walsh, as Trina, nailed “I’m Breaking Down” in March; we were there for the final moments of Falsettoland, perpetually moved as Adam Heller, as Mendel, sang, “Lovers come and lovers go/lovers live and die fortissimo/this is where we take a stand.” We endlessly laughed over the anecdote told by Evan Pappas and Roger Bart, as Marvin and Whizzer, of a student matinee when the lights came up on the pair in bed and one student announced rather loudly, “Ooh, they’re gonna get some.”

The whole experience became heightened when Frank Rich, then the chief theatre critic of The New York Times, rendered his verdict.

“It was a secret, until now, that the two ‘Falsetto’ shows, fused together on a single bill, form a whole that is not only larger than the sum of its parts but is also more powerful than any other American musical of its day.

For this discovery, audiences owe a huge thanks to the Hartford Stage. Under the artistic direction of Mark Lamos, it has the guts to produce these thorny musicals together at a time when few nonprofit theaters are willing to risk aggravating dwindling recession audiences by offering works that put homosexual passions (among many other passions in the ‘Falsetto’ musicals’ case) at center stage.”

With unstinting praise, he went on to note:

“She [Daniele] has brought off an inspired, beautifully cast double bill that is true to its gay and Jewish characters — and to the spirit of the original James Lapine productions — even as it presents the evening’s densely interwoven familial and romantic relationships through perspectives that perhaps only a woman and a choreographer could provide.”

Of course, the box office exploded, selling out the remainder of the run within a day. House seats, which I instituted as a practice a Hartford Stage for the first time when I came to the theatre and were only rarely needed, were in high demand. And the talk began of Broadway.

That talk continued for several months, but without going into what were protracted and emotionally trying times, the Hartford production, as we all know, did not go to Broadway. It was Lapine’s original that returned to New York, with the core original cast members – except that Barbara Walsh, our Trina, joined that production. As a result, the Hartford Falsettos became the stuff of legend, and regional theatre legends tend to fade with time. But over lunch with Evan Pappas a few weeks ago, our first in quite some time, he noted that 25 years on, he still meets people who saw the show in Hartford, and tell him stories about how it changed their lives.

I suspect productions of March, of Falsettoland, of Falsettos, have been changing lives for a very long time, whether directed by James Lapine, Graciela Daniele, or any of the many other directors who have brought that story to the stage. I was privileged to have seen Grazie’s production as often as I wished; I’ve seen the previous Lapine productions several times and will see the new one in a couple of weeks.

I couldn’t be happier that it’s back on Broadway, though the show will always echo in my head with Grazie’s vision, with Evan, Barbara, Adam, Roger, Joanne Baum, Andrea Frierson and the twins who shared the role of Jason, Etan and Josh Ofrane. I only wish that Fun Home were still running, because how marvelous would it have been to have two stories on Broadway about family life, love, and pain, set in roughly the same era but written years apart, exploring the thrill of first love and the need for absolute acceptance of gay parents and children.

Oh, the “coup de theatre’? I haven’t forgotten. I saved it for the end, just as Grazie did, though I tipped my hand with the photo at the start of this essay.

The term, as applied to the Hartford production, comes from Frank Rich’s review. He wrote, “For her finale, Ms. Daniele exploits the spatial dimensions at her disposal with an overwhelming coup de theatre (not to be divulged here) that first reduces an audience to sobs and then raises it to its feet.”

After a quarter century, let me divulge.

March of the Falsettos & Falsettoland at Hartford Stage, 1991 (Photo by Jennifer W. Lester)

Grazie and set designer Ed Wittstein chose to completely open up the vast stage at Hartford to its walls, using no set pieces other than interchangeable cubes – and a bed. The lyrics were scrawled randomly on the entire floor (visible due to the theatre’s arena-like seating), and across the Broadway theatre-sized back wall. To be honest, in shades of black, grey and white, they largely disappeared, allowing audience members to concentrate wholly on the handful of people singing intimate stories, with no distraction.

But at the very end of the show, as Mendel intoned the final lines, a small square suddenly appeared through the drop that masked the rear wall. On it was simply the name: “Whizzer.” Then the drop was revealed to be a scrim as the entire back wall dissolved into a ghostly section of the AIDS quilt. A lever was tripped, rather loudly, and the front drop wafted slowly to the floor, fully and clearly revealing the quilt for just a moment before the lights went out, and the show ended.

While the quilt at Hartford Stage was not part of the real quilt, it replicated panels from that extraordinary expression of loss that once covered the National Mall in Washington. Because members of the company had been asked if they had family and friends who they had lost and wished to see included, audience members who worked in theatre quickly discovered they knew people on the Hartford quilt facsimile. While much of the audience was in tears, those who saw the names of those they loved and lost were often overcome.

Beautiful, sad, simple, funny and transcendent. That was the Hartford March of the Falsettos & Falsettoland. I have always understood and accepted that I am spending my life in a world that is forever fading into memory. But if I could ever go back in time to see just one more performance of any show I worked on, it would be March of the Falsettos & Falsettoland. At least it’s still playing in my head 25 years on, and once again, I’m in tears over its beauty as I write, and proud that I had a connection to it. I wish you’d seen it, and if you did, I suspect you know exactly how I feel.

Scene from the musical Marathon of Hope (screen grab from Drayton Entertainment YouTube video)

If you look at photos or video from Marathon of Hope, a new musical that just premiered in Waterloo, Canada, about an hour outside Toronto, something seems off.

The musical is based on the life story of Terry Fox, a young Canadian man who in 1980, after losing a leg to cancer, undertook a country-wide run to raise money for and bring attention to cancer research. He did not complete his effort, because his cancer metastasized to his lungs and he died in 1981. His life is the stuff of legend in Canada, with schools, athletic centers and sculptures standing as memorials to him, and ongoing fundraising to fight cancer in his name. His story has been told in two separate TV movies, in 1983 and 2005.

So what’s wrong with the images?

It looks like the on-stage Terry Fox, especially when seen in running shorts, has three legs. One limb appears to be flesh and bone, the second is shrouded in a black legging and the third is a prosthesis. The images reveal that in telling the story of a man who is certainly one of the best known Canadian athletes and advocates with a disability, Drayton Entertainment, the producer of the musical, has cast a non-disabled actor. The prosthesis is a stand-in for the real one that Fox used to make his run; the black-clad one is an effort to disguise the presence of one of the actor’s own limbs.

The list of actors with disabilities portraying characters with disabilities on stage, TV and film is stunningly brief, despite Harold Russell’s dual Oscar win in 1947 for The Best Years of Our Lives. Deaf West’s Big River and Spring Awakening, with Deaf and disabled actors, were significant milestones on Broadway, but they remain the exception to the rule. Yet the decision to have a non-disabled actor play Terry Fox seems creatively and historically derelict (though it should be noted that Fox’s family approves of and supports the musical).

Drayton doesn’t seem unaware of the casting imperative for the show, making note of their efforts to seek talent in the amputee community. Their announcement of the show’s cast includes this statement.

Given the scope of this particular project, in addition to its regular audition process, the not-for-profit theatre company initiated a nationwide search for the role of Terry Fox through open call video auditions.

The organization also reached out to the National Amputee Centre and 35 prosthetic and orthotic centres throughout Ontario, along with the Amputee Coalition of Canada and Amputees Amplified. Additional leads were generated through Casting Workbook, an industry group providing full service casting software.

There’s no question that these are good efforts to have made. But speaking for the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts, where I am interim director, the countless artists with disabilities for whom we advocate, and the hundreds we have in our files for just such casting needs, Drayton didn’t go far enough, based on the final casting of the show.

While national pride could have been an issue in a story so dear to Canadians’ hearts, Drayton may not have reached beyond Canadian borders. Within minutes of learning about Marathon of Hope and its casting yesterday, my colleagues at Inclusion were able to list several male actors in their 20s who are amputees – including Anthony Michael Lopez and Evan Ruggiero (Ruggiero’s musical skills landed him a spot on Ellen). There are other actors who fit the requirements of the role in the Inclusion files, but without public websites or Facebook pages, we’re not able to name them so publicly (Drayton never contacted Inclusion, though we often consult with Canadian as well as UK companies).

Is it possible that Drayton reached out to these performers? Certainly. As it happens, both are working on stage this fall: Ruggiero as the title role in The Toxic Avenger for the Pittsburgh CLO and Lopez in New York Theatre Workshop’s Othello. But the fact is, when telling a story about disability, about a person whose disability was so central to his fame, to not cast the role with an actor with a disability denies one message of the show and insults professional actors who are indeed capable of playing the role. Talent searches among non-professionals may sometimes prove fruitful, but there’s no guarantee. For a show such as Marathon of Hope, if an appropriate actor isn’t immediately available, the show should be delayed until they are.

Pretending to disability under the mask of “theatricality” is no solution – even if it is part of the long, frustrating history of ignoring actors with disabilities. This point was not lost on J. Kelly Nestruck, critic for The Globe and Mail in Toronto, who wrote in his review of the production:

Carroll’s casting has angered some activists who feel that this is an example of “cripping up.” For me, the larger problem is that Mustakas’s production (which also features a pair of able-bodied child actors playing disabled characters) has not found room for disability anywhere in his aesthetic.

This is a musical whose main goal is to inspire – as unabashedly as Fox did. And instead, it sends a message that while a young man with one leg may be able to run 5,373 kilometres, there is no room for anyone with atypical abilities in musical theatre.

It’s worth noting that when the 1983 TV movie The Terry Fox Story was made, an actor who was a real-life amputee played the role. When the story was told again in 2005, the filmmakers cast a non-amputee, and used digital airbrushing to replace one of his legs. Regrettably, technological advancements in filmmaking trumped lived experience. Of course, that’s not possible on stage.

Whatever the future may hold for Marathon of Hope, it has the potential to make a strong statement not only about Terry Fox’s achievements, but also about the avenues open to performers with disabilities. In its present form, it has opted only to advance the former story, while disguising the latter – not once, but three times, per Nestruck – because the producers and creative team did not fully commit to every facet of the story they sought to tell.