Nora Brigid Monahan in “Diva: Live From Hell” (Photo courtesy of DDPR)

I cannot claim that I was completely surprised. By the same token, I didn’t know exactly what to expect.

A press release first made me aware of Diva: Live From Hell, and I lingered on it longer than most I receive. The plot synopsis, of a high school drama kid doomed to Hell for his thespian transgressions while alive, ticked off some of the boxes that usually interest me, school theatre in particular. But thinking about the already heavy theatergoing schedule I keep in late March and April, I decided I’d better give it a pass. So many shows, so little time.

That was that, until a Facebook message popped up from Morgan Jenness, the highly regarded dramaturg, agent, teacher,  literary manager, activist, advisor, artist advocate and so much more. Was I planning to see Diva: Live From Hell, she wondered, because she thought I should see it. I replied, explaining that I’d thought about it, but decided to forego it. She wrote back to say I really should see it, and when Morgan gets emphatic like that, I know I’d be foolish not to take heed. I said that if she felt so strongly, I’d go. So while I began to ponder exactly what the deal was, I made a mental note to look to see when it was playing, having already deleted the press release.

When I awoke Monday morning to a Facebook wall post from Daniel Goldstein, who was directing the show, saying that I “may or may not be name-checked” in Diva: Live From Hell, I understood why Morgan was being so insistent. After all, Daniel couldn’t be posting versions of that message on the pages of all of his Facebook friends as a marketing ruse to sell tickets to the show, could he?

That’s how I found myself at Theatre for the New City on Monday night, with less than eight hours planning, having discovered that given my aforementioned busy schedule and the limited run of Diva, the only possible time I could attend was that same day. Normally, my theatergoing is planned out weeks in advance. Moviegoing is more spur of the moment for me.

So I might get some manner of shout out during the show, but of course I didn’t know when, and I didn’t know what it would be. It’s actually a terrible way to watch a show, waiting for a very specific yet indeterminate moment, but I tried to just relax and enjoy the proceedings. I settled in for the saga of Desmond Channing, played by Nora Brigid Monahan, who had also devised the show and written the book (music and lyrics are by Alexander Sage Oyen). Damned to recount his sordid tale of high school theatre rivalry, Desmond’s eternal cabaret is playing a lounge in the fiery pit; Roy Cohn, he tells us, is playing the big room.

(At this point I should give a lackadaisical spoiler alert, for those who find the prospect of hearing my name in a theatre production utterly thrilling. I imagine that if such a community exists, it’s extremely small, and perhaps might want to seek professional help.)

It wasn’t very far into the show, as Desmond relived his triumphant high school theatre career, that my name came up.

“I mean, I’m sure we all remember last year’s stunning production of “Flower Drum Song.” And not because of the controversy surrounding the casting! I’m still very hurt by Howard Sherman’s letter-writing campaign vilifying me for my portrayal of Wang Chi-Yang.”

OK, there it was. A good-natured ribbing of my advocacy regarding authenticity in racial casting and against practices such as yellowface. The audience laughed, but so far as I could tell, it was with the punchline, not at the mere mention of my name. I settled in to watch the rest of the show.

So imagine my surprise when only a bit later, I heard Desmond say the following:

“Auditions for the Fall Musicale are tomorrow. You just have to sing a Gilbert and Sullivan song. Wait a minute! What should I sing? Maybe “He is an Englishman.” No, everyone’ll do that… Or maybe something from “The Mikado”… No, can’t. Damn that Howard Sherman.”

Wow, I’m a recurring joke, albeit a highly esoteric one. But Monahan wasn’t quite done with me, as I discovered later in the show with the following interjection:

DALLAS: Alright, don’t make a big show. You know you’re the only student I let in the faculty room. Don’t abuse the privilege. Nice Louis Armstrong, by the way. If we hadn’t gotten in so much trouble for “Flower Drum Song,” next year I could’ve cast you as Porgy.

DESMOND: (Under his breath, furious) Sherman…

Because I was engaged in the show itself, my thoughts about these mentions didn’t really come until the lights went out and the curtain call began.

First thought: well, I guess people are registering the kind of advocacy I’ve been doing if it rises to the level of lampooning in an Off-Off-Broadway showcase.

Nora Brigid Monahan in “Diva: Live From Hell”

Second thought: I would never, NEVER, lead a campaign against any high school student. At the high school level, I try to be supportive. I might have had a few words for a teacher so clueless as Mr. Dallas.

Third thought: Wow, I got name-checked alongside Kevin Kline, Tovah Feldshuh and Patti LuPone, among many others. Of course, Seth Rudetsky appeared as himself via recording, a more prominent inclusion in Monahan’s imagined world. (Under my breath, furious) Rudetsky!

As I exited the theatre, I encountered Morgan Jenness, grinning widely, eager to hear what I thought. I said I’d had a good time and was amused to be part of the show. “But, I confided to Morgan, “I don’t think anyone in that theatre had any idea that I’m a real person. I’m just a fictional nemesis invented by Sean along with the other characters.”

“Oh, Howard,” she replied, “People know who you are. And after all, it’s a pretty insider show.”

“Insiders enjoy LuPone and Kline jokes,” I countered. “Mentions of me are downright obscure. As far as this audience knows, I’m a fiction.”

And so, for the next week and half at least, I will have my own form of immortality, embedded in the pages of a theatrical script and spoken aloud for presumably unwitting audiences. This joins my other brushes with exceedingly minor fame, including my guest appearance as a Cupcake Wars judge and my three-sentence role on an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

But I thank Nora Monahan for giving me this little gift of recognition, and perhaps someone will see Diva: Live From Hell and laugh spontaneously and knowingly at the mention of my name (if I haven’t already spoiled the moment for those most likely to do so with this essay). And while my next two weeks are completely committed, perhaps I’ll have the chance to encounter Desmond Channing once again, be it in this life, or the afterlife.

Context is everything.

If you ask the average parent whether, in the abstract, they want to hear a student, any student, saying the n-word from the stage of their local high school auditorium, the answer (hopefully) would  be no. Put that word in its full context in the musical Ragtime, or in the plays of August Wilson, and those familiar with the works may feel differently.

Ask parents whether they’d like to hear students say words like “ass” and “skanky” from a school stage, and odds are they wouldn’t be keen on it. But put it in the context of the significantly edited school edition of Avenue Q, which is vastly less transgressive than the original, and it’s not quite so jarring, since its language is heard in network television comedies regularly.

The social media post from rehearsal of The Foreigner at New Prague High School

So when a photo of students dressed as Ku Klux Klan members began circulating on social media in the New Prague High School community in New Prague, Minnesota, with the message “I think you’re gonna want to come to the spring play,” there was understandable concern and outrage.

The image was from a dress rehearsal of Larry Shue’s mid-80s comedy The Foreigner, and the Klansmen appear briefly in sheets and hoods at the climax of the show as a threat to the shy title character, after the racist behavior of the Klan and their like have been clearly made out as ugly and malignant in the show. The Foreigner is hardly a social justice piece and it does use the Klan for humor, but it in no way endorses their real-life behavior.

Because this took place just a week before the performances, New Prague High School decided to quell the furor by shutting down the production entirely on Monday, three days after the post went up and just days before the performance dates. The school’s e-mail read as follows:

Dear Parents and Students,

We are sending this communication to notify you that our spring play, The Foreigner, has been cancelled.  On Friday afternoon, a NPHS student involved in the play posted a captioned photo on social media of some fellow cast members in KKK costumes that are used in the final scene of the play to depict an evil force in the story. Administration was made aware of the posting, and the insensitive nature of this post.

As we reviewed the social media post and conducted meetings with our theatre director and concerned community members, we feel it is in the best interest of New Prague Area Schools to not present the show this weekend.

This situation will also allow us the opportunity to have conversations with our students, staff and community as we continue to work at embracing a culture of acceptance and respect for all students within New Prague Area Schools.

Regards,

Lonnie Seifert, Principal

Tom Wetschka, Assistant Principal

Principal Seifert further elaborated in a conversation with Minnesota Public Radio:

Is it disappointing? Yes, I’m disappointed for the kids that invested so much time in the play and performing. But I think we also need to look at the big picture of our students and I’m disappointed some of our students had to go through the feelings that they went through seeing that (social media) post.

As Paul Walsh reported in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, there are only twelve black students at New Prague High School, in a student body of 1300 (he didn’t include data about other students of color). But regardless of the number of black students or all students of color at New Prague, a social media image of Klansmen and a mention of the school play created a fraught situation, presumably unknowingly on the part of the student who shared the photo. The school’s desire to send the message that it did not support either the Klan or clueless depictions of the Klan on its stage, with the clock ticking towards performances, was swift action with a commendable goal at heart, namely to send an anti-racist, anti-Klan message.

The question remains as to whether they made the right decision, since they shut down the show rather than trying to immediately grapple with the issues it raised. As acknowledged earlier, The Foreigner is not a nuanced depiction of racism and violence, but rather a light comedy bordering on farce, written with a sensibility that’s now 30 years old; past productions have engendered comments about the use of the Klan as comic foils, as well as concerns about its portrayal of a character with an intellectual disability. The show was last seen in a major New York production in 2004 at the Roundabout Theatre Company, with Matthew Broderick in the title role, but it is a staple of school and community theatre.

In a report on WCCO-TV, a CBS affiliate, Ben Thietje, the school’s drama teacher and director said that the cancelation “was a unanimous decision made by school administration and myself. The play has a positive message of acceptance and celebration of differences. However, if it also causes stress to a portion of our student body, the point of performing it has been lost. The well-being of our students is the main concern. I take full responsibility in not doing a better job of communicating this message with students from the beginning.”

But could the school have scrapped some lesson plans this week to focus on the insidious, vicious history of the Klan and explored how the play does or doesn’t represent that well? It would have taken a concerted effort, with committed faculty and administrators calling on outside experts to swarm and address the issue. It could have been managed if everyone committed very quickly.

Unlike Ragtime in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, where the school had six weeks to prepare students for the racial slurs that would be uttered onstage, New Prague was certainly under pressure. Unfortunately, in alleviating the concerns provoked by the photo, the school negated the work done by the students in the show and sent the message that cancelation, censorship, is the best response when the arts are challenged, even with legitimate concerns.

Promotional button for the 1984 Off-Broadway production of The Foreigner

There are works of theatre, both comic and dramatic, that when picked apart, can often reveal some element that might prove objectionable in the abstract, shorn of its context within the work. There can also be objections when older shows are blithely presented simply as the “entertaining” school play, without educational and social context. It’s for others to decide whether The Foreigner remains a funny farce for today’s sensibilities, or whether it has aged into a work that reflects a less aware time in an unflattering mirror.

No matter whether a piece of school theatre is overtly speaking to political and social issues or merely touches upon them casually, it’s essential that educators take a good look at what they’re producing, how it speaks to students today – rather than how it spoke to audiences when it was first written, or even a decade ago – and create the appropriate context for that work, above and beyond just producing it to the best of their and their students’ abilities. This shouldn’t be construed as making the case for safe work, but rather for insuring that school productions aren’t islands unto themselves, for making them part of a comprehensive approach that grounds all school theatre in multiple contexts: as theatre, as literature and as a valuable part of the broader educational process not only for those involved in the production, but for the school community at large.

Note: Before this piece was written, Arts Integrity sent e-mails requesting interviews with New Prague principal Lonnie Seifert and Assistant Principal Tom Wetschka, and also left voice mail for Seifert. No response was received by the time this piece was posted, but updates will be made, as appropriate, should they respond. The school district office said there was no communications officer for the district and that all questions should be directed to Seifert and Wetschka.

When incidences of high school theatre censorship arise, the point at which they occur, and when that breaks out beyond school walls, can be central to efforts to reverse the decision. At other times, one finds webpages like the one above, from Danville Area High School in Pennsylvania in late January.

The recent debate in Cherry Hill NJ over Ragtime is an excellent case in point. The decision by the school administration to alter all “offensive” language in the play, without permission from the licensing house or the authors, arose while the show was in rehearsals, six weeks before performances were to begin. The school publicly announced its plan to alter the play’s text, to placate those who objected to words within it, which if enacted would have caused the school to lose the rights to perform the show at all. A broad lobbying effort ensued to make the case that Ragtime was much more than the handful of slurs that are essential to the work, and advance its message of acceptance and inclusion. It had sufficient time to have an effect, echoing other such efforts in recent years in Plaistow NH over Sweeney Todd and Trumbull CT over Rent. Ragtime opens in one week.

But even as the initial decision adverse to Ragtime was being reversed, productions in Fresno CA and Danville PA were irrevocably ended, with school officials forcing a student-directed production of Sartre’s No Exit to end after the first of its three performances, and the school edition of Avenue Q canceled in favor of James and the Giant Peach, to be performed in April.

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Poster design by Dominic Grijalva for No Exit at Buchanan High (via Facebook)

Homophobia was cited as the cause of the cancellation of No Exit in Clovis CA, at Buchanan High School in late January. Jared Serpa, the student directing the show as his senior project, as part of the school’s drama program known as Bear Stage, made the charge in an online video, citing a complaint by a member of the audience at the first performance and a conversation he had with a faculty member which specifically identified the gay character as being problematic, should a parent bring a young child and have to explain why one woman was trying to kiss another. The remaining performances were immediately shut down.

“Talk with your children about reality,” urged Serpa in his video. “Don’t put them in this bubble and darkness … because you couldn’t find the courage to talk to your own child about the fact that people are different.”

Speaking to The Fresno Bee, Clovis Unified spokesperson Kelly Avants denied the charge of homophobia, saying “We own the fact that it should never have even been approved as a senior production in the first place. Being a K-12 institution, the expectation of our drama programs is that every production they do is to be age-appropriate content.”

An online fundraising campaign, to move the production off campus, quickly raised more than $1,000. But that move isn’t happening.

After conversations between Serpa and the school, subsequent to the canceled performances, they reached what was described as a mutual decision not to go forward with the show on or off campus. Serpa described it as letting the show “peacefully die,” in a second Twitter video. Serpa cited the pressure the situation was putting on his cast, comprised primarily of students who were not seniors, and his intent to use the money raised for No Exit to be the seed money for an independent theatre company that could tackle, in his words, “gritty art, gritty theatre.”

A joint statement, credited to both Clovis Unified School District and the No Exit Team, yet reading very much as an institutional statement, said in part:

In the case of the Jean-Paul Sartre play No Exit, the show’s language; dark themes of hopelessness, hell and mutual torment/torture; conversations about the murder of an infant, being shot in the chest nine times and infidelity; and multiple sexual advances and requests made by the characters all add up to content that as a whole we do not believe is appropriate for a high school audience.

It would be expected that the school administration would have reviewed the show’s content and, long prior to opening night, asked the senior student to select a different show with more age-appropriate content. Unfortunately, the content was not fully known to the administration until the first production.   It was at that time that a determination was made that the show could not “go on” given the mature themes and content more appropriate for a college or community audience.  One indicator of the mature nature of No Exit’s content is the fact that the play only appears in our curriculum in the college-level Advanced Placement Senior English course. This is a course that requires parent notification of the reading lists and provides an opt out option should a parent want alternate content for their student.

In the past, we have had multiple productions that featured characters or storylines that included LGBT or Q characters. That alone would not be a reason for us to stop a show.

But while No Exit was silenced, it did not go unremarked upon. Writing in the Bee, Donald Munro said of No Exit:

It is a bleak, brilliant, existential torture-rack of a play that shakes you out of your daily stupor of denying mortality and makes you ponder life’s gaping and unconquerable questions.

Which makes it perfect for older high school students just itching to dive into murky philosophical waters.

But don’t worry. Clovis Unified is keeping us safe from a classic drama written in 1944.

The one other piece of news coverage appeared, somewhat inexplicably, in The New York Daily News, recapping much of what the Bee initially reported, but bringing the situation to ore national attention. Indeed, Serpa cited the national focus as part of the pressure surrounding the production that led him to abandon his plans for an off-campus production, ending what he had originally described as a four-year quest to stage No Exit. Consequently, after a single performance, No Exit was trapped in its own eternal existential hell, remembered only by those who managed to catch that first performance before the hammer came down.

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Image from news report by ABC affiliate WNEP 16

While No Exit managed one performance, officials at Danville Area High School In Pennsylvania canceled Avenue Q shortly after the cast had been announced. The school superintendent Cheryl Latorre told the Daily Item, “It is the school version, but there is a lot of foul language in it and things that are so controversial. Not that that isn’t the real world. It’s just not the time for the program here. I just don’t think it’s something our little ones should attend.”

She went on to say, ““I just don’t feel it’s a fit for us at this time. We want a production to fill the auditorium.”

John Brady, the drama advisor who was to stage Avenue Q, quit his position as a result of the decision. The school’s other drama advisor will direct the replacement production. Reporting in the Daily Item indicates that Brady did receive approval for the show, which was withdrawn once school administrators subsequently read the script.

One student, commenting to the Daily Item, suggested that the school’s decision was a case of wanting to avoid controversy, as fundraising is in process for a new $12 million school auditorium. An editorial in the Daily Item, while acknowledging that the decision was being made later in the process than is advisable, sided with the school.

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So what exactly might be found objectionable in these plays?

Before the joint statement was issued, Kelly Avants from Clovis Unified described No Exit, which is part of the school Advanced Placement curriculum, to TV station ABC 30 as follows:

“There’s language. There are themes of child murder. There are themes of people getting shot multiple times. There’s a great deal of sexual content from a number of different perspectives.”

Yes, No Exit has dark themes, but it is neither graphic nor salacious. Any play set in hell, and considering the implications of eternity there, must engage with the sins that sent people down. Yes, the school edition of Avenue Q is at times suggestive, but the show’s fully transgressive nature has been dialed back significantly. It retains just enough so that it remains a parody of Sesame Street rather than a replica of it for slightly older audiences.

The school edition of Avenue Q, has been almost entirely stripped of the “foul language” invoked by Danville superintendent Latorre. Of the words that remain, the only phrases which presumably might trouble educators are “gonorrhea,” “undescended testicle,” “sucks,” “skanky,” “ass” and “crappy.” Some songs are gone entirely – such as “You Can Be As Loud As the Hell You Want” and “My Girlfriend Who Lives in Canada” – while Trekkie Monster’s “The Internet is for Porn” has been recast as “My Social Life is Online.” Mrs. Thistletwat in now Mrs. Butz. The characters do consume alcohol and sleep together, but the latter is entirely offstage.

However, contrary to Latorre’s statement, Avenue Q is not the real world. The puppets should be a tip-off. It’s about how young people adjust to the real world. It’s about growing up. Also, by saying she wanted the production to fill the auditorium, was she making a judgment about how well a show would sell, as opposed to its value to the students? The motivations seem muddled.

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In the school edition of Avenue Q, Rod remains a closeted gay puppet, and the terms “gay,” “queer” and “homosexual” remain part of the script. Certainly none of those latter terms should be considered as in any way offensive in this day and age, unless deployed somehow as epithets. In No Exit, one of the four characters is a lesbian, though that word doesn’t appear in the text (at least in 1946 Stuart Gilbert translation consulted for this article). In examining the fates of both the Clovis and Danville productions, it’s hard not to notice that both of these canceled shows contain gay characters – even though the statement from CUSD assured the public that “LGBT or Q” characters had been portrayed in the past on their stage. The Bear Stage No Exit included cross gender casting, with a female student in a role written as a man; that student self-identified as being part of the LGBTQ community.

Another similarity between the two cases is the rhetoric used for justifying the termination of the shows. In Danville, the superintendent said, “I just don’t think it’s something our little ones should attend.” In Clovis, the spokesperson gave the rationale that, “Being a K-12 institution, the expectation of our drama programs is that every production they do is to be age-appropriate content.”

In the latter case, the reasoning is obfuscation, since most public school districts cover both elementary and secondary education. But Buchanan High School is for grades 9-12, with students of an age where the school edition of Avenue Q is equivalent to network TV comedies and PG or PG-13 movies. It is not a frontier schoolhouse with a single classroom that teaches students of all ages.

The invocation of little ones and kindergartners reveals an all too common rationale: that high school theatre must be entirely family friendly, that it must remain benign and inoffensive in order to serve as a community relations, rather than an educational tool for the students participating. The idea that high school presentations should be acceptable for primary schoolers is infantilizing.

As it happens, it’s very likely that young children might miss the residual innuendo in the school edition of Avenue Q. They surely wouldn’t even understand the implications of No Exit, and indeed might be bored by it. But those shouldn’t be reasons for denying students in their mid-teens the opportunity to work on popular, current work (even in a tamed form) or intellectually rigorous pieces that they may well be studying in their classrooms if they are engaged and excited by them. That Clovis requires parental consent for advanced placement students to study No Exit is evidence of how risk averse schools have become. That same overcaution is demonstrated by the fact that the school board in Danville had to vote to approve of James and the Giant Peach.

There’s no question that the discipline, commitment, teamwork and talent required for theatre is at the core of every production, regardless of the content of the work. But walling off a vast amounts of the repertoire from high school theatre in order to avoid any thorny issues or marginally strong language, lest absolutely anyone object, serves to erase any intellectual rigor from the students’ experience, whether curricular or extracurricular.

In addition, making the choice of school plays subject to the approval of superintendents and school boards will likely serve to insure that only the safest, middle of the road shows can be done, denying drama teachers and their immediate supervisors the right to make decisions best suited for their students, who are certainly not children and may well flourish even more fully when facing a challenge. But that challenge should come from the material they are allowed to enact, not from arbiters who, under the guise of protecting students and appealing to the most people possible, deny student opportunity in order to protect themselves.