Casting Notice for American Idiot at Enfield High School
“Welcome to a new kind of tension. All across the alienation. Where everything isn’t meant to be okay.”
The details are very sketchy. The drama director hasn’t yet responded to a call or e-mail. The school principal said that he “wasn’t comfortable” talking about it without the approval of the superintendent, which he did say he would seek. The licensing house that handles the rights for the musical has not responded to an e-mail inquiry about approved changes (although the company’s president is overseas). An anonymous source who provided some background materials won’t be named publicly because they fear recriminations against their child in the school system.
But here’s what’s known: the Enfield High School Lamplighters, in Enfield CT, were scheduled to perform the musical American Idiot this spring, with auditions set for January 13 and 14, with callbacks on January 15. Performances were set for early May.
On January 17, Nate Ferreira, faculty director of the Lamplighters, sent a general e-mail to the school community which included the following statement:
As most of you know, we had a drama club meeting this past Wednesday to discuss the details of producing “American Idiot” as our final show this school year. Due to the mature content of the original production, I have been working with the publisher to modify the script, to ensure that it would be appropriate for a high school group to perform.
This project was very successful, and we feel that the modified script and production notes maintain the integrity of the show, while removing profanity and the more adult scenarios in the original Broadway production. The publisher is even starting the process of turning our edited version of the script into their official “School Edition” of the play, to allow other high schools to easily perform this play in the future.
As I’ve stated at our student/parent meetings during the past two school years: this extended production process was intended to allow us to work on a show that most of the kids were extremely excited about, while continuing the award-winning Lamplighters tradition of exploring serious issues in a mature and responsible way. In the same way that our presentation of the student-authored and directed “Happily Never After” last year did an excellent job of handling the difficult issues of domestic abuse and justifiable homicide, “American Idiot” opens discussion about many issues of young adulthood.
Unfortunately, a very small number of extremely vocal people have complained about our choice of production. This led to Mr. Longey [principal Andrew Longey] and I meeting on Friday to discuss a change in our choice of production. To be clear, Mr. Longey did not force us to change – he and I took a long and careful look at all aspects of the show, and all arguments on either side. At this late stage it is very difficult to switch to a different play, but I do feel that it is best for us to set aside “American Idiot” for the time being. I want ALL of our club members to be able to be a part of our musical, and I want to be absolutely certain that the play happens at all.
Billie Joe Armstrong in American Idiot on Broadway
Currently, the last post on the Lamplighters Facebook page is a reference to a meeting on January 20. There is no announcement of a new show for the spring.
While hopefully more details will fall into place, there is someone else who would like to see the production of American Idiot go on. I reached out to Christine Jones, who designed the set for the Broadway production of American Idiot, in an effort to make Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong, the composer and lyricist of the show, aware of the situation. Armstrong sent back the following message through Jones in a little over an hour’s time, and reportedly also posted it on Instagram (it is reproduced here precisely as he wrote it):
dear Enfield high school board,
It has come to my attention that you cancelled your high school theater production of American Idiot.
I realize the content of the Broadway production of AI is not quite “suitable” for a younger audience.
However there is a high school rendition of the production and I believe that’s the one Enfield was planning to perform which is suitable for most people.
it would be a shame if these high schoolers were shut down over some of the content that may be challenging for some of the audience. but the bigger issue is censorship. this production tackles issues in a post 9/11 world and I believe the kids should be heard. and most of all be creative in telling a story about our history.
I hope you reconsider and allow them to create an amazing night of theater!
as they say on Broadway ..
“the show must go on!”
rage and love
Billie Joe Armstrong
P.S. I love that your school is called “Raiders”
Mr. Ferreira seems to have followed every appropriate step in the process of planning this show for Enfield High, but the production has been suspended. Yet he is still hoping that American Idiot will be done at some point. So is its author, who has apparently granted permission to alter the work to make it more appropriate in a school setting. Perhaps there’s still room for dialogue, and Enfield High can still give its students the opportunity to take on challenging, modern work.
If indeed a few parents resulted in spoiling this experience for all of the Lamplighters, that would be a real shame that denies opportunity to many in order to satisfy the views of a few. I’d rather at this turning point, the school was directing the students where to go – towards work that will help them grow as performers and as people, towards work that provokes rather than palliates. I hope they’re allowed to have the time of their lives with American Idiot, sooner than later.
Update, January 25, 10:45 pm: In an article in The Hartford Courant that went online an hour ago, the Lamplighters director Mr. Ferreira represents his intended revisions to the text of American Idiot in a markedly different framework than he did in his e-mail to the school community. Per The Courant:
Ferreira said the performance included “a lot of swearing,” which Ferreira said he’d hoped to limit or eliminate pending approval from the publisher. “There’s some heavy drug use and graphic sex scenes, not things we were going to depict to the extent they did in the original show.”
This is a far cry from the tone of Ferreira’s e-mail, which declared:
“I have been working with the publisher to modify the script, to ensure that it would be appropriate for a high school group to perform. This project was very successful, and we feel that the modified script and production notes maintain the integrity of the show, while removing profanity and the more adult scenarios in the original Broadway production. The publisher is even starting the process of turning our edited version of the script into their official “School Edition” of the play, to allow other high schools to easily perform this play in the future.”
In my original post, I said it seemed that Ferreira had followed the appropriate steps, and now by his own admission, that is clearly not the case; he did not have approval to make any changes, he had not undertaken a successful project that would influence future productions. While I think there may still be opportunities for Enfield students to benefit from performing in American Idiot, they cannot do so in any version not fully approved by the authors and their representatives.
I don’t support a small number of parents ending the opportunity for the majority of the Lamplighters, but I also don’t support Ferreira’s effort to aggrandize his own sanitized version of the text. This has been a lose-lose proposition at Enfield High: the show has been shut down without being properly defended, and there has been an effort to misrepresent to the community that Ferreira’s text was authorized and even praised, obscuring the authors’ rights and copyright protections. Unfortunately, the students lose as well.
Update, January 26, 6:30 am: I received the following e-mail from Nate Ferreira at 1:55 am this morning, more than 17 hours after I first attempted to contact him, 14 hours after Principal Longey said he could not comment without the approval of the superintendent, 11 hours after my original post went online, and three hours after the previous update was posted. It is reproduced in its entirety precisely as it was received (except for the lack of paragraph spacing, which is a formatting problem on my site).
Thank you for reaching out to me. I’m sorry that I didn’t see your email until after you had finished writing your post.
Here are some more details regarding our decision not to perform American Idiot. As the director of the school’s drama club, I was very excited to produce American Idiot, and to explore the issues raised by the material.
Due to the fact that some of our club families were not comfortable with their kids being involved in the show, it was my decision to perform a different show. This was not a decision forced on me by the school administration, it was simply what i felt was best for our club membership. Many of the kids were disappointed by this decision, but others were happy because this would allow them to be involved again. I had also begun to feel that the material itself would be better served if I were to stage American Idiot _unedited_ with another local organization, and encourage the families who still wanted to do the show to become involved with it there.
My decision to change the show came prior to finalizing the contract and payment, prior to any rehearsal, and prior to casting or auditions. As with any show that would require edits for a high school group, I had a full list of changes that I felt were necessary to the dialogue, and they would have had to meet approval by the publisher. I made several phone calls to MTI during the past year, and their staff were extremely helpful in explaining the procedures for requesting edits.
I stand by my decision to change our choice of production, and I have always felt that the school administration has been supportive of our efforts.
That being said, I am elated that people like yourself are fighting for the freedom of thought and expression that is so vital to the arts. Your coverage of our situation has helped to shed light on the issue, and to spark serious discussion in our community. Mr. Armstrong’s support has likewise invigorated our students. Although we will not be performing American Idiot for our end of year production, you can be sure that the Lamplighters will continue to push boundaries and explore serious issues.
Thanks again,
Nate Ferreira
Director, Enfield Lamplighters
This post will be updated as additional information becomes available.
“Welcome to a new kind of tension. All across the alienation. Where everything isn’t meant to be okay.”
The details are very sketchy. The drama director hasn’t yet responded to a call or e-mail. The school principal said that he “wasn’t comfortable” talking about it without the approval of the superintendent, which he did say he would seek. The licensing house that handles the rights for the musical has not responded to an e-mail inquiry about approved changes (although the company’s president is overseas). An anonymous source who provided some background materials won’t be named publicly because they fear recriminations against their child in the school system.
But here’s what’s known: the Enfield High School Lamplighters, in Enfield CT, were scheduled to perform the musical American Idiot this spring, with auditions set for January 13 and 14, with callbacks on January 15. Performances were set for early May.
On January 17, Nate Ferreira, faculty director of the Lamplighters, sent a general e-mail to the school community which included the following statement:
As most of you know, we had a drama club meeting this past Wednesday to discuss the details of producing “American Idiot” as our final show this school year. Due to the mature content of the original production, I have been working with the publisher to modify the script, to ensure that it would be appropriate for a high school group to perform.
This project was very successful, and we feel that the modified script and production notes maintain the integrity of the show, while removing profanity and the more adult scenarios in the original Broadway production. The publisher is even starting the process of turning our edited version of the script into their official “School Edition” of the play, to allow other high schools to easily perform this play in the future.
As I’ve stated at our student/parent meetings during the past two school years: this extended production process was intended to allow us to work on a show that most of the kids were extremely excited about, while continuing the award-winning Lamplighters tradition of exploring serious issues in a mature and responsible way. In the same way that our presentation of the student-authored and directed “Happily Never After” last year did an excellent job of handling the difficult issues of domestic abuse and justifiable homicide, “American Idiot” opens discussion about many issues of young adulthood.
Unfortunately, a very small number of extremely vocal people have complained about our choice of production. This led to Mr. Longey [principal Andrew Longey] and I meeting on Friday to discuss a change in our choice of production. To be clear, Mr. Longey did not force us to change – he and I took a long and careful look at all aspects of the show, and all arguments on either side. At this late stage it is very difficult to switch to a different play, but I do feel that it is best for us to set aside “American Idiot” for the time being. I want ALL of our club members to be able to be a part of our musical, and I want to be absolutely certain that the play happens at all.
Currently, the last post on the Lamplighters Facebook page is a reference to a meeting on January 20. There is no announcement of a new show for the spring.
Billie Joe Armstrong in American Idiot on Broadway
While hopefully more details will fall into place, there is someone else who would like to see the production of American Idiot go on. I reached out to Christine Jones, who designed the set for the Broadway production of American Idiot, in an effort to make Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong, the composer and lyricist of the show, aware of the situation. Armstrong sent back the following message through Jones in a little over an hour’s time, and reportedly also posted it on Instagram (it is reproduced here precisely as he wrote it):
dear Enfield high school board,
It has come to my attention that you cancelled your high school theater production of American Idiot.
I realize the content of the Broadway production of AI is not quite “suitable” for a younger audience.
However there is a high school rendition of the production and I believe that’s the one Enfield was planning to perform which is suitable for most people.
it would be a shame if these high schoolers were shut down over some of the content that may be challenging for some of the audience. but the bigger issue is censorship. this production tackles issues in a post 9/11 world and I believe the kids should be heard. and most of all be creative in telling a story about our history.
I hope you reconsider and allow them to create an amazing night of theater!
as they say on Broadway ..
“the show must go on!”
rage and love
Billie Joe Armstrong
P.S. I love that your school is called “Raiders”
Mr. Ferreira seems to have followed every appropriate step in the process of planning this show for Enfield High, but the production has been suspended. Yet he is still hoping that American Idiot will be done at some point. So is its author, who has apparently granted permission to alter the work to make it more appropriate in a school setting. Perhaps there’s still room for dialogue, and Enfield High can still give its students the opportunity to take on challenging, modern work.
If indeed a few parents resulted in spoiling this experience for all of the Lamplighters, that would be a real shame that denies opportunity to many in order to satisfy the views of a few. I’d rather at this turning point, the school was directing the students where to go – towards work that will help them grow as performers and as people, towards work that provokes rather than palliates. I hope they’re allowed to have the time of their lives with American Idiot, sooner than later.
Update, January 25, 10:45 pm: In an article in The Hartford Courant that went online an hour ago, the Lamplighters director Mr. Ferreira represents his intended revisions to the text of American Idiot in a markedly different framework than he did in his e-mail to the school community. Per The Courant:
Ferreira said the performance included “a lot of swearing,” which Ferreira said he’d hoped to limit or eliminate pending approval from the publisher. “There’s some heavy drug use and graphic sex scenes, not things we were going to depict to the extent they did in the original show.”
This is a far cry from the tone of Ferreira’s e-mail, which declared:
“I have been working with the publisher to modify the script, to ensure that it would be appropriate for a high school group to perform. This project was very successful, and we feel that the modified script and production notes maintain the integrity of the show, while removing profanity and the more adult scenarios in the original Broadway production. The publisher is even starting the process of turning our edited version of the script into their official “School Edition” of the play, to allow other high schools to easily perform this play in the future.”
In my original post, I said it seemed that Ferreira had followed the appropriate steps, and now by his own admission, that is clearly not the case; he did not have approval to make any changes, he had not undertaken a successful project that would influence future productions. While I think there may still be opportunities for Enfield students to benefit from performing in American Idiot, they cannot do so in any version not fully approved by the authors and their representatives.
I don’t support a small number of parents ending the opportunity for the majority of the Lamplighters, but I also don’t support Ferreira’s effort to aggrandize his own sanitized version of the text. This has been a lose-lose proposition at Enfield High: the show has been shut down without being properly defended, and there has been an effort to misrepresent to the community that Ferreira’s text was authorized and even praised, obscuring the authors’ rights and copyright protections. Unfortunately, the students lose as well.
Update, January 26, 6:30 am: I received the following e-mail from Nate Ferreira at 1:55 am this morning, more than 17 hours after I first attempted to contact him, 14 hours after Principal Longey said he could not comment without the approval of the superintendent, 11 hours after my original post went online, and three hours after the previous update was posted. It is reproduced in its entirety precisely as it was received (except for the lack of paragraph spacing, which is a formatting problem on my site).
Thank you for reaching out to me. I’m sorry that I didn’t see your email until after you had finished writing your post.
Here are some more details regarding our decision not to perform American Idiot. As the director of the school’s drama club, I was very excited to produce American Idiot, and to explore the issues raised by the material.
Due to the fact that some of our club families were not comfortable with their kids being involved in the show, it was my decision to perform a different show. This was not a decision forced on me by the school administration, it was simply what i felt was best for our club membership. Many of the kids were disappointed by this decision, but others were happy because this would allow them to be involved again. I had also begun to feel that the material itself would be better served if I were to stage American Idiot _unedited_ with another local organization, and encourage the families who still wanted to do the show to become involved with it there.
My decision to change the show came prior to finalizing the contract and payment, prior to any rehearsal, and prior to casting or auditions. As with any show that would require edits for a high school group, I had a full list of changes that I felt were necessary to the dialogue, and they would have had to meet approval by the publisher. I made several phone calls to MTI during the past year, and their staff were extremely helpful in explaining the procedures for requesting edits.
I stand by my decision to change our choice of production, and I have always felt that the school administration has been supportive of our efforts.
That being said, I am elated that people like yourself are fighting for the freedom of thought and expression that is so vital to the arts. Your coverage of our situation has helped to shed light on the issue, and to spark serious discussion in our community. Mr. Armstrong’s support has likewise invigorated our students. Although we will not be performing American Idiot for our end of year production, you can be sure that the Lamplighters will continue to push boundaries and explore serious issues.
Thanks again,
Nate Ferreira
Director, Enfield Lamplighters
This post will be updated as additional information becomes available.
Three books that changed my life? Only three? As soon as I think of any one, a dozen more come to mind. But I will color inside the lines, so to speak, even as I leave countless loved ones up on the shelf.
1. My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
As someone intensely interested in the arts since I was young, but in a family that wasn’t particularly arts-oriented, as someone educated three days a week in conservative Judaism while in elementary school, but increasingly uncertain of what it meant to me personally, Potok’s story of an Orthodox young man whose talent for painting took him beyond the strictures of his upbringing spoke to me very powerfully, even though I didn’t meet with parental opposition to my affinity, and lacked any particular talent. Asher was compelled by talent to become a rebel and I was, to all outward appearances, a conforming good boy. His story was my own minor struggle writ large. But despite admonitions that the arts were a terrible way to make a living (albeit not the sin that Asher was cautioned about), I went my own way too. And in college, I took a philosophy seminar with Potok, and was able to thank him for what his work meant to me, even as he opened new avenues of thought for me. Corollary: Philip Roth’s The Ghost Writer.
2. What Makes Sammy Run by Budd Schulberg
Even after I began my life in the theater, I still held romantic dreams of working in Hollywood, going so far as to spend a week interviewing at studios and production companies the year I turned 30. When, as a teen (and I still reread it annually), I first read this seminal novel of two men whose lives took them from New York to Hollywood, it offered me the already bygone allure of a different life, of fame and money, even as it showed the price one might pay to achieve such things. Yet as the years progressed, what I saw in the book evolved, as I realized that I was much more like the novel’s narrator than its hyper-precocious anti-hero. I wasn’t someone who could swim in the (seemingly) shark-infested waters of movie making. Where Sammy was once a book that offered the vision of a different life, it became an affirmation of the choices I’ve made, of staying in theater, and outside the commercial arena, of staying in the form and with the people with whom I’m most comfortable. Corollary: The Player by Michael Tolkin.
3. Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
As children, we were always falling into fantasy worlds: on TV, in movies and in the pages of books. This hypnotic novel, which I read when it was first published, is probably the last time I recall being immersed in a fantasy completely—a fantasy that was at times dark, uncomfortable, and even incomprehensible. I don’t think I’ll ever quite understand its hold on me, how it manages to be entirely otherworldly and impossible in some ways and utterly believable in others. Even as I had entered the working world, saw how magic was made on stage from behind the scenes, and dealt with the mundanity of such things as paying rent and car loans, Dunn’s novel of a most unconventional, fractious, fantastical, and loving family—and how the legacy of any family lives on even after they’re gone—was a reminder of how completely a book could transport me. Corollary: from years earlier, the first “grown up” book with a comparable effect, despite being about rabbits, Richard Adams’s Watership Down.
Extra-credit: Though first published in newspapers, but collected in countless anthologies, Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz, which is utterly woven throughout my life for as far back as I can remember.
This essay 0riginally appeared on the blog of the National Endowment for the Arts
It’s a tad too early to announce the emergence of a new trend, but two recent announcements suggest that there’s something brewing in the theatrical zeitgeist.
The announcements to which I refer are Quentin Tarantino’s repeated references to adapting his newest film The Hateful Eight for the stage, and Warner Bros Theatre Ventures’ announcement that Stephen Adly Guirgis will adapt the 1974 film Dog Day Afternoon for Broadway. I’m more sanguine about the latter than the former, because Guirgis is a proven theatrical talent who is likely to assert his own unique take on the true-life story that fuelled the Sidney Lumet film. While some have noted that The Hateful Eight is, if you strip away the profanity and slurs, the widescreen, and the protracted running time, really a western equivalent of an Agatha Christie locked room mystery.
The potential wave of which I speak is the movie-into-play adaptation, which seems poised to supplant the movie-into-musical and jukebox musical trends of recent years. This isn’t a brand new idea, and has actually been more common on British stages than American ones, with Chariots of Fire, The Shawshank Redemption, Cool Hand Luke and The Ladykillers among the examples. But when British exemplars have crossed the Atlantic, they haven’t set Broadway afire, with Festen and Elling being blink-and-you-missed-them failures. The Graduate ran for a year, but it closed more than 12 years ago.
Misery, now on Broadway in a different version than the UK one in the early 1990s, has held its own in the face of negative notices, buoyed no doubt by the Broadway debut of Bruce Willis, but its fortunes have been declining. Breakfast at Tiffany’s and A Time To Kill both closed particularly fast.
Experts will be quick to note that in many cases, the movie-to-play adaptations are often based on an original book from which the film and play have been adapted separately. But it’s usually the movie’s success and familiarity that prompts the theatrical version. The same impulse that has driven the trend for musical adaptations of movies seems to be behind these play efforts, with movie companies eager to exploit even properties that perhaps don’t lend themselves to musicalisation.
The problem is that drama into drama efforts often aren’t transformative enough to make the new stage versions compelling. When assembling songs into a story (like Mamma Mia!) or adding songs to one (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels), there is inevitably a change in the source material. But the play into play paradigm doesn’t necessarily undergo the same kind of revision and rethinking – even though it’s essential to making great theatre. And of course without fundamental change, the inevitable comparisons are easier to make.
The best film into stage adaptations (The Lion King, Once) create something that is an altogether new way of looking at the preceding work. If film companies’ only goal is to generate more income from existing material, and to trade on our affection for it, then this incipient genre may well prove an unsatisfying one, as so many jukebox musicals and movie-to-musical adaptations have been before.
Having also produced Misery, Warner Bros’ choice of Guirgis is a heartening one, particularly if they give him room to let his own imagination and language truly create a new work for the stage, rather than a photocopy. While I never want to see them lured away for long from original work, I can only imagine what artists like Annie Baker, Anne Washburn, Stephen Karam, Suzan-Lori Parks, Mike Lew, and Tarrell Alvin McCraney could do with some classic and – better still – not-so-classic films. But only if it interests them creatively – not just for the money.
This essay originally appeared in The Stage, under a slightly different title.
Ian McKellen as King Lear (Photo by Simon Farrell)
Oh, British theatre, you’ve bested your American counterparts again, and you likely don’t even know about it. I should explain.
In late October, a new streaming service called BroadwayHD came online, to a flurry of press attention, likening the offering to Netflix or Hulu for the stage. As the holiday season often affords the opportunity to seek out online entertainment, I finally had the opportunity to peruse the offerings on the nascent BroadwayHD. To my surprise, I found remarkably little US theatre, let alone material from the Great White Way.
As of now, the relatively limited repertory of the service is comprised overwhelmingly of BBC offerings, tilted towards Shakespeare. Now, there’s no question that the selection is choice, featuring esteemed actors such as Judi Dench, Michael Gambon, Juliet Stevenson, Ian McKellen, Anthony Hopkins and others, but the fact is, few of the shows on offer ever played Broadway.
Rifling through the categories of comedy, classics, drama and musicals yields a decidedly anglicised view of theatre. The category of musicals, which one would expect to be a strong suit, is the most American of sections, but also particularly thin, with only nine offerings, the most recent being Memphis and the oldest being Tintypes from 1980. One of the titles is the Bette Midler made-for-television Gypsy, which was never performed on stage.
That’s not to say there’s no value in the service, because I’m eager to explore some of these pieces – Daniel Craig in Copenhagen, anyone? But for now, it remains largely a US subscription-based version of BBC’s iPlayer with a cache of older titles. It also points out, once again, how behind US theatre is in adapting to the newly pervasive video reality, whether broadcast into movie theatres like NT Live is, or available on a mobile device.
I will always say that filmed theatre is not true theatre because it alters according to what the video camera finds. The live experience is unparalleled. But until all of the parties concerned – producers, writers, directors, actors, designers, craftspeople and crew – get together to hammer out an agreement that makes it possible for more US theatre to be recorded and distributed electronically, us Americans will be runners-up to our British colleagues (and soon our Canadian ones as well). Without that commitment, access to theatre will remain out of the reach of swathes of our population, for geographic and financial reasons.
Meanwhile, less attentive users of BroadwayHD will be left wondering why all of these ‘Broadway’ shows were performed with British accents.
At first, they were a few lunchtime tweets, which proved of little interest, it seemed. But when I collected a couple, and added a few more, for a Facebook post at 9:30 pm on New Year’s Eve, they seemed to resonate. And so, with little ado, my New Year’s resolutions by way of lyrics and dialogue from works of theatre, but no less heartfelt for being so.
Talk less, smile more.
Wake each morning to realize I have a good thing going.
Never walk alone.
Decide what’s right, decide what’s good.
Half the fun is to plan the plan. All good things come to those who can wait.
Many people have to depend on the kindness of strangers. Be that stranger.
When I speak, and I will, be kind.
Sources
I don’t want to patronize those who recognize where these are all from, or presume that everyone will know each one. So if you want to seek any of these out in their original contexts, here are some details.
Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton, direct quote
Stephen Sondheim, Merrily We Roll Along, “And then one morning I woke to realize, we had a good thing going.”
Oscar Hammerstein II, Carousel, “Walk on with hope in your heart and you’ll never walk alone.”
Stephen Sondheim, Into The Woods, “You decide what’s right, you decide what’s good.”
Stephen Sondheim, Sweeney Todd, direct quote
Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”
Robert Anderson, Tea and Sympathy, “When you talk about this…and you will…be kind.”
If the location of your office compels you to visit Times Square regularly, you are confronted at least twice a day (going to work and on your way home) by a crush of people, gaping tourists, perpetual construction and, of course, by opportunists dressed as cartoon characters, Marvel and DC superheroes, Star Wars figures and, here and there, barely dressed at all. The common reaction to all of this is to keep one’s head down and push through, muttering about the madness, wondering where all the people have come from and why they won’t get out of the way, and even entertaining a small incursion on the first amendment that might rid the pedestrian plazas of the tip-seeking fictional personages.
As someone who works in Times Square, I have taken an alternative perspective. I have elected to find it all very funny.
As a result, instead of looking away from the costumed hustlers, I look right at them, because at times this third-rate cosplay can offer some truly absurd tableaux. With my iPhone in hand, I record these bits of urban incongruity, posting them to my Facebook page as “Times Square Weirdness, my continuing series.” Instead of rushing across Times Square with my head down, I walk to my assorted destinations with a surveying gaze, my camera at the ready, hoping to catch Dora The Explorer dancing with Mickey Mouse, while three Spider-Men look on.
Were I a parent on holiday with children in tow, I’d likely take a less indulgent view of the situation. I have even gone so far as to offer a practical plan that might at least reduce the costumed populations (with no constitutional breach whatsoever). But in the meantime, I choose to find the whole thing deeply ridiculous and while I will not ever offer even $1 as a gratuity, and while in turn many of the “characters” quickly lift their cut-rate visages to foil my photos, I’ll chronicle Times Square Weirdness for as long as it lasts.
I should note that for all of the Elmos, Olafs, Minnie Mice and Spider-Man who appear daily (and even form packs), some characters (or costumes of said characters) appear only once or twice, never to be seen again. I guess some people decide it’s not really for them. I often wonder what happens to the costumes. But I try to save their appearances for posterity.
Oh, New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players, what are we going to do with you?
It was surprising to many that you thought you could do a “classic” yellowface Mikado in New York in 2015. But you also responded pretty quickly once there was an outcry against the practice, with the first blog posts of dismay (from Leah Nanako Winkler, Erin Quill, Ming Peiffer and me) posted on Tuesday and Wednesday and the production canceled by midnight on Friday morning. You’ve promised to bring your Mikado into alignment with current sensibilities at some point in the future, and I’m one of the many people who had cordial conversations with your executive director David Wannen in the wake of the September controversy.
So one can’t help be brought up short by your current commercial for The Pirates of Penzance, the production which replaced The Mikado at NYU’s Skirball Center. Shot in the Old Town Bar just north of Union Square, it features pub denizens having a Gilbert & Sullivan sing-off with some piratical looking men, as well as some geriatric British naval officers. All in good fun, it seems.
So why is there an admittedly brief shot in the ad of three yellowface geishas in a bar booth being leered at (by telescope, no less) by the British officers? Why is there still yellowface as part of advertising a production that was scheduled to eradicate yellowface?
Now I’m fully prepared to acknowledge this is probably an old TV spot, and all that has been changed is the superimposed show title, venue and number to call for tickets at the end. In fact, having watched New York television for much of my life, I’d say this spot could be quite old, and may well have emanated from days when Pirates, The Mikado and H.M.S. Pinafore were the bedrock of your repertory.
But in light of all that has happened over the past four months, seeing those faux-Asian women giggling behind their fans seems wholly out of place, if not a slap at those who advocated for a more enlightened take from you going forward. I acknowledge the effort and cost of recutting, or even reshooting, a commercial, but it might have been wise for you to not keep propagating the very imagery that led you to decide to cancel your production.
There’s no way to know whether you’re buying broadcast or cable time for the spot, but you just posted it to YouTube at the beginning of this month. This morning, the spot was featured in an e-mail blast you sent. So this possibly vestigial ad is still very much part of your marketing.
As I noted in a conference call with David Wannen, it is not lost on us that Albert Bergeret, the company’s artistic director, has not – so far as I know, and I’d be happy to be corrected – publicly expressed his support for the decision to remove The Mikado from your repertoire pending a reconception. Even this brief glimpse of yellowface suggests that the message of respecting ethnicities other than white hasn’t really sunk in. In fact, this could be seen by some as you winking at the controversy and telling your regular audiences that your “traditions” will be upheld, even if your sole intent was to economize and recycle an existing ad.
C’mon NYGASP, you said you were going to do better. You’ve taken some important steps, but it seems you’ve still got a ways to go.
Thanks to Barb Leung for sharing the e-mail and video from NYGASP.
Howard Sherman is interim director of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts and director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School College of Performing Arts.
Oh, New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players, what are we going to do with you?
It was surprising to many that you thought you could do a “classic” yellowface Mikado in New York in 2015. But you also responded pretty quickly once there was an outcry against the practice, with the first blog posts of dismay (from Leah Nanako Winkler, Erin Quill, Ming Peiffer and me) posted on Tuesday and Wednesday and the production canceled by midnight on Friday morning. You’ve promised to bring your Mikado into alignment with current sensibilities at some point in the future, and I’m one of the many people who had cordial conversations with your executive director David Wannen in the wake of the September controversy.
So one can’t help be brought up short by your current commercial for The Pirates of Penzance, the production which replaced The Mikado at NYU’s Skirball Center. Shot in the Old Town Bar just north of Union Square, it features pub denizens having a Gilbert & Sullivan sing-off with some piratical looking men, as well as some geriatric British naval officers. All in good fun, it seems.
So why is there an admittedly brief shot in the ad of three yellowface geishas in a bar booth being leered at (by telescope, no less) by the British officers? Why is there still yellowface as part of advertising a production that was scheduled to eradicate yellowface?
Now I’m fully prepared to acknowledge this is probably an old TV spot, and all that has been changed is the superimposed show title, venue and number to call for tickets at the end. In fact, having watched New York television for much of my life, I’d say this spot could be quite old, and may well have emanated from days when Pirates, The Mikado and H.M.S. Pinafore were the bedrock of your repertory.
But in light of all that has happened over the past four months, seeing those faux-Asian women giggling behind their fans seems wholly out of place, if not a slap at those who advocated for a more enlightened take from you going forward. I acknowledge the effort and cost of recutting, or even reshooting, a commercial, but it might have been wise for you to not keep propagating the very imagery that led you to decide to cancel your production.
There’s no way to know whether you’re buying broadcast or cable time for the spot, but you just posted it to YouTube at the beginning of this month. This morning, the spot was featured in an e-mail blast you sent. So this possibly vestigial ad is still very much part of your marketing.
As I noted in a conference call with David Wannen, it is not lost on us that Albert Bergeret, the company’s artistic director, has not – so far as I know, and I’d be happy to be corrected – publicly expressed his support for the decision to remove The Mikado from your repertoire pending a reconception. Even this brief glimpse of yellowface suggests that the message of respecting ethnicities other than white hasn’t really sunk in. In fact, this could be seen by some as you winking at the controversy and telling your regular audiences that your “traditions” will be upheld, even if your sole intent was to economize and recycle an existing ad.
C’mon NYGASP, you said you were going to do better. You’ve taken some important steps, but it seems you’ve still got a ways to go.
Thanks to Barb Leung for sharing the e-mail and video from NYGASP.
I was certainly going to the theatre, and to Broadway, by the 1980s, but I never did see a show in the Mark Hellinger Theatre on 51st Street before it was sold to the Times Square Church. I’ve often walked by the building, wondering about what lay inside its doors, where the original production of My Fair Lady played for six years. But I felt awkward about slipping inside as others gathered for prayer.
This weekend, when the church offered up a live radio play with free admission, I felt it wouldn’t be inappropriate to go inside, especially after I read every exterior sign to see if there was a proscription against pictures. Finding none, and with a good-sized camera around my neck, I entered with the audience, the vast majority of whom, if not all, were presumably entering for the event, not a glimpse of theatrical history. However, I was hardly the only person taking photos pre-show, and ushers smiled at me congenially as I walked around and snapped away. I left the auditorium ten minutes before the performance, and the building five minute before.
There’s no point in debating the wisdom of the theatre’s sale, or the possibly apocryphal stories about the onerous requirements that a prospective buyer would have to meet in order to reclaim the church as a performance venue. All I want to do is share some images of the theatre, which is stunning, and stunningly preserved.
As someone intensely interested in the arts since I was young, but in a family that wasn’t particularly arts-oriented, as someone educated three days a week in conservative Judaism while in elementary school, but increasingly uncertain of what it meant to me personally, Potok’s story of an Orthodox young man whose talent for painting took him beyond the strictures of his upbringing spoke to me very powerfully, even though I didn’t meet with parental opposition to my affinity, and lacked any particular talent. Asher was compelled by talent to become a rebel and I was, to all outward appearances, a conforming good boy. His story was my own minor struggle writ large. But despite admonitions that the arts were a terrible way to make a living (albeit not the sin that Asher was cautioned about), I went my own way too. And in college, I took a philosophy seminar with Potok, and was able to thank him for what his work meant to me, even as he opened new avenues of thought for me. Corollary: Philip Roth’s The Ghost Writer.
Even after I began my life in the theater, I still held romantic dreams of working in Hollywood, going so far as to spend a week interviewing at studios and production companies the year I turned 30. When, as a teen (and I still reread it annually), I first read this seminal novel of two men whose lives took them from New York to Hollywood, it offered me the already bygone allure of a different life, of fame and money, even as it showed the price one might pay to achieve such things. Yet as the years progressed, what I saw in the book evolved, as I realized that I was much more like the novel’s narrator than its hyper-precocious anti-hero. I wasn’t someone who could swim in the (seemingly) shark-infested waters of movie making. Where Sammy was once a book that offered the vision of a different life, it became an affirmation of the choices I’ve made, of staying in theater, and outside the commercial arena, of staying in the form and with the people with whom I’m most comfortable. Corollary: The Player by Michael Tolkin.
As children, we were always falling into fantasy worlds: on TV, in movies and in the pages of books. This hypnotic novel, which I read when it was first published, is probably the last time I recall being immersed in a fantasy completely—a fantasy that was at times dark, uncomfortable, and even incomprehensible. I don’t think I’ll ever quite understand its hold on me, how it manages to be entirely otherworldly and impossible in some ways and utterly believable in others. Even as I had entered the working world, saw how magic was made on stage from behind the scenes, and dealt with the mundanity of such things as paying rent and car loans, Dunn’s novel of a most unconventional, fractious, fantastical, and loving family—and how the legacy of any family lives on even after they’re gone—was a reminder of how completely a book could transport me. Corollary: from years earlier, the first “grown up” book with a comparable effect, despite being about rabbits, Richard Adams’s Watership Down.
