This week, Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s 1990 musical Assassins will have its first major New York performances since the 2004 Roundabout Theatre Company production*, in a concert version as part of City Center Encores!’s Off-Center series. Given the controversy sparked last month by The Public Theater’s Julius Caesar, in which Caesar and his wife were portrayed as analogues of Donald and Melania Trump, prompting the withdrawal of sponsors, sparking disruptions of performances and precipitating threats against the production, the theatre, the artists and the staff, it seemed an appropriate moment to speak with Weidman about how Assassins has been perceived over the past 26 years and how the newest incarnation might be received. Weidman, a former president of The Dramatists Guild, currently serves as president of the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund, founded to, according to the organization’s website, “advocate, educate and provide a new resource in defense of the First Amendment.” This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Howard Sherman: Given the state of discourse about public expression, given what happened with Julius Caesar in Central Park, it seems that putting up this show at this moment carries not necessarily more weight than other times, but that people may bring some other baggage to it in a different way they might have at other times. Back in 1991, it did not move to Broadway, the reason given being it wasn’t the right time, it was the first Gulf War, etc. Then there was the first planned Roundabout production, coming right after 9/11, when you and Steve and others felt it was not the right time to do the show. So is there ever a right time or ever a wrong time to do Assassins?

Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman

John Weidman: I don’t think there’s ever a wrong time to do it.  I think the reception of the first production was honestly more a function of the fact that people did not know what to expect when they came into to theater. They were not prepared for the shock value of the opening number, which was a deliberate choice on our part to kind of knock the audience off balance. I think that, 25 years ago, even though there had been many adventurous musicals that had been done, some people simply assumed that the musical theater was not an appropriate place in which to tackle material that was this fundamentally serious.  I think we’re well past that assumption at this point, given the kind of musicals that have been written in the last 25 years.

When the show was scheduled to be done at the Roundabout, and when we decided to delay the production after 9/11, that wasn’t a good time to do Assassins.  But it wasn’t because we thought people would find the show problematic, that they would resent a show about presidential assassins in that sudden new political moment.  In order to engage an audience, given the way the show’s designed and the way it’s written, it requires an audience which is, frankly, prepared to laugh in certain places, to take the humor on board.  That’s part of the roller coaster ride of the show.  We all felt that at that time, it was unfair to ask an audience which was grieving to come into a theater and to engage this kind of material in a way that was intermittently humorous. The show in that context simply wouldn’t work.  And If it wasn’t going to work, it made sense to delay the production.

As far as now goes?  When the show first opened, we had a conservative Republican in the White House, and then for eight years we had a centrist Democrat in the White House, and then for eight years we had a conservative Republican in the White House, and then we had a centrist Democrat who was black, and now we’ve got this guy.  The show’s been performed continuously over the course of those 25 years in all kinds of different political and socioeconomic contexts.  This is just a different one.

That said, people will obviously come into the theater from a different place, because the world outside the theater is a different place. Which will affect the way in which the members of the audience take the show on board.

But I don’t think it makes it a particularly good or bad time to do Assassins.  Personally, I think it’s always a good time to do the show, because the  show is meant to be provocative, and hopefully people will walk out of the theater talking about it, that it will provoke the kinds of conversations that Steve and I hoped it would provoke when we wrote it.  That should happen now the way it’s happened with previous productions.  They may be different conversations, but that’s what I would hope would happen.

Sherman: Have you and Steve made any changes in the show since it was last seen in New York, since the 2004 Roundabout production?

Weidman: No. The text of the show that’s going to be performed at City Center is exactly the same as the text which was performed at the Roundabout. And the text at the Roundabout was exactly the same as the text that was performed at Playwrights Horizons with the exception of “Something Just Broke,” the song which we added in London. The show’s really been what it’s been since it was first performed 25 years ago.

The 2017 Yale Repertory Theatre production of “Assassins” (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Sherman: Assassins was performed this spring at Yale Rep. Was there a difference in response to the show than for previous productions?

Weidman: You know, I was curious to see if there would be a difference in the way in which the show was received after the last election, and Yale was the first significant production that was available to me.  I didn’t feel, sitting in the audience, as if there was any kind of shift that I was aware of in terms of the way in which the audience was connecting to the material.

Sherman: Speaking to you both as an author of the piece, and also in your role with the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund, it’s fair to say that there was some very heightened conversation, and actions around the Julius Caesar, admittedly by people who didn’t see it, didn’t take the time to understand it or understand its context. In the wake of that, are you concerned at all about how, not even the audience, but how people external to the audience might choose to speak about this piece?

Weidman: The word you used was concerned.  I’m not in any way worried about it.  At the same time, I’m sensitive to the possibility that in this current political climate, there will be people who will react to the idea of a musical about the people who tried to attack the President, that they will react to that in a way which is similar to the way in which some people reacted to the show in 1991, when they hadn’t seen it and weren’t going to see it.  They simply knew what the show was about, and they had a problem with that. That happened then and that could conceivably happen now.

I do think that we’ve had 25 years in which this show’s been performed a lot everywhere, and so people have a better idea of what the show’s ambitions are and what its intentions are.  I’ve got Google alerts set on my computer to Assassins, because I’m always curious to see how the show’s being received. The reviews tend to be really good, which is always nice, but the main thing is people writing about the show all over the country, in a variety of different kinds of publications, seem to understand what Steve and I were intending. That’s really reassuring. People get the show. They can like any show, they can like it a lot or not like it a lot. But they seem to understand what we were doing, and I assume that that will be the case this time around as well.

Sherman: In reading some of the press about the prior productions and some of the commentary, one of the ways in which the show is described is that it’s about, and I’m not quoting here, I’m paraphrasing, it’s about an America that causes people who feel they have no voice to take extreme actions. As we look at politics today, there are those who say that where we are is about people who felt they were disenfranchised from the political system, and that has brought us to the real polarization that we’re at now. Might that affect people’s perceptions?

Weidman: As Steve and I started to talk about this material 25 years ago, I realized at a certain point very early on that what drew me to the material was an attempt to explain something to myself which I had not understood since I was 17 years old when Kennedy was shot. The Kennedy assassination was my first real experience of loss and  it was devastating to me. Two of my friends and I got together and we went down to D.C. and stood on the sidewalk as the funeral cortege went by, and all the subsequent attempts to try make sense of what happened — conspiracy theories. Was it the Cubans, was it the CIA, the FBI?  It all seemed like, on some level, a waste of time to me. The fundamental question was: how could so much grief and pain be caused by one angry little man in a t-shirt with a rifle in Texas?

When Steve and I started to talk about these other personalities who had articulated a variety of wildly different motives for attacking the President, we said, ‘Well if we gather them together and look at them as a group’ – something which had not been done much, even by academics – ‘would some common grievance, some common complaint beyond what they articulated begin to emerge?  And if it did, that would be a useful thing to write about.’  That is at the heart of what the piece explores. The people who, with one or two exceptions, picked up guns did tend to be, when you look at them as a group, people who were operating on the margins,  the fringes of what we would consider a mainstream American experience.

In the last election, a lot of people who you and I would have identified as operating on the margins of a mainstream middle-class American experience, cast their votes in a particular way and elected a particular guy President. That does seem to suggest a different way of looking at the characters on stage in the show.  I’m not quite sure what the change is.  I’m not quite sure what it means in terms of how one observes their behavior and listens to what they have to say.  But we are in a different political moment, and that moment will undoubtedly have an impact on how the audience responds to the piece.

I do think it will probably make for conversations on the way out of the theater which will be different from the conversations people might have had five years ago or ten years ago.  I’m not sure if any of that’s clear. If it’s not, it’s because it’s something I’m still working through in my own head.

The 2004 Roundabout Theatre Company production of “Assassins” (photo by Joan Marcus)

Sherman: Given that the run is sold out, if there is conversation about why this show at this time, and if people choose to try to politicize it, is there something you would like them to know beyond the simplistic plot descriptions of a marketing brochure or a PR release about the show?

Weidman: I have always felt that that it’s essential with this show that it be allowed to speak for itself.  It obviously can only speak to the audience that’s in the building, but that’s true of any theater piece.  You know, somebody can describe to you what Hamlet means, but if that’s all it took to appreciate Hamlet, then you wouldn’t have to waste time listening to Shakespeare’s language for three and a half hours. I think you need to experience the piece itself, and I think that’s true of this piece. That said, Assassins is an exploration of where these vicious acts came from, in an attempt to get a better handle on how to prevent them from happening again in the future.

Sherman: Speaking to your role with the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund: is there any sense that there has been a change in people wanting to assert their own prerogative over what happens on stage? Has that changed in the past six to eight months? Does DLDF have more concerns now than in the past, or is it just consistent with the kinds of challenges that you’ve faced?

Weidman: I’m not aware of any kind of seismic shift, in terms of what people are either attempting to repress or ways in which people are self-censoring, although it would be hard to know about the second one. It may be the decisions at the high school level, it may the decisions at the amateur level, but also at the stock level, that people are making more cautious decisions in terms of what they think a school board or parent body or a subscriber base is going to be comfortable with.  It’s entirely possible that they are shying away from things which they think are likely to be controversial.  I would obviously hope not, because this seems to me a period when it’s important for controversial material to be produced and to become part of the national conversation.

When DLDF gave an award last year to Jeffrey Seller, and Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Thomas Kail, and the cast of Hamilton for the speech that was made from the stage when Mike Pence was in the audience, I wrote the citation and I handed the award to Jeffrey. The point I wanted to make most forcefully was that Mike Pence apparently had stood there and listened and that was fine, but the President-elect the next morning had not only castigated the cast for being rude, but he had instructed them to apologize.  I said if censors tell artists what they’re not allowed to say – here we have someone going beyond that, instructing artists what they’re required to say.  The latter is a genuinely frightening prospect, and I wouldn’t have thought five years ago that it was something we had to be concerned about, but I think we all feel like we’re living in a new world where anything is possible and nothing is surprising.

* There was a one-night reunion concert of the 2012 cast, held as a benefit for Roundabout.

Does anyone remember last summer’s The Taming of the Shrew in Central Park? It opened with an entirely non-Shakespearean beauty pageant and talent show, led by a buffoonish figure costumed to look very much like a billionaire presidential candidate who has owned, and exploited, beauty pageants of his own. Coming in a production in which the entire cast was women, in a play that is widely considered to be misogynist in our era, it was a broad parody, a buffoonish portrayal of a political figure who had yet to consolidate his electoral power. But there was no mistaking that this was meant to be Donald J. Trump.

Now Trump is president and, by all accounts, he is once again on stage at The Public Theater’s Delacorte Theater—or rather Julius Caesar is on stage costumed to evoke the now-president, complete with a fashionable spouse who reportedly speaks in an Eastern European accent. Because Caesar is – as we all know – killed, the layering of present day politics in America over a 400-year old play (set even centuries) earlier is being said by some to have crossed a line. Lumped together with Kathy Griffin’s less classically oriented gory political theatre in which she posed with a bloody head, strongly implied to be that of the president, The Public’s Caesar quickly became a target for such media outlets as Breitbart and Fox News, even drawing a certain Donald Jr. into Twitter commentary.

“I wonder how much of this ‘art’ is funded by taxpayers?,” tweeted the presidential scion. “Serious question, when does ‘art’ become political speech & does that change things?” A Fox News tweet, headlined “NYC Play Appears to Depict Assassination of @POTUS,” was appended.

The tweet itself, for those inclined to look at such things analytically, undermined itself with its intellectual flabbiness. There is no hard line between art and politics, no absolute moment when one becomes the other. The Public Theater is hardly a stranger to melding the two, with shows ranging from Hair in the 1960s to Hamilton in 2015. It staged David Hare’s Stuff Happens and Tony Kushner’s The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide. Always socially minded, it is at least as outspoken as ever under the leadership of Oskar Eustis, the proud and vocal product of a left-wing youth. Indeed, there has been very little at The Public during Eustis’s tenure that hasn’t been easy to examine through a political prism.

Yesterday, when pressure from Breitbart, from Fox, from the Trump family, reached a point when it may have seemed to them politically, corporately, and publicly untenable from a perceptual angle to underwrite (with many others) the production, Delta Airlines disavowed The Public, pulling their support from the theatre entirely. Bank of America followed suit, but somewhat more guardedly, only pulling their support of Caesar itself. In doing so, they gave the production – for which tickets are free – vastly more attention than it had already received. Even as theatre die-hards were focused on The Tony Awards, the story of the Trump-like Caesar exploded in the media.

In statements and tweets, Delta stuck to a singular sentiment:

No matter what your political stance may be, the graphic staging of Julius Caesar at this summer’s Free Shakespeare in the Park does not reflect Delta Air Lines’ values. Their artistic and creative direction crossed the line on the standards of good taste. We have notified them of our decision to end our sponsorship as the official airline of The Public Theater effective immediately.

Bank of America stated:

Bank of America supports arts programs worldwide, including an 11-year partnership with The Public Theater and Shakespeare in the Park. The Public Theater chose to present Julius Caesar in such a way that was intended to provoke and offend. Had this intention been made known to us, we would have decided not to sponsor it. We are withdrawing our funding for this production.

In a report for Deadline, Jeremy Gerard noted that the airline’s support fell in the $100,000 to $499,000 category of sponsorship; airline arts support typically takes the form of vouchers for flights or a bank of so much value that can be used to acquire tickets, though it’s possible that there was cash involved. Certainly, that’s the likely case with Bank of America, which like many corporations has philanthropic arms, though in recent years corporate philanthropy has become inextricably linked with marketing and public relations.

Does The Public have the absolute right to stage the works it chooses and in the manner it sees fit? Yes, it certainly does. It is an independent not-for-profit organization, and what it chooses to produce, to share with audiences, is entirely the responsibility of the staff and, by extension, the board of directors. Does it have an absolute right to sponsorship or donations from any particular organizations? No. That is the result of fundraising, of a cost benefit analysis on the part of any potential sponsor or donor. If they like the work, the mission, the initiatives, of The Public – or any arts organization – individuals, government sources, foundations and corporations may choose to support it.

But there’s no mistaking the actions of Delta and Bank of America as anything but political acts as well, cloaked in the guise of corporate sensitivity. While they have not said exactly what line has been crossed by Caesar, it doesn’t seem that it’s about blood or even gore. Shakespeare is filled with violence and its results, though typically in service of a larger message. But with their decision to publicly pull funding, and even sever a long relationship in the case of Delta, these corporations are saying to those who take offense at an obviously fictional portrayal of Julius Caesar as a Trump stand-in that they don’t countenance such things, that they are shocked, shocked to find politics on stage at The Public, even a mock assassination, and don’t want to be a part of it.

As a number of sources online have noted, Delta’s outrage seems rather selective. In 2012, The Guthrie Theatre and The Acting Company staged and toured a Julius Caesar with a slim black actor being “murdered” in the Senate as Caesar, midway through the Obama presidency. Some critics remarked on the parallel to the then-president, but Delta’s sponsorship there was unruffled. Why was the death of one presidential doppelganger OK while another crossed a line? I suspect the corporate PR department of Delta is unlikely to answer that question.

By pulling their support, have Delta and Bank of America censored Caesar and The Public? Are any First Amendment rights being trampled? On an absolute level – no. Media commentary cuts both ways. The participation of a member of the governing family, however, which has blended the personal and the political in countless ways, is the kernel of official censorship. Yet the show goes on (although it ends its brief run this week) and, so far as any reports have indicated, neither company attempted to get the production altered to make it more palatable to their tastes. Indeed, it’s unclear whether either company has had any representatives see Caesar in the park, or have made their decision, cloaked behind corporate statement, based solely on the media coverage.

Will there be a backlash to the actions of these companies? Will those who support The Public and free expression in the arts now make their feelings known to these companies, and others that might jump on the bandwagon? It’s very likely. It’s also possible that those who support these decisions will affirm it as well. People will refuse to fly Delta and keep their money with Bank of America, even as others will opt in to the carrier and the financial institution. Beyond merely expressing support and dissent, the era of dueling boycotts is probably upon us. Delta and B of A may find they have become the preferred outlets for the right and even the alt-right. By making this choice in their support, and withholding of support, of the arts, they have become politically-tinged corporations, aligned with a certain point of view.

The true danger here is that supporters of the arts will begin to interrogate possible beneficiaries of their intent for each and every undertaking, keeping funds from organizations and initiatives that might be aligning themselves politically by making any comment, right or left, Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative. After all B of A judges that the production set out to “provoke and offend.” No doubt Eustis wanted to provoke, that’s his stock in trade. But offend? That’s less clear.

Will the fear of media backlash force organizations to choose between commenting in any manner through their work on what the prevailing issues of the day may be and gaining public or private funds to do their work? Could this be the harbinger of a forced conservatism in the arts, because so many companies cannot survive without the infusion of donated funds?

It’s worth noting that the National Endowment for the Arts felt it necessary to make clear it had not supported The Public’s Julius Caesar:

The National Endowment for the Arts makes grants to nonprofit organizations for specific projects. In the past, the New York Shakespeare Festival has received project-based NEA grants to support performances of Shakespeare in the Park by the Public Theater. However, no NEA funds have been awarded to support this summer’s Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar and there are no NEA funds supporting the New York State Council on the Arts’ grant to Public Theater or its performances.

The issue evolving with Caesar in Central Park is the canary in the coal mine, and an emblem of the potentially Faustian bargain one strikes when asking for major donations. Fortunately, The Public can sustain itself even with hundreds of thousands of dollars of lost support, but they are among the largest of theatres in the country. Indeed, they may take a page from the political playbook and raise new funds off of this action against their work. But smaller companies might not be so well positioned, resulting in a flight to safer work to avoid what has just happened. Strangely enough, it is the commercial theatre, which relies solely on ticket sales for revenue, which may be in the safer position to make political statements, as was the case with the cast of Hamilton sharing thoughts with Mike Pence. Their contract is directly with the audience, and if the work finds partisans for partisan messages, then the shows will run.

Vastly more people will hear about the Trumpian Caesar than can possibly see it. They will form opinions based on media accounts, and they can and will debate whether it’s right or wrong, proper or improper, wise or foolish to stage a show in which a presidential stand-in in killed, even in the context of a classic work, taught in many high schools, where few will be surprised by the emperor’s untimely end. But the actions of Delta and B of A, especially at a time when the administration in Washington has expressed a desire to shutter both the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, risk being the first steps in a new cultural McCarthyism. That serves no one who believes in free expression, whatever they have to say, no matter how ugly or difficult what they have to express may be to hear, no matter what their politics may be. Everyone should be concerned.

UPDATE: June 12, 2017, 5:30 pm: The Public Theater released a statement this afternoon in response to the controversy surrounding Julius Caesar. It reads, in full:

We stand completely behind our production of Julius Caesar. We recognize that our interpretation of the play has provoked heated discussion; audiences, sponsors and supporters have expressed varying viewpoints and opinions. Such discussion is exactly the goal of our civically-engaged theater; this discourse is the basis of a healthy democracy. Our production of Julius Caesar in no way advocates violence towards anyone. Shakespeare’s play, and our production, make the opposite point: those who attempt to defend democracy by undemocratic means pay a terrible price and destroy the very thing they are fighting to save. For over 400 years, Shakespeare’s play has told this story and we are proud to be telling it again in Central Park.

UPDATE: June 12, 2017, 7:00 pm: The Dramatists Legal Defense Fund has issued a statement of support for The Public Theater. It reads, in part:

Good taste is a matter of opinion and an “intention to provoke” may be an integral part of a play’s mission. The works of Shakespeare are replete with representations of regicide, and potentially objectionable and graphic violence of all sorts, but Delta doesn’t appear to have had a problem with the “values” or “taste” of such depictions before. The fact is that, for hundreds of years, this particular play has been understood to be a critique of political violence, not an endorsement of it.  As director Oskar Eustis explained, “Julius Caesar can be read as a warning parable to those who try to fight for democracy by undemocratic means. To fight the tyrant does not mean imitating him.” So those criticizing this production for endorsing violence against President Trump seem to be willfully misinterpreting it, for their own political ends.

UPDATE: June 13, 2017, 8 am: From Oskar Eustis’s remarks before the opening night performance of Julius Caesar on June 12:

Julius Caesar warns about what happens when you try to preserve democracy by non-democratic means and again, spoiler alert, it doesn’t end up too good. But at the same time, one of the dangers that is unleashed by that is the danger of a large crowd of people manipulated by their emotions, taken over by leaders who urge them to do things that not only are against their interest, but destroy the very institutions that are there to serve and protect them. This warning is a warning that is in this show and we’re really happy to be playing that story for you tonight.

What I also want to say, and in this I speak, I am proud to say for The Public Theater past, present and I hope future, for the staff of The Public Theater, for the crews at The Public Theater, for the board of directors of the Public Theater, for Patrick Willingham and myself, when I say that we are here to uphold the Public’s mission, and The Public’s mission is to say that the culture belongs to everybody, needs to belong to everybody, to say that art has something to say about the great civic issues of our time and to say that like drama, democracy depends on the conflict of different points of view. Nobody owns the truth. We all own the culture.

One doesn’t expect to hear the words “nudity” and “children’s theatre” discussed in the same sentence. But there’s been a lot of that juxtaposition going around up in Boston as a result of the Boston Children’s Theatre production of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest in the latter half of April. “Artistic director caught in storm over nude scene at Boston Children’s Theatre” blared the headline in The Boston Globe one day late last week, only to be followed the next day by “Amid nudity flap, board member resigns at Boston Children’s Theatre.” WBUR’s The Artery had commentary headed “Nudity Turns ‘Cuckoo’s Nest’ Into Hornet’s Nest at Boston Children’s Theatre.”

The headlines were spurred by internal disputes between the board and staff of BCT regarding the nudity in the production. Executive artistic director Burgess Clark informed the press that he is on layoff at the moment, as an alternative to his resigning, in the face of what he sees as board meddling in his artistic prerogatives. He characterized what took place to Don Aucoin of the Globe as attempted censorship by two “overreactionary ninnies” on the company’s board.

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Scene from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, as seen in The Boston Globe

The fuller situation, as pieced together from e-mail correspondence with Clark and BCT executive director Toby Schine, a phone conversation with BCT board member Henry Lukas, and the press accounts, is as follows.

The not-for-profit BCT, through its program for young people aged 14 to 19, has been producing shows in the past few years geared towards more mature youths, including Rent, Spring Awakening and Reflections of a Rock Lobster. Cuckoo’s Nest was part of that progression of work. Clark says that he has done the full texts of those shows, not student editions.

When Cuckoo’s Nest was announced for production, there was no public notice that nudity would be part of the production, nor was the board apprised of it. Clark, in an e-mail, said that the nudity (one male actor, aged 21, enacted during an exchange that covers less than one page of the acting edition script) was not pre-planned, but, per Clark, originated at the actor’s suggestion at the first rehearsal. “I asked him if he had ever appeared nude onstage before and he said no,” wrote Clark, “but that he was willing. I thought it was a brave risk for a young actor to offer.  I told him we would attempt it if it seemed organic. Five weeks later when we were in tech, we tried it and it played beautifully.  The cast had become so comfortable with one another by that point that it was pretty casual and had just the right tone.”

Asked when he learned of the nudity, Schine, the executive director, wrote, “Burgess mentioned it to me two weeks in to the rehearsal process. He had considered it for the scene in the pre-production, but thought it better not to take the risk, given that we likely wouldn’t have an actor who was comfortable with the idea. On the first day of rehearsal, the actor playing McMurphy, Sam Mulcahy, asked if the scene would be played with him nude for a few moments – Burgess then reconsidered. He finally said he wanted to move ahead with it two weeks before we opened.”

For student performances, the actor wore boxer shorts, and for the first two general public performances (there were ten general audience shows in total), he wore them as well. The nudity was introduced at the third public performance and was in place for the remainder of the run.

“We had agreed to try it both ways—so we did it without the nude scene the first two performances and did on the next two,” wrote Clark. “The scene as we had rehearsed it (nude) worked much better with our audiences.” In light of that decision, Schine wrote, “We contacted the parents involved in the scene and had discussions with them, [and] had Sam Mulcahy sign a nudity waiver based on AEA’s for his protection and for the theatres.”

During the second week of the three-week run, following the introduction of the nude scene, all parties agree that two board members contacted Schine to discuss the nudity; one audience member also called the company with concerns. What is unclear is the exact nature of the board members’ communications, which has been described variously as “demands from the board members to cut the nude scene” to “a concern about process.” Arts Integrity has asked Schine for clarification, since he was on the calls, and none of the complaints went directly from board members to Clark; as of the morning of May 9, Schine’s e-mail has an auto-respond message saying he is out of the office for two days.

In response to the initial expressions of concern, heated or not, Clark writes, “Toby called Hank [Miller, the board president] back and Hank said, ‘This is an artistic decision and I have to trust you to make the right one. You have my support.’” Lukas, the board member interviewed, confirms that Miller gave his support and makes clear that the board never met or discussed the issue until after the production had closed, and that at no time did the board ask for the production to be altered. Clark acknowledges that the two board members were acting independently.

Clark has said that from the time the concerns were raised, he felt uncertain from day to day as to whether the show would go on. He characterizes the subsequent events as, “After daily harassment from these board members, who were acting completely without authority, I made my plan to resign.  My board president and my executive producer collectively offered the alternative of being temporarily laid off rather than have me resign, until they could present a united front from the board. That has yet to take place.”

Subsequent to this, one of the two board members who took issue with the nudity resigned. The board met on Monday May 8, following which Lukas said, of the more advanced work Burgess has done with the older participants, “Burgess has done a great job.” He went on to say, “We’re hoping that we can sit down with Burgess, clarify the issues and have him back. Asked whether there have been any other organizational changes coming out of the meeting, Lukas responded, “Not that we’ve finalized, no.”

News accounts report that the staff has gone on “strike” in support of Clark, and BCT classes were canceled this past weekend. Asked about the strike, Schine responded, “I did not strike – I felt it was most advantageous for our process as an organization to stay on staff and work aggressively to move conversations forward between our Board President, Burgess and the Staff. As of this moment, I’m hopeful that we will be able to move past this challenge towards a very invigorated Boston Children’s Theatre. We’ve had very, very challenging conversations, and we have learned a lot as an organization about how we need to re-align our organizational spine.”

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Scene from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest at Boston Children’s Theatre (BCT publicity photo)

There are numerous issues bound up in the situation at Boston Children’s Theatre – censorship, public nudity, content for children’s theatre, not-for-profit leadership and governance among them – and they bear consideration, separately and together.

Taking censorship first, it is clear from all accounts that the board of trustees Boston Children’s Theatre did not attempt to censor Burgess Clark’s production of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. While two board members independently did express concern – what they sought, how strongly, how often and at what volume is in dispute – they were not acting on behalf of the board. The board never met to discuss the issue while the show was running, and the board president was supportive of the company’s staff leadership in making the decision that they thought best under the circumstances.

In a letter to the BCT board, dated May 8, the National Coalition Against Censorship’s Director of Programs, Svetlana Mintcheva wrote, in part:

“Adults, possibly shamed about their own thoughts and fantasies, may occasionally be embarrassed, but if anyone can look at a nude and not see an issue, it is a child. Nevertheless, there are frequent calls to censor artwork containing nudity so as to “protect children” from what some claim is “indecent,” or simply to avoid controversy.

However, the U.S. Supreme Court has stated multiple times that simple nudity (i.e., representations of the nude body in a non-sexualized manner) is constitutionally protected expression. Schad v. Mount Ephraim (1981), Jenkins v. Georgia (1974), Osborne v. Ohio (1990).”

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest was originally seen as a three-act play on Broadway in 1963 for a short run and subsequently revised into a two act for an Off-Broadway revival in 1971. The Off-Broadway script is the one that is available for production through Samuel French. It carries a message from playwright Dale Wasserman saying:

“There is profanity and strong language in the play. Particularly as concerns educational institutions and community theatre, you may feel free to modify or delete language which may give offense in your community without, however, altering the basic text.”

What it does not have is any stage direction indicating nudity. Indeed, in the scene in question, the script notes that the character of McMurphy, when told to remove a towel around his waist, reveals silk boxers covered in white whales, saying:

“Ain’t they some shit? They was a present from a co-ed at Oregon State. She said I was some kind of symbol.”

Commenting on the addition of nudity in his production, Clark wrote, “When it was written, I doubt that would have even been an option.” At a separate point in the correspondence, he wrote, responding to a question about the dialogue about the boxers, “The dialogue was the same with and without the boxer shorts. The particular line ‘Ain’t they some shit?’ (which now referenced his manhood on display) got quite a laugh as I recall.”

In a phone call with Samuel French, the company’s executive director Bruce Lazarus said that BCT had not sought any permission to alter any of the show’s text. Stage directions and costuming, however, are not the same as text in some cases, and not always followed in staging shows unless the action is essential to the plot or the author’s clear intent.

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The issue of nudity on stage is a complicated one when working with professional actors, let alone young ones. Professional practice generally requires that any role requiring nudity be stated as such in a casting notice, and that the actor agree to it in writing at the time of contracting. In university theatres, many schools have guidelines that require nudity to be discussed prior to the start of production with a department chair, and state that no student should be required to perform nude or appear in a production with nudity if they do not wish to do so, among other protections (including prohibitions on photography and video recording of any nude scenes). The advance notices and stipulations are designed to insure that, in the power dynamic between a director (who also may be an employer or teacher) and their cast, no one is expected or pressured to participate in a process that makes them uncomfortable, or seen to be opposing the wishes of the majority opinion on such matters. Such guidelines have been increasingly implemented over the past few decades as protection for all concerned.

While the actor who appeared nude reportedly suggested the idea himself, and the other actors who appeared on stage in the scene who were under 18 received parental approval to participate, the process for nudity in a children’s theatre production could have been more thorough, consistent with professional or educational practice. Burgess professed to being surprised that the nudity had become “such an electric issue.” Separately, he wrote, “The nude scene is organic to the story, and I was proud to again be the first children’s’ theatre in the country to be staging full male nudity by a 21-year old actor.”

This also begs the question of whether it was appropriate to make the audience aware of the nudity, especially in the context of production by a youth theatre program that’s part of a children’s theatre company. “We gave ample warning of the nudity, language and adult themes,” Clark wrote. Schine wrote, “The audience was warned on signs upon entering the theatre, the website, during a curtain speech and in the playbill. During the tech process, we invited parents, theatre staff (those not working on the show already) and solicited opinions.”

However, while notice may have been given at the theatre, BCT’s website speaks only of  “strong language and adult themes,” and notes that, “No one under 14 will be admitted without a guardian’s permission.” Unless there was a pop-up box in the ordering process, now disabled, there is not specificity about nudity in the online advisories. With the nudity only added to the show following the first two performances, the question of whether ticket buyers should have been or were advised about the nudity in advance of arriving at the performance, and how and when, remains unclear.

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Regardless of one’s moral, ethical or even legal perspective on the issues surrounding Cuckoo’s Nest at BCT, the problems that emerged would seem to stem in particular from a failure of communications within the totality of the organization. While board members certainly have the right to share their thoughts with the company’s leadership, if individual board members did in fact demand that the show be altered, they were placing the executive director in an untenable situation, since artistic and managerial leaders typically report jointly to the board, not to individual board members or factions within the board. If that was their demand, as characterized by Clark, then they should have asked for an emergency board meeting to address such an action, since artistic leaders are indeed empowered to make creative decisions for the organization, but are ultimately accountable to a board. If they were asking only for conversation, as characterized by Lukas, then Schine’s account of the conversations may have precipitated the kind of brinksmanship that arose, as Clark was relying upon what he was told by Schine, having never spoken directly to the complainants. The circumstances remain unclear.

While at professional organizations, or for that matter any not-for -profit, the danger of a board trying to micromanage, let alone dictate appropriate artistic content, is always a concern. Strong artsboards have grappled with the issues of governance and put in place procedures for communication and oversight of staff. However, when an artistic director has no direct communications with any of the board in a time of crisis, that is only bound to exacerbate issues. Additionally, when an organization is anticipating potentially controversial issues, not apprising the board in advance, or as soon as possible when such circumstances arise, is foolhardy, since the board’s support and guidance can help to protect against any blowback.

It’s impossible to say how this will all resolve, since the situation seems fluid. There appears to be a great deal more communication needed, ideally with all pertinent parties in the same room at the same time. As for the efforts of BCT to serve older youths beyond the nomenclature of “children’s theatre”? That seems a worthy goal, provided the company follows best practices, hewing to, as the vision statement on their website includes, “maintaining and understanding artistic discipline,” with “professionalism and professional standards play[ing] a key role.” That process calls for – and in light of the specific controversy you should pardon the expression – getting everything out into the open. Everyone in leadership, staff and board, at BCT, needs to be on the same page, on the same team, and acting in the very best interests of the young people they are there to train and serve.

Addendum: As this post was to be published, Don Aucoin at The Boston Globe published a commentary piece which also sought opinions from other youth theatre companies in the Boston area. You can read it here. It concludes with a paragraph that seems counterproductive to a positive theatergoing experience. It reads:

“Reassuring words, but it’s still probably wise for parents to be ready to clap their hands over the eyes or ears of their little ones when they take them to any theater, anywhere. Just in case.”

That seems an awful state of mind for parents to be in when taking their children to the theatre. If they have any concerns, they should call the theatre company and inquire as to specifics of content. Sitting poised for alarm seems no way for anyone to attend the theatre, and to do so seems a certain way of spoiling the show for both parents and children.

Update, May 11, 7 am: The Boston Globe reports that Burgess Clark and the Boston Children’s Theatre staff have returned to work at the company. A total of three board members, specifically board president Hank Miller as well as the two trustees who registered complaints about the nudity in Cuckoo’s Nest, have resigned. The company’s annual benefit, which generates roughly 10% of its income, has been postponed from next week until the autumn. A series of steps are being put into place to address longstanding financial instabilities which have come to light, as well as the company’s failure to compete mandatory tax filings since 2014.

Update, May 12, 8 am: Contrary to their account from one day earlier, The Boston Globe now reports that there is again a rift a Boston Children’s Theatre. Next steps seem to be uncertain following the seeming detente of the prior 24 hours.

This post will be updated as circumstances warrant.

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Note: in the interest of full disclosure, I acknowledge that I attended high school and was friends with BCT board member Lori Correale. While I was aware of her son’s participation in the company, I did not know she was a board member until I began researching this article, at which point I determined that I couldn’t interview her, in order to avoid any real or perceived conflict of interest. I did ask her for help with contact information for board members who might be willing to speak with me.

According to an old aphorism, “dog bites man” is not big news, however “man bites dog” is something to report. Consequently, in the arts world, “board of directors fires staff” may be of interest, but it’s hardly novel. “Staff fires board of directors” is something else entirely, and that’s what’s playing out right now in Seattle.

Of course, that’s highly reductive, but the fact is, on April 24, the majority of the staff of Theatre Puget Sound, a theatrical service organization for the greater Seattle community, signed a letter to their board which began, “In good faith, we ask you to resign from the TPS Board of Directors. We do this because you have given us reason to have no confidence in your leadership.” It further read, in part:

We stand united to inform you that we will not continue working under your governance. Should you reject this request for your resignation, we will discontinueour employment by May 7.

TPS is now paralyzed by an atmosphere of distrust and organizational dysfunction of your collective making and perpetuation, and only a newly constituted Board of Directors working in full trust, transparency, and partnership with an appropriately supported Executive Director and staff can effectively govern the organization going forward.

This request is made solely with the best interest of Theatre Puget Sound, its mission, and its membership in mind. In the Summer of 2016 you set in motion a cascade of substantial organizational actions, the inevitable consequences of which cannot now be disguised or avoided.

TPS
 cannot function without the current staff, but it can and will function without the existing Board.

To date, the TPS board has not resigned, and evidences no intention of doing so.

TPS has been going through a good deal of transition lately. Karen Lane, the organization’s longtime executive director, left her post in November 2016, succeeded on an interim basis by Zhenya Lavy, who had joined TPS in September 2016 as Lane’s deputy. According to a report by Rich Smith in The Stranger, the board asserts that it received a letter from Lavy on April 1, “demanding that they end their search for an executive director, install her in that position, and guarantee her a certain salary. If they don’t meet those demands, then she walks May 5. They have until April 7 to respond.” Per Smith, the board did not agree to the demands and reasserted their intention to conduct a full search.

In Smith’s account, “Lavy paints her ultimatum to the board–that they make her executive director or she leaves May 5 – as a matter of survival…even after working there for a few months, Lavy claims the board hadn’t yet outlined a clear job description for her, nor had they discussed pay commensurate to the task. Because she had been working so much since she started –spending upwards of three nights in arrow sleeping in the office, she says– she’d have to leave the company by May 5 in order to save her health.”

When the staff demanded the board resignation, one employee name was absent, that of Shane Regan, listed on the company website as being in charge of “programs” while identified by Smith in The Stranger as “membership programs associate.” Whatever his title, in the immediate wake of these events, an outpouring of comment on Facebook characterized Regan as the popular, most public face of TPS. Shortly before the letter was sent to the board asking then to resign, Lavy terminated Regan, she says for cause. Rumors swirled that he was fired for refusing to sign the letter, but Regan told Smith that he was never asked to sign the letter.

Smith reported that Lavy was suspended for firing Regan without board approval, but board member Shawn Belyea, who is speaking publicly on behalf of the board, told Arts Integrity that that was not the case. While being careful not to discuss matters that about employees that are legally precluded from being made public, Belyea did not cite Regan’s firing as the cause of her suspension, referring instead to the totality of recent events. He affirmed that the hiring and firing of staff members was within the purview of the executive director.

Because the day of Regan’s firing and the staff letter was also supposed to be the day of a board meeting, Belyea cites the circumstances of the meeting’s cancellation as one reason why Lavy has been suspended, even as he notes that because Regan never signed a termination letter, his status is actually now that of being on vacation. Belyea explained:

Unless it’s stated in the bylaws that you will have x number of public meetings or all your meetings will be public or any of those things, standard practice for non-profits is not public board meetings. Nor would there typically be public notice of the board meeting. So if you go back to Monday there was an announcement put out by the staff on the TPS website that said the board meeting is open to the public. Come to the public board meeting of the TPS board. So that alone constitutes some questionable action. Posting that, then sending out a public notice specifically inviting people from the public to come to the board meeting, that is also a very questionable act.

We had two options in this situation as a board. We have to go to the place where it has been incorrectly posted that the public is invited, where we know from other sources that people have been invited and told that the meeting is public. So we are faced with two choices: we have to go in and tell everybody, no, the board meetings are not public and then close the doors and exclude all these people, or we have to cancel the board meeting and do a separate executive session and start doing some investigation into why these things are happening and what is the agenda of the group that is doing them. All of these things happened on the day of the board meeting, so we did not have a lot of time to respond…

There’s a whole series of actions there that we need to investigate exactly who made those decisions, how those decisions came to be made, what the impact of those decisions are, what the legal ramifications of those decisions are, how these things were communicated to the staff, how these things reflect what the staff believes, what are the staff’s understanding of the situation of their decisions – there’s just a tremendous amount of fact finding that we have to do, partly because none of these actions were taken by the board.

Arts Integrity attempted to reach both Zhenya Lavy and staff member Catherine Blake Smith, identified by The Stranger as “membership and communications specialist,” but received no replies. A Facebook post by by former executive director Karen Lane, cited in The Stranger, backed the call for the board to resign.

In the staff’s resignation request, mention is made of legal counsel advising the staff, which led them to proffer the steps by which the board could resign and a new board take over without jeopardizing the company’s not-for-profit status. Belyea said the board has consulted several attorneys on not-for-profit procedure and human resources procedures, and was also being counseled by Josef Krebs at the consulting firm of Scandiuzzi Krebs, with additional support their City of Seattle liaison at the Seattle Center, where TPS manages multiple rehearsal studios.

Bottom line? It’s a mess. It’s also a very public mess, not simply because of the reporting in The Stranger, but because Lavy sent the request for the board’s resignation to a wide cross section of the Seattle community, including the media, leaders of other arts organizations, community philanthropists and more, and even included a pair of internal e-mails by the board. In addition, Lavy attached the theatre’s whistleblower policy, adopted only at the end of February.

This situation will play out for some time in Seattle. Belyea said the board’s investigation of events was not yet complete when speaking on April 20; a public forum on the situation is scheduled for April 27. It is described as follows on the company Facebook page:

The purpose of this meeting is to dialogue with members concerning recent events at TPS and to provide details regarding the upcoming search for the next Executive Director. Part of this discussion will be for the Board to hear feedback on how best to ensure members are meaningfully involved in the ED search process.

It’s worth noting that with Lavy’s circulation of the whistleblower policy, a flaw in that policy may be exposed. While it seems primarily structured to address issues that arise within the staff, within the board, or between the two, it doesn’t seem to speak to when the two constituencies find themselves in the position of questioning the performance of one another as complete entities. While the policy does allow for circumstances where an executive director’s complaints are lodged against the whole board, in which case they are to consult outside legal counsel, the policy does not suggest that such consultation precipitate the removal of the board. Indeed, the board that has the ultimate legal and fiduciary responsibility for the organization.

The circumstances that led to the brinksmanship at TPS are certainly specific to the organization and the individuals involved, both staff and board. Parsing every gory detail won’t serve the larger national arts community, though The Stranger is on the case for those who want more information, and for future study by arts management educators and students. However, the bird’s eye view of the contretemps should serve as a reminder for boards and executive and senior leadership of arts organizations to examine their practices and policies, because while the situation is rare, it demonstrates how a rapid cascade of events can put an arts organization at risk. That it holds the organization up for public examination, while embarrassing, is not necessarily a problem in and of itself, because it forces the organization to address what have surely been long festering concerns and structural issues.

To be sure, there is crisis at Theatre Puget Sound. As of this writing, the organization’s website lists only two staff members; one week ago it listed five. However, while who has acted properly or improperly, and who has the best interests of TPS at heart – and most likely everyone does, just as everyone probably shares some burden of blame for what evolved – are important questions, certainly a thorough reexamination of the organization’s purpose, structure, leadership and governance is vital. It’s regrettable that it took such an adversarial situation to bring it to the fore.

P.S. While it may now be a footnote in regional theatre lore, in 1976, Adrian Hall, artistic director of Trinity Repertory Theatre in Rhode Island, did essentially fire the theatre’s board when they sought to fire him after a controversial season. He replaced them with a board that supported his artistic vision. But that was 41 years ago, and Hall had personally founded the company. Few have tried it since, or at least few have tried and succeeded.

This post will be updated if the parties concerned respond to Arts Integrity’s prior inquiries, and as events transpire.

An earlier version of this post misspelled Josef Krebs’s first name. It has been corrected above.

The shutting down of a high school play at East Newton High School in Granby, Missouri last week may have set a new low in bad timing for such incidents. The show was not canceled after casting, during rehearsals, just prior to opening night or following the first performance. No, at East Newton the show was canceled roughly 10 minutes into the second act on its first night. Why? Because two parents, watching the show, demanded that their child be pulled off the stage.

The reasoning? As one of the parents claimed on Facebook, “The play consisted of extreme amounts of cursing, drug use and sexually explicit content. There was language speaking about dildos, pornography, virgins and cherry popping. A student flipped off a teacher.”

With the cast member taken from the stage, a hasty explanation of the remainder of the show was offered. The school would not permit the show to have its second performance, even if a replacement actor had been found in time.

What was the show with this offensive content? A stage adaptation of the widely-loved John Hughes coming of age film The Breakfast Club, released 32 years ago. But therein lies another problem, namely that there is no authorized stage adaptation of The Breakfast Club. The production at East Newton was a wholly homegrown affair, save for the source material itself.

It’s impossible, unless one saw the truncated performance or was involved in the production, to debate whether the material was or was not appropriate for high school production. To what degree the words or actions on the East Newton stage were simply transcribed from the screenplay and copied from the film, or were altered, amended, edited and so on, may never be widely known. The film itself was one of only two of the “golden era” John Hughes to be rated R by the MPAA (the other being Trains, Planes and Automobiles).

The drama teacher, new to the school this year, told Arts Integrity that, regarding authorship, “A local teacher edited the show.” He also acknowledged the lack of rights, writing, “We were unable to obtain rights, the show has never been released as a play. I did a lot of research and found that there is no one to obtain the rights [from]. So we did some creative donation to make it closer to legal.” Asked to explain what “creative donation” meant, he replied, “We weren’t really charging admission. We put out a suggested donation to the drama club.”

As is often the case when shows are shut down by school officials, a campaign to get it restored began quickly, with a former drama club president, now a college student, leading the charge. He rallied support on social media, instigated a lengthy Facebook chain, coined the hashtag #LetThemPlay and even shared a tweet from the school superintendent showing a senior citizen audience attending what apparently was an extra performance or dress rehearsal. He noted that there were no red flags raised about the show’s content then, only when the parents complained – and cited the fact, corroborated by the drama teacher, that all of the students involved in the show had been required to get written permission to participate in the show from their parents in advance.

Another teacher at the school posted to Facebook that she was responsible for the adaptation. She wrote on Facebook about the school principal seeing part of a performance, or possibly a rehearsal, two evenings prior to the suddenly shortened one, noting that while that presentation was also cut short, in that case by a tornado alert, the principal recommended cuts to the text in order to address content issues, which were willingly implemented.

The situation generated coverage in the local media, but as of now, there are no plans for additional performances of The Breakfast Club on or off the East Newton campus. It leaves one sympathetic to the students and even their supporters, because they were denied the opportunity to see their work come to fruition. The principal commented to the local press that with additional changes, the show might yet be brought back. But continuing on with the show would sustain the copyright violation. This is an unwinnable scenario.

The lesson here is one of failed communication all around. It’s possible to applaud the school administration for the initial impulse to trust and work with the drama teacher and his wife to come up with a good show for the students, however all of those parties failed to understand the basics of copyright and licensing, since no script was available. That shouldn’t be taken as permission to go ahead and cobble together your own adaptation, but rather to either create a wholly original work, or to legally license preexisting material. The fact that a Hollywood movie company is unlikely to discover a scofflaw adaptation in a small town (and indeed, several other “original” stage adaptations of The Breakfast Club can be found via a careful Google search) makes no difference. Neither does asking for a donation instead of charging a set admission. What happened in Granby absolutely qualifies as public performance of dramatic material.

That parents apparently signed a permission slip approving their child’s participation in a school show and then rescinded that permission mid-performance suggests that either the form didn’t indicate why permission was being sought or that the parents weren’t paying sufficient attention to that information. While it’s impossible to assess from afar how school appropriate (or not) the play was, these parents had to know that by removing their child mid-show, they were effectively ending the evening for all concerned, cast, crew and audience alike. The school’s rapid decision not to allow the second performance served to back the parents’ assessment.

There are multiple adults who shoulder blame for what happened at East Newton. In recounting this situation, names have been omitted, since everyone here has lost out in one way or another. There’s no need to provide an easy route for shaming any of the parties –though the former drama club president’s efforts were admirable, if underinformed about the full scope of the issues at hand. Local news accounts can be found for those eager to push into the details or to verify this account.

It seems more important that all of the parties involved walk away with some lessons for the future. Teachers and administrators need to learn what is and is not permitted with regarding adapting existing works or licensing scripts for performance, and they should share that understanding of responsibility with their students. That this teacher-adapted version of a screenplay was willingly adjusted according to administration requests shouldn’t in any way suggest that existing, properly licensed scripts can be edited at will by those in authority. Permission slips should make clear their purpose when utilized, to insure parents understand what they’re approving for their children, to avoid even later than eleventh hour reversals. Parents should understand how their actions for their children can have a domino effect on many other students, and consider how it affects everyone in that moment, not solely what it means to them and their child.

Finally, this should also not be an excuse to suspend or terminate the drama program at East Newton, or to subject it to undue ongoing scrutiny beyond that appropriate for any school activity, but rather prompt all concerned to make it stronger and indeed to hopefully present material that is something more than G rated. After all of the attention this generated locally, the East Newton Drama Club should be allowed to build on that awareness it in the future, all concerned should do better next time, and East Newton students should be assured they can appear in shows that speak to their own experiences, perform shows in their entirety, and bask in applause when it’s all said and done.

As for The Breakfast Club? The Blu-Ray can be purchased for under $7 online.

Poster for Langston Hughes’s “Mulatto” in 1935

If you happen to have been giving any thought to producing Langston Hughes’s 1935 play Mulatto at the Ames Center in Burnsville MN, save yourself some time and either move on to another play or another venue. Why? Because the Ames Center is uncomfortable with the word “mulatto,” and won’t approve it in the title of an offering in their building. Hughes’s stature, and the fact that the Black Repertory Group in Berkeley play produced the show as recently as 2015, probably wouldn’t make any difference.

How do we know this, since the scenario above is hypothetical, in addition to being awfully specific? Because the city-owned Ames Center recently vetoed a production of the play Caucasian-Aggressive Pandas and Other Mulatto Tales, by biracial actor and playwright Derek “Duck” Washington, to be produced by the Ames Center’s resident theatre company, the Chameleon Theatre Circle. The Center cited “mulatto” as the problem, saying they would only allow the play to be done if the word was removed from the title. Caucasian-Aggressive Pandas had already been a hit at the Minnesota Fringe Festival in 2016, after first being produced locally in 2015. That it is Washington’s exploration of his own heritage and his relationship to a relatively archaic racial term, one which is admittedly at its root derogatory in nature, was no defense as far as the Center was concerned. Washington refused to alter the title.

Partly as a result of the dispute over Washington’s play, but with other factors at play as well, Chameleon, a 19-year-old professional non-Equity company which has been a tenant in the Ames Center’s black box theatre since it opened in 2009, will not be renewing their relationship with the venue. Chameleon is currently seeking a new home base in the greater Minneapolis area. The future life for Caucasian Aggressive Pandas is uncertain.

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Multiple dictionary definitions of “mulatto” designate it as both a dated and offensive word, which specifically denotes someone who is the child of one white parent and one black parent. While The Atlantic headlined an article “Mulatto is not a cool word” in 2016, they did so in writing about a website and video series entitled “Evoking The Mulatto”, which describes itself as “examining black mixed identity in the 21st century, through the lens of the history of racial classification in the United States.” At the same time, some worry about the ongoing trope of “the tragic mulatto,” explored by many sources, including The Root back in 2011. It is not as loaded as the n-word, but it’s not a word to be thrown about thoughtlessly.

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Kirsten Wade, Matthew Kessen, Derek “Duck” Washington, Suzanne Victoria Cross and Ted Femrite in “Caucasian Aggressive Pandas and Other Mulatto Tales” (Photo by Bob Alberti)

The dispute over the play came to light when, after several months of negotiations between Chameleon and the Ames Center for their year to year contract, told Washington for certain in mid-March that the play would not be permitted to go forward without a title change. Washington had previously informed Scott Gilbert, chair for season selection for the company, that he would not change it.

Both G.J. Clayburn, Chameleon’s board chair, who represented the company in negotiations, and Brian Luther, executive director of the Ames Center, which is operated by the company VenuWorks for the city of Burnsville, agreed that part of the annual contract renewal between the companies includes the submission of titles. Luther described this process as a matter of insuring that at least 50% of the titles in the Chameleon season would, he said, “have the opportunity to sell tickets,” referencing the need for a “balanced season.” Neither Luther nor Clayburn cited any contractual language that permitted the Ames Center to simply veto work over title or content so long as this threshold was met.

In response to the final decision, Washington decided to send an open letter to Luther at the Ames Center, as well as to the mayor, the city manager and the city council. It read in part:

I was really excited by the proposal to bring the show to Burnsville as I had so many people come up to me after performances or throughout the Fringe Festival telling me they wished I could bring the show out of the city to their home towns in the suburbs. They felt it would be very valuable to their communities and that this tale of race would have a positive impact on their residents regardless of their demographic background. This made Burnsville an optimal place to launch the show after two successful runs in Minneapolis…

I’m told that members of the city took concern with the word “mulatto” being in the play’s title. Mulatto is a word that represents someone that is the offspring of a white parent and a black parent. It is deemed by many to be a derogatory word, as its origins stem from a Spanish or Portuguese work for mule, which is the cross between a horse and a donkey. The show does not ignore the word’s derogatory origins and in fact addresses them in the first few minutes of the show. In a large way discussing those origins is a lot of what the show is about. As a person who is both black and white it is a word I still hear even if it isn’t quite as present in the modern vernacular. I put a lot of thought behind this word when writing this show. Could I have changed it “Mixed Race Tales”? Possibly, but it is a show specifically about my experiences of being both black and white. I felt like saying “Mixed Race Tales’ included a much larger subset of people whose experiences may or may not have represented my own….

So when I was asked by the city if I would change the title, I said no. Not only did it not make sense for the show, it also meant it would be difficult to leverage the show’s previous success operating under that title. Before the Fringe I did have one or two people express concern about the word which I believe I was able to lessen with a few sentences of conversation.

It should be noted that all parties acknowledge that Washington had no direct communication with any city officials. He spoke with Scott Gilbert, who spoke with the company’s executive producer Andrew Troth and with Clayburn, and Clayburn spoke with Luther at the Ames Center. Did Luther communicate with city officials about the show’s title? In an e-mail to Arts Integrity, Luther wrote, “Ames Center staff handles all show and performance decisions. However, if questions arise that may impact the City more generally, we make sure City representatives are aware. The decision regarding this show was ours, but the City supported that decision.”

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Derek “Duck” Washington in his play “Caucasian-Aggressive Panda and Other Mulatto Tales” (Photo by Bob Alberti)

As noted above, no one could cite contractual language which gave the Ames Center approval of titles due to the nature of of their content, only that a certain number would be perceived as generally marketable. In confirming that, Luther wrote, “There was no intention to censor the show, or stop it from being performed. The only concern was with the use of an offensive term in the title. Being our facility is owned by a public entity, we need to be mindful of what goes up on our marquees, in our publications, displays, etc. It is a reflection of the entire City. As you can imagine, it’s a challenge to balance the rights of members of our community (who may not wish to be subjected to language they find offensive), with artistic license. We made what we thought was the most appropriate decision for our facility.”

Despite his assertion that there was no intention to censor, that’s precisely what the Ames Center did. Indeed, as the property of a government entity, which did not stipulate conditions under which Chameleon would not be permitted produce a show beyond specific sales concerns for a portion of their season, their apparently successful effort to quash the work since they could not alter it is an act of suppression of speech.

It would be interesting to know what the Center or the City might make of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins An Octoroon, a critically acclaimed, widely produced work that utilizes another archaic and derogatory term for a mixed race individual. Even with their right to determine what’s marketable, the only programming caveat in the contract, Ames would be hard pressed to say that it’s not a popular title right now. As it happens, Chameleon performed The Vagina Monologues the year before they moved to the Ames Center. Would Luther and his staff have been similarly cautious about putting that title on his marquee? Clearly some people have taken exception to the term for a woman’s genitalia being made part of everyday parlance in the way that show most certainly has done.

Both Clayburn and Washington mentioned that earlier this year, a performance by the comedian Ralphie May at the Ames Center had been controversial, with Washington specifically noting that the local Native American community had been upset over some portion of its content; no one cited the specific material to which objection was taken. But one performance should not cause the Ames Center to retreat into safety. In the case of Caucasian-Aggressive Pandas, there was the opportunity, with plenty of advance time, to contextualize the work, rather than suppressing the voice of a mixed race artist whose very work, based in his own experience, was grappling with the implications of the word he chose to use in his title. A performing arts center afraid of work and discussions about race is an arts venue out of step with creative and social conversations that pervade the country.

*   *   *

Andrew Troth, executive producer of Chameleon Theatre Circle, in an e-mail, wrote that Chameleon won’t have a singular venue for their next season and that, “Nobody knows right now what Chameleon’s situation will be after that.” He explained that Pandas is not currently scheduled as part of their upcoming season because of their vagabond status. “Part of the appeal if co-producing [Pandas] with us,” he wrote, “was the opportunity to present it outside of Minneapolis, where he has already had two successful runs of the show. Having walked away from our resident status in the Ames Center, and given the absence of alternate venues in close proximity, it is not clear that we will be able to offer that benefit in the future.”

He went on to write:

I will say this much on a personal basis: I find nothing to contradict or disagree with in Duck’s public letter. I consider him a friend, I admire his work, I was excited to include his show in Chameleon’s intended season, and I utterly disagree with the decision by management at Ames and the City to disallow it. It is my view that in deciding to move our productions elsewhere, Chameleon has exercised the only leverage available to us in response to the Ames Center’s multiple points of disagreement with our season plan.

Certainly Chameleon has stood up for their rights to produce work they feel is worthy, and will now struggle through the process of finding a new home for their work to insure its creative integrity in the future. But in the meantime, Duck Washington’s opportunity to reach new audiences with Caucasian-Aggressive Pandas and Other Mulatto Tales is on hold, as a result of the Ames Center’s effort to avoid giving offense to anyone. In doing so, they censored the work; they wouldn’t permit it on their small stage or on their signage, because avoidance was simpler than engaging with the work and supporting the artist and his collaborators.

The Ames Center may be a beautiful facility, but it has demonstrated that it is one without a core commitment to all manner of arts, only those which are broadly popular and anodyne. That doesn’t serve the arts nor does it serve their community. Because they imposed their will without benefit of a contractual agreement to permit such oversight, they have violated the free speech rights of Washington and of the Chameleon company. What will they deprive Burnsville of next?

Update, May 4, 2017: Chameleon Theatre Circle today announced their dice-show 2017-18 season, which will be produced in a number of venues in the greater Minneapolis area following, their break with the Ames Center in Burnsville MN. The season will conclude, as originally planned, with Caucasian-Aggressive Panda and Other Mulatto Tales by Duck Washington, directed by Jena Young, in the Black Box Theatre at the Bloomington Center for the Arts in Bloomington MN. The new home for Pandas is less than ten miles away from the censorious Ames Center.

Correction, April 5, 2017: Andrew Troth was originally referred to as artistic director of Chameleon. His correct title now appears above.

Despite its origin in a 1988 film from John Waters, the underground master of camp, shock and transgression, the story of Tracy Turnblad, as told in multiple iterations, has become wholly mainstream. Thanks in large part to the 2002 stage musical version, Tracy’s story of leading an effort to integrate a local TV music program in Baltimore has had America singing and dancing along for years now. Beyond its more conventional musical numbers, it offers up a craven TV producer who laments her salad days as “Miss Baltimore Crabs” and teens miming the crushing bugs as part of a dance craze. Indeed, the mildly subversive tone of the musical, while significantly less spiky than the original film, is set by Tracy’s buoyant paean to her home city, which includes shout outs to the rats on the street and the local flasher.

In spite of its popularity and its pro-integration narrative (the show is set in 1962), the musical has been been criticized by some as advancing a white savior narrative, since it portrays a white girl, albeit one who is ostracized for her weight, taking the initiative and risk to make “every day Negro Day” on The Corny Collins Show, the musical’s American Bandstand analogue.  Given that it’s explicitly about the crossing of the racial line between blacks and whites, a certain amount of disbelief met the news in 2012 that one Texas high school did the show with an all-white cast, seemingly deracinating a story about race and posing a particular challenge to truthfully representing the narrative.

Consequently, the casting of a March production of Hairspray at Princeton University, in which Tracy was played by a biracial student and her mother, Edna, was played by a black student, was both surprising and informative. It demonstrated how this musical about integration can be explored anew, 15 years after its debut and 30 years after the original film. The production, which played for five performances in a studio theatre on the campus, was the senior thesis project of two students, Alex Daniels, who played Tracy, and AJ Jones, who directed (only her second time directing). Princeton does not have a theatre major, but does offer theatre certificates for a concentrated course of study. The production was entirely student driven, except for its musical director and its sound designer.

In an interview with Arts Integrity subsequent to the run, Daniels, who describes herself as ethnically biracial and racially black, and Jones, who identifies herself as white, explained the thinking behind their production.

Daniels began by saying, “When I was a freshman, way back when, I was having a conversation with someone about dream roles of mine and I mentioned that I really loved Tracy and that she would definitely be a dream role. That person was like, ‘That’s not possible. You’re not white. You could never play Tracy.’ And so that comment really hit me in a not so great way. Why should the color of my skin limit me from any possibilities? I brought it up with AJ and from there we thought, why not? This script and this show seem to be catered to having a person of color in this position struggling with these issues.”

Expanding upon the inception story of their Hairspray, Daniels said, “When Alex told me about this comment, I started thinking more about Tracy possibly being biracial and it made a lot of sense, especially given her role in the show, bringing these two groups together. It changes the relationships with all of the characters in the show and gives them all a little more depth as well.”

In the production, Daniels appears in facial makeup that is noticeably lighter than her own skin tone. The rationale for this was described by Daniels as addressing, “How is Tracy going to fit into this world when she very clearly is not white? I personally cannot pass as white. Then we had the conversation about what if she’s trying to pass. What if she’s using makeup to lighten her skin, using whiteface in order to make it through every day in this community. So that’s where this conversation came in. We also just felt that the story of passing was something we wanted to talk about, the extent to which African-American, biracial females, and definitely men as well, went to belong in this community to reap the benefits of being white.”

Jones noted, “We spent quite a bit of time testing a lot of different types of makeup. We decided to have it only on her face because we wanted to make it clear to the audience that she’s not white, that she’s passing as white. We discussed whether other characters in the show know that Tracy’s trying to pass, and we came to the conclusion that yes, they have to be suspicious, but they can’t really know for sure, they can’t really say anything about it, because of the power of this white face that she has on.”

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At this point, it would be fair to question whether this color conscious casting of the roles of Tracy and Edna was contrary to the authors’ intent for the show. Arts Integrity asked that very question of Music Theatre International, which licenses the show, specifying what the production had done in regards to those roles. In reply, MTI president Drew Cohen said that the company does not place casting restrictions according to race on its customers, and pointed out specific material answering questions about racial casting for Hairspray, in the form of a letter from the four authors of the show, as well as John Waters. It reads, along with instructions for using it, in its entirety, as follows:

The use of make-up to portray black characters in your production (e.g., blackface) is not permitted under this Production Contract. By signing below, you agree to inform the director of your production that such use of make-up is strictly prohibited.

If your production of Hairspray features actors who are portraying characters whose race may be other than their own, you may elect to include the below letter from the creators of Hairspray in your program. You are not permitted to edit the letter in any way. 

Dear Audience Members,

When we, the creators of HAIRSPRAY, first started licensing the show to high-schools and community theatres, we were asked by some about using make-up in order for non-African Americans to portray the black characters in the show.

Although we comprehend that not every community around the globe has the perfectly balanced make-up (pardon the pun) of ethnicity to cast HAIRSPRAY as written, we had to, of course, forbid any use of the coloring of anyone’s face (even if done respectfully and subtly) for it is still, at the end of the day, a form of blackface, which is a chapter in the story of race in America that our show is obviously against.

Yet, we also realized, to deny an actor the chance to play a role due to the color of his or her skin would be its own form of racism, albeit a “politically correct” one.

And so, if the production of HAIRSPRAY you are about to see tonight features folks whose skin color doesn’t match the characters (not unlike how Edna has been traditionally played by a man), we ask that you use the timeless theatrical concept of “suspension of disbelief” and allow yourself to witness the story and not the racial background (or gender) of the actors. Our show is, after all, about not judging books by their covers! If the direction and the actors are good (and they had better be!) you will still get the message loud and clear. And hopefully have a great time receiving it!

Thank You,
Marc, Scott, Mark, Tom & John

While Cohen did not respond directly to the query regarding the specific color conscious casting at Princeton, where certainly white students were available, his pointing out of the letter, and his comment about not imposing racial restrictions, strongly indicate that such casting is permissible. In a separate piece of correspondence, Cohen stated, “The key is that the show must be performed as written and the characters should be portrayed as written.” He also clarified that while the authors’ letter singles out high school and community theatre productions, it is applicable to university productions as well.

*   *   *

So what was the effect of this concept of Hairspray? It seemed, as the thesis students intended, to deepen the story, and staging decisions only enhanced that. “Good Morning, Baltimore” was played slowly, more like a sad ballad, suggesting that Tracy’s everyday routine was not a joyous leap from bed, but rather the start of a new day of struggle. When the perpetually panicky Prudy Pingleton commented to Edna, her laundress, about “colored music,” it read as more pointed than ever before, and Edna’s dismissal of the characterization read as self-negating. When Velma von Tussle humiliates Tracy at her dance audition, it ceased to be solely an attack of her weight but also decidedly racial. When first encountering Edna and Tracy together, Velma’s already ugly sizeist comment “I guess you two are living proof that the watermelon doesn’t fall too far from the vine,” became doubly ugly. That all of the female characters are released from jail after the altercation at Motormouth Maybelle’s save for Tracy, a particular focus is placed on the continued imprisonment of a young woman who is biracial, while the black characters and white characters are all freed.

At the same time, the friendship between Tracy and Penny came across as particularly special, since clearly Penny – in and out of the Turnblad house like any teenager – surely had no questions about Tracy’s mixed parentage, but ignored the racial faultlines of the day. When Seaweed declares that, “Detention’s a rainbow experience,” he negates any concerns about racial divisions or conflicts as well for Tracy, who has been trying to pass as white. Detention becomes, in effect, a racial safe space.

By consciously altering the racial dynamic of Hairspray through only two characters, albeit leading roles, it is fair to suggest that the story of racial acceptance, integration and diversity became possibly even more resonant than the original portrayal as defined by the Broadway production. While the authors’ letter permitting cross-racial casting may have been intended primarily to address situations where there aren’t sufficient performers of color available, it laid the groundwork for Daniels and Jones’s interpretation, even though they asked the audience to engage directly with their color conscious casting, rather than suspending disbelief over it.

*   *   *

It is unfortunate to report that Cohen’s statement, common to all licensed productions, that “the show must be performed as written” was not fully adhered to when it came to the text. Daniels and Jones acknowledged that they had made small changes and excisions, such as changing the song “Big, Blonde and Beautiful” to “Big, Black and Beautiful,” as their Motormouth Maybelle wore her hair more naturally. Perhaps most significantly, in “You Can’t Stop The Beat,” a late segment involving the Von Tussles, both mother and daughter, in which they are encouraged to join the full on party, initially resisting and then ultimately joining in, was gone. They were denied their redemption as the authors intended.

Because Daniels and Jones did not request permission to make these changes, and perhaps other smaller ones that went unnoticed, they were violating the authors’ copyright and the licensing agreement. While their production may have been a student thesis and part of their academic work, it was publicly presented, and for multiple performances, so the legally standard practices should have applied. That they felt the need and the freedom to reauthor any of the show is a shame, since the casting, direction and performance had already been transformative, while still working within the existing text and the leave granted by the authors regarding race.

*   *   *

It is the right of Tom Meehan, Marc Shaiman, Scott Wittman, John Waters and the estate of Mark O’Donnell to determine what may be done in productions of Hairspray that go beyond the existing casting template, and they’ve offered up their thoughts for producers and directors to consider. This mirrors Lin-Manuel Miranda’s statements regarding the racial casting of In The Heights, where he has made clear that in high school productions, the cast need not be Latinx, in whole or part, so long as the performances are respectful of the Latinx identity. But it’s important to remember that this guidance is specific to these shows by these authors about their own work, not a policy applicable across the literary spectrum. Texts should remain inviolate without express permission, which may be hard to secure, but is nonetheless legally and ethically required.

While the criteria for evaluating the Princeton students’ thesis academically is unknown, they did achieve two silent but memorable moments that have not typically been part of productions of Hairspray, but are both worth remembering. The first came midway through Act II when Tracy, inspired by “I Know Where I’ve Been,” wiped away the makeup which had been used to indicate that as a biracial teen, she was trying to pass as white, and would no longer. She becomes secure with her racial identity, even if it means more struggle in that community in that era.

The second memorable invention came in the very final moments of the show when, after the joyous and victorious refrain of “You Can’t Stop The Beat” hit its final peak, there was not the customary blackout. Instead, the cast (sans the Von Tussles, as noted previously) were arrayed in a straight line across towards the rear of the stage. Maintaining the rhythm of the now ended song, they stepped forward in unision, in unity, to the beat, beat, beat, and the dance party was transformed into the front lines of a civil rights march, of the fight for racial equality that would extend far beyond the integration of a single teen TV show.

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.

*   *   *

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.

*   *   *

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.

*   *   *

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.

Even if you’ve never read the quote, you’ve no doubt seen the meme, in all of its arts-affirming, damn the torpedoes glory. Just one small detail: it isn’t true.

I am referring to the story that goes as follows, and here I’ll quote an op-ed piece from TheHill.com, dated February 19, 2017:

At the height of WWII, Winston Churchill was challenged to defend a budget that called for an increase in arts funding.

“How can you propose this at a time of extreme national crisis?” asked one member of Parliament.

Churchill replied, “I do it, sir, to remind us what we are fighting for.”

That’s one of the longer versions of the account. You may have seen it as, “During WWII, Churchill was asked to cut funding for the arts. He replied, ‘Then what are we fighting for?’,” or, “When Churchill was asked to cut arts funding in favour of the war effort, he simply replied, ‘Then what are we fighting for?’”

There are countless iterations.

They are all fake history, recycled endlessly by arts advocates because the story fits a narrative we want to tell, because support of the arts in the face of the horror of the Holocaust and World War II is just so perfect. So it figures that it’s too good to be true.

Many times when you see this quote, you’ll even see a source. But those sources never lead you to a piece of primary research proving that Churchill said it, or a video clip of him actually saying it. Instead, it’s one big echo chamber, in which people cite other people who shared the quote, none of whom provide a footnote as to its veracity.

That said, a bit of online searching will bring you to generally reliable sources that claim to have researched the quote and found it wanting. Now to be fair, there’s a certain circularity in the debunking as well. Snopes.com has a piece dated just weeks ago, which cites historian Richard Langworth debunking the quote in a 2009 blog post, “Safeguarding The Arts.” The recent inquiry from Snopes prompted Langworth to refashion his answer under the banner of The Churchill Project at Hillsdale College in Michigan, but save for replacing who asked the question of him, his answer is consistent.

Andrew Eaton, writing in The Scotsman in 2011, allowed that the provenance of the quote was in dispute. An article from The Conversation.com says the quote is fake, sourcing it to a piece in the Village Voice in 2008, but their source, if you follow the links, is once again Langworth.  Fortunately, Snopes also checked with the International Churchill Society, where a representative declared the statement “quite bogus.”

Using this quote in fighting to stave of arts cuts in the US is, ultimately, a disservice to the effort. Why? Because if the quote cannot be unequivocally verified, then its deployment counts as fake news. That opens up anyone who uses it to having all of their arguments, no matter how valid the others may be, dismissed out of hand. The very people who are quick to brandish the pejorative “fake facts” against things with which they simply disagree will have a field day with claims that are demonstrably false, even if veracity isn’t central to their own arguments. One anti-liberal bias site, also looking to Langworth, took this on in 2012 when Chris Matthews cited the quote, so this isn’t exactly flying under the radar.

This should not discount the idea that Churchill didn’t support the arts. Reliable sources quote him as saying, at an April 30, 1953 Royal Academy Banquet, “The arts are essen­tial to any com­plete national life. The State owes it to itself to sus­tain and encour­age them…Ill fares the race which fails to salute the arts with the rev­er­ence and delight which are their due.”

One must wonder why the British Churchill, who died at almost 90 years old in 1965, perseveres as the go-to defender of the arts in America today. Looking closer to home, even if the remarks were the work of a speechwriter, President John F. Kennedy, whose White House regularly welcomed artists to perform, has a series of quotes about the arts emblazoned on the rear balcony of The Kennedy Center, all suitable for memeing.

“This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.”

“I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft.”

“To increase respect for the creative individual, to widen participation by all the processes and fulfillments of art — this is one of the fascinating challenges of these days.”

“There is a connection, hard to explain logically but easy to feel, between achievement in public life and progress in the arts.”

As mentioned previously, the specious Churchill quote made perhaps its most recent appearance in an op-ed at TheHill.com. Regrettably, the authors of the piece are Earle I. Mack is chairman emeritus of the New York State Council on the Arts, Randall Bourscheidt is president emeritus of the Alliance for the Arts, and Robert L. Lynch is president and CEO of Americans for the Arts. A Google search on their version of the quote reveals only a single match, namely their article. Their use doesn’t even mirror other faulty citations.

 By all means, let’s write our own words in defense of the arts, and arts funding, and let’s cite the very best comments made by others in support of that case. But unless someone produces irrefutable proof that Churchill said what he is so often quoted as saying about “what are we fighting for,” it’s time to put it away for good. Opposing the truism advanced in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, we cannot afford to print the legend, we must stand with the objective truth.

P.S. If anyone actually can prove that the “what are we fighting for” story is verifiably true, please shout the proof out loudly.