I am angry and I am sad. But I am not entirely surprised.

Earlier this morning, Dawn Burch, drama director at South Williamsport Area Junior/Senior High School in Pennsylvania, was fired from her position. By e-mail. The reason given? “Job performance.”

It doesn’t take a detective to figure out what’s really going on. At the beginning of July, Burch asserted that her musical choice for this school year, Spamalot, had been nixed by the school due to its gay content. School officials vehemently denied that was the case.

In late August, Keystone Progress and I received copies of school e-mails between Burch, principal Jesse Smith and superintendent Mark Stamm regarding the decision. An e-mail from Smith from the end of June cited “homosexual themes” as the reason for canceling the show.

So now, less than a month after the administration’s efforts to hide their own actions were revealed, Burch suddenly loses her job. Save for holding auditions and beginning rehearsals for the school’s fall play, Alice in Wonderland, she has barely undertaken her job for this year, as prior to that it was summer break. When exactly did these job performance issues come to light? Awfully coincidental, no?

I believe Burch has been fired for telling the truth. Burch has been fired for not being willing to accept that gay life was not something to be hidden away, not something to be ashamed of, not something to be afraid of. It hardly takes another Right-to-Know request to put together the pieces.

I wanted to interview Burch about what has transpired, but she was too emotional to say much more than the bare facts of the firing as cited above, except to express concern about what would happen to the fall play and to the students already cast, who were looking forward to being in the show. Will it still happen? Who knows. But even on a difficult day, Burch’s main concern was for the students. She may not be a teacher (and therefore has no tenure), but putting the needs of students first is a sign of an excellent teacher, accredited or not. There are many ways to teach.

It’s worth noting that at a Board of Education meeting a week and a half ago, conversation regarding the Spamalot issue was expressly deferred until this coming Monday, September 22. So it’s quite remarkable that this decisive action took place even before the South Williamsport community could discuss the issue publicly; that they were denied any opportunity to speak before the issue was resolved and that it became a referendum on Burch’s performance, rather than about condoning homophobia and then hiding that fact. Will the topic still be discussed Monday night? Perhaps. But there’s going to be a lot of discussion in the past tense when it comes to Burch.

Perhaps we’ll all be surprised. Perhaps overwhelming support for Burch will be in evidence on Monday night. Perhaps the Board of Ed members will discover that this is an issue that will be a factor when they run for reelection. Perhaps parents will make clear that they can’t trust the word of the board chair, the superintendent and the principal, given their efforts to obscure the truth in this situation. Perhaps the press will cover the fallout of this firing with rigor and depth, and a truer picture will emerge.

I don’t know how the students will feel, or what they’ll be told about the loss of their drama director. I don’t know how they’ll react, or if they will at all. But just as kids are smart enough to intuit a great many things from a very early age, I suspect many of them are going to realize that they’ve just been given a lesson in right and wrong, in honor and duplicity, in the politics of fear and silence. They’ve seen just how badly their elders can behave in the name of protecting them. I hope they’ll see through it as well.

And I hope they’ll realize that Dawn Burch is a hero. I think plenty of people already do.

Even if I were to attend the Board of Education meeting of the South Williamsport Area School District in Pennsylvania this coming Monday, September 22, I couldn’t speak. That’s because the district only allows comment from residents and taxpayers, and I am neither. Even if I were permitted to speak, I very likely would only be permitted to make a statement, since many school boards allow public comments at meetings, but don’t necessarily engage in dialogue. I have no idea what the practice is in South Williamsport.

I remain very concerned about the school’s decision to cancel the musical Spamalot due to, in the words of Principal Jesse Smith, “homosexual themes.” This is no longer an issue about play choice, but about institutional bias. As a result, I have a lot of questions I wish I could ask, both at that meeting and elsewhere in South Williamsport, about all that has transpired over this clear effort to suppress any portrayal of gay life at the Junior/Senior High School, even in a piece as non-doctrinaire as a Monty Python musical.

So all I can do I toss my questions out into the universe, hoping that perhaps a resident or taxpayer might ask them, or speak to them, before Monday night, during the Board of Education meeting itself, and afterwards.

1. Principal Jesse Smith: when this story was first reported, a quote was falsely attributed to you, which has rightly been corrected and/or excised. In school e-mails, you expressed concern that this falsely attributed statement made you look like a bigot. However, the central issue remains – you don’t think it appropriate for homosexual characters or relationships to appear in a school show. This leads me to ask an obvious question: do you personally support or oppose equal rights for all people – gay, straight, bisexual and transgender? Do you personally think the portrayal of gay characters in Spamalot is inappropriate in a school setting, or are you acceding to the opinions and wishes of those who do?

2. Superintendent Mark Stamm: internal e-mails from the school have you declaring that Mr. Smith’s original decision on this issue is “sound.” Therefore, it’s only natural to ask you the same question put to him: do you personally support or oppose equal rights for all – gay, straight, bisexual or transgender?

3. Board of Education chair John Engel: On July 3, regarding the initial assertions that Spamalot was canceled due to gay content, a story from PennLive/Patriot-News said, “Homosexuality did not enter into that decision, Engel said.” The released e-mails prove that homosexuality was the reason for the decision. So, were you given false information by school district staff that led you to make this incorrect statement, or were you attempting to obscure the facts? As an elected official, what is your position regarding the dissemination of incorrect information to the public by any member of the school staff or school board?

4. WNEP Television: You first reported the story of the cancelation of Spamalot and, regrettably, that story contained a noteworthy error which proved distracting. Several days later, you aired a second story about the community coming together. However, since then, you have not reported on the story at all, even after multiple sources revealed that indeed it was the show’s gay content that provoked censorship. Is this fulfilling your responsibility as a source of local news? Have you scared yourselves away from covering an important story?

5. PennLive.com/Patriot-News: You also wrote about the Spamalot controversy when it first broke in July, but have not written about it since the school e-mails were revealed. Why do you not consider those facts newsworthy, especially since they contradict material you previously reported?

6. The news staff of the Williamsport Sun-Gazette: Why did it take a blogger and a progressive advocacy organization to bring forward the truth of the reasons for Spamalot’s cancelation through Right-to-Know requests? Given the information you published originally, it was clear there were varying accounts, and there was an obvious way to clear things up. Why didn’t you do this on your own? Why, once the e-mails were revealed, did it take you another 10 days to report the story?

7. The editorial page staff of the Williamsport Sun-Gazette: Since your paper ultimately wrote about the release of e-mails which made clear that Spamalot was canceled due to its “homosexual themes,” and prior statements from school administrators had been designed to obscure that fact, you have not mentioned this issue at all – either with any letters to the editor or an editorial. In fact, you haven’t offered an editorial about this situation at all since the story first emerged in early July, even though you have managed 10 pieces relating to the Federal government, including terrorism and the IRS, among many others, in that time. Why haven’t you written a word about a case of anti-gay bias in your own backyard?

8. Superintendent Stamm: When you spoke to the Sun-Gazette about the released e-mails, you spoke about statements being taken out of context. However, as the Right-to-Know administrator for the district, you were personally responsible for redacting the context in the e-mails, presumably with advice of counsel. Is it reasonable to complain about lack of context that you blacked out? Also, you defended Mr. Smith’s signature on a check for the rights to Spamalot by saying the attached contract was folded. Is folded material a legitimate excuse for not understanding why disbursements are being made?

9. To the (claimed) South Williamsport area parent who contacted me via my website: You wrote, “I have a child that attends the So. Wmspst school district and would never want him exposed to that sexual sin. There are still parents and students and many members of our community who do not agree with homosexuality or gay marriage… We have freedom of speech also-I don’t want to see our innocent children exposed to that. They don’t need to grow up thinking that it’s normal. Some of us still have morals. Keep it out of South!” Your freedom of speech absolutely does guarantee you the right to express your opinions. However, a public school has the responsibility to prepare students for life and to teach them about the world beyond their local community. Do you believe that your disagreement with aspects of the world can dictate what students learn and perform?

10. All officials and residents in South Williamsport: national news reports on this issue have the potential to leave a lasting image of your town as one that does not believe in inclusion and equality. Will you make a public effort to assure members of the local, regional and national community that South Williamsport accepts, respects and welcomes all people as equals, without regard to gender, age, race, religion, disability or sexual orientation?

I realize that my questions go far beyond the scope of a Board of Education meeting. But that meeting is as good a reason and opportunity as any to start raising these questions, since they arose from a school issue. Now all I can do is hope that they get asked.

Among the many responses I’ve received to my accounts of the censorship of the musical Spamalot at South Williamsport Junior/Senior High in Pennsylvania was a tweet from Dane Rooney, an English teacher and drama director in Shenandoah PA, who spoke of his own school’s Spamalot. I invited him to e-mail me with more information, but instead of a handful of bullet points, I got an essay. I asked if I could share his communication and, with a few adjustments by Dane for wider readership, this is his account of productions of both Spamalot and The Producers at this Central Pennsylvania school of less than 500 students across six grades. – Howard Sherman

BY DANE ROONEY

Ever since I was in kindergarten, I wanted to act and direct. Coming from Shenandoah – a small town in the hard coal region of Northeastern Pennsylvania – opportunities to act were scarce. Even entering high school, there wasn’t a consistent theater organization. That is until 2001, when I was a sophomore and my brother Colin was in seventh grade. We joined the club and performed in Grease, and since then, the Shenandoah Valley Drama Club has produced a musical every spring. I graduated college and was hired as an English teacher at SV in 2007. I also began directing the musicals.

The Shenandoah Valley High School cast of Monty Python’s Spamalot with the visiting ambassador of Nigeria.

Every single year I hoped that Monty Python’s Spamalot would become available. Hours before the opening of Grease in 2001, we watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail to relieve some of our nerves. It became a ritual for a while, and so when Colin and I saw the Broadway tour in Hershey in 2008, I felt that one year, the SVDC would have the opportunity to produce the hit comedy. Colin passed away that year from meningitis, so producing Spamalot took on a deeper meaning than just a silly comedy.

Just like South Williamsport High School planned for their 2015 production, SVDC wanted to produce Spamalot after success with How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying. Once the rights were available in PA in February of 2013, the Shenandoah Valley High School principal and superintendent approved the show without any “school edition” edits or optional dialogue/lyrics, which Eric Idle makes available through Theatrical Rights Worldwide. The administration and school board trusted me with the show’s material and felt that it would be a great production choice. On April 19^th 2013, the Shenandoah Valley Drama Club became the first high school in Pennsylvania to produce Monty Python’s Spamalot.

Not only was I excited to direct one of my dream shows, but the students were thrilled about the choice to perform in Spamalot as well; many of them already loved the film version. Typically high school drama clubs have a majority of girls in the cast, however over the last four years, our drama club has become a predominantly male cast. The show fit us perfectly: the cast, the humor, the edginess, and that certain strangeness in most Python works.

Though Shenandoah is an even smaller town than Williamsport (located about 60 miles from us), no questions were ever raised about the gay marriage or the gay characters in the show. In fact, I was more concerned about the song “You Won’t Succeed on Broadway” which is a song poking fun at Broadway and the large Jewish community involved in Broadway productions.

Danny Schaffer and Eric Rooney at the wedding of Sir Lancelot and Prince Herbert at Shenandoah Valley High School’s Spamalot

The students who played Sir Lancelot and Prince Herbert (the couple who get married at the end of the show) treated their characters with seriousness and humor. Both actors were nominated for Best Comedic Actor at our local high school awards, and the senior who played Lancelot (and other various characters) won the award. “His Name Is Lancelot”, the song in which Lancelot comes out of the closet, was by far a crowd favorite. The trick was casting some of the most charismatic students in our school as the gay male rumba dancers. I assembled four football players, the school mascot, and a class clown and we tried to keep it as much of a secret from the student population as possible. We worked countless late night hours at dance rehearsals, working around their sports schedules. When they appeared and the song began, I could hardly hear the music; the crowd burst into an uproar of applause, laughter, and cheers. I’m not even sure if they know the impact they had on the drama club, the student body, and the community; but I hope they know now and I know they were proud to portray gay characters in such a great scene and I am proud of them for doing it so bravely.

This song and this play became a highlight for our drama club. The audience loved the show and, to up the ante even further, we chose to perform The Producers the next year (April 2014). Because of the success of Spamalot (in which our cast size was about 30), we had over 60 kids in seventh through twelfth grade make the cut for the cast of The Producers. With stellar comedic actors, we pulled off another edgy musical, even topping Spamalot according to most audience response.

Angelo Maskornick as Roger De Bris and Eric Rooney as Carmen Ghia in Shenandoah Valley High School’s The Producers (Photo by Mary Sajone)

In The Producers, the students who played Roger De Bris and Carmen Ghia, the gay director and his partner/assistant, were so believable that audience members were “aww-ing” at some of the more tender moments between the pair. During the song “Keep It Gay” in which Roger explains that all theater must have something gay in it, the members of Roger’s production team pulled audience members onto the stage to join in the dance and conga line. The audience couldn’t stop laughing and enjoying themselves. On our final performance, the junior who played Roger went all out after “Springtime for Hitler” by laying a surprise kiss on his onstage partner, sending the audience into an uproar that nearly resulted in a premature standing ovation. It was as if our audience wanted them to be as affectionate as any straight couple in a high school musical.

However, I heard of one concerned comment that was made. Someone was worried about any closeted seventh grader watching upperclassmen portray gay characters in a satiric way. This person’s concern was that a closeted youngster might feel even more afraid to be themselves. I, however, feel passionately that, by choosing shows with gay characters and portraying them in a truthful way, we lighten the weight that a closeted seventh grader holds on his or her shoulders. Seeing a popular junior and sophomore act as a loving gay couple in a successful show like The Producers allows that seventh grader to fear no more; it allows a community to accept, to laugh, and to love. It also opens the doors for other actors to expand the roles they audition for in upcoming years, to make it okay to play any type of role. The high school actors playing gay characters in both Spamalot and The Producers performed for the thrill of acting, entering the stage with humor and bravery; what they never expected is that when they took their final bows, they left that stage heroes.

This year, we estimate that 80 to 90 students will be auditioning for the musical – that’s nearly a fifth of the school’s population. We have become the most popular and largest organization in our school, including all sports and extracurricular activities. Theater is alive and well at Shenandoah Valley High School.

As an educator, it is my duty and an honor to provide my students with everything they need to succeed. It is my job to ensure the safety of my students, and that means creating an environment free of judgment, prejudice, and hate. This story of how the SV Drama Club includes gay characters is one that I’m proud of, but the fact of the matter is, it never needed to be explained or justified over a year ago when we produced it. I am happy to share our story if it means that a high school may stop and think about the harm they are doing upon their community and student body if they decide to exclude a show based on the show’s inclusion of gay characters.

The fact is this: Spamalot is a perfect show for any high school, and if you’re lucky, it will have an astounding effect on your students, community and organization as it did at Shenandoah Valley High School.

“I chop down trees, I wear high heels, suspenders and a bra.

I wish I’d been a girlie, just like my dear papa.”

My friends and I happily sang those Monty Python lyrics, at the drop of a hat, throughout our teen years, identifying with Michael Palin’s exuberant character, rather than the men who walked away from him in dismay. Yes, we’d seen men dress as women in comedy sketches, but those were burlesques, painted in broad, garish strokes. There had never been a declaration of donning women’s garb as a part of regular life, let alone by a macho character like a lumberjack.

In my little gang of friends, we didn’t necessarily know or talk much about homosexuality, which was decidedly less open in our suburban lives in the 70s (though one of our group later came out, to little surprise from any of us). We also hadn’t heard of terms like transvestitism or cross-dressing. Remarkable as it may seem, Monty Python may have played a key role in raising our consciousness, even more so when we learned, in the following decade, that Python’s Graham Chapman was gay, sadly lost too young to cancer.

So it’s particularly galling, more than three decades later, to find that South Williamsport Junior/Senior High School in Pennsylvania has just shut down an intended production of Monty Python’s Spamalot reportedly because of its gay content. WNEP News paraphrases the school’s drama director, Dawn Burch, as saying, “school officials dropped the musical because of its homosexual themes, according to an email she says she received.” WNEP quotes the superintendent as saying, “We want our performances to be appropriate for the student performers and audiences so that anyone participating or watching can enjoy all aspects of the show.” There’s no indication of what he finds inappropriate or unenjoyable.

I have already reached out to Burch, as well as to the school’s superintendent, for comment; I’ve received no replies as I write a few hours later. I would very much like to read exactly what the e-mail that nixed the production said. The language needs to be brought out into the open. But if Burch’s characterization is accurate, it marks the first time I’ve encountered a school explicitly saying that gay content caused cancellation of a show; the language is usually veiled, with references to mature themes, difficult material or, as even the WNEP report is headlined, “questionable content.”

The WNEP piece continues, “In that email, Burch says the principal wrote that homosexuality does not exist in a conservative community such as South Williamsport.”

If the principal believes that, then he is standing with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinajad who denied that homosexuality existed in his country during a 2007 speech at Columbia University. He is backing the rationale of Russia’s Vladimir Putin who has outlawed the “promotion” of homosexuality. That’s a very strange cast of characters for any high school principal to be aligned with, especially in such a conservative community.

While I’ll grant that there’s some language in Spamalot that a combined junior and senior high school might have some concerns about, they certainly could take those moments up with the licensing house, Theatrical Rights Worldwide. In fact, TRW already has an FAQ with suggested edits for schools right on its website (click here, then ‘Resources,’ then ‘FAQ for School Productions’).

But the marriage of the characters Herbert and Lancelot is non-negotiable. I asked Jim Hoare, director of licensing for TRW, whether they would ever entertain the excision of those nuptials, and his answer was blunt: “Absolutely not.” Hoare said that hundred of schools perform Spamalot annually.

This news is just breaking, and I’m writing with limited information at what I suspect and hope is the start of a story, not the end. One facet to be explored: Dawn Burch’s husband Samuel is on the district Board of Education, and both are active in community theatre as well, so there may well be support for the show above the level of superintendent.

Despite this coming to light just before a national holiday (gee, didn’t Trumbull High cancel their production of Rent right before Thanksgiving?), it must survive the weekend festivities, on a wave of deserved outrage. School may not be in session, but hopefully the students can organize, like students in Trumbull High School in Connecticut, like students at Timberlane High in New Hampshire, via social media, to increase pressure on the narrow-minded, retrograde administration.

That any educator or school administrator is still denying gay love and gay life in 2014, that a school would cancel a show in a move designed both implicitly and explicitly to shame and frighten any gay student, teacher or person, is simply ugly and wrong. It’s worth noting that in the very first news piece on this, reporter Kristina Papa quickly found people to counter the principal’s alleged, now retracted, assertion about gay life in South Williamsport, which must have really startled the blinkered administration.

It’s worth noting that gay marriage is legal in Pennsylvania. So it is ironic that, as they marry in Spamalot, Lancelot says to his spouse, “Just think, Herbert, in a thousand years time this will still be controversial.”

I guess Tim the Soothsayer had warned Lancelot about South Williamsport, PA. But maybe we can change history, if we raise our voices together.

I urge you to write Superintendent Dr. Mark Stamm (mstamm@swasd.org) and Principal Jesse Smith (jsmith@swasd.org) to voice your concerns (and please share your correspondence with me, if you’re willing, at howard [at] hesherman [dot] com. But I ask that you do so respectfully, even if the district doesn’t afford the same respect in its attitudes and actions.

Addendum, July 3, 5 pm: WNEP now reports that the principal did not make the statement about “homosexuality not existing.” I have left the material in place with the text and my rhetoric about it struck through, because I cannot deny having shared that original report or that I made statements resulting from it, but to show that they are also no longer supported by facts in evidence. Disclosure of the e-mail at the root of this controversy seems more essential than ever, and it should be noted that the school administration certainly has the legal right to disclose it should it wish to do so.

For those who do read the original WNEP story, it should be noted that the local resident and parent, Manny Tskitas, who makes several statements in support of the school administration’s position and questions the play choice, is also a staff member of the South Williamsport school district, as the librarian for grades K through 6. It would have been beneficial if WNEP had noted his affiliation.

Correction, July 5, 7:30: The original version of this post stated that Graham Chapman died of AIDS. That was an error and the text has been updated with accurate information.