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| Mitchell Hall, where (presumably) Boy My Greatness was to have been performed |
Curmie doesn’t know the work in question, Zoe
Senese-Grossberg’s 2024 play Boy My Greatness, but he did immediately recognize one
of the most famous lines from Antony and Cleopatra, in which the
Egyptian queen, now captured by Caesar’s minions, predicts that “Antony / Shall
be brought drunken forth, and I shall see / Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my
greatness / I’ th’ posture of a whore.” (That’s V.ii.265-8, if you’re playing
along at home, Gentle Reader.)
The line is not only metatheatrical (there are other examples in Shakespeare, but this is probably the best known), but also, of course, self-referentially ironic: the actor saying that line at the Globe (or perhaps the Second Blackfriars?) Theatre in c. 1607 would almost certainly have been a boy. Indeed, this speech is one of the major pieces of evidence that boys, rather than adult female impersonators, played the women’s roles. It’s possible, of course, but unlikely, that there were adults roughly equivalent to the onnagata in Kabuki in some of those parts. But this would almost certainly create an even “squeakier” Cleopatra, as higher pitches do not come naturally to post-puberty males. The point is taken, either way.
It comes as no surprise, then, that a play titled Boy My
Greatness deals with boys playing women in Shakespeare’s plays. It’s set in 1606, and one of the plays
currently in rehearsal is indeed Antony and Cleopatra. (Yes, it’s probable that the play hadn’t been
written yet in 1606, but it’s not like the Bard himself didn’t play fast and
loose with historical accuracy.)
It is simply a fact that all women’s roles in public
performances (court masques were a different category) in the Elizabethan and
Jacobean periods in England were played by male actors. Even the most ignorant of university
officials must surely know that. Ah, but
two of the boys in this play are, or at least have been, in a romantic relationship. One presumes that is what rattled the chain of
the homophobic idiots censorial asshats university counsel’s
office.
OK, let’s take this one step at
a time. There’s a stupid law at the
state level and a directive (not a law) from the feds that forbid the use of
public funds to support “DEI” initiatives.
Curmie disagrees with these restrictions, but acknowledges that in a
perfect world they would be sensible.
(He also gestures broadly, wearing an expression readily translatable as
“does this look like a perfect world to you?”)
But if the laws themselves are problematic, the idea that
staging a play in which gay (or curious) characters exist is somehow endorsing
DEI is ample evidence that, to borrow a felicitous phrase from Ken White of
Popehat, universities should cease hiring legal counsel from the back of a bait
shop.
Showing something onstage is not endorsing it, as ought to
be painfully obvious to anyone who can out-think a turnip. Even portraying a character favorably falls
well short of supporting everything about that individual. Curmie once directed a production of Jean Racine’s
Phaedra; that doesn’t make him (or his actors) either a Jansenite
Catholic or a monarchist. He’s directed Mishima
Yukio’s Lady Aoi; he’s neither a Buddhist nor a believer in demonic possession. He’s directed Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold…
and the boys”; he does not endorse the racial animus perpetrated (briefly) by
the title character. But you, Gentle
Reader, already knew all of this. That’s
because you’re considerably smarter than UCO’s legal staff (or president, or trustees, or whoever really made this decision).
True, the university’s official statement reads “After a review of
the requirements outlined in the contract from the national production company
with legal counsel, the university’s theatre department decided not to support
the local production of the show with university resources at this time.”
Gentle Reader, if you believe the decision was de facto made by the
theatre department, Curmie has some ocean-front property in Kansas he’s willing
to sell to you for cheap.
This has every earmark of a top-down decision made by administrators. Curmie’s friend, who may have information
that hasn’t been made public, says there were threats of firings, which prompted
faculty and students to “back down.” Of
course, any theatre faculty member who willingly capitulated to this nonsense without
being somehow threatened should indeed be fired.
But, as Curmie has suggested before, there is a lesson here: Don’t Fuck with Theatre Kids, who are an industrious and creative lot. The good news, or at least the promising news, is that a Gofundme campaign raised considerably more money than the $2000 goal, and plans are afoot to find an off-campus venue for the production. As of this writing, such a space has not yet been secured, but hopes are high.
As noted above, there is remarkably little press coverage of
any of this.* There’s a single story from a local TV station which does, at least, seem to have been picked up by
yahoo. The lack of press about the incident
suggests that the censors will get away with their bigoted and authoritarian
bullshit without the widespread humiliation they so richly deserve. This post is, perhaps, the proverbial voice
crying in the wilderness (Curmie did go to Dartmouth, after all, where Vox Clamantis in Deserto is the college motto), but at least it’s something. Gentle Reader, you should, of course, feel free to make your
voice heard, too (even if you disagree with Curmie).
Curmie closes by turning the floor over to his friend: “Show
will be done. UCO will lose theatre majors/students. Faculty and admin will
retain their jobs. And the state legislature will gain confidence in their
fascist policies.”
What he said.
* This statement was true when this piece was posted. There is now a piece by Howard Sherman and an article in Playbill. This is good news.
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