Boy, Is This Not Greatness

Mitchell Hall, where (presumably) Boy My Greatness
was to have been performed

A grad school friend of Curmie’s now lives a few miles from the University of Central Oklahoma, which recently suppressed the production of a play that had been scheduled to be produced this month.  He posted about this story on his Facebook page, and Curmie became interested, in part because there is so little press coverage (more on that below).

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.  It’s possible, of course, but not generally believed, that the role could have been played by an adult female impersonator, equivalent to the onnagata in Kabuki.  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 COU’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 made by the theatre department, Curmie has some ocean-front property in Kansas he’s willing to sell to you for a mere $10,000 an acre.  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.