Theatre Kids Do What Theatre Kids Do

 

A scene from [REDACTED]

We could all use a little good news once in a while, and it sure isn’t going to come from the pair of prancing and prevaricating plutocrats in Washington.  Luckily, there’s this.

When last we checked in on the theatre program at Santa Rosa High School in California, they’d recently had their production of Dog Sees God shut down by school officials who trembled at the wrath of Anonymous Whiny Folks.  There’s unpleasantness in that play, after all: substance abuse, homophobia, teen violence, isolation, eating disorders… all that nasty stuff that teenagers understand all too well because they and their friends are grappling with those issues. 

As Curmie said in the earlier piece, he doesn’t think it’s a great play, or, frankly, even a good one.  But you know what, Gentle Reader?  That doesn’t matter.  Curmie will probably skip going to the current production at the university from which he is now well and truly retired.  Why?  Because he’s not the target audience, wouldn’t catch all the references, and would not only be miserable himself but would run the risk of spoiling the evening for other spectators.  Similarly, Dog Sees God resonates with people a quarter of Curmie’s age a lot more than it does with him.  That’s absolutely no problem.

Anyway, if there’s anything a half century of working on shows has taught Curmie, it’s that theatre kids are a resilient lot, quite familiar with problem-solving, and they enjoy little if anything more than sticking it to who we in our generation called The Man.  That was true when Curmie was one of them, and it’s true today.  So what did the Santa Rosa kids do?  They couldn’t do their show on campus, so they packed up their stuff, booked a space a few miles away, and packed the auditorium with enthusiastic theatre-goers.  Twice.

But, as they say in the late-night infomercials, WAIT!  THAT’S NOT ALL!  That brouhaha was in mid-November.  By January, those kids, working with their director, Jerome Anglin, and with Brent Lindsay, artistic director of the Imaginists theater company in Santa Rosa, had written a freaking musical, [REDACTED], about their experience.  And they entered it in the Lenaea Festival, a huge convention/competition that draws entrants from some 70 (!) high school programs.  As one does.  (Don’t get ahead of me here, Gentle Reader, even if you’re pretty sure you know what’s coming.)

Curmie presumes the festival is named for the similarly named event in Ancient Athens which was notable primarily for its stagings of Old Comedy plays (satirical works by the likes of Aristophanes); it also took place in the winter, which may or may not be relevant here.  Curmie won’t bore you with more theatre history, Gentle Reader, except to note that [REDACTED] is the kind of fare that would have fit in nicely with the Lenaea Festival of the 5th century BCE.

One suspects that [REDACTED] isn’t going to supplant Lysistrata or The Frogs (both of which premiered at the other Lenaea Festival) in the dramatic lit anthologies, but with the Mommies Against the Arts chanting, “Protecting kiddies is our duty! / We cancel anything that smells a little fruity!” and defending school officials, “particularly those who make over $200,000 a year,” it certainly seems to have captured the iconoclastic irreverence of Old Comedy.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the troupe received the Spirit of Lenaea Award.  The festival of a couple of millennia ago would have been an appropriate venue, and its 21st-century descendent seems to be so, as well.  Board director Cheena Moslen said, “This group refused to be silenced. They mobilized their community, pushed back against censorship driven by fear, and ultimately staged their production, selling out performances. But that hurdle seems to be the beginning of a larger issue of silencing and oppression.”

It’s interesting, too, that according to Anglin that particular award generally goes to an individual rather than a group, but it was the entire company who shared this prize.  Santa Rosa also won a dozen other awards, including the Gold Medal (Curmie isn’t sure what that means, but it sure sounds impressive, right?) and a host of individual awards; there are awards for songs, scenes, monologues, etc.

Curmie has never been a fan of awards in the arts.  He pays even a little attention to awards shows only when he knows someone whose project has been nominated.  But sometimes those awards serve a purpose.  High school theatre programs in Curmie’s adopted state of Texas are generally better (and much better funded) than they were at Curmie’s previous stops in other states.  That’s because you can win trophies in it, and school adminstrators love to brag, even if it isn’t about anything they really care about (cough… football… cough).

And, lo and behold, the district—the same folks (with the exception of a new principal) who shut down Dog Sees God—are now strutting around praising these kids.  District public information officer James Hodgman saw a preview performance of [REDACTED].  “It is clear the students wanted to be heard on any possible censorship, and the play is based on some things that happened in recent memory,” he said. “At the district level, we are working to prevent something like that happening again.”  Curmie notes the ambiguity of that demonstrative pronoun.  Does “that” refer to the censorship or to the students’ having the audacity to believe they should be heard?

That new principal, Monica Fong, had questioned some of the monologues students intended to perform at the Lenaea Festival; Anglin invited her to a rehearsal, but she “didn’t really have much of a response to it,” and the play was not approved by the administration.  Now, of course, it’s “We would like to congratulate the ArtQuest Theatre group from Santa Rosa High School for awards received at the Lenaea Festival.  Congratulations to the students and all of the teachers that made these awards possible.”  Uh huh.

Curmie and Beloved Spouse watch a lot of old cop shows on Hulu, Amazon, Britbox, etc.  Not infrequently, some antagonist tries pushing our hero or heroine around.  They’re not our hero and heroine by accident; we know they’re going to win in the end.  And Curmie finds himself talking to the TV, saying, “Don’t fuck with [insert name here].”

School administrators, boards of education, and anyone else who seeks to censor free expression, especially in the arts, take note: Don’t fuck with theatre kids.

 

Three Stories from the OnStageBlog, Part 1: High School

The recent writer’s block and attendant dearth of posts is when Curmie turns to familiar topics… like theatre, for example.  There will be, I hope, a more complex piece forthcoming, triggered by a thought-provoking editorial a while back by Joel Grey in the New York Times.  For right now, though, it’s three stories from this fall that appeared on the OnStageBlog site.  Curmie is going to take two posts to cover the three stories—two here, one to come—lest the posts get too long even by Curmie’s standards.

A scene from the Dog Sees God dress rehearsal

The first two, from the world of high school theatre, are, as Stevie Nicks might have said, hauntingly familiar.  We start with Santa Rosa High School in California, where school officials shut down a production of Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead after opening night, capitulating to complaints that play is “obscene” and “offensive.”  The complainants were, of course, unidentified.  They always are.

Curmie read Bert V. Royal’s dark comedy, which imagines the Peanuts kids as dysfunctional teenagers, not long after its first production in 2004, and saw a production of it a couple of years ago.  He admits that he found it more vulgar than iconoclastic, more pretentious than profound, and frankly rather boring.  But it got great reviews from a lot of New York publications.  More importantly, small-town sexagenarian curmudgeons aren’t exactly the play’s target audience.  You know who it resonates with?  Adolescents and post-adolescents.  Go figure.

So… is Dog Sees God “obscene” or “offensive”?  Maybe.  After all, one of those reviews calls it “raunchy,” and the Dramatists Play Service blurb (linked above) suggests that “Drug use, suicide, eating disorders, teen violence, rebellion and sexual identity collide and careen…”  All that stuff does in fact appear on stage, but Curmie doesn’t remember ever finding anything offensive, per se.  Of course, he’s not easily offended, and he’s not the parent of a teenager, so he may be missing something. 

It’s also worth mentioning that the parents of all the students involved in the production had been informed of the play’s content and had given their consent for their children to participate.  Ah, but you see, the school hadn’t warned the parents of other kids.  Oh, bloody hell.  And of course, the decision to shut the play down had been “not made out of censorship but out of caution and concern.”  Translation, if you’re not familiar with educational bureaucracy-speak, Gentle Reader: “we absolutely censored the play because we’re afraid of idiots who are unwilling to stand for their beliefs openly.”

The point here is that some caution might be appropriate, but the time to impose any restrictions is much earlier than opening night: before spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars on scripts, royalties, sets, costumes, advertising, and all the other expenses involved in producing a play, and before the thousands of person-hours spent by faculty and students in rehearsal and in technical support.  It’s also worth noting, as Chris Peterson does in the article linked above, that another school in the same district did the play two years ago, placing second in a high school theatre festival. 

Given the fact that the cancelation was apparently ordered by district officials rather than by, say the school’s principal, that’s a rather significant indictment of the decision-makers.  If the previous production was “obscene,” then this one should not have been allowed to proceed (note: the theatre teacher didn’t write a personal check for the royalties).  If the earlier show was deemed acceptable, then the board is clearly signaling that they will be swayed by a heckler’s veto.  Not a good look.

Theatre people being a somewhat canny lot not given to submitting to authoritarian stupidity, the company proceeded to find another venue, the privately owned Mercury Theater in nearby Petaluma, whose owners volunteered their space after hearing of the cancellation.  (Hats off to them!)  They did two shows there, at least one of which was sold out to the point of turning people away.

The good news, such as it is, is that the board backed down, at least somewhat, following community uproar and nationwide humiliation upon reconsideration.  Their compromise solution, that the play could continue but only to audiences over 16, would have made sense as an initial decision, provided, of course, that those under 16 could see the show with parental approval (or perhaps if accompanied by a parent).  It’s unclear whether Santa Rosa High includes 9th graders or not.  If it does, then there’s a reasonable chance that 15-year-old freshmen could work the show but wouldn’t be allowed to buy a ticket. 

This, alas, wouldn’t surprise Curmie.  School boards do all too often represent the perfect storm at the nexus of authoritarian impulses and intellectual cowardice.  Quoting Paul McCartney this time: “La la how the life goes on.”

Curmie was tempted to cite yet another popular song from decades ago to introduce the second OnStage article in question.  But with all due respect to Herman’s Hermits, “Second verse, same as the first” isn’t quite accurate, although it’s pretty close.  There are indeed similarities between the Santa Rosa situation and one at Cesar Chavez High School in Phoenix.  

In the latter case, officials from the Phoenix Union High School District delayed the opening of the school’s production of The Laramie Project only hours before the scheduled opening, citing “the need for additional time to better prepare our audience and the public for the seriousness of the play’s content. So there’s something akin to censorship by a school board who should have done their jobs earlier in the process.  A little communication between the theatre director and district officials would have gone a long way.

Here’s where Curmie’s profession may get in the way a little: no one in my line of work doesn’t know that The Laramie Project is about the torture and murder of Matthew Shepherd in Laramie in 1998 (well, Curmie had to look up the date, but you get the idea, Gentle Reader).  The play, constructed by Moisés Kaufman and the Tectonic Theater Project, consists of statements by Laramie residents, company members’ journal entries, and news reports, all transcribed verbatim and presented by a small group of actors, each of whom play several roles. 

But, as Curmie is reminded every time he and Beloved Spouse watch the Macy’s or Rose Parades, not everyone is expected to know everything: “Who the hell is that country singer who’s apparently so popular?”  So it’s not exactly dereliction of duty for school officials not to recognize the title of the play.  True, given the fact that reading as much as a one-sentence description of The Laramie Project would tell administrators pretty much all they’d need to know, that level of supervision doesn’t seem overburdening.  And if students’ claim that the board had initially signed off on the project is accurate (as opposed to the board not explicitly forbidding the show), then there’s a real problem.

Still, the theatre faculty certainly should have known that the material might require a warning to prospective audience members; that they didn’t initially provide one or (apparently) consult with the board doesn’t show them in the best of light.

Students, of course, started throwing around words like “censorship.”  But the board’s actual press release doesn’t seem outrageous.  Here’s part of that statement:

The themes and language in the play need additional acknowledgments and disclaimers for families and students in attendance. Many of our students have younger siblings, and we must properly inform families about the content they are going to see so they can make informed decisions about whether younger family members attend. In addition, we want to ensure proper mental health support is in place for those in the audience who may have strong feelings about the play’s contents.

That’s fine if they meant it, and if they were really talking about a delay rather than a cancellation… and it turns out they were.  The play went on a week after the scheduled opening.  According to one report, it was unaltered, although the director had apparently agreed to excise “bad language”  (over the strenuous, and absolutely legitimate objections of many of the students involved: “If you change all the language that was said, is it really even a hate crime anymore? You're censoring it. These real things were said about this person that died because of a hate crime.”)  It is unclear (to Curmie, at least) whether the bowdlerization ultimately occurred, or, if so, if it was approved by the rights-holders.

It seems that the production was originally scheduled for only a single performance.  That seems odd, but plausible.  If that’s the case, then the single show a week after schedule with appropriate content warnings almost, almost, solves the problem.  The good news, of course, is that there aren’t a lot of high school productions that get nationwide publicity.  We take our triumphs where they come.