One of the most common topics for Curmie’s blog over the years has been when idiot school administrators (the usual apologies for redundancy) do something stupid and censorious with school plays. Curmie is no doubt forgetting an episode or two, but here’s a brief sampling:
There was the moronic Superintendent in Pennsylvania who pulled a production of Kismet—yes, the thoroughly innocuous 1950s musical that gave us “Stranger in Paradise” and “Baubles, Bangles, and Beads”—because the central characters are Muslims, and 9/11 was [checks notes] only ten and a half years or so before the scheduled production date. (That same post also discusses a community theatre that cancelled its production of The Rocky Horror Show because it turns out that parts of the show are risqué: who knew, right?)
There was the Ohio principal who fired the director/choreographer of the musical Legally Blonde (after it had received standing ovations) for violating vague “code of conduct” guidelines: not deleting the word “skank” from the script and similar offenses which the principal could have headed off if he’d… you know… done his job.
There was the Utah school board who, admitting they “they failed to give [All Shook Up] careful scrutiny” when they signed off on a contract to produce it, were apparently more shocked than Claude Rains in “Casablanca” that a musical loosely constructed around the songs of Elvis Presley might contain some suggestive choreography.
Ah, but the #1 target of the censorious asshats: any play that suggests that gay people exist and that they sometimes… sometimes fall in love. Thus, this post from a little over eight years ago about the cancellations of a Pennsylvania school’s production of Spamalot! and a North Carolina school’s production of Almost, Maine.
In the climax of the former show, Lancelot takes stage as a flamingly (and hilariously) gay character who ultimately marries the man of his dreams. In the latter, a scene called “They Fall” shows two young male characters literally falling (as in being unable to stand) as they realize their attraction for each other. Both moments are fun; neither would offend anyone who has decided that the 1950s are behind us.
Here’s what Curmie wrote then:
High school plays ought to be appropriate for the performers, but directors and student actors ought to be under no obligation to pander to the least common denominator of their audiences unless a particular production is specifically intended for children. Think about the second most-produced high school play: A Midsummer Night’s Dream. [Note: at the time, the most produced play in American high schools was… wait for it… Almost, Maine.]
Fairies, forbidden love, a whole lot of sex jokes in the mechanicals’ performance (I know this in part from having played an Egeus/Philostrate conflation; part of my job in Act V was to laugh at all the dirty stuff so the audience would be alerted to the jokes), a variation on the theme of bestiality… and why do you think Oberon was so interested in that Indian Boy, after all? Fact is, pick any show and if you look hard enough, you’ll find something to complain about.
Also remarkable about both these plays is the willingness of the rights-holders to accommodate “milder” versions. There’s a “school” version of Spamalot!, for example, and the North Carolina school had already announced that a different scene from Almost, Maine, one suggesting imminent (heterosexual) sex, had already been cut, presumably with the permission of the playwright or his agent.
There were ways, then, by which administrators could have protected the tender sensibilities of their charges without being censorious asshats. Whether they’re terminally constipated, dumber than the proverbial box of rocks, or just like throwing their weight around because they can (or more than one of the above) is difficult to determine, and ultimately doesn’t matter.
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| A scene from the Broadway production of Indecent. |
The first news story Curmie can find, from a local television station , sums up the situation concisely: the play “contains a same sex relationship.” And that is precisely the reason for the censorship, the school’s protestations that the problem was “adult sexual dialogue” are, in a word, bullshit.
And spare us the nonsense about “inappropriate for student cast members and student audiences.” The participating students had permission from their parents, and frankly there’s nothing in the play’s language that won’t be heard in the halls of the school on a daily basis… well, other than the Yiddish, that is.
Once again, school administrators created the problem by not doing their damned jobs. First off, as Curmie has pointed out repeatedly in the past, someone other than the director had to have signed off on the show. And what’s that play’s title, again? Wouldn’t it be worth spending 30 seconds on an internet search before de facto approving a show called Indecent? Ah, but that would have been the responsible thing to do; these yahoos can’t be bothered.
And it is, of course, the case that a compromise solution could almost certainly have been worked out had administrators simply expressed concerns instead of over-reacting. Paula Vogel issued a response to the censorship. It’s worth reading in its entirety, but the especially relevant portion to this discussion reads as follows:
For the past 40 years, I receive requests from high schools to change language in my plays, and to restage the scenes, ignoring my stage directions. And I readily give my permission. There have been high school productions of INDECENT where the student actors hold hands. The Victorian translation is demure, and one can amend my updated translation with permission.
Ms. Vogel was much admired, both as playwright and as person, by one of Curmie’s most beloved mentors. Curmie met her once and found her charming and sensible. Curmie believes her, in other words, when she says she’s likely to have been accommodating.
To be fair, Indecent is not a play Curmie would choose to be produced by high school kids, although not for the reasons the show was cancelled. Rather, it’s a damned difficult play. It requires an understanding of a culture the average American knows little if anything about, and is often specific about the music, choreography, fashion, and attitudes associated with that society. There are a host of complex characters, requiring nuanced performances. And the play-within-a-play structure demands an attention to detail that adolescents aren’t necessarily prepared to provide.
Finally, of course, although the play had been nominated for a host of major Broadway awards—the Tony, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, and Drama League Award—it’s probable, given the response of director Madeline Scotti (that the powers-that-be are “trying to tell me that, I, myself and my community is dirty, immoral, obscene, and indecent”), that initial choice of the play was based more on its lesbian kiss and its critique of anti-Semitism—its representation of Scotti’s political views, in other words—than on any critical appreciation of the dramatic text.
All of this would give Curmie pause before selecting (or approving) Indecent to be part of a high school season. But the point is, it was chosen. Administrators knew, or at the very least should have known, what the play is about and the language it employs. Students had been granted parental permission to be in the play, suggesting two things: that the producers knew the show might be controversial and made sure there wouldn’t be any complaints from the families of the participants, and that the school’s later insistence that the language was “inappropriate for student cast members” did not coincide with the views of the people most responsible for those students’ welfare: their parents.
This, of course, presents an ironic reversal of what has become a common trope in secondary schools, especially in Florida: that parents object to the teaching of this or that work of literature, this or that scientific theory, or this or that interpretation of history. So… do we side with the school, or with the parents?
Neither. We side with free expression. We teach Oedipus, we teach evolution, and we at least make students aware of the fundamental tenets of Critical Race Theory. None of the above should be confused with endorsing those positions, merely presenting the arguments and treating adolescents as if they have at least some cognitive ability: knowing how to separate the persuasive from the excremental is what education ought to be about. Oh, and if we have at least implicitly signed off on a production of Indecent, we put it on stage and talk about it after the performance.
Curmie generally claims the last word in these posts, but generally there isn’t a professional writer involved. So we’ll turn things over to Paula Vogel: “Why hurt the students who are aiming to become theatre makers? Instead of letting them discover the issues of antisemitism, intolerance, censorship and the Holocaust the school board is censoring them. Disempowering young artists at this crucial age borders, to me, on an obscene act.”
What she said.
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