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 JoelGrey 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.
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| A scene from the Dog Sees God dress rehearsal |
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.
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 the come.
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