Elliot Page Isn't Playing Achilles! Who (other than Curmie) could have guessed?

You may perhaps recall, Gentle Reader, that Curmie had a good time a couple months ago, laughing at the conservative hand-wringers who convinced themselves that Elliot (formerly Ellen) Page was going to play Achilles in Christopher Nolan’s cinematic version of “The Odyssey.” 

There were rumors, you see, and that was sufficient evidence for idiots like Rob Finnerty of Newsmax and the terminally self-important and generally wrong Elon Musk to decry the casting of, in Finnerty’s words, “a girl who dresses as a guy who’s five-foot-one, 118 pounds” as “the greatest warrior in history.”  Even Finnerty acknowledges that Page would “reportedly” play Achilles, but the rest of his screed works on the assumption that the rumors should indeed be believed.  The once savvy Jack Marshall launched into a diatribe against “wokeness” and “stunt casting,” writing that Page “was cast” as Achilles.  No room for skepticism when there is righteous dudgeon just waiting to be spewed!

Guess what?  Page isn’t playing Achilles!  There is indeed some question as to whether Achilles even appears, either as a ghost or in a flashback.  The preview showing of the film happened a couple of nights ago, and Curmie can’t find any commentary he’d regard as trustworthy that says anything one way or the other.  Someone on Reddit says Achilles isn’t in the film, but Curmie isn’t betting the mortgage on that assurance.

Curmie confesses that it has been a very long time since he last read Homer, but does think it would be a little strange not to have Achilles appear, either as a shade in the underworld or in a flashback scene, especially since the role Page actually is playing, Sinon, doesn’t appear anywhere in Homer at all.  The character is best known to us through Vergil’s Aeneid.  He was the Greek soldier, a cousin of Odysseus, who allows himself to be captured by the Trojans, pretends to be a deserter, and convinces them to bring the Trojan Horse inside the city gates. 

Page’s Sinon isn’t going to over-power the Trojans, but that’s not his job.  He outwits them instead, and Page’s charisma and facility with language would seem to be appropriate qualifications for the role.  It’s also worth pointing out that Greek men in that period didn’t really have a lot of choice about whether they’d go to war.  You couldn’t opt out because you were small.  Moreover, Page’s diminutive size could actually be used to advantage for this particular role, making the subterfuge that Sinon had been forsaken or sacrificed by the Greek army more plausible.  Of course, we don’t know what the real Sinon looked like because... he never existed except as a fictive character.  That’s a 5th century CE image of him at the top of the page: over a millennium after he supposedly existed, in other words.  But he does look a little pudgy compared to Elliot Page...

Curmie is just spit-balling here, but there are, or at the very least could be, good and appropriate reasons to cast Elliot Page.  Plus, of course, there’s the likelihood that Nolan and Page just like working with each other.  There’s plenty of hot air about how Nolan cast Page to have a better chance at an Oscar.  That’s true to the extent that Page is a good actor, thereby making the film better, but the movie had already met those dumb “inclusion” requirements through other means, and Sinon is unlikely to be a big enough role to qualify as “significant,” anyway.

Curmie does note that he was led to believe that Page would probably take on the role of Elpenor (who at least appears in Homer’s epic!).  This rumor, too, was regarded as definitive by a lot of folks as recently as last week.  Curmie does point out, however, that he italicized the words “reported” and “expected” in his post back in May, suggesting that whereas the Elpenor rumor, unlike the Achilles rumor, was at least plausible, he wasn’t going to suggest that such casting was indeed a fact.

So, there are, unsurprisingly, those who feel the need to complain for the sake of complaining about changing Homer’s plotline, adding the Sinon character.  <Sigh.>  Adaptations, additions, and edits have been a part of the business since, well, at least as far back as Homer, who drew from other versions of what we’d now call mythological tales.  Greek tragedies borrowed (stole?) from Homer, Hesiod, and whoever else was handy.  The Aeschylean, Sophoclean, and Euripidean versions of the murders of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus by Orestes and Electra differ from each other in significant ways.  (Euripides’ Electra actually makes fun of Aeschylus’s Libation Bearers.)  More recently, if you see an author’s name as part of a movie title (“Agatha Christie’s this,” “Bram Stoker’s that”), you can pretty much take it to the bank that there is little if any relationship between the film version and the original book.

Much of Curmie’s career as a scholar concentrated on these adaptations.  There’s no such thing as a direct translation, of course, but there are certainly adapted works that try to keep as closely as possible to the original.  Others, there’s just a hint.  For example, there’s Brian Friel’s play Living Quarters: After Hippolytus.  Without the subtitle, even a perceptive and well-educated theatre-goer might miss the reference, as there are a lot of differences between Friel’s version and Euripides’, extending far past character names and settings.  Some of these adaptations really work; some don’t, usually because they beat the reader/spectator over the head with their presumed contemporary relevance.

Curmie isn’t going to talk about whether an idea worked or didn’t until he sees the final product.  He can speculate, as he did in discussing the Arena Stage production of Inherit the Wind, but that’s as far as he’ll go.  He could watch “The Odyssey” and love it… or hate it… or think it was “meh.”  He could think including Sinon or casting Page was brilliant or stupid or somewhere in-between.  But Christopher Nolan has proven to be someone who makes a lot of good choices, and Curmie isn’t going to criticize him without knowing a lot more than he does now.

Reviews from the London screening have all been positive, even enthusiastic.  Whether you or I agree, Gentle Reader, will be a matter of individual taste.  Maybe we think Nolan hit the proverbial home run; maybe we think he hit a lazy one-hop grounder to the shortstop… or struck out.  But one thing we must agree on is that he handled the casting controversies, especially the bit involving Elliot Page, brilliantly.  We know that he is heavily involved in the marketing of his films, and he got mountains of publicity for a project that hadn’t been released yet… and made the right-wing pundits look like idiots in the process.  Whether Nolan actively encouraged the mistaken belief that Page was to play Achilles or just sat back to watch the self-inflicted carnage almost doesn’t matter.

There’s one other aspect that Curmie, as a theatre historian, can’t help but mention.  When the famous Playboy riots happened at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1907, the theatre’s directors kept the doors open.  For several nights, the audience couldn’t hear the performance over the boos of the protestors.  But—key point here—those folks had to buy a ticket to get inside to boo.  And a lot of other people wanted to see what all the fuss was about.  They bought tickets, too.  Curmie predicts “The Odyssey” will sell well, whether or not it’s a great, or even good, film.  Whatever you think of him as a director, Christopher Nolan is a bright lad.  Or maybe he just paid attention in Theatre History class.

Thoughts on a Play Curmie Hasn't Seen

Henry Drummond (Billy Eugene Jones) interrogates
Matthew Harrison Brady (Dakin Matthews)
in the Arena Stage production of Inherit the Wind.

The Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee classic Inherit the Wind has played an important role in Curmie’s life more than once.  He first encountered the play when he was in high school, at a time when he began having real doubts about organized religion in general and Christianity in particular.  Of course, this was in the early ‘70s, a time of turbulence in American society in general—the Vietnam War, civil rights, what was then called “women’s liberation,” campus protests, drug culture…  Not all of those things had much of a direct effect on Curmie, but what had always been taken for granted was increasingly being questioned.

The play, of course, was based on the “Scopes Monkey Trial” in Tennessee in 1925.  The irreverence of Henry Drummond, the Clarence Darrow character, shows towards Matthew Harrison Brady (William Jennings Bryan) really caught Curmie’s attention.  He was particularly fond of the bit about where Cain’s wife came from: “Figure somebody pulled off another creation, over in the next county?”  That’s the kind of snark that appealed a lot to an adolescent who wanted desperately to be rebellious but couldn’t quite handle the social discomfort.  Fifty-something years later, Curmie still approves.

Above all, though, Curmie was introduced to the idea that drama can be about something, not just pretty words or an engaging story.  He hadn’t put all the pieces together yet, but this play was indeed destined to play a role in Curmie’s career choices, especially the willingness to explore the more academic side of the business after it became clear that he had more intellect than acting talent.

Speaking of which…  A few years later, in the summer between his freshman and sophomore years of college, Curmie auditioned for a production of Inherit the Wind in the summer season of the local college, whose theatre building was literally across the street from his house.  He was cast, not in the role he wanted, but cast.  His role may be the most difficult he’s ever played: not because it was a lead (Curmie has had a couple, though not many), but precisely because it wasn’t.  Part of the difficulty was, no doubt, due to Curmie’s inexperience; things would certainly have been easier had he had a few more shows behind him before essaying the part. 

But a good deal of the struggle came from the role itself.  Curmie played Harry Y. Esterbrook, the announcer for WGN radio in Chicago.  In the trial scenes, which are at the center of the play, Esterbrook is on stage, facing the audience, every moment.  All those clichés about how “acting is reacting” were certainly true for that part.  Curmie had very few lines to hide behind or build a character around, and it was one of those roles that can’t really help the show, but sure can hurt it.

But what Curmie really got out of that production was something different.  He had no choice but to watch the other actors, and indeed really to pay attention to them.  While Esterbrook was watching Drummond or Brady or Hornbeck (the H. L. Mencken character), Curmie was watching actors more skilled—whether by experience, talent, or both—than himself.  He noticed the difference between standing on the line and before it, the subtle but noticeable turn of the head that set up a moment, the pause that made the audience listen more intently to what followed.  He also listened to the director, who was excellent in some ways but given to rants… and he saw the veteran actors pretty much ignore these outbursts.  If you’re screaming all the time, it doesn’t matter that you’re screaming now.  That applies to life in general, of course, but especially to the stage.

Curmie got better as an actor, in large part because of that show: not good enough to make a living at it, but he did play a few featured roles in student productions as an undergrad and even a couple of leads in amateur productions after graduation.  But without even contemplating the possibility that he might someday be a director, he learned a great deal from the experience of Inherit the Wind about how to do that job, too.

It is ironic, to be sure, that whereas Curmie did indeed end up acting in a couple dozen more plays and directing 60 or so over the course of his career, his job was as a theatre scholar, and it wasn’t until years after being in that production of Inherit the Wind that he realized that the play is about the Scopes trial in very much the same way that The Crucible is about the Salem witch trials of the late 17th century: in other words, as a stand-in for something else.  In both cases, that “something else” was the anti-communist fervor exemplified by investigations by Joseph McCarthy et al. in the Senate and HUAC in the House.  Whereas Arthur Miller concentrated on the false accusations, Lawrence and Lee were more about the suppression of ideas, but the two plays end up in pretty much the same place, and do so in similar fashion, by creating a fictive world that approximates but does not reproduce historical events.

Cates, of course, is found guilty.  His fine has been paid, but he has no future in this small Tennessee town.  Drummond recognizes this, but provides a bit of context: “You don’t suppose this kind of thing is ever finished, do you?  Tomorrow it’ll be something else—and another fella will have to stand up.  And you’ve helped give him the guts to do it!”  We are left with the confidence that Cates, probably more than the IRL person on whom he is based, will be fine.

While it is a little embarrassing that Curmie took literally years to figure out that a play written in the immediate aftermath of the McCarthy era might be about something more than just a 30-year-old trial in Tennessee, at least he’s perceptive enough to notice that there’s a reason for theatre companies in 2026 to choose this particular chestnut.  Being that “next fella” matters, especially as attempts by the right to suppress any expression they don’t like are springing up faster than zits on prom night.  

Curmie started to list the cases he’s written about just in this academic year, but that list got really long.  A couple of highlights, then: the cancellation of a student-directed play because there are… you know… <whispers> gay people in it; the professor who was fired and the retired cop who was charged with a felony (!) for posting memes insufficiently hagiographic about Charlie Kirk (certainly far less celebratory than Dear Leader’s recent outburst about the passing of Robert Mueller); the Texas A&M philosophy prof who was forbidden to assign a passage from Plato, and his colleague from a different department whose class was cancelled after it had already met because he couldn’t predict which specific days class discussion might veer into territory the censorial regime didn’t like.  And on and on. 

Plus, of course, we should mention the various felonies committed by ICE/DHS/whoever against citizens exercising their 1st Amendment rights, including but by no means limited to the murder of Alex Pretti.  Plus, of course, all of those incidents that Curmie posted about on his Facebook page but never wrote about… and the hundreds (no doubt) that Curmie never even heard about.  Yeah, it’s time for a production of Inherit the Wind, which, of course, also highlights the dangers of cherry-picking which sections of the Bible should form the foundation of a weltanschauung and which can be readily ignored.

So… anyway… there is such a production at Arena Stage in Washington, DC, presented in cooperation with Seattle-based The Feast company (director Ryan Guzzo Purcell is the founder of The Feast).  It is a trimmed-down version: there must have been a couple dozen actors in the production Curmie was in; this one has only ten, with a lot of doubling and only a sprinkling of jurors on stage at any given moment, for example.  As might be expected, this is a show created by Woke Folk: Drummond is black; Hornbeck is female (one presumes that the company got approval from the rights-holders for this change); the cast is listed alphabetically in the program, which also includes a land acknowledgment.  <Sigh.>

Curmie’s dear friend Paul Webb reviewed the production on his blog, which, Gentle Reader, if you’re a theatre-goer in the DC area, you should bookmark.  Paul touches on some curious choices in terms of time period: both in terms of costumes and, for example, the presence of a 50-star American flag, which strikes Curmie as more likely intentional than lazy (but he doesn’t totally reject the latter as a possibility).  A couple of other choices were curious: giving Brady, a Nebraskan, a southern drawl and even putting him in a white suit that make him look like a refugee from a KFC commercial for at least one scene, for instance.  (Bryan was from Illinois,)

Over at Ethics Alarms, Jack Marshall declares the production “stupid,” a “travesty,” and “absurd,” among similar endearments.  Is he right?  Up to a point, yes.  Part of the play’s appeal stems from the audience’s recognition of the historical reference: at some level, Bert Cates is John Scopes, Henry Drummond is Clarence Darrow, etc., and there’s no way some of what happens in this production could have occurred in the real world: no rational defendant would hire a black lawyer in Tennessee in 1925, for instance… not to mention the fact that the author of the textbook in question used evolution as a means of supporting eugenics and the alleged superiority of the white race, and it’s rather unlikely that a black man would be much interested in taking up that cause.

But this is a fictionalized version of events, not a literal re-telling with the “names changed to protect the innocent,” à la “Dragnet.”  For example, Bert Cates may be dating the preacher’s daughter, but John Scopes wasn’t; the locals may have been hoping Scopes would be convicted, but they weren’t hostile towards the outsiders (they welcomed the visitors who were spending money in their town); Bryan didn’t die until several days after the trial, in his sleep, not mere moments after the verdict was announced.  

Lawrence and Lee altered the story to make it more theatrical, in the same way that Shakespeare played fast and loose with his history plays.  (Curmie spent a very long time indeed re-learning the actual events of the Plantagenet and Tudor eras after first reading about them in plays like Henry V and Richard III.)  The changes wrought in Inherit the Wind tend mostly to increase the tension, making things more difficult for Cates: he has become more of a pariah in the community, and his personal and professional lives are more in conflict with each other.

What appears to have happened in the Arena production is to exaggerate these departures from history per se and their effects even more.  Without having seen the play in production, Curmie is loath to proclaim these changes successful or otherwise, but he suspects he’d have felt preached at and/or condescended to.  It’s important to note here that changing the time period, or the race and/or sex of a character aren’t inherently problematic: Curmie has indeed done all of the above, usually because there just wasn’t a good enough male actor or white singer or whatever.  Such problems are unlikely to present themselves in a professional production in Washington, DC.

In all probability, the squishiness of the time frame is intended to make the audience think about how this play, written over 70 years ago and referencing events of 30 years before that, is relevant to today’s world.  Curmie doesn’t think that’s necessary; rather, he’s going to trust the audience’s perspicacity (and his own story-telling ability) to make those connections without artificial assistance.  One of the essential elements of theatre is audience superiority: not just “I see what you did there,” but “and I saw it before the people in the row in front of me did.”  Whether a 50-star flag helps or hurts this process probably varies by spectator as well as by production choices.  (It would be interesting to know which came first: the decision to cast a black Drummond, necessitating the time change, or the time change, allowing a black Drummond.)

But all of this dances around the central issue: there’s a professional production of Inherit the Wind out there!  Curmie would definitely go if he was in the area, but there are four screen versions, including three that seem to be available on Tubi: the original 1960 film with a host of recognizable actors led by Spencer Tracy as Drummond and Fredric March as Brady (this is the only one Curmie has seen; it’s really good); a 1988 TV version with Kirk Douglas and Jason Robards; and another TV version, this one from 1999, with Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott.  Curmie might just have to check one of these out before long…

Well, One of Them Is Excusable

<Sigh.>

Curmie, as you might well imagine, Gentle Reader, sees a lot of political cartoons, memes, and brief commentary from (generally) like-minded folks.  Every once in a while, he sees something so absurd on its face that it couldn’t possibly be true.  Alas, it turns out to be true more often the not.  Curmie, however, is skeptical by nature, and he really does try to avoid re-posting stuff that isn’t true. 

This week, there were two stories that caught Curmie’s eye in this regard: an alleged quotation from Ted Cruz and a video supposedly posted to Donald Trump’s Truth Social account.  Both were in the “this couldn’t be true… could it?” category.  Well, they were both true.  Sort of. 

Let’s start there, with Senator Cruz’s line that we should “stop attacking pedophiles.”  Did he really say that?  Yes, he did.  But it’s clear that, unlike the host of politicians who get busted for saying something outrageous or an outright lie, the “he misspoke” follow-up really is true.  His spokesperson is absolutely justified in saying that Cruz was “rattling off a series of crimes we should unite in opposing, started a sentence about opposing pedophilia, and added a stray word while talking it out.”

This is the kind of thing that happens when speaking off the cuff.  Anyone who spends a lot of time talking is going to screw up, and might not even be aware of it.  Curmie is pretty certain he did that several times over the course of his career; it’s just that his students and colleagues were kind enough to know what he meant and to let it go at that.  And Barack Obama doesn’t really think there are 57 states. 

Even when there’s enough time to think, these mistakes can happen.  There’s a Modelo beer commercial that assures listeners that they are “not to be reckoned with.”  They mean “not to be trifled with,” but that’s the opposite of what they say.  A few years ago, Curmie’s hometown didn’t get any appreciable rain for several weeks.  The city (or the county, or whoever) posted a bunch of signs about “drought protection.”  One suspects they weren’t actually trying to protect the drought.  See?  This stuff happens.

Look, Curmie is no fan of Ted Cruz.  The guy is a liar, a coward, and possessed of less integrity than even a run-of-the-mill partisan hack like his fellow Texas Senator, John Cornyn.  But that’s really sort of the point: give him a day or two, and he’ll say or do something that really is worth of derision, and “our side” can be a little less disingenuous.  Things get complicated by the fact that in one sense Cruz is indeed protecting pedophiles, but it’s by more by craven inaction than by clear intentionality.  He’ll never not be an asshole, but he’s pretty much innocent this time, and we need to respond accordingly.

On the other hand, there’s that video posted to Dear Leader’s Truth Social page that includes an image of Barack and Michelle Obama’s faces superimposed onto the bodies of apes.  Needless to say, the cries of “racism” were prompt and loud.  And they came from virtually everywhere.  Sure, Democrats were at the forefront and the criticism.  Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and Hakeem Jeffries all weighed in.  But, unsurprisingly, it was firebrand Jasmine Crockett who pretty much led the charge: “Most of us already know who Donald Trump is. We already know there are no bounds to how low he’s willing to go. We know that he has no moral compass. We know that he is a disgrace. So while his behavior is not shocking, it is certainly disgusting and disturbing.”  That is not a subtle commentary.

That said, a lot of GOP pols weren’t far behind.  Representative Mike Turner (OH) wrote that “the release of racist images of former President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama is offensive, heart breaking, and unacceptable. President Trump should apologize.”  Expressing similar sentiments were Senators Susan Collins (ME), John Curtis (UT), Pete Ricketts (NE), Tim Scott (SC), and Roger Wicker (MS), and Representative Mike Lawler (NY), among others, no doubt.

And it’s only fair to mention: last time out Curmie lamented Ethics Alarms’ Jack Marshall’s started allowing “excuses for inexcusable conduct by Dear Leader and his minions [to become] a significant part of the mix.”  But he writes “I regard that as about a half-step, maybe less, from the President calling the former First Couple ‘niggers,’ and subsequently adds that “this ugly episode fairly earns shame and criticism for the President, regardless of how it came about.” 

That last part is relevant.  The White House initially tried to pass the incident off as unworthy of consideration, and the response as “fake outrage.”  That strategy backfired, although J.D. Vance is still trying.  Their focus then shifted to placing the blame on… wait for it… an anonymous “staffer.”  Sigh.  Dear Leader sees no reason to apologize because, you see, he did nothing wrong.

Unfortunately, even if we believe what has now become the official line, things look bad.  First off, the best that can be said is that someone so stupid that they didn’t realize the racist overtones to the post was granted permission to post in POTUS’s name.  You know, that guy who hires only the best people.  The alternative is that the racism was intentional.  That’s certainly a possibility, especially given the comments by Lara Trump, who is trying to be as vile a creature as her father-in-law: “It's kinda like any good joke is rooted in truth.”  Ew.

Someone made that video, and, best case scenario, thought it relevant to… well… anything.  The full video shows Dear Leader as a lion, the king of the jungle, to whom a gaggle of leading Democrats as other animals ultimately bow down.  Frankly, it’s a stupid shtick, but its sycophancy is no doubt celebrated throughout Trumpistan.  But if it’s indeed supposed to be based on The Lion King, then it’s worth noting that there are no simians in that play or film.  The choice of apes for the Obamas, then, adds credence to the allegations of intentional racism.

The beginning of the reel is a standard whine about “stolen elections,” Trumpistan’s term for “it was completely fair, but our guy didn’t win.”  It then auto-advanced into the Lion King nonsense.  Curmie doesn’t know how that could happen accidentally, but he’s enough of a technological troglodyte that his ignorance doesn’t necessarily mean anything.  Perhaps there really is a perfectly innocent explanation.

But what if the worst we can say about the video is that it’s kinda dumb?  Now it becomes a variation on the familiar trope of the cover-up being worse than the crime.  All that needed to happen was a prompt removal, and a statement that the offending staffer has been fired.  People might still be suspicious, but the situation is reduced to the proverbial tempest in a teapot.  Of course, both transparency and admitting anything are verboten in Trumpistan.  So we get disingenuous commentary from the Usual Suspects.  They’re almost as incompetent as they are dishonest.  Alas.

Proving the Relevance of "The Crucible"... by Cancelling It

The Offending Scene... we think

Administrators censor high school plays in many different ways.  Sometimes it’s refusal to put a show on the schedule; sometimes it’s butting into the design process; sometimes it’s shutting a production down during tech week or after a single performance; sometimes it’s firing a teacher/director for doing a show the administration had signed off on.  What’s consistent is that the school officials seldom if ever admit they screwed up, even if they do reverse themselves under nationwide or even international ridicule.

There have been, no doubt, dozens of cases over the past few years that Curmie missed… but there are a fair number he’s chronicled here.  In chronological order (in order of Curmie’s posts, not necessarily when stuff happened): Kismet in PA, Legally Blonde in OH, All Shook Up in UT, Almost, Maine in NC and Spamalot in PA, Indecent in FL, The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee in OH, The Addams Family Musical in PA, and Dog Sees God in CA and The Laramie Project in AZ… and now The Crucible in GA.

What’s particularly intriguing about this one is that no one is really sure why the show was cancelled after a single performance.  Or, rather, the only thing we know with any certainty is that someone, almost certainly the school’s administration, is flat-out lying. 

Curmie tends to learn about these incidents through one of three sources, all of whom have written about this one: Howard Sherman, Chris Peterson at the OnStage blog, and Jack Marshall at Ethics Alarms.  (Curmie hasn’t contributed as much as a comment on EA for months since it took a hard turn from its titular ethics orientation to GOP propaganda, but he suspected that Jack might weigh in on this one.) 

Here’s what we know for sure: a production of Arthur Miller’s McCarthyism-inspired play was scheduled for two performances at Fannin County High School in Blue Ridge, Georgia, and was cancelled after opening night.  We know, also, that the original director (a teacher?) was fired/forced to resign a couple of weeks before the show was to open, leaving a high school student in charge.  This much is about as far as we can go without fear of propagating untruths.  Well, there’s one more thing that we’ll get to in a moment, Gentle Reader…

We do have the school’s official statement on the affair.  Officials claim that “after Friday night’s performance of The Crucible, we received several complaints as to an unauthorized change in the script of the play.  Upon investigation, we learned that the performance did not reflect the original script.”  The likelihood that the school’s statement is an outright lie may be a little short of ontological certitude, but it’s pretty damned close.

You will notice, Gentle Reader, that no specifics about the alleged violation are forthcoming.  The students say they didn’t add, delete, or change any words, and there has been no assertion to the contrary by the administration.  That, one suspects, is because such a statement could too easily be shot down.  Better to leave it open-ended and hope the opposition—in this case, the students—admits to something. 

Well, that happened… sort of.  The production did open with a scene of the girls dancing in the woods, enacting a moment that was only narrated in the script.  One might suppose that you could argue that the scene represents a change in the script, but it’s pretty much of a stretch.  It’s only fair to point out that Jack Marshall writes that a director at the American Century Theater (where Marshall was Artistic Director) wanted to do precisely what the Fannin County students did, but was refused by both Dramatists Play Service and Arthur Miller himself.  There’s no reason to doubt this testimony, but professional and amateur contracts are different (Curmie has handled both), and things may be different since Miller’s death 20 years ago. 

Curmie, who directed about 50 educational theatre productions over six different decades, confesses he would never have even considered the possibility that he’d need permission to stage that scene… and he’s asked permission for a lot of trivial changes: changing “God dammit” to just “Dammit” for a production at a church-related college, changing the title of a Greek tragedy to the one we’d been using in publicity for the new season before deciding on a translation that used a less common Anglicization of the title, and so on.

More to the point, perhaps: Curmie has read, taught, and seen The Crucible multiple times, and he wouldn’t have caught the alleged departure from the text, or at least wouldn’t have thought it noteworthy in legal terms.  He might have been skeptical of the aesthetic choice, but that’s a different matter.  And you’re going to tell me that not one, but several, spectators at a high school production in a tiny town in northern Georgia caught that supposed breach of contract and were sufficiently incensed that they called the principal that night?  And that the “investigation” took only a couple of hours?  Curmie detects a distinct whiff of eau de cow pasture.

It’s also important to point out that terms like “as written” in licensing agreements not only need not, but literally cannot mean that literally everything in the staging must be exactly as prescribed.  Acting editions differ from published editions.  The latter version is what the playwright wrote; the former is generally transcribed by the stage manager of the original production.  Thus, for example, a character may be described physically according to what the actor in the Broadway show looked like; Broadway Licensing isn’t going to come after you if the “beautiful blonde” of a script is played by a beautiful redhead (or a beautiful Latina, Asian, or black woman, for that matter) unless there’s something in the dialogue that demands that she be blonde.

Curmie remembers seeing a production of The Crucible performed in the round.  So what?  Well, the opening stage direction in the acting edition says “One emphatic source of light is at the left.”  There is no left or right in arena staging.  Is DPS going to forbid all but proscenium productions?  Of course not; they make their money, and their clients’ money, by getting as many legitimate productions as they can.  Some discretion is mandatory.  (Note also that the opening sequence in the acting edition is considerably more detailed than in the regular published form.)

The situation is aggravated by the fact that, according to Howard Sherman, two different parents contacted Broadway Licensing (now the parent company of Dramatists Play Service), and both were told that the licensing company did not shut the production down and would have been very unlikely to have done so, especially if the opening scene were removed.  You can hear both ends of one of those conversations here.  (We’ll casually avoid talking about the ethics and legalities of recording a phone conversation without the consent of the other person on the line.)

Sherman reports that students were initially told that the second performance was cancelled because of parental complaints that the show was “evil and disgusting and things like that.”  Fannin County is almost too stereotypical a place for this to happen: rural (not many county seats in the country with fewer than 1300 residents), overwhelmingly white (93% white and not Hispanic/Latino), overwhelmingly Christian, especially Protestant (over half the county’s congregations are Southern Baptist); MAGA (Donald Trump got over 82% of the vote in the ’24 election).  It is, in other words, precisely the kind of place where brie-eating, Chablis-sipping, clove-cigarette-smoking elitists (or, indeed, anyone with a little knowledge of the world) would suspect the locals would get their collective skivvies in a twist over a high school production of an American classic.

And then, as if by magic, the complaint changed to a strained argument about production rights.  Oh, by the way, Caden Gerald, who played the leading role of John Proctor, says in a video posted to Facebook that administrators saw the scene in question “every morning that we ran it.”

Curmie finds it difficult to argue with Chris Peterson’s conclusion that the administration “didn’t stop the play to protect a license. They stopped it to quiet the backlash. They threw their students under the bus for the sake of avoiding Facebook drama.” 

Someone is lying.  All the students, their parents, and two customer service reps from DPS… or a chickenshit principal (the usual apologies for redundancy).  That seems like an easy call to Curmie. 

But there’s one more point to make.  Even if the administration is telling the truth, they are still 100% responsible for the fuck-up and for the nation-wide embarrassment wrought upon their school.  Let’s assume for the sake of argument that it was appropriate to fire the original director, and that there are legitimate reasons for not making the details known.  Let’s assume, also, that the students are lying about administrators’ seeing rehearsals, about being told the play was shut down because of content complaints, and about the administration only discovering (as opposed to announcing) the alleged violation two days after cancelling the second night.

It’s still the school’s fault.  It is the responsibility of the school, not of a high school senior, to comply with the licensing agreement.  In the absence of a responsible adult director, the school had an obligation to ensure that someone in a position to speak for the school be able to sign off on the production’s adherence to the licensing agreement.  If someone from the school saw even a single rehearsal, it was that person’s responsibility to ask the simple question, “did you change anything?”  If Caden Gerald is lying, and no one from the administration saw any rehearsals, they bloody well should have.

The Crucible remains in the canon and on stages throughout the country because it speaks to conditions far beyond colonial Massachusetts or even mid-century hysteria about the Red Menace.  It’s about the problems created when people abandon truth and justice in order to pander to the mob.  To say that the actions of Principal Scott Ramsey and his minions in shutting down the production is thus deeply ironic is to err on the side of understatement.

Expelled for... um... Greenface?

Back in the halcyon days of the 2010s, the big annual event of this blog was the Curmie Awards, presented to the person or organization who most embarrassed the profession of education.  Curmie would compile a list of nominees from stories he’d covered during the calendar year, and readers would vote on the most (un)deserving recipient.

There won’t be any Curmies awarded this year or in the foreseeable future for three reasons.  First, Curmie has written a lot less of late about educators behaving badly.  That doesn’t mean there haven’t been cases, of course, but, perhaps because he’s no longer in the game, as it were, other stories have done more to pique his interest.  Plus, the unethical or incompetent protagonists in most of the education-related stories Curmie has covered recently have been non-educators: students, politicians, or organizations like the NCAA.

Second, blogspot no longer supports the gadget that allowed polls, so there would have to be a link to an outside site like Survey Monkey or something, and Curmie doesn’t want to deal with all that noise.

Finally, there are a lot fewer of you.  Individual posts are garnering only 20% or so as many hits as in yesteryear.  You, Gentle Reader, are a member of an elite, not to say miniscule, group.  It doesn’t make sense to continue the poll if a half dozen votes would win the election.

All that said, Curmie’s netpal Jack Marshall at Ethics Alarms alerted him to a story that, if Curmies were still a thing, would mean that what passes for a brain trust at St. Francis High School in Mountain View, CA, like Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando’s character in “On the Waterfront”), coulda been a contender.

Our story begins in 2017, when three 14-year-old boys took a photo of themselves posing with anti-acne masks covering their faces.  One of the three apparently had rather severe acne, and the other two joined him in what Reason’s Jacob Sullum describes as “an act of playful solidarity.”  The medication started light green in color, but grew darker as it dried.  The lads photographed themselves because they “looked silly.”  Importantly, the boys did not post the photo to social media.

Nothing to see here, right?  Well, not to any rational person, no.  But this is a story about high school administrators, remember?  Two of those lads were about to enroll at St. Francis, a high-priced private school.  Again: so far, so good.

Flash forward three years.  It’s now 2020 and the aftermath of the George Floyd incident in Minnesota.  Some recent St. Francis grads had posted an apparently not-PC meme about Floyd’s death, so there was, perhaps, some increased tension.  Unbeknownst to the two boys attending St. Francis, the other lad in the photo had sent a copy to a friend, who “tagged a music playlist on her Spotify account with a copy of the photograph.”  And one of her friends (the administrators undoubtedly know who, but that information seems not to be available to the rest of us) saw it there, recognized the boys, and proclaimed them to be in blackface.  The photo was to be regarded as “another example” of racism at St. Francis.

Well, no self-respecting (i.e., self-important) school administrator wants that kind of publicity, so instead of…you know… listening to the mother of one of the boys, who explained the truth of the matter, they decided that due process was far too much to ask, so they summarily issued an ultimatum that the boys either withdraw or be expelled.

To be fair, those masks are pretty dark (see the photo above), and it’s not too outrageous a leap of faith to see them as blackface, especially if you’ve been prompted to do so.  So some of the furor, though not justified, was at least comprehensible.  But that doesn’t get the school off the hook.  They leapt to a false conclusion when even a cursory glance at the so-called evidence would have revealed that the boys did nothing wrong.  (Curmie isn’t convinced that what 14-year-olds do ought to be held against them years later even if they were in blackface, but that’s at least an arguable position.)

As Curmie has noted several times in the past, it’s important to get names out there if possible.  We may not know the name of the student who posted that photo, but we do know that President Jason Curtis immediately piled on without bothering to check the facts, and that Dean of Students Ray Hisatake called the boys’ parents but obviously didn’t care that they offered a reasonable and indeed true rebuttal to the accusations leveled against their sons.

The money quote, though, is that of Principal Katie Teekell, who said her decision was based not on the boys’ “intent,” but on “optics” and “the harm done to the St. Francis community.”  Of course, there is no indication that the student whose posting of the photo was obviously intended to demean the school has suffered any punishment at all.  Meanwhile the boys who did nothing wrong, and weren’t yet students at the school when the supposedly offending photo was taken, were almost literally run out of town.  The world knows that, now.  So, Ms. Teekell, as Matt Damon might have said in “Good Will Hunting,” “how do you like them optics?” 

This being an education story, and Curmie being a career educator, it seems only appropriate that we attempt to discern the explanation for the administrators’ actions with a multiple-choice quiz.

So…

They acted the way they did because…

a.    They have been so infected with a socio-political agenda that they are incapable of seeing the world except through woke-colored glasses.

b.  They have the ethical sensibility of a hungry cobra and the backbone of overcooked angel’s hair.

c.     They’d come in third place in a battle of wits with a dead battery and a turnip.

Yes, I know, Gentle Reader, “d. all of the above” is likely the best answer, but perhaps your mileage may vary.

This story has received new life of late because the boys sued the school and the jury recently awarded them over a million dollars.  The award is based on a new California law which demands the equivalent of due process from organizations like private schools, unions, hospitals, etc.  This is the first case to invoke the new law in a suit against a private secondary school.

The initial suit sought over twenty million dollars in damages, but the jury rejected claims of breach of contract, defamation, and violation of free speech.  Curmie reminds you, Gentle Reader, that he is not a lawyer, but he confesses astonishment that falsely labeling Bay Area teenagers (OK, they’re into their 20s now) as racists doesn’t qualify as defamation.  Still, each boy will receive over a half million dollars, and the school might have learned its lesson.

Yeah, that’s likely to happen…

 

 

The Implications of Returning Reggie Bush’s Heisman

 

Reggie Bush: He’s baaaaaaack.

Former University of Southern California tailback Reggie Bush had his 2005 Heisman Trophy returned to him this week.  It had been “voluntarily” returned when it became clear that Bush had received improper payments to play at USC and therefore shouldn’t have had a college career at all.

The reaction to this reversal has been disquietingly positive.  Indeed, Curmie can’t find anyone other than Jack Marshall of Ethics Alarms (and some of his readers, including Curmie) who thinks this decision is a travesty.  All the talking heads on ESPN nod in agreement as insufferable blowhard Stephen A. Smith intones that the action was “long overdue.”  Various other sports sites generated pretty much the same responses.

Bah.  Humbug.

Reggie Bush was indeed an incredible college football player.  He was a logical choice to win the Heisman in 2005, and he did so over some rather stiff competition.  But that was before it was revealed that he and his family had accepted payments they were fully aware were contrary to NCAA rules.  We’re not talking about buying the kid an unauthorized pizza, here, Gentle Reader.  These were serious charges, and whatever Bush may say now about his innocence, it’s unlikely that USC would have put up so little resistance had they not been pretty certain that there was a fair amount of fire to accompany all that smoke.

It’s also true that the likelihood that Bush wasn’t the only Heisman winner to have broken NCAA rules approaches ontological certainty.  Curmie can think of at least three specific individuals whose guilt has been established to a degree that far exceeds “preponderance of evidence” and is very close to “beyond reasonable doubt” if it hasn’t crossed that threshold, as well.  That doesn’t matter.  It’s the equivalent of getting stopped for going 80 in a 55.  Complaining that other cars were going just as fast isn’t going to get you out of a ticket.  Were you speeding, and not just by a little bit?  Yes?  Then sit down and shut up.

Of course, Bush and USC have been lobbying to get this reversal for some time, and Bush himself staked a claim to a position in the Narcissist’s Hall of Fame by suing the NCAA for defamation for implying (not even saying outright) what virtually everyone believes to be true: that Bush was engaged in “pay-for-play arrangements.”  The statement also says that “Previous penalties, including those that are several years old, will not be re-evaluated or reconsidered based on the recent changes to NIL rules.”  (Yes, they lied.)

Of course, with the advent of NIL (name, image, and likeness) deals, pay-for-play is pretty much happening at every college or university with Division I athletic programs (and probably others, too).  What Bush did (okay, allegedly did) nearly two decades ago would almost certainly be permissible now.  That, coupled with a threat from the likes of 2012 Heisman recipient Johnny Manziel that he’d boycott future Heisman ceremonies until Bush’s award was reinstated, gave the movement some steam.  But seriously… when, exactly, did Manziel develop those “morals and values” he describes in his tweet (or whatever those things are called now)?

Here’s the thing: ex post facto works both ways.  You can’t be charged with a crime that wasn’t a crime when you did it, and you can’t avoid at least ethical responsibility for something that was illegal when you did it but might not be now.  The Heisman Trust’s action (which we can be assured was with the concurrence of the NCAA if not indeed at their behest) is not a pardon; it’s not an act of forgiveness.  It’s a denial of reality: Bush cheated and, unlike USC (which had to surrender scholarships and vacate victories, including the 2004 national championship and the entire 2005 season), is now effectively unpunished.

But this brings up another twist.  As of now, at least, Bush has his Heisman back, but USC still doesn’t have its national championship, which was stripped from them for one reason only: Reggie Bush played on that team.  

Curmie, having grown up in Central New York, became a fan of the local Division I team, the Syracuse Orangemen, in the 1970s.  Twentysomething years later, he enrolled in the PhD program at the University of Kansas, and he’s been a loyal Jayhawk ever since.  The NCAA has stripped victories from the basketball programs at both of those schools.  The Syracuse case involves more moving parts, but the KU case pretty much boils down to one thing: improper payments made to power forward Silvio DeSousa.  There are lots of twists and turns there, including the claim that the university was unaware of an Adidas rep’s shenanigans, but it’s not Curmie’s intention to re-adjudicate that case.  

What is significant, however, is that the NCAA invalidated 15 Kansas wins: the games in which DeSousa played before being retroactively ruled ineligible by the same organization that had previously declared him eligible.  As it happens, the Jayhawks had just recently passed the University of Kentucky to become the NCAA’s winningest team in history; the NCAA verdict put the Wildcats back on top. 

Does this really matter?  No, not really.  But it does put the NCAA in a bit of an ethical bind.  If the organization at the very least signed off on re-instating Bush’s Heisman because what he did is legal now, then the same argument should logically hold for the USC team on which he played, and for the Kansas basketball team.  (Perhaps the Syracuse team should be included, as well, although there were allegations in that case other than pay-to-play.) The list of other programs similarly affected is plenty long; no need to enumerate them all.  It should be noted that those teams have already paid a price in terms of scholarships, recruitment restrictions, and the simple fact that elite players want to be assured they’ll be seen in the post-season.

Of course, there are few organizations of any kind in the world as incompetent, corrupt, and whimsical as the NCAA.  How will they handle this situation?  Curmie’s guess is that they’ll do nothing… at least until someone else sues them.

Censorious Asshats and High School Theatre

Curmie really does plan to get to two pieces he’s half-promised: an update of his nine-year-old post on the de facto costs of a university education today compared to yesteryear, and a close look at the 303 Creative SCOTUS ruling. 

But on the 4th, Curmie’s netpal Jack Marshall alerted him to a story in the New York Times about how difficult it is to find a high school play that won’t run into trouble with some gaggle of censorious asshats (the usual nod to Ken White for the locution). Curmie couldn’t get to the Times story, but found it on Yahoo (a useful work-around, Gentle Reader, if you, like Curmie, don’t have a Times subscription). 

By the time Curmie had a chance to really respond, however, it was time to watch the Boston Pops Independence Day celebration, which has become a tradition at Chez Curmie… and then life happened, and Curmie is only now finishing up his essay.

Anyway, by the morning of the 5th, Jack had posted his commentary on his Ethics Alarms blog. There are some good comments, too. (Feel free to ignore the ones from those folks who would find a way to blame the fact that their beer isn’t cold enough on a Woke conspiracy to undermine American values.) 

Michael Paulson of the Times lists a host of proposed (or even initially approved) plays and musicals that have been deemed problematic or indeed cancelled by schools across the country (those with links are ones Curmie has written about at some point in the last decade or so; he’s not going to bother to mention the college and community theatre productions that have met a similar fate): She Kills Monsters; Shakespeare in Love; Three Sisters (yes, the canonical Chekhov play); The Prom; Almost, Maine; South Pacific; Thoroughly Modern Millie; How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying; Bye, Bye, Birdie; Grease; Fences; Oklahoma!; Newsies; The Little Mermaid; Crush; Indecent; The Addams Family Musical; Marian, or the True Tale of Robin Hood; The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. 

That’s quite a list, but Curmie has a few additions: All Shook Up, Kismet (!), Spamalot, The Wiz, Legally Blonde, Dead Man Walking, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Hairspray. Oh, and there was the superintendent’s interference in a production of The Producers.  The chances some idiots somewhere shut down a show that Curmie didn’t hear about: approaching ontological certitude.

The fact is that it would be difficult to name a show that doesn’t have something in it to offend someone. As Curmie wrote in the piece on All Shook Up:

Carousel is one of the creepiest plays ever; Henry Higgins—our hero—is a condescending, sexist, erm… sphincter in My Fair Lady (far more so than his Shavian predecessor in Pygmalion); Godspell requires a conflation of John the Baptist and Judas; all the heroes of West Side Story are gang members; the best songs in Jesus Christ, Superstar go to Mary Magdalene and Herod; the title character in Sweet Charity never strays far from her origins as a prostitute in the Fellini film on which the musical is based; “Hernando’s Hideaway” from The Pajama Game (done right, at least) drips with sexuality; Luther Billis cross-dresses in South Pacific, and extra-marital sex is taken as a given (albeit never made explicit). Need I go on?

(Notice that these were just the musicals, by the way.) At the time, Curmie suggested that none of these titles would be challenged. He apologizes for his woeful lack of imagination, as the complaints have now morphed into full-blown lunacy. 

It is certainly true that Curmie wouldn’t do some of these shows in high school, but it’s because they’re too difficult for high school actors, or because as a culture we’ve moved away so far from the mores of when the play was written that audiences will struggle to get to the real meaning of the text. (Curmie says this while acknowledging that he’s seen some really good productions of, say, The Taming of the Shrew that have found ways to undercut the play’s obvious sexism because it’s more important that we have some empathy for Petruchio.) 

Speaking of sexism, many classic musicals certainly have more than their share, and several have more and better roles for men than for women, which becomes a particular problem at the secondary school level due to the fact that far more high school girls than boys want to perform. That doesn’t mean those shows don’t have some great tunes and story lines that still resonate with audiences and performers alike. 

There are, of course, complaints from the left about such things as racist language or cultural appropriation. For all that, by far the majority of the censorious asshattery at the high school level emanates from the right. (It’s the other way around at colleges and universities and in the professional theatre world, but that’s not the current issue.) More importantly, whereas there are a couple of plays listed above that rather push the envelope, most of the alleged offenses are things like suggesting that gay people exist or uttering epithets considerably milder than what one would be guaranteed to hear on a two-minute stroll through any high school cafeteria in the country. 

Particularly sad are the attacks on plays like She Kills Monsters or The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (both of which have specifically made-for-schools versions), which have plentiful teen-aged characters and deal with coming-of-age issues faced by adolescents.  They are ideally suited for production by high school groups, in other words.

So, what’s the source of all this turmoil? Well, we’ll get to a couple of conjectures about that in a moment. But the real problem is simple: the reason we’re getting all of this censorious… erm… bovine fecal matter is that the asshats in question are, at least sometimes, getting away with it. Yes, it’s true that a number of the idiotic decisions were subsequently overturned because the culprits finally were sufficiently embarrassed by international humiliation online were able to claim victory by accepting changes already offered before their censorship saw the proverbial light. But even an initial decision in favor of suppression bolsters the spirits of the censors, and concomitantly disappoints and enervates student artists.

So, who is/are the problem? Curmie suggests a three-fold response. For the sake of brevity, Gentle Reader, please insert “Not all, but too many” before each of these sentences. In order of increasing degrees of both frequency and power, then:

--High school theatre directors seek to impose their personal political perspectives on their students and audiences.

--Principals and superintendents are even more cowardly than they are stupid.

--School boards are comprised of idiots who were elected by a tiny minority of like-minded morons.

So, let’s look at those individually. There does exist a subset of high school directors who are more interested in “making a statement” or being perceived as “cool” (or whatever the current term is) by their students than in providing the benefits associated with high school theatre, which in some ways harken back to the origins of school theatre centuries ago: critical reading, empathy, teamwork, friendships, confidence in appearing before groups, memory, what was once called “elocution,” and (yes) fun. After over forty years as a theatre professor and director, Curmie could go on, but he suspects that you already get the point, Gentle Reader. 

High school theatre shouldn’t be about the director except as a guide through the text and as the instiller of professionalism, and plays should be chosen for their ability to challenge and engage students without throwing them into the proverbial deep end. Plays should be enjoyable to be a part of, and to attend. Intentionally doing shows that are likely to offend the local audience is simply counter-productive, but the allure of what in Curmie’s youth was called “sticking it to The Man” is, perhaps, occasionally overwhelming. 

Most of the problem, however, stems from the common conceit (in both senses of the term) of the right. These folks (again: not all, but too many) are so insecure in their persons and their beliefs that any suggestion that their demographic profile, their belief system, isn’t the only one is seen as an attack. Simply alluding to a gay character is somehow “grooming,” having a black character complain about racism is anti-American, showing a Muslim character in a favorable light is an attack on God himself. 

Which brings us to the level of school administrators. As a class, these people are far more fond of rules than of thinking, and their one unifying characteristic is risk aversion on steroids: a single dissenting voice (from anyone other than a student or teacher, of course) sends them scurrying for cover like cockroaches when the lights come on. They’re also, of course, the very people who at least de facto approved that show when scripts and royalties were ordered, and in many cases insisted on being consulted on the choice of show… then, they are shocked!, to an extent that hitherto only Claude Rains in “Casablanca” had ever been shocked, that a character is wearing a short skirt or drinking a fake martini or says he has two dads. 

Or they cancel a show, demanding that changes are made in the text: changes that have already been approved by the playwright or the agency, and which were part of the contract signed by someone with enough authority to commit the school to its terms and to a few thousand dollars of the district’s money. Hint: that person is unlikely to be a show’s director. 

Curmie would just love to see some principal or superintendent somewhere tell Karen and Skip just not to come to the show… oh, and to get a freaking life. Perhaps that happens from time to time and it just doesn’t make headlines. That would be unlikely, but even a Curmudgeon can dream… 

Finally, it’s time to quote Mark Twain yet again: “In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.” First off, who gets on a school board? Especially recently, the answer is “zealots.” Seriously, Gentle Reader, could you even name a single member of your school board? Curmie admits that he couldn’t. And in nearly a half-century of voting, he has seen maybe two debates between school board candidates as much as advertised. These were sparsely attended events (to put it generously). Most of the campaigning consists of generic statements about the well-being of the next generation and oh-so-relevant information like having lived in the city since birth and being a loving spouse. 

So, how do you get elected to the school board? It certainly has little to do with any skillset relevant to the position. (Curmie has never known of a current or former educator being elected to a school board. That shouldn’t be a requirement, obviously, but one might consider it a reasonable credential.) Knowing people personally is a huge help. And what’s the best source of that? Well, church is a great place to start. 10% voter turnout, and they’re mostly from the Unification Church of Christ the Theocrat or Our Lady of Perpetual Whining. And thus we end up with a school board that pretends to protect kids from largely imaginary liberal groupthink by imposing their own blinkered and myopic world view. 

Unfortunately, what Curmie has just described is not the most insidious manifestation of theatrical censorship. Idiot administrators and proselytizing school boards don’t have to actually pull the plug on a show; they just need to act like they will. Prior restraint has long since become the most powerful weapon of those who would silence expression that makes them even mildly uncomfortable. They can claim, truthfully (sort of), that they didn’t forbid anything. 

The most chilling detail in the Times article isn’t that someone wants to suppress Three Sisters; it’s that 2/3 of high school teachers say that censorship concerns are influencing the choice of their upcoming season. Oh, and of course the Righteously Indignant can be guaranteed to smugly assert that this self-censorship is an acknowledgment of previous wrong-doing, rather than an extension of their own power-play. 

Curmie differs with Jack Marshall on two aspects of this story. Unsurprisingly, he sees less leftie indoctrination in high schools than Jack does. More importantly, whereas Jack expresses little hope for a solution—“I have no ideas for a way out. There may not be one.”—Curmie thinks we’re still at a point where fighting is worth the effort. This is, as the expression goes, a hill worth dying on. Stupid decisions have indeed been reversed in the wake of public scrutiny. 

Sure, some plays by David Mamet or Sarah Kane might be, nay, are inappropriate for high school performance. But there should certainly be a very wide range of what is acceptable. And we’re not going to get anywhere if we stay locked in our partisan bubbles. We on the left need to speak out against stupid arguments from “our side,” too. It’s not cultural appropriation to do Fiddler on the Roof; it’s not sexist to do Waiting for Godot as written, with an all-male cast; it’s not racist to cast a white actress in a role once (even famously) played by a black one if the role doesn’t require it. 

Curmie suggested in a recent post that if we constrain ourselves by looking only at left and right, we overlook the equally if not more important continuum from authoritarian to libertarian. That’s the battleground on which this conflict will be fought, and we need all the allies we can muster.