Reading between the Lines of the Censorship of "Between the Lines"

Curmie isn’t sure whether the classic rock lyrics du jour should come from Stevie Nicks or Whitesnake, but it’s clear that the situation is hauntingly familiar and yes, here I go again.

The topic is yet another idiot public school administrator shutting down a high school theatre production because he appears to have neither the brains nor the spine of the average earthworm.  This one involves the suppression of the musical Between the Lines at Mississinewa High School in Gas City, Indiana, a fortnight before the scheduled opening.

Curmie got his first teaching gig at a small church-related college in the Bible Belt.  His predecessor had been fired (or pressured to resign) in part, at least, for staging a play that someone considered objectionable.  Curmie is reliably informed that the people presumed to have been so horribly offended by the show enjoyed it immensely while actually in the theatre, then put on their public faces and were utterly horrified that actresses were briefly seen in undergarments.  Censors are often hypocrites.

All of Curmie’s choices for productions at that school were reviewed by a committee prior to contracting for production rights.  Those meetings were brief, and Curmie got the distinct impression that they were intended to protect him rather than to limit him: a couple of tenured faculty signed off on Curmie’s choices (they always approved whatever Curmie proposed), and they appeared ready to take the heat should anything arise.  (It’s also true that Curmie’s predecessor allegedly did some things that might have legitimately merited dismissal, and this kerfuffle may have been a way for the college to save face.)

Why mention this here?  Because, if you’re even tempted to censor theatre productions, establishing such a committee or some other form of review before a season is finalized was what should have happened at Mississinewa High, and what Superintendent Jeremy Fewell has proclaimed will happen in the future.  (Insert reference to shutting barn doors here.)  Curmie has made this point repeatedly in the past: no high school theatre teacher is authorized to spend the hundreds or (more likely) thousands of dollars to pay for royalties and script rentals for a musical.  Those checks are authorized by an administrator—a principal or superintendent.  One might reasonably suggest that competent people would know what they’re buying.  These folks, Fewell and Principal Rachel Roesch, don’t pass that test, and those who suffer for their sloth are the high school students involved in the production.  Nothing to see here; move along.

The foregoing, of course, is based on the presumption that there is something in the script, even as bowdlerized, that merits censorship.  This is, of course, a risky proposition at best.  The point here is that even if there was something problematic about the script, the time to make that point is before you’ve spent thousands of dollars on scripts, royalties, costumes, sets, publicity, etc. (it’s possible the leasing agency might refund the royalties, but not the script and score rentals), and before staff and students have spent thousands of person-hours in rehearsals and the tech shops.  If you’re going to be a censorial asshat, at least be timely about it.

Curmie doesn’t know the show, so it’s possible that Fewell might have had a point had he raised concerns months ago.  Curmie doubts it, but it’s possible.  Still, what seems to be emerging in commentary from the students’ parents is that references to sexuality and alcohol use are being used as cover for the real problem: one of the characters is (GASP!) non-binary.  Curmie can’t improve on the commentary of Jodi Picoult, who wrote the book on which the musical is based:

Received this devastating news yesterday while I was literally in the West End at the premiere of another musical I wrote - The Book Thief - which is all about censorship and fascism.  The irony was not lost on me. This Indiana school already was granted permission through licensing to make changes to the script, but a single parent still complained about the existence of a non-binary character (whose gender orientation is not even explicitly mentioned) and the superintendent cancelled the show after kids had put in hundreds of hours of rehearsals. Censorship in America has spilled from books into theater. When one person decides for others what is appropriate, we have lost freedom of expression. Worst - this show is NOT explicit. It’s been performed by hundreds of school groups. The message it offers: Live the story you want if it’s not the story you’re in. Perhaps this objecting parent can explain to me what, exactly, is so wrong about that?

One trusts that Ms. Picoult is not really waiting for an answer to that question, as the parent in question will almost assuredly remain cravenly anonymous.  That’s how the system works, after all.  One loud-mouthed parent (or in some cases not even a parent) and a spineless administrator is all it takes.  Curmie has written about this phenomenon several times.  Here’s most of one paragraph from one of those instances. 

As a class, these people [school administrators] 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 doesn’t conform to someone’s idea of what gender identity ought to look like.  It’s fine to have Nazis in The Sound of Music or gang members in West Side Story.  It’s even acceptable to have an actress play the title role in Peter Pan or for Luther Billis to cross-dress in South Pacific.  That’s because there’s no attempt to suggest that what is being presented on stage is in any way reflective of reality: Peter is a magical character; Billis isn’t trying to convince anyone he’s really female.  But suggest that a young character, especially (OMG!) one who is treated sympathetically, might be… you know… <whispers> non-binary, and the pearls will never have been clutched quite so hard.

Adults who object to a particular play have an easy recourse: not buying a ticket.  Parents can pull their own children from the show.  It’s not fair to the kids, who have put in dozens if not hundreds of hours of work, but parents are entitled to act like parents.  They can even try to convince their friends not to attend.  Preventing other people from seeing the show, or other kids from participating in it, is a different matter, and the problems had damned well better be objectively egregious.  Curmie’s betting that isn’t the case here.

There is a special kind of narcissism that accompanies these censorial outbursts.  Curmie has mentioned several times that sometimes he just isn’t the target audience: not for Dog Sees God, not for Taylor Swift, for example.  And you know what?  That’s just fine.  Not a lot of people are big fans of Václav Havel or Warren Zevon, but Curmie is.  You do you, Gentle Reader, and let me do me.  Different strokes for different folks, and all that.  But to the censorial mindset, one’s personal tastes, interests, and value systems ought to be imposed on everyone, and those who disagree are attempting to infect America’s youth with their poisonous ideologies.  Curmie calls bullshit on that, and suspects that you wouldn’t be here, Gentle Reader, if you didn’t agree with him.

The censorship here isn’t about protecting kids from growing up too fast.  Curmie isn’t telling you anything you don’t already know in suggesting that high schoolers have already been exposed to sex and alcohol and both the allures and the dangers of both.  Curmie knew some non-binary schoolmates when he was in high school fifty-something years ago, but he didn’t “knowingly know” them; that is, today’s kids can be more open about their identities now.  Curmie thinks that’s a good thing.  What he knows (as opposed to merely thinks) is that non-binary people exist.  Denying that basic fact is not merely bigoted; it is an attack on reality itself.

We can hope that the students involved in the production of Between the Lines will be able to mount their show independently of the school, as those kids at Santa Rosa High did with Dog Sees God.  But sometimes those arrangements can’t be made, and Curmie isn’t blaming the students or their directors a bit if the show just doesn’t happen now.  Idiots like Jeremy Fewell have a lot to answer for, either way.

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.