School Plays Are the Latest Cultural Battleground

Stevie Ray Dallimore, an actor and teacher, directed the drama program at a private boys’ school in Chattanooga for a decade, but he’s never had a year like this.

A planned production of “She Kills Monsters” at a neighboring girls’ school, in which his students would also have been involved, was rejected because of gay content, he said. A “Shakespeare in Love” at the girls’ school, which would have starred his boys, was turned down for cross-dressing. His school’s staging of Chekhov’s classic The Three Sisters was turned down because of the theme of adultery and concerns that some boys might play women like in the past, he said.

School performance — long an important part of arts education and a formative experience for creative youth — has become the latest battleground in a time when America’s political and cultural divisions have led to a rise in book bans and conflict over how race and sexuality are taught schools and efforts by some politicians to restrict drag performances and transgender health care for children and youth.

For decades, student productions have faced questions about their age-appropriateness, and more recently, left-leaning students and parents have objected to many shows because they portray women and people of color. The latest wave of objections has come largely from right-wing parents and school officials.

The final act in Dallimore’s year-long drama in Chattanooga? He learned that his position at the McCallie School was being axed, along with that of his colleague at the nearby Girls Preparatory School. They were invited to apply for a single new position as theater director at both schools; Both educators are now unemployed.

“This is obviously a nationwide problem in which we have only a small part,” Dallimore said. “It’s definitely part of a larger movement — a highly concerted effort by politics and religion working hand-in-hand, banning books and trying to erase history and denigrate otherness.”

A McCallie spokeswoman, Jamie Baker, acknowledged that the two school theater positions had been axed to allow the programs to be merged, but said that “any suggestion or assertion in any way that McCallie’s theater director’s contract is not renewed due to content concerns.” was inaccurate.” Noting that the school has a “Judeo-Christian heritage and a commitment to Christian principles,” she added, “That we would and will make decisions consistent with those commitments should not confuse anyone to surprise.”

Acting teachers across the country say their choice of shows is coming under increasing scrutiny, and titles that were acceptable just a few years ago may no longer be able to be performed in some counties. The Educational Theater Association released a poll of teachers last month that found 67 percent say censorship concerns are affecting their choices for the upcoming school year.

In the last few weeks, teachers and parents have given a whole host of examples in emails and phone calls. From the right, there have been objections to homosexuality in the musical The Prom and the play Almost, Maine, as well as other frequently performed shows; From the left, there were concerns about the portrayal of race in “South Pacific” and “Thoroughly Modern Millie” and gender in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” and “Bye Bye Birdie” and “Grease”. And there have been plenty of unexpected complaints from individual schools, about the presence of bullying in “Mean Girls” and the lack of white characters in “Fences”, about the words “damn” (in “Oklahoma”) and “bastards” (in ” Newsies) and God (in The Little Mermaid).

Challenges to school productions, teachers say, have far more weight than they once did due to the polarized political climate and the amplifying power of social media.

“We’re seeing a lot of teachers censor themselves,” said Jennifer Katona, executive director of the Educational Theater Association, an organization of theater teachers. “Even if it’s just a bunch of girls dressed up as ‘newsies’ boys, which wouldn’t have been a big deal a few years ago, it’s a big deal now.”

Teachers are now desperate for titles that are somehow relevant to today’s teenagers and unlikely to get them into trouble.

“A lot of people don’t want controversy of any kind,” said Chris Hamilton, the theater director at a high school in Kennewick, Washington. Hamilton said last year marked the first time in ten years as a teacher that he had performed a play The proposed play was banned by the school board: She Kills Monsters, a comedy about a teenager who appears in Dungeons & Dragons ‘ Consolation, the seventh most popular school play to feature gay characters in the country. “The level of control has increased,” Hamilton said.

Across the country, in both the blue and red states, drama teachers say it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find plays and musicals that escape the kind of criticism they say will cost them their jobs or result in curtailments funding could result. “People lose their jobs because they book the wrong musical,” said Ralph Sevush, executive director of business affairs for the Dramatists Guild of America.

“A polarized society is fighting the culture wars in secondary schools,” he added.

Stephen Gregg, a playwright who has been writing successfully for high school students for three decades, said he was surprised this year when his publisher emailed him asking for “major changes” to his science fiction comedy “Crush” to replace an anecdote about a gay couple with a straight guy, declaring, “Because we’re a Florida public school, we can’t have gay characters.”

Gregg turned down the request, thinking that “you probably have gay kids in your theater program and that sends a terrible message to them.”

Several school productions made headlines this year when they were canceled over content concerns. In Duval County, Florida, production of Indecent was halted because of its lesbian love story. In Pennsylvania, the North Lebanon School District banned The Addams Family, the country’s most popular school musical, citing its dark themes.

“There has been a very clear series of theater cancellations throughout the school year, and this is happening in parallel and in conjunction with efforts to ban books,” said Jonathan Friedman, director of free speech and educational programs at PEN America. “Sometimes it affects pieces in production, and sometimes it affects the approval of future pieces. The entire climate is affected.”

Some productions have overcome objections. In New Jersey, Cedar Grove High School canceled a production of The Prom, a musical starring a lesbian protagonist, but then relented and staged the musical under public pressure. After Carroll High School in Fort Wayne, Indiana, canceled a production of “Marian, or the True Story of Robin Hood,” marketed as “a gender-bending, patriarchy-busting, hilarious new take on the classic fairy tale,” students said I got it nevertheless staged in a local open-air theater.

Autumn Gonzales, a teacher at Scappoose High School in Oregon, faced objections to a staging of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, a musical starring two gay fathers. She stuck with it – the show had been chosen by her students – and production was allowed to continue. For the next year, however, she is particularly cautious. When her students expressed an interest in “Heathers,” which deals with suicidal issues, she told them, “It’s not going to happen.”

“I’ve always tried to find a middle ground,” she said.

“We’re not going to do Spring Awakening,” she said, referring to the 2006 musical about young people and sexuality. “The community is just not suited for that. But I’m also not going to deny that there are gay people – it’s not good for my acting students. I won’t be inflammatory for the sake of art, but I won’t shy away from deeper messages either.”

The restrictions, supporters say, will impact the education of future performers and viewers.

“Students deserve to have the opportunity to learn about a wide variety of works, not just the safest, most benign, most family-friendly material,” said Howard Sherman, executive director of New York’s Baruch Performing Arts Center, who has followed the issue for years.

In some areas, the controversial plays can’t even be read: In Kansas, the Lansing school board responded to objections from a parent by banning high school students from reading “The Laramie Project,” a widely staged and scholarly play about the murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student in Wyoming.

“Every year there have been a few schools that have banned a performance, but this is the first time the reading of the play has been banned,” said the play’s lead writer Moisés Kaufman, whose theater company offered to send his script to everyone Lansing student who asked, “I don’t mean to be a scaremonger, but it’s alarming.”

Audio produced by Tally Abecassis.