Open Forum

A situation for debate or reaction, I'm not sure yet. IN the midst of planning a rounded season with balance between classic, comedy, challenge, entry level, and so on, and the other week I was happy to read Don Zolidis' 'Election' as a free read of the week from Playscripts. I love the fact they offer this service, as I appreciate being able to read the ending of plays I'm perusing.

So I brought up the idea of mounting 'Election' to my principal, and I got as far as the title.

"No politics, no religion. Nope. Not doing it. Can't be seen to be taking any sides."

If you're familiar with 'Election' you'll know that any references to Democrat/Republican are wiped, and really the play is strictly a very sharp satire, leveled appropriately at a high school audience and parents, about the state of money in politics. I thought it was very funny, lacking in any real offensive thing (no language, no sex, no....blah blah).

I wrote to Don, and he sent me a response, and he encouraged me to post it here in the community. I've edited minor parts of the exchange for repetition, among other reasons. Love to hear anyone else's experiences, or advice on how to proceed. I feel like I may have done damage to my admin's cornflakes, to clean up a colloquial expression, so I want to tread carefully and be respectful, but I also don't want to just do bland 1950s doo-wop pieces forever that prevent my students from really growing in ability and perspective of the world.

Here we go:

I feel that in most cases, we all have to determine what is appropriate for our students and our audiences. I've developed a system with my administrative team that helps us prepare for each show.  I submit a written proposal for each show I would like to produce, and why.  The main questions I answer in the proposal are:

-Why this show? What is the educational value?

-Why now? Why here?

Having this answer in writing helps my administrators look past the titles, and truly understand the merit of a show.  It also helps us in case there are any complaints.  We recently produced Larry Shue's "The Foreigner," where the KKK makes an appearance.  We all agreed that if there were complaints we would use the language from the proposal to respond to our audience.  This made sure we had a united front.

For this particular show, and in fact, the show before which was Don Zolidis's "Monster," we also put ratings on our production advertisements to help educate our audiences and therefore minimize complaints.  "Monster" was rated PG-13, and "Foreigner" PG.  We also put content warnings in all our advertisements to help prepare our audiences for their experience.  The one for "Monster" read, "As this show is based on the true events that inspired 'Frankenstein,' it deals with themes of mortality and death.  A strobe lighting effect is also used."  This was posted at our ticket table, at the bottom of the program page, and all advertisements.  This helped our administrators sign-off because they knew that  we were providing enough information well in advance to our audience members.

To help our audiences/community understand the educational value of the show, we created great dramaturgical displays.  For both shows, we took lines from the show and connected them to real events in history.  Example, in "The Foreigner" Reverend David Lee is proud of his relation to General Robert E. Lee, and has a line that says "God helps those who help themselves."  This saying is actually engraved on General Lee's sword.  Here are some examples of our dramaturgical line displays from "Monster":

Then we created an entire tri-fold on the location of the plays: Geneva for "Monster" and Southern Georgia for "Foreigner."  Another tri-fold was on each of the show's time periods: 1816 and 1984.

We then had specific concepts from each show researched, and a display created.  For "Foreigner" it was xenophobia, the KKK, and David Duke.  For "Monster," it was galvanism, the history of women's rights, and "Frankenstein."

These displays were HUGE in educating our audiences and have been incredibly popular.  We are going to start putting them out for every show we do, sensitive content or no.  It was a great theatre advocacy piece because it quantifies to many how much you can learn from a show, and the true interdisciplinary-ness of a show.  One of my students playing a member of the KKK, wrote an essay about how the acting process which really put our administration and audiences at ease.  It was great, and I’d be happy to share it with you.  It’s nice to have a student perspective.

In Don Zolidis’s “Monster,” one of the character’s dies by suicide.  This was worrisome for our administration, and to help them overcome their hesitation, I put together a ten-step plan outlining how I was going to handle the content in the rehearsal process. Having this is writing, gave them a response to any parents who were nervous about a script with sensitive content.  Again, I’d be happy to share with you the plan I had created.

The final piece of the display we put together was a behind the scenes look.  We put up blocking notes, set build drawings, costume renderings, you name it.  This doesn't help with sensitive material, but so many people responded, "I didn't know you did all this!"  Great tool to justify your work and the amount that the students put in and dedicate.

I will be honest, my administration does not approve every show that I want to produce.  But I’m okay with that because I know with the proposal process they hear me out.  I’m also okay with it because we’ve acknowledged that most shows have sensitive content.  Knowing that each show has sensitive content, what kinds of content are they okay with, and which are they not?  This conversation was incredibly helpful because it boiled down to one real for my particular community: race.  They will not approve any show that includes racism (that is not addressed as racism).  Sadly, this means I can’t perform “Anything Goes,” but that also means they have to accept that I might produce “Catch Me If You Can.” (CMIYC has objectification of women, and the FBI have guns)

It might be a good response to your administration to say I understand, but I also understand that most plays have sensitive content.  I like to compare it to English: there is no protagonist without an antagonist.  Heck, “Annie” has a drunk, abusive caretaker for an antagonist.  Remind them that you want to challenge the students with content appropriate for their age, just as they do in English.  How does the English department handle sensitive or controversial material?  Can you develop a plan similar to the English department?  Sometimes going in with a plan prepared, even if they say no, can show that you put a lot of thought behind it, and might make them willing to be more open.

I also agree with Don’s strategy of pointing out how and where this show has been produced.  Although this is a tricky point because I am interested in producing “Kentucky Cycles: Fire in the Hole” next year.  I spoke to a theatre teacher in TX who did it, and his administration had issues with alcohol but were completely fine with the violence and guns.  My administration is exactly the opposite: reacting negatively to the violence and guns, but fine with the alcohol.

This is such a hard line to walk, and I totally hear you.  I’m hoping that maybe one of the strategies I’ve thrown out may be helpful for you.  I’m happy to share pictures, insight, anything, so please let me know if I can be of any help.  

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Jessica Harms
Theatre Director
Acton MA

I am fortunate to teach at an arts magnet school, with a very supportive administration.  The Theatre Department here has always enjoyed the freedom to produce the shows we want.  In the past several years, we have done Hair, Rent, Lysistrata, For Colored Girls..., a fairly sexy version of The Revenger's Tragedy, The Laramie Project, festivals of student-written plays that always push the envelope, and many other plays that some administrations would consider too edgy for high school.  Everything was fine until this year, when one faculty member went to the principal and said that she objected to many of the plays we selected, and that she planned to bring it up at the next meeting of the school leadership team (a body of some faculty, administrators, and parents who help to shape certain school policies).  Her goal was to have a review committee who would pass judgment on our choices before we would be allowed to announce them  The principal told me all this and asked me to attend the meeting, to speak on behalf of my department.  Before the meeting, I sent an email to all the parents in our very well organized and very passionate booster club, and asked them to send me letters, if they did indeed stand behind our selection of plays.  The response was overwhelming, and ALL of it supportive.  The gist of most of the emails was that the theatre faculty, and no one else, should select our plays.  I went to the meeting and when the other faculty member walked in and saw me sitting there with my stack of almost 100 letters, she never opened her mouth.

I am going to approach this from a different angle.

For better or worse most of us teach at High School or lower schools. I am constantly reminding myself my students are minors, mostly. 

It is the principles responsibility to ensure the community standards are upheld. If they are broken it is the Principal that faces the heat. Some principals are adverse to any controversy. That is kind of their right since they are the ones being hit with the storm if something goes wrong.

I am not in your community so I can't comment on your specific situation, but I have always felt I needed to respect the principals decisions even it I don't always agree with them. I try to remember we both have the students best interests in mind.

I have also found that no matter what the script is, someone is going to complain. I have had one admin complain a show was too adult for high school and one teacher complain it was too childish for high school, same show same performance; It was "Once Upon a Mattress" go figure.