However, another Portland teacher is not going so gently into that good night. Drama teacher Wade Willis presented The Laramie Project to his high school back in 2005, but he claims that he met great resistance, and for producing the play he was “harassed, intimidated and humiliated” by the administration. He resigned after the school year but is now suing for wrongful termination. Though Willis chose to resign, a wrongful discharge lawsuit can be filed when an employer “maintained specific working conditions so intolerable” that a person would resign. His lawyer has said that “he’s never been able to let this go because he feels that not only has there been an injustice, but that he owes a duty to the students and parents of the Beaverton School District to make some positive change as a result of his experience there.”
These events echo the incident last year at Wilton High School in Connecticut, where students were creating an original theatrical work called Voices in Conflict. Teenagers were using theatre in the most powerful and responsible way—to explore one of the most important issues in their lives and in the lives of their peers, the American involvement in Iraq. The writing and presentation of this play would have been a unique educational opportunity for these students to begin a dialogue with each other, with their peers, and with the greater Wilton community. Unfortunately, when the principal canceled the play, that opportunity was lost. He claimed that there was insufficient time to create a proper context and balance for this student production and that he was acting to protect the feelings of Wilton families who have lost loved ones or who have family members serving in Iraq. Those were all legitimate concerns, but, instead of trying to address and remedy them, he took the quick and easy path of censorship. Fortunately, the students were eventually given a NY venue and performed the play to much greater attention than their school production ever would have garnered.
Tony Kushner’s play, Angels in America was recently attacked as “pornography” by local advocacy groups for its use in an AP English class at Deerfield High School in Illinois. Instead of buckling to the pressure, the school board made the class assignment “opt-in,” and only a handful of students chose to read the alternative assignment; the majority wanted to read Angels in America.
A few years ago, I wrote a letter to a high school teacher in Indianapolis, who had produced a production of Ragtime at his school over the vocal objections of local community groups. In my letter, I wrote:
I write to you in support of your courage and conviction in presenting the show Ragtime at your school, in its unexpurgated form, in the face of a small but vocal opposition. When there are still communities in this country that object to the inclusion of Huck Finn in high school English curricula, it is not surprising that a similarly determined group in Indianapolis was able to garner the attention of local media in their attempt to obstruct your production.
It is unfortunate that both the protesters and the TV station fail to understand the nature of “context”. In the case of this show, the writers Lynn Ahrens, Stephen Flaherty, and Terrence McNally created a context for the words and music that they used to tell an important story about racial injustice. That there are people who ignored that context in order to perpetuate their own agendas is sad indeed. But that there are teachers, principals, superintendents, students, parents and audiences who are willing to stand up to such forces and defend the work of artists who tell stories that fight bigotry, racism, injustice and violence... well, this is indeed a cause for hope.
These are just some of the recent incidents I’ve read and heard about, and rather than be upset by them, I am proud and gratified to see teachers and students standing up together across the country and demanding the right for playwrights to be heard.