The DLDF [Dramatists Legal Defense Fund] Defender Award, presented annually at the Dramatists Guild Awards, is given in recognition of an individual, group, or organization’s efforts in support of free expression in the dramatic arts. For its 2024 award, the DLDF board named the students at Santa Rosa High School’s ArtQuest Theatre, who led a fight against the school’s attempt to shut down their production of Dog Sees God and then helped create a new theatrical work, [REDACTED], to comment on their experience; their drama teacher, Jereme Anglin; Brent Lindsay, artistic director of The Imaginists, who helped the students create [REDACTED]; and the Mercury Theater of Petaluma, for providing a new home for Dog Sees God after performances were suspended at the high school. On July 20, DLDF board member and Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Robert Schenkkan met with students Leila Paine and Dean Jahnsen, as well as Jereme and Brent, to discuss their experience.

Jereme Anglin: My name is Jereme Anglin. I’m the theatre teacher at ArtQuest at Santa Rosa High School. Dean and Leila are my students, and Brent is a guest artist that we bring in every year to work with our students.

Brent Lindsay: I’m Brent Lindsay, and I work with the local theatre company here called The Imaginists. Every year, I go to ArtQuest, and we devise an original work together. 

Leila Paine: I’m Leila Paine. I just graduated from ArtQuest, and I was the vice president last year. 

Dean Jahnsen: I’m Dean Jahnsen. I just graduated from ArtQuest Theatre, and I was the president last year.

Robert Schenkkan: I’m Robert Schenkkan, Council member of the Dramatists Guild Council and the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund. I’d like you to set the stage for this story. November 2024. ArtQuest theatre program at Santa Rosa High School is performing a play and there is some controversy.

Dean Jahnsen: Yes. The play is called Dog Sees God [by Bert V. Royal]. It’s a spinoff to the Charles Schultz’s Peanuts, and it’s basically about them growing up and going through life as teenagers. The play was written in 2004, so it had a lot of pop culture moments from then, and it has a lot of drug use in it, and it uses certain slurs that are not accepted today.

Leila Paine: There are a lot of difficult topics that happen during high school. A lot of stuff with mental health, including suicide, drug use, alcohol abuse, things like that, and just overall bullying.

Robert Schenkkan: Leila, Dean, how was it you came to be doing this play?

Dean Jahnsen: At the beginning of last school year, Mr. Anglin brought four plays for us to choose from, and we gravitated toward two plays. Both of them had very real topics—the other one talked about sexual assault. Our entire class decided on Dog Sees God together. 

Leila Paine: We read the scripts for all four plays, and I think it was a week that we took discussing which one we wanted to do.

Robert Schenkkan: Sounds like the students are super involved at this theatre program.

Jereme Anglin: When the students began as freshmen, the content that they’re given is really selected by the teachers. Same thing as their sophomore year. They’re required to do some Shakespeare, some comedy of manners, and different topics that the teachers choose. But in their advanced years, I like to treat them like they’re a burgeoning theatre company. Students then take on leadership roles and have a say in what content they want to do. When they’re producing their shows, they oversee the budget and all that, so they really learn how to work as a theatre company.

Robert Schenkkan: Fantastic. Would you say there was anything unusual about the selection of this particular play for ArtsQuest?

Leila Paine: I feel like it was the usual. Honestly, it was more entertaining than other shows that we’ve done there.

Dean Jahnsen: Yeah. It just felt like another play.

Leila Paine: In level three, it’s a lot more college level material, but it’s also stuff that we enjoy and find important. That was why we chose Dog Sees God over the other shows, because we really connected with the topics that were in it, and we thought it was important to do, especially in a high school.

Dean Jahnsen: It really felt relevant to the times, and it was true to the high school experience.

Jereme Anglin: We’ve done The Laramie Project [by Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project] in that class. The Wolves [by Sarah DeLappe], She Kills Monsters [by Qui Nguyen]… so Dog Sees God didn’t stand out to anyone as particularly provocative.

Robert Schenkkan: Which brings us to this rather extraordinary moment where suddenly the play is canceled. Were you informed whose decision this was, and what were the reasons given for the cancellation?

Jereme Anglin: We did our first performance on Thursday night, and then Friday, before I had a chance to meet with the students again, I was pulled into the principal’s office, and there was someone from the superintendent’s office there who said that there had been one anonymous complaint from someone who was in the audience the night before, and that we were gonna need to cancel the play. 

Robert Schenkkan: Had this ever happened before in the history of your program?

Jereme Anglin: Not in recent times. I heard that in the ‘80s they were performing Cabaret, and Cabaret was forced to close because of antisemitism, but it’s really unusual, I think. 

Robert Schenkkan: The complaint was anonymous.

Jereme Anglin: Yeah.

Robert Schenkkan: Were you ever given any more explanation of who voiced this complaint or what specifically they were upset about?

Dean Jahnsen: I believe the first time it was because of the language that was used, and then the other time it was sexual innuendos onstage.

Leila Paine: They kept changing it in every email or talk that we had with them. It was always something different. It’s like they couldn’t agree on one reason why it was canceled.

Jereme Anglin: I have a suspicion that the initial reaction was the vocabulary, the language, the slurs, and some of that content. But after the backlash from the community and all the support we got, I think the district then consulted with their legal team and found that the reasons they canceled the play were not actually something they could do. I think they slowly pivoted toward “protecting the audience members” versus, “is this something appropriate for our students to present?” Someone in the audience could sue the school because they were exposed to something they were not prepared for. And that could pose a legal threat somehow to the school district, if a student could say that they learned about something or were forced to confront something that they weren’t ready to do. 

Robert Schenkkan: Do you typically have content warnings on your play programs and on the publicity surrounding your productions?

Dean Jahnsen: In our morning announcements, we do content warnings. We have one outside the theatre and inside the theatre, and then also in our [preshow] speech. We started doing it on social media as well. 

Robert Schenkkan: So, suddenly, they’ve shut you down. How did you all respond?

Jereme Anglin: When I first found out, I was a little stunned and not sure what to do, but I just sat the class down in a circle and let them know what I had been informed of. At first, they thought I was joking, and then when they realized I was serious, they got upset. People were angry. Some were crying, but they quickly became motivated, and I’ll let them tell you what they did. They’re the ones who did it. 

Dean Jahnsen: I sat there, and I was like, “You’re lying,” and then I cried a little bit, and then I went outside, and I talked to my mom, just because I needed comfort. I noticed that, everywhere I looked, they were sad or they were angry. A group of students left the classroom and went around the school to talk to other teachers on what to do. I thought to contact our local newspaper, The Press Democrat. One of our fellow classmates contacted one of the editors. 

Robert Schenkkan: So, you went right to the press! That’s fascinating. And Leila, I gather that pretty quickly, you also pivoted to another production venue. Can you talk me through that?

Leila Paine: Right after it happened, we realized that we still wanted to try and find a way to put [the show] on. The class had all agreed—especially because the show was double cast, and because there was only one performance, only half of the class got to do the show. 

Dean Jahnsen: The cast was split up—the level three class is juniors and seniors, and the cast that went was mostly juniors, so the senior class didn’t get to perform at all. So, that was also devastating, because there isn’t a next year.

Leila Paine: My mom is involved in the theatre community in our town, and I was working at a theatre, so I was messaging her and my boss at the theatre company I work at. Mr. Anglin and the other theatre teacher at our school, Miss Cain, were contacting everyone we knew that had venues. Our treasurer has a connection at another theatre company and was contacting them, so we were all reaching out to find what place was available as soon as possible.

Jereme Anglin: A lot of theatre companies had something already built on their stage, so we were looking for an empty space that we could just jump into, and [we] finally found one in the neighboring town, Petaluma. A little theatre company called Mercury Theater said that they had space, and we could go down there and set up. So, the next morning, we all met at the high school, loaded up our vehicles, and spent the entire day at the theatre. I was rebuilding the set and setting things up while the students took over restaging it themselves on the stage. We were multitasking to try to and get it open that same night.

Robert Schenkkan: The students restaged the play themselves. Is that an unusual activity for them? Typically, would you be doing the staging?

Dean Jahnsen: The students will stage it, and then Mr. Anglin will review it and make sure it works for every perspective in the audience. But at that point, we didn’t have time [for that]. But we did it, and honestly, I think the staging was better than it was before.

Robert Schenkkan: It’s so interesting how you took this moment for grief, and rage, and confusion, and then you very, very quickly pivoted to action. So, you have found another theatre, the Mercury Theater. You moved in. You’ve restaged the play, and you did a single performance there, two performances?

Dean Jahnsen: We did two: one earlier in the evening and one later. It was, like, an eighteen-hour day, nonstop. It was crazy.

Leila Paine: Then we got together at one of our classmates’ houses to relax and talk about what was going on, and we all made signs about censorship, and we hung them outside of the theatre where we performed.

Dean Jahnsen: That was the night the article got posted, and our entire community really got involved. We were just reflecting on everyone’s support, and that was the big moment where our class bonded. 

Jereme Anglin: The students were also very active on social media, posting on various platforms, and contacted the playwright, Bert V. Royal. He got on board to support us, so there was a huge avalanche of support and positive things that came out. 

Dean Jahnsen: [There were] theatre departments from all over the Bay Area contacting us, [asking] if we wanted to come to them. It was so overwhelming, but it was so cool to see.

Leila Paine: It felt like it came out of nowhere. Initially, when we got shut down, our entire class felt alone in what had happened. We were like, “There’s nothing we can do about this,” but we found, as we kept pushing and trying harder instead of giving up, that there are lots of people in our community and outside of our community that actually care about what happened. It was strange to see that happen, that it’s not just something small that’s happening to us.

Robert Schenkkan: You were surprised by the response?

Leila Paine:  Yeah.

Dean Jahnsen: Yes.

Robert Schenkkan: This is really extraordinary. And there are lessons here, for artists everywhere, professional and nonprofessional. You did not allow yourselves to be shut down. You did not shrink away in shame. In fact, you stepped up and embraced the issue, embraced the controversy. Publicity became your friend.

As a result, there’s a greater sense of ownership by the students. You have expanded a play which already dealt with serious and potent topics into an examination of censorship and the importance of speaking out against censorship. Extraordinary. But my understanding is you didn’t stop there. After Dog Sees God closed, you traditionally begin a new project with another local theatre company, The Imaginists. What have you previously done with The Imaginists, and how was this collaboration different?

Leila Paine: Well, initially, the process started the same. Every year, Brent comes in, and we usually start [brainstorming] around the same time that we’re rehearsing our fall show. 

We did that in about September/October, and then we’d take a break for a little bit when we’re doing our fall show, but then as soon as the show closes, we jump right into rehearsals for what we’re bringing to Lenaea [High School Theatre Festival]. This year, I think we started a little bit earlier, and we started talking about censorship before everything even happened, how the arts seemed to be almost dying a little bit. That was an idea that we were playing with going into it, and we had a rough draft of the script that Brent had created. After everything with Dog Sees God happened, we jumped straight into making [REDACTED]. 

Dean Jahnsen: Every year, it’s a relevant theme of what’s going on in the world, and every year, it alway has a message. The year before, when we were juniors, it discussed the toxicities of social media, but then this year, I remember talking about Moms for Liberty, their censorship and their influence. And this seeped into when we were writing [REDACTED], how people have influence on the school board, how the school board affects our every day.

Brent Lindsay: At one of the first meetings, someone brought up theatre and how it is basically either under attack, or it is not finding its enrollment. The COVID blip is real. We see theatre and other art forms struggling. I think this came up early in the conversation, so it wasn’t necessarily about censorship, but censorship, of course, became a very convenient way for us to “find our villain.”

The early drafts, I was playing with One Thousand and One Nights. We present this show at the Lenaea Festival, so this was a way for us to take something that was going to celebrate the art form, theatre, but also be a little bit cheeky—a satire about a theatre company going to a festival and the antagonist being Mommies Against the Arts. So, we were taking those components, and it was rather messy in the beginning. Then Dog Sees God happened in the middle of this process, and I must say it wasn’t just the cancellation; it was then these meetings that came thereafter in the next two months where I had to be in the room—from the principal to the district to the superintendent. Every one of these meetings, I was taking mad notes, and the show was changing and evolving. Between Jereme and the students and me, it was like, “We could write all this into the material.” 

So, it wasn’t just becoming satire. It was very close to home, and quite dangerous.

Robert Schenkkan: When you say, “Quite dangerous,” what do you mean?

Brent Lindsay: Well, I mean, because the other side of this story that, as soon as Dog Sees God was canceled and they moved it to the Mercury Theater, I think it was the next day that the school board had received enough pressure that they allowed the play to continue, and at that point, it was already too late. Am I getting that right? 

Dean Jahnsen: Yeah. 

Brent Lindsay: The students and [their] social media blasts, they were ferocious. The testimonials were beautiful. I mean, every screen in our community, especially the theatre community, was just blasted, so it was very easy for us to turn to our school board, the superintendent, the principal, everybody, and say, “What the hell’s going on?” 

I think that that kind of community support created a situation where they found themselves in a place where it was very uncomfortable. They step back, and then they have these meetings with the students, which I gotta say all seemed ridiculous. They wanted to save face. They wanted to play the victim, and they were putting it on these guys as if they were the antagonists, that they were actually on the offense. 

So, what I mean by “dangerous” is we got to take all that information in quite some detail and write it into the script. So, if school board members or superintendents came to see the play, they saw themselves. There was no question, not by name, but they knew exactly who we were talking about. 

Robert Schenkkan: I wish I could say I felt adept at social media. Could you school me for a minute here, Leila and Dean, on your social media work throughout the experience? What was your focus? How was it organized? 

Dean Jahnsen: It started with us calling The Press Democrat, our local paper, and that story being written, and everyone started reposting. And there would be updates on the article because we kept in contact with the writer. People were constantly refreshing and reading what’s happening, and it was just repost after repost. I remember looking at that post and looking at the other ones that The Press Democrat put out, and it had like, 5,000 likes, 20,000 views, where the other ones were like, 30 and twenty. 

Leila Paine: And then some of our classmates posted the email addresses of the administrators who were in charge of what had happened, explaining what the actual issue was from our point of view—like, if you’re against this, please contact these people.

Dean Jahnsen: We used our company’s Instagram and Facebook, and also word of mouth. It just spread like wildfire. 

Robert Schenkkan: Fantastic. So, I gather the new play you created with the Imaginists was kind of a story within a story that reflected what you had actually just lived through. Could you give our audience a quick explanation of the plot of this new play?

Brent Lindsay: I think that it boils down to a class bringing scenes and monologues to a festival, and you’re always doing your pieces for a group of respondents. It can be one respondent looking at the playwright’s submissions, two respondents or three looking at scenes or monologues. So, this play starts with one student before a group of respondents, and all of a sudden, it becomes apparent that one of the respondents is one of these Mommies Against the Arts. 

It’s all about, then, how do we kill the arts by way of killing, literally killing these students? So, it becomes this high satire of the students being at risk of death from Mommies Against the Arts. And, à la One Thousand and One Nights, one student steps forward and says, “I wanna do my scene,” and that becomes a scene within a scene within a scene and keeps them all living until she can get to the final scene, basically surrounding all the Mommies for the Arts and threatening to tear them all apart and beheading them and all that. 

Then all the lights come on. That same student steps forward and says, “Hey, relax. It’s just theatre,” and then it’s a blackout. 

Robert Schenkkan: Wonderful. And I understand you went on to win a bucketload of awards at this statewide festival?

Jereme Anglin: Yeah. That came as a shock. We always bring original work there, because of the nature of our ArtQuest program. Our students have a lot of training, and we tend to do pretty well at the festival. We have, I think, a bit of a reputation and respect from other schools and other programs, but this year, we really were surprised at how much they had heard about what we have been going through and how much they liked the [REDACTED] script. The big award that they gave at the end is called the Bob Smart Award. He’s a theatre teacher who created the Lenaea Festival many, many years ago, and they created this award in his honor, to go to an individual or individuals who have undergone some significant struggle in bringing pieces of theatre to the festival, and so last year, we were given that award.

Robert Schenkkan: Congratulations! And finally, as a sort of postscript to this whole extraordinary event, I understand that the superintendent who initially censored this production was fired. Is that correct?

Jereme Anglin: Yes.

Dean Jahnsen: The entire school board has been going through a lot of fire recently because of consolidation efforts, and she was let go at the end of last year.

Jereme Anglin: I think it was after a series of bad decisions, and then the community just feeling that the superintendent didn’t really mesh well with our community, with our program.

Dean Jahnsen: And our beliefs.

Robert Schenkkan: Very clearly not. We live in a very challenging moment right now. The arts are definitely under assault. Censorship is a very real issue. Leila and Dean, as you look back on it now, what are the lessons that you took away from this experience which you think might be meaningful to other artists?

Leila Paine: I think that the biggest thing that came out of it, at least for me, is that instead of being passive and letting it happen and accepting it, we took all the emotions and anger, what we had gone through, and we worked with Brent and turned it into art. Instead of just letting it happen, we took our experiences and made something greater. And then also the fact that, as artists, you’re not alone. There are so many more people out there who support the arts than you think there are. So, just because you have one person telling you, “No,” or a group of people telling you what you’re doing isn’t okay, that it’s not right, [that] doesn’t mean that they’re right, and doesn’t mean you have to listen to them. 

Dean Jahnsen: What I noticed is that I didn’t really see a lot of support from the younger generation when it first happened, but when I got to Lenaea and noticed everyone supporting us, it really showed me that the young generation is out there to support and defend the arts, especially in the political climate we are in. 

Robert Schenkkan: Jereme, Brent, did you have anything you wanted to add to that?

Brent Lindsay: Hearing Leila and Dean talk about it, I’m reminded that when we performed [REDACTED] at the school, when we had school board members, or assistant superintendents, or even the principal or vice principal come and sit and watch that piece, oftentimes what happened at the end is the whole black box would leap to its feet uproariously. And the one person sitting would be that school board member, isolated, alone, and I think it was just as shocking to me to see that story play out, to see how lonely it was to be that person who is trying to achieve some sort of power that was rejected by the community. And I think that that’s where art lives. When art finds its feet and its power, that’s what could happen, and this show, like no other that I’ve done with the students, absolutely reflected that. 

Robert Schenkkan: This is such an inspiring story, and I want to thank you for sharing it with the Guild. And I wish you all the very best in your future endeavors!

Dean Jahnsen: Thank you very much. 

Leila Paine: Thank you so much.