Monday, February 29, 2016
Oklahoma State professor says play censored over transgender identity themes
www.insidehighered.com: A play written and set to be performed by Oklahoma State University theater students was scuttled in the early planning stages, their professor says, after the department learned it would deal with gender and transgender issues. The university denies censorship but acknowledges that it blocked the play from being performed as planned and allowed it only to be produced in a less prominent setting.
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4 comments:
I am not quite sure about all of the ins and out of the politics of a play and how college theatre departments deal with those politics, but if the only reason for the play to be pulled from the main stage was because “you’ve got to make a play with our audience in mind,” and that audience happens to be "“over 50, white and conservative", i think that is a really poor excuse. Yes, it might upset those conservatives, but theatre is not made to make a person comfortable. Theatre is made to tell us a story in a way that we have never seen that story before. Theatre brings stories to life and makes them relevant for today. The ideology that a company shouldn't preform a play because it is not in line with the audiences view or something that the audience can relate to is the thing that is holding the diversity and true impact the theatre can have back. Also, the argument of the university that changing the venue, ability to advertise, and time of the play is not censorship I think is wrong. To do anything that can hinder the success of the play and how many people see it, i think counts has censorship.
At first when I began reading this article, I thought my comment would be along the lines of, this is why we do theater to approach the hard questions and the taboo topics and present one story on them to create conversation on the topic. However, one part of this really stood out to me, yes the professors and students were worried themselves about doing the production for themselves, but what they were really scared about was how the donors that sponsored the project would react. This is very interesting and something that isn't talked about much. Anytime I hear about shows being put down because of the subject matter in an education setting is always revolves around those that create it and if they can handle it. I think that it is very interesting that the company is worried about the donors, because in you don't want them to be so over whelmed that they won't put more money to future projects. So, it is hard to say that theater is meant to work through the tough stories, because if the donors, and 9 times out of 10 are the elderly who don't understand the modern theater world, don't agree with what is on stage they may not come back and that might mean no future for the theater.
This article raises a lot of questions for me about the balancing of a theater’s ideals with its need to bring in its audience. Although I would love to say that this was a horrible case of unnecessary censorship, but unfortunately I do see where the administration is coming from. At the basest, most purely practical level of theater our job is to sell tickets. But I think that even if they had stereotyped their audience as “over 50, white, and conservative” they should have had more faith in them. People want more than just entertainment from really good theater, they want to be challenged by new ideas and perspectives. By censoring this play, they are saying that their audience did not want that from their theater and not even giving them a chance to show that they would be open to seeing a play that offered challenging ideals. As theater artists, I think we need to aim our goals a little bit higher than just tickets sales and trust that if we are making good, interesting theater an audience will come.
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