High school drama teachers complain about plays canceled over LGBTQ content: 'Villainizing otherness'

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High school debate impacted by biases and censorship

High school sophomore Briana Whatley on how she feels censored on her debate team

Libraries aren't the only places where parents are raising concerns about inappropriate sexual content accessible to children. High school drama departments are also waging debates over school plays from parents and school officials, The New York Times reported.

Actors, drama teachers and playwrights complained to the paper that the political climate and social media have put increased scrutiny on high school theater.

The report claimed that conservatives have raised objections to homosexuality in productions like "The Prom," "Almost, Maine" and other popular shows, while there have been gripes about race depictions in "South Pacific" and "Thoroughly Modern Millie" and gender in "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" and "Bye Bye Birdie" and "Grease." 

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Empty Theater. (iStock)

Stevie Ray Dallimore, an actor who ran the theater program at a private faith-based boys’ school in Chattanooga, Tennessee, said three plays were rejected one year because of gay characters, cross-dressing, and adultery themes. He said the pushback reflected a "concerted" censorship effort. 

"This is obviously a countrywide issue that we are a small part of," Dallimore told the Times. "It’s definitely part of a bigger movement — a strongly concerted effort of politics and religion going hand in hand, banning books and trying to erase history and villainizing otherness."

The Times report linked an increase in book bans, state laws about Critical Race Theory and sexual content in public schools, as well as bans on gender reassignment treatments for minors to the drama over school plays.

Teachers complained that plays that were acceptable in recent years are now controversial in certain parts of the country.

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Equality Loudoun President Charlotte McConnell poses with LGBTQ-themed children's' books that she believes belong in classroom libraries across Virginia's Loudoun County on Nov. 8, 2019. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

A playwright who had been writing for high school students for the past thirty years told the Times he had to reject a Florida high school's request for him to remove a gay couple from his play. It sent a "terrible message" to the gay kids in the theater program, Stephen Gregg said.

The report cited a survey from the Educational Theater Association which found 67 percent of drama teachers said that censorship concerns influenced what titles they chose.

Teachers also expressed fears that they could be fired for suggesting the "wrong" play.

"Around the country, in blue states as well as red, theater teachers say it has become increasingly difficult to find plays and musicals that will escape the kind of criticism that, they fear, could cost them their jobs or result in a cutback in funding," the Times said.

"People are losing their jobs for booking the wrong musical," Ralph Sevush, the executive director of business affairs at the Dramatists Guild of America said. "A polarized society is fighting out the culture wars in high schools."

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A report last April from PEN America, a group that challenges book bans, found that nearly 1,500 books were banned in the first half of the 2022-2023 school year. 

Howard Sherman, an advocate against censorship and veteran of arts administration, argued students should be exposed to controversial content. 

"Students deserve to have the opportunity to be exposed to a wide variety of work, not only the safest, most benign, most family-friendly material," said  the managing director of New York’s Baruch Performing Arts Center said to the Times.