Ah, the Age of Enlightenment

Admittedly, the world probably didn't need another high school production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible. ("I saw Goody Osburn with the devil.") But how interesting that a school in remote, ultra-conservative (80%+ Trump), ultra-white (90%+) Fannin County, Georgia, would decide to put on a play about witchhunts, panics, hysteria, and the persecution/prosecution of the innocent. (The play may have been the idea of the school's drama teacher, who was forced out a few weeks before. In the true spirit of "the show must go on," the kids forged on without their leader.)

Back in May, they had their first of two performances on a Friday night. On Saturday morning, the students were informed that the second performance had been canceled. 

In accounts from multiple students and parents, the Friday evening performance went off without incident. But on Saturday morning, word of the cancelation began filtering out. Angela Grist, a parent with two students in the play, described the Saturday morning in her house as, “The kids all got messages stating that, what the kids were told initially, was that somebody in the audience didn’t like the context of the play and said that it was demonic and disgusting and that it was immediately shut down.” (Source: Howard Sherman)

The president of the school's drama club, senior Abigail Ridings - who was the one directing the play - heard pretty much the same thing:

“I walked into my mom’s bedroom Saturday morning, the night after our first show, and she told me that the show had been canceled, that she just got off the phone with my principal. He said that certain people had to ‘repent after watching the show,’ as a joke, and that it was canceled due to parent complaints.” Asked about the specific nature of the complaints as explained to her mother, Ridings elaborated saying that the play was “too evil and disgusting and things like that.”

Fast forward to Monday, when the school tut-tutted to the world that the play wasn't canceled because of pitch-fork parents. No. Nothing like that: 

After Friday night’s performance of The Crucible, we received several complaints as to an unauthorized change in the script of the play. Upon investigation, we learned that the performance did not reflect the original script. These alterations were not approved by the licensing company or administration. The performance contract for The Crucible does not allow modifications without prior written approval. Failing to follow the proper licensing approval process for additions led to a breach in our contract with the play’s publisher. The infraction resulted in an automatic termination of the licensing agreement. The second performance of The Crucible could not occur because we were no longer covered by a copyright agreement.

So, not pitch-fork folks, but super-sharp local experts well versed in the ur-text of The Crucible and in copyright law. Is it just me of does this credulity-straining bit of legalese not hold water?

Students weighed in to say that they hadn't changed any of the wording. 

The only possible material in the production that might have given the licensor pause was that the production began with a wordless scene of the young women of Salem dancing in the woods at night, enacting what is described by dialogue in the text, an interpretive choice that was unlikely to have been in violation of the license since it altered not the text, the spirit nor the intention of the show. Would it have been advisable to have checked with the licensor? Yes. Was it flagrantly out of bounds? I think not.

(Howard Sherman, whose post I'm extensively quoting here is "the managing director of the Baruch Performing Arts Center at Baruch College in Manhattan." So I suspect he knows what he's talking about.)

Without saying BS, Sherman calls BS, ticking off a number of reasons why this copyright reasoning doesn't ring true.  "So the timing [of the cancelation] is questionable and the solution draconian."

Angela Grist - the parent with two disappointed kiddos in the play - took the initiative to contact Broadway Licensing. She was told by a staffer there that nothing that the Fannin High drama club had done rose to the level of copyright violation. (You go, Angela Grist!) Another parent also called Broadway Licensing and was informed that they have a process they follow through when they learn there's been a possible copyright infringement. And this ain't it. (You go, second drama mom Amber Cather Herendon!)

Sherman posits that:

...it seems that the school’s administration decided, after content complaints, to use the wordless opening scene, an interpretive choice, as a pretext for shutting the show down, after bowing to complaints about the show’s actual content, namely the words of Arthur Miller and his characters.

The students, by the way, also stood up for themselves. Aiden McBee, a member of the cast, questioned the school's decision to close things down:

“They say they understand and appreciate the arts, but I just don’t believe it, because to appreciate the arts you have to understand. The Crucible is a message of authority and of distrust, which is quite ironic. I just want clear communication.”

Another cast member - Caden Gerald, who played John Proctor (hanged for witchcraft) - said that some locals were on FB and Insta saying they thought the "show was demonic and disgusting."

Channeling the oratory of his character, Gerald said, “John Proctor is being forced to sign away his friends because of one cry against them. To draw parallel to real life, I ask you to ask yourselves, how may you teach us students to walk like men and women in this world when you sell us to lies and opinion, deflecting blame to our good names that we have made...How may we walk in this world when you have forced us to be sat?”

I'd say the kids of the Fannin High drama club are all right!

The ninnies who were terrified by The Crucible, the weaklings in the school administration who buckled under to the complaints of the ninnies and ginned up a nonsense excuse to shut the play down: not so all right. They're all no doubt the sorts of fear-stricken loons who'd be up there on the stand testifying that they saw Goody Proctor dancing with the devil.

Ridiculous.

Whatever happened to the Age of Enlightenment? Apparently it never fully made its way to Fannin County, Georgia. That said, the parents and students who spoke up and out - especially in a community where the odds are stacked against them - do give me some hope...And god knows I could use some right about now.

 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------Image source: Genius.