Facing Up to Our History

Newton North High School’s March production of the play “Thoroughly Modern Millie” sparked controversy throughout the Greater Boston community over what some saw as insensitive racial stereotyping. Many Asian members of the community were particularly hurt and offended by the play. The responses to the controversy were varied: some students at Newton North defended the production for having begun a conversation about race relations, while some productions that followed in other schools chose to sanitize their own versions of the play in order to avert potential for offense.
Cambridge, which enjoys its own vibrant theater scene thanks to the presence of various theatrically engaged local colleges and high schools, should see the incident at Newton North as a chance to reflect on representations of race on its stages. How should communities deal with racially insensitive content in the works that they take on?  The answer seems to lie in bravely facing up to uncomfortable aspects of history and turning would-be controversies into teaching moments.
Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, a local public high school, has so far been spared from dealing with any negative backlash in response to representations of race in its theatrical productions. Elaine Koury, the school’s coordinator of the Visual and Performing Arts Department, explained to the HPR that the process of choosing what play to stage always takes the community’s interests into consideration. This year’s fall musical was “Ragtime,” which Koury described as a work about “the collision of three communities — African-Americans, immigrants, and the white upper class — and how they learn to come together.” For a city as diverse as Cambridge, this play proves especially poignant. This kind of catering to community interests is crucial when it comes to theatrical productions and can preempt controversies. But does this mean that controversial content should be avoided at all costs?
Martin Puchner, Professor of Drama, English, and Comparative Literature at Harvard, encouraged schools to take potential for offense into consideration, but not necessarily to avoid controversial material. Puchner told the HPR, “Theater has always attracted more controversy, and has always been held to a higher bar because of its immediacy, because it’s not usually consumed in private, but rather in front of an assembled audience.” Meanwhile, he also pointed out that theater brings together the varied perspectives of the characters, producers, and the audience, which “should make it particularly obvious that a racist character on stage isn’t necessarily endorsed by those behind the production.” The interactive nature of theater may call for increased sensitivity to potentially offensive material, but it also offers unique opportunities to provide a venue for confronting and grappling with problematic content.
CRLS’s “Ragtime” includes a scene in which the “n word” is used, and another in which a character suffers racially-charged violence. In her conversation with the HPR, Koury drew a distinction between this portrayal of racism, which is “part of the story of what our nation has gone through, and makes it clear that they’re not the good guys,” and the racism found in “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” which is for comic effect. While both plays push the audience to confront painful historical realities, their different methods of doing so make one more palatable than the other.
But while some plays may be more problematic than others, the answer to navigating history without causing offense does not lie in completely avoiding them, or even in changing the content. Puchner told the HPR that when it comes to sensitive material, “It’s a question of framing it. Have a discussion about it, turn it into a teaching moment.” Instead of avoiding plays like “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” schools can embrace the opportunities that these works present to teach important lessons about the injustices present in our history. This can be facilitated through holding discussions and debriefs among the students and providing an introduction or program notes to clarify the issue for the audience.
Though the fierce backlash faced by Newton North’s production of “Thoroughly Modern Millie” may push schools to follow suit by steering clear from the production of such plays, Koury reminds us that it is important to remember that “we are always teaching, in the choices of material, and in how we present this material.” Avoiding plays like “Thoroughly Modern Millie” teaches students no more than to avoid historical realities. Controversial material may require more sensitive approaches to its presentation, but this extra effort is worth it — both to avoid causing offense, and to make sure that we continue to face up to our history.