I got a call this morning from a playwright friend who lives in another state. She called to talk about a listserv we are both on, specifically about how to respond to a post and some backchanneling that had upset her.
She told me about a call for submissions she'd received for an anthology of monologues with "language and theme sensitive for high school/college classroom discussion" (which I'd also received and posted on my En Avant playwrights opps board). She'd corresponded with the editor of the anthology and come away with the impression that monologues on gender and identity would not make it in.
She took the discussion to the listserv, and the response was mostly: "I know that guy, he's nice." Which is, of course, always appreciated. However, what got my friend on the phone with me on a Sunday morning was the attitude she perceived that her work would be welcome if she could find a way to "skirt the issue." (Presumably that didn't mean writing a monologue on cross-dressing).
After we got off the phone, I spent a little time reading over the responses on that list on the topic, and then looking at the website for the publisher. I followed up with my own post to the listserv, which is a place I don't frequent as often as I used to, in part because sometimes it is annoying being the Accessible Friendly Lesbian, who will politely point out the homophobia in a group of women. I blame Bush. Because during his terms, it became okay for millions of people to be rude in public to people they don't like because their personal version of God says it's not just okay, it's an obligation!
(This may seem like a digression but it comes back around).
My friend posted part of her correspondence with the editor to the listserv, and what gave me pause was this phrase:
"My publisher had reservations on some monologues from my recent "Women's Collection" last year and wasn't persuaded that gender topics like these would make excellent classroom discussion pieces...so I suspect there would be the same hesitation in this revised book."
This says to me that the publisher itself is uncomfortable with certain topics or themes that are WOMAN-related. And to hold the opinion that "gender topics" are NOT excellent points for classroom discussion reads to me that they are uncomfortable with any discussion of sexuality outside of heterosexual, if at all.
On its website, Meriwether Publishing, the house that's doing this anthology, describes itself as "America's foremost pubisher of theater arts books." If you explore further on the website, you will see that they also publish a number of books on Christian theatre and Christian resources. (And also "Great Scenes from Minority Playwrights." Ouch! How clunky is that? I wonder if they consider GLBT playwrights to be "minorities?" Uh...no.)
I also noted that the company is headquartered in Colorado Springs, CO, a town sometimes referred to as "the evangelical Vatican."
I found a copy of the table of contents of "Young Women's Monologues for the Contemporary Stage," (which I would guess is the one the editor mentioned in his correspondence) and there is some tough, modern stuff in it: Durang's For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls (GAY GAY GAY, and camp...), The Food Monologues (body issues/food), and selections from many playwrights whose work I know and respect. I don't see many lesbian playwrights represented (there's Jane Wagner, who has an Agnus Angst monologue in there).
Maybe the editor got pressure to stay away from GLBT stuff in a book that's going to be sold to schools; maybe his publisher isn't aware of the queer stuff that's in some of the books already. But to relegate "gender issues" to the back of the bus, so to speak, letting in a few famous gay playwrights for window dressing (oh, I couldn't resist...) is degrading.
I spent some time going through the Meriwether catalog online, and delving into the tables of contents, and introductions to the books, and I get the feeling that this is a company whose vision is distressed by the mores of the modern day: one that grudgingly accepts that there is an "other" (non-white, non-Christian, non-straight) but not quite sure how to take it (or accept it). Though they will sell books to it.
The pragmatic playwright in me says: well this isn't a place for my work; after all isn't that what we do as we market ourselves? But then I think about the adolescent or teenager who is trying to figure out who he or she is, and would like to find a voice for his or her feelings. But it's not in the texts, not in the material in the classroom where s/he spends most of his day. "Faggot" and "lezzie" and "that's so gay!" are the epithets of choice in school halls.
On TV, on the radio, on the internet, there are straight teens living their lives depicted everywhere... they rule with their stories and songs of girls who like cute boys, and girls who like cute boy vampires, and the occasional "very special episode" about drug abuse or rape, and...there's so much less for the gay kid, much less in a school where the gay kid is scissored out of the picture, so to speak.
In the short run, I won't be sending my work to Meriwether. In the long run, the way to change the textbooks is for schools not to buy the textbooks, and the goal is for young actors to have access to the work of ALL the great playwrights.
It's ridiculous to think of the theater without gays (as Scott Eckern recently found out). It's even more ridiculous to think that the kids in the drama department in any high school, much less college, are all straight, or that they will be damaged in some way by being "exposed" to the work of the "other."
Most kids who take a drama class in high school or college, or learn a monologue from an audition book are not going to make a life in theater. But if he sees himself or herself in the words then he or she gets to think "I exist." Or if a straight kid gets a window into the life of an "other" and stops demonizing what he doesn't know, then that text has taught someone something. If a learning opportunity is disappeared, so does the chance for change.
And we're all about change, these days, thank goodness.
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