As a theatre practitioner, the article that Magdalen sent us about the play version of To Kill a Mockingbird being censored was particularly upsetting for me. Especially the rhetoric surrounding it. From the article:
The theater director at Flagler Palm Coast High School, Ed Koczergo, says the problem is the N-word. Koczergo says the word can't be removed from the script because of copyright laws.
Principal Jacob Oliva says parents, students and community members began complaining about it during the third week of rehearsals. The production was scheduled to open Nov. 12.
First of all this might be the first time ever that I've heard of a school obeying copyright laws in respect to their shows, so forgive me for being dubious of that justification. It makes more sense to me that they couldn't cut the word because it is essential to the plot. Because it kind of is. To Kill a Mockingbird addresses racial tensions within a historical period where the n-word was both common, and still a kind of hate speech. Part of Scout's learning process is to understand the dimensions of the word and its potency. There's not really a word you could change it to without cutting whole beats from the play.
What I'm really hearing here is a failure in directing and leadership. Whoever picked the show needed to be able to articulate to the cast and the community why the word was there, and what the play stood for. What was most disturbing to me about the article was the last part:
Most Flagler County ninth-graders read the novel dealing with racism in a fictional Depression-era Alabama town as part of their course work. Oliva says the guidance teachers give in the classroom about controversial material isn't available to community members coming to the play.
This is a blatant misunderstanding of how theatre (and art in general) works. If an audience member fails to understand the negative attitude the play has towards the n-word, this director deserves to be fired. This is not to say that there aren't other elements in the script that are more ambiguous but the play (and book) is pretty clear about the way the word is used. You could do a reading where Atticus is a different kind of racist, more condescending than outright hateful. That reading is legitimate. But the "evilness" of the n-word is pretty clear in any case.
In another class I was introduced to the community of Monroeville Alabama, the source material for To Kill a Mockingbird. The citizens of Monroeville put on the play version of To Kill a Mockingbird every year with an Oberammergau-like vigor. Their humility and conscience is prominently on display in that they segregate the audience for the courtroom scene and select the all white male jury that convicts Tom from the audience. The barriers between audience and actor are broken and the town addresses their complicity in the cycles of hate depicted in the book and play. You can read more about the Monroeville production here.
My point is that if you examine the play and the book you realize that the use of the n-word is in the interest of authenticity, that Lee is confronting a culture that needed to be interrogated. A culture that Florida was a part of, a culture that all privileged Americans allowed to continue. The power of theatre is to show us our humanity, to present a reality that can't be dismissed because it's on a screen or on the page. It is standing in front of you, forcing you to engage. What I'm seeing in Florida is a fear of that, which is understandable. I can't imagine how upsetting (and educational) it must be to be put in the jury box in Monroeville for the second act of their version of the play, waiting to be forced to find an innocent man guilty. There are far more disturbing things in heaven and earth, Palm Coast, than are dreamt of in your idea of hate speech.
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