Student productions at Wilton High School range from splashy musicals like last year’s “West Side Story,” performed in the state-of-the-art, $10 million auditorium, to weightier works like Arthur Miller’s “Crucible,” on stage last fall in the school’s smaller theater.
For the spring semester, students in the advanced theater class took on a bigger challenge: creating an original play about the war in Iraq. They compiled reflections of soldiers and others involved, including a heartbreaking letter from a 2005 Wilton High graduate killed in Iraq last September at age 19, and quickly found their largely sheltered lives somewhat transformed.
“In Wilton, most kids only care about Britney Spears shaving her head or Tyra Banks gaining weight,” said Devon Fontaine, 16, a cast member. “What we wanted was to show kids what was going on overseas.”
But even as 15 student actors were polishing the script and perfecting their accents for a planned April performance, the school principal last week canceled the play, titled “Voices in Conflict,” citing questions of political balance and context.
The principal, Timothy H. Canty, who has tangled with students before over free speech, said in an interview he was worried the play might hurt Wilton families “who had lost loved ones or who had individuals serving as we speak,” and that there was not enough classroom and rehearsal time to ensure it would provide “a legitimate instructional experience for our students.”
“It would be easy to look at this case on first glance and decide this is a question of censorship or academic freedom,” said Mr. Canty, who attended Wilton High himself in the 1970s and has been its principal for three years. “In some minds, I can see how they would react this way. But quite frankly, it’s a false argument.”
At least 10 students involved in the production, however, said that the principal had told them the material was too inflammatory, and that only someone who had actually served in the war could understand the experience. They said that Gabby Alessi-Friedlander, a Wilton junior whose brother is serving in Iraq, had complained about the play, and that the principal barred the class from performing it even after they changed the script to respond to concerns about balance.
“He told us the student body is unprepared to hear about the war from students, and we aren’t prepared to answer questions from the audience and it wasn’t our place to tell them what soldiers were thinking,” said Sarah Anderson, a 17-year-old senior who planned to play the role of a military policewoman.
Bonnie Dickinson, who has been teaching theater at the school for 13 years, said, “If I had just done ‘Grease,’ this would not be happening.”
Frustration over the inelegant finale has quickly spread across campus and through Wilton, and has led to protest online through Facebook and other Web sites.
“To me, it was outrageous,’’ said Jim Anderson, Sarah’s father. “Here these kids are really trying to make a meaningful effort to educate, to illuminate their fellow students, and the administration, of all people, is shutting them down.”
First Amendment lawyers said Mr. Canty had some leeway to limit speech that might be disruptive and to consider the educational merit of what goes on during the school day, when the play was scheduled to be performed. But thornier legal questions arise over students’ contention that they were also thwarted from trying to stage the play at night before a limited audience, and discouraged from doing so even off-campus. Just this week, an Alaska public high school was defending itself before the United States Supreme Court for having suspended a student who unfurled a banner extolling drug use at an off-campus parade.
The scrap over “Voices in Conflict” is the latest in a series of free-speech squabbles at Wilton High, a school of 1,250 students that is consistently one of Connecticut’s top performers and was the alma mater of Elizabeth Neuffer, the Boston Globe correspondent killed in Iraq in 2003.
The current issue of the student newspaper, The Forum, includes an article criticizing the administration for requiring that yearbook quotations come from well-known sources for fear of coded messages. After the Gay Straight Alliance wallpapered stairwells with posters a few years ago, the administration, citing public safety hazards, began insisting that all student posters be approved in advance.
Around the same time, the administration tried to ban bandanas because they could be associated with gangs, prompting hundreds of students to turn up wearing them until officials relented.
“Our school is all about censorship,” said James Presson, 16, a member of the “Voices of Conflict” cast. “People don’t talk about the things that matter.”
~
From the script: Voice of Conflict
National Guard Sergeant Ben Flanders:
I reenlisted again! There was something profound about serving my country, and although I had been a national guardsman for six years and I was getting paid and getting benefits, I wasn’t seeing where I was providing a service---until I was actually deployed to Iraq. Then my butt was on the line and that readjusted my whole focus that --service to the country is really important. I realized it’s really important to have a strong military, and I alsorealized that we need to keep our leaders accountable. Do I support the invasion? I’m not 100% sure. We need congressional hearings about what led to that.I believe in this country, it needs people who are critical and analytical and take their own skills and strengths and put them to some use. I have a lot of conviction about staying in Iraq. We should not leave, and that’s because of the work we did, and I believe in that work. We confronted an enemy that easily would have chosen to bomb a café or kill innocent civilians.
Sgt. Robert Sarra:
...We had been in a firefight, we had been in an engagement, and the engagement was over and I see this woman walking out in all black, shes got a bag in her arm, shes wearing a berka. Uh and shes walking out towards the armoured vehicle. And the guys on the Amtrack start waving their hands and yelling at her stop stop and their raising their weapons and i went, “ok one or two things are gonna happen: this woman is gonna put up her hands and surrender and start talking to the marines or she’s gonna walk up to these guys and explode. And if she blows up, she’s gonna kill a bunch of those guys or wound a bunch of them. I’ve got a clear shot with nothing behind her. And this was all, i mean (snaps fingers continually, while nodding head) the was spilt second ya know? It happens all that fast. Pulled up my rifle, took two shots at her. (takes deep breath) I know i probably missed the first shot, the second shot, I’m pretty sure i hit her. And as soon as that second shot went off, the guys on the other vehicle opened up and they cut her down. She fell to the dirt, and as she fell, she had a a white flag in her hand. At that moment there, I lost it, I threw my weapon down on the deck of the vehicle and I was crying and i was like Oh my god, what are we doing here? whats happening? I had a gunnery sargent, who had been in the first war, he said it happens there’s nothing you can do to bring her back, it happens we gotta keep going.Spilt second decision that’s all, you pull the trigger, you trigger something else...
Army Captain Patrick Murphy:
I trained 600 Iraqi soldiers in small class settings. I taught rules of engagement, but I also taught them what it meant to be a soldier. I’d tell them about the seven army values: loyalty, duty, respect, selfless services, honor, integrity, and personal courage. I told them to be loyal to their country. I spent a lot of time with them. I told them, “You are my brothers now. We are brothers in arms. In history we fought like the dickens with the Japanese and the Germans and look now. Ten years from now, I’m going to come to Iraq on vacation and visit my brothers. We are brothers now in the same profession, with the same goal: a better Iraq. This is a defining moment in your country’s history, and you are true patriots for your country.”
Sgt Kelly Dougherty:
...The enemy could be anyone that you see, you don’t know where to focus your attention, you don’t know where to focus your anger—the aggression and the hatred that would be focused on a clear enemy gets focused on every single Iraqi.
Islamic Woman:
Don’t blame it on Islam. Every religion has its extremists. In times of chaos and disorder, those extremists flourish. Iraq is full of moderate Muslims who simply believe in “live and let live”. We get along with each other – Sunnis and Shi’a, Muslims and Christians, and Jews and Sabi’a. We intermarry, we mix and mingle, we live. We build our churches and mosques in the same areas, our children go to the same schools…it was never an issue. Someone asked me if, through elections, the Iraqi people might vote for an Islamic state. Six months ago, I would have firmly said, “No”. Now I’m not so sure. There’s been an overwhelming return to fundamentalism. People are turning to religion for several reasons. The first and most prominent is fear. Fear of war, fear of death and fear of a fate worse than death (and yes, there are fates worse than death). Encroaching Western values and beliefs have also played a prominent role in pushing Iraqis to embrace Islam. Just as there are ignorant people in the Western World, there are ignorant people in the Middle East. In Muslims and Arabs, Westerners see suicide bombers, terrorists, ignorance, and camels. In Americans, Brits, etc. Iraqis see depravity, prostitution, ignorance, domination, junkies, and ruthlessness. The best way people can find to protect themselves, and their loved ones, against this assumed threat is religion.
No comments:
Post a Comment