2012 was not my year. The giants were overwhelming,
my tilting skills felt dubious, and my lance proved weak and ineffectual. There
were many factors that contributed to my grip weakening, and finally slipping
altogether – a misstep here, a realization of futility there – but one event
stands out in causing my giants to begin to resemble windmills.
I parted ways with a performing arts school that I greatly admired.
This was not much of a financial blow. Nor was it
a blow to my pride, or even my ego. I stood my ground on a legal and ethical
issue, and was told my services were no longer needed. I was able to walk away
with my head held high.
And yet . . . it was a blow. It undermined my
faith in myself, in my place in the world of theatre, in my belief that while I
may be in a minority, I was not alone.
To nutshell the occurrence – I was given a script
that I was to use in the classroom, both as a learning tool for my students,
and as rehearsal for a full-scale production that would be mounted in a theatre
in front of a paying audience. While I knew ahead of time the script would be
based on a well-loved children’s novel, I was not prepared for the script that
was handed to me. As I read it through with my class, my heart sank lower and
lower.
The script was stuffed with lines, dialogue,
lyrics, all lifted verbatim from one of three popular re-creations of the novel
– 2 movies, and one stage musical. I’m not talking elements, concepts, or ideas
from these re-imaginings of the original. I’m talking plagiarism. All three of
these sources were protected by copyright, and no rights had been purchased, no
permissions had been granted. Just to add a little dose of irony (?) to it all,
the original novel, the inspiration for the movies and stage show that had been
pillaged, was firmly in the public domain. If it was vital to do that
particular story, the script could have legally and ethically been written
using the original material.
If you’ve read my previous blog entries, you can
probably guess where I stand on this sort of thing. I do not walk the fence on
this issue. At all. Artistic integrity is vital to me, and there was no
integrity to be found in this script. I was ill.
Those of you who know me in person - chiefly those
of you who know me in theatre – are familiar with the . . . er, passion . . . I
tend to display when it comes to issues of artistic integrity, and thus are
probably imagining that at this point, I stormed the head offices, threw the
script down like a gauntlet, declared it a travesty, and washed my hands of the
entire thing.
Alas. Perhaps my inevitable defeat would have been
less painful if I had waved the white flag, instead of attempting negotiations.
Here’s the thing, though. I loved that school. I loved what they were doing. I
had immense respect for the woman who ran it, and her vision of releasing
artists and lovers of art into the world, instead of mere performers. In the
months that I was there, she seemed to do more than pay lip service to this
mission. While I didn’t always agree with her approach, I admired the
motivation behind it.
So instead of being buoyed by righteous
indignation, I was gnawed by disappointment and sorrow. I was losing sleep. I
was dragging myself to work. I was hating myself. Desperate for a compromise
that would allow me to keep my integrity and my job, I refreshed my knowledge
of copyright law, hoping for a loophole. I found one. Sort-of.
I approached the head of the school and laid out
my concerns in detail. I prefaced the discussion with the acknowledgment of the
great work she does with the kids, and that the school itself is an important
addition to the community. Then I told her that I could, with a semi-clear
conscience, rehearse with the children in the classroom, as that is a
legitimate use of the copyrighted material. I could not, however, be a part of
the actual production.
It was a long, painful discussion. She
acknowledged that what she was doing wasn’t ethical, but insisted there was no
other way for them to pull off their end-of-year performance. She cited the expense,
the difficulty of working all the students into a production, the amount of
effort it would take to write a script from scratch. I sympathized, but pointed
out that none of these were insurmountable obstacles. I offered my experience
from my previous job of writing and producing original musicals with a group of
students, tailor-made for the cast we had. She countered that the students
wouldn’t want to do material that they weren’t already familiar with. I
disagreed, and felt children, especially, welcome the opportunity to embrace
new stories and characters. I won’t hit
every point that we covered during that first discussion, but in the end,
although she hadn’t let go of the notion that, while technically wrong, her
approach was justified, she agreed to my proposed compromise. My stomach unknotted, and I began to breathe
easier.
Sadly, the compromise lasted mere weeks. She no
longer felt she was justified – she felt she was absolutely in the right. I was
accused of caring more about the letter of the law than about the children. I
pointed out that a good portion of what I wanted to teach the children as
artists is artistic integrity, not only in respecting other people’s work, but
in respecting their own, and respecting themselves as artists. The previous
discussion was repeated, almost verbatim. I stood my ground. She stood hers. I
was told that my principles precluded me from being a good teacher, as I was
willing to abandon the students during their production rather than participate
in something unethical. She politely
informed me that they would no longer be able to use me as a teacher.
I was at sea.
I had close ties with my students, particularly the teens, and I was
being cut off from them with no chance to say good-bye, and no confidence that
the head of the school would explain my abrupt departure in neutral terms.
And that is when my lance slipped. When I began to
question my own perceptions. When I began to wonder if I was alone in my belief
that art must have integrity. When I finally asked myself if I was fighting a
battle worth fighting, or merely tilting at windmills. It was a gradual, and wholly
unintentional progression. I didn’t lay down arms, discard my armor, and ride
from the battlefield in surrender. Instead, I froze in place. I loosened my
grip. I let my armor grow rusty, my steed wander off. I didn’t notice, and I
didn’t try to counteract it. I just stood. I sunk. I forgot where I was and why
I was there, and I didn’t try to remember.
It took months for me to awaken to the fact that I
had, essentially, quit the fight. That my lance was half-buried in the mud, my
armor useless, my horse long gone. As daunting as it can be to become conscious
to the stagnation I must climb out of, I am heartened by the fact that as I
survey my personal landscape, windmills are once again beginning to take the
shape of giants.
I wish I could declare that I am now fully charged
to don new armor, wrest my lance from the mud, and once more into the fray. Still,
while I may be questioning my personal ability to fell giants and windmills, I
am steadfast in my belief that they must fall.
