Lesbian Playwright Paula Vogel Slams Florida School for Banning Play

Paula Vogel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning lesbian playwright, warns that a Florida school district's decision to cancel a production of one of her plays is a slippery slope to dangerous censorship.

Students at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, a Jacksonville area magnet school, say they are experiencing anti-LGBTQ+ censorship 10 months after Florida's Parental Rights in Education -- also known as the "don't say gay" law -- passed.

As the school's theater troupe prepared to put on Paula Vogel's acclaimed 2015 play Indecent, Duval County Public Schools board members blocked the performance, calling it "not age appropriate."

The play deals with the fallout surrounding the play God of Vengeance by Sholem Asch, which got shut down on Broadway in 1923 and resulted in the producer and cast members being arrested and convicted on obscenity charges. The performance was deemed obscene at the time because it involved a same-sex relationship.

"From what we've been told, they say that it's the adult sexual content in the show," 17-year-old Madeline Scotti tellsThe Advocate. "But then we rebutted that with saying that the only thing in the stage directions is a kiss and that language can be adapted from the playwright's permission."

Scotti says that the district came up with additional justifications.

"Then they said that it's the language, which, again, we rebutted with saying that 'no, it's not, the playwright has allowed us to change certain words to make it more fitting for high school audiences,'" the teen continues.

"And obviously, we have assumptions about why this is happening at such a peculiar moment in the political climate, especially in Jacksonville," they tell The Advocate. "But that's what we miss them. So that's where we're currently at."

Paula Vogel won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play How I Learned to Drive. Vogel knows a thing or two about censorship. She wrote Indecent in 2015, and upon learning about developments in Florida, the playwright and educator tells The Advocate that she's dismayed at the rise in anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and anti-Semitism in Florida.

"I'm afraid this is a measurement of how dangerous the fragmentation of our country is right now," Vogel says. "We have moved backwards to the 1920s in terms of racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and every day we're witnessing our rights being challenged."

She says that one could argue, as the school board appears to, that children have no rights and that the concerns are parents' rights.

"What I want to say is that the parents gave permission to their students to perform Indecent," Vogel says.

Before students were allowed to participate in the play, they had to have written permission from their parents.

She says she's heard from educators who teach Indecent in the classroom from around the country.

"I'm hearing from people reaching out who have produced Indecent in high schools very recently, this past summer, and they report that there were no issues, no problems and that the cast, the students loved doing it," Vogel says.

"So I fear that this is the next step in the culture wars," she adds, explaining that her main concern as an educator is ensuring that students feel supported and don't internalize the homophobia and anti-Semitism directed at them.

Scotti, a senior cast in the play, had taken her frustration to Instagram but learned that kindness abounds in the world.

"During rehearsal, our company was notified that the school board is shutting us down, not because of, but related to the ideal, stated in the 'don't say gay' bill," she began. "Indecent is a story about how detrimental censorship is, about how its damaging effects can ruin a nation and a community. I don't need to point out the irony."

Scotti continued speaking directly to the camera in the video with an emotional appeal.

"The 100-year anniversary of Sholem Asch's God of Vengeance being shut down on Broadway is the same week that our production of Indecent would have opened," they said.

The student director and actor called attention to the school board's decision to censor the "queer Jewish love story."

A request for comment to the Duval County Public Schools board went unanswered.

"They are trying to tell us that this play is dirty, immoral, obscene, and of course indecent," Scotti said in her video. "By that nature, they are trying to tell me that I, myself, and my community is dirty, immoral, obscene, and indecent," she said.

Since posting the video, Scotti says she has received messages of love and warmth that have surprised and overwhelmed her and the theater company.

"I've received so much love from every corner of the universe," Scotti says. "It feels like, I mean, the Broadway community, the Jewish community, the queer community, um, people from all over the world have reached out with their stories. And that love is just something that I could have never expected."

Vogel says there's a lesson that one can learn from her writing that gives her pause because many school boards, in addition to resisting LGBTQ+ topics, are implementing curricula that don't teach about the Holocaust.

"The lesson from Indecent is that censorship of the arts is always the first step towards totalitarianism, which is in the case of God of Vengeance, the canary in the coal mine in terms of the Holocaust," she says.

Vogel says that it's the loss of a community not to see the talents of the young people she met over Zoom recently. The students did a cold reading of Indecent for the play's author.

"My jaw dropped," Vogel says. "My God, the two actors performing, who were to perform those roles, are really, really good. So I need to praise not only their talent, but I need to praise their parents for supporting their children's art, and I need to praise that faculty."

She adds, "They're professional. Those two students I heard from last night are professional actors."

Vogel encourages everyone who cherishes the arts to write to leaders in Florida to express their support for the students.

"Dear companies of INDECENT: please write Diana Green to support the students and faculty at Douglas Andersen whose production was shut down in Jacksonville Florida," she tweeted.

Scotti says to stay tuned but that later this week, the theater company's students expect to announce details of a forthcoming project.

In the meantime, Vogel notes that anybody who wants to support the arts and see Indecent as a filmed stage production can do so online.