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This article was orignally obtained from http://www.dispatch.com/panarchive/1998-9-16/features/ottfea.html. It is also available in the Friday, October 16, 1998 edition of the Columbus Dispatch. To reach the Dispatch home page, click here.
Otterbein College Theatre, responding to student complaints about racial stereotypes in an upcoming David Mamet drama, will shift the show's venue to a more private classroom audience.
Originally planned as a workshop presentation Nov. 5-7 in the Campus Center Theatre, Mamet's Edmond will be performed instead as a classroom project in response to "real concerns" that a campus protest "could result in violence," Artistic Director Dennis Romer said.
"As a classroom project, it is protected by rules of academic freedom," he said.
Mamet's episodic 90-minute piece, produced in Chicago in 1983 and off-Broadway later, is a dark portrait of an unhappy white man whose frustrations are expressed through self-hatred, misogyny and bigotry.
Eric Dysart, a 24-year-old senior in Otterbein's theater program, was the first to complain "because I found (the play) offensive, I didn't consider it art and I felt, as an African-American, that it exploited African-Americans."
Dysart -- who most recently played the Emcee in Otterbein's Cabaret and a college student in Moonchildren, Otterbein's coproduction with Contemporary American Theatre Company -- asked to be excused from the requirement to audition for all college productions.
Dysart and two other black actors were excused under a department policy allowing students to disassociate themselves from plays that offend them, Romer said.
But Dysart said he wasn't satisfied, and took steps to "stop the play from being done."
Among them: contacting a family attorney, sending a script to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and communicating his concerns to the African American Student Union, an Otterbein student group.
Dysart's actions led to a reportedly contentious campus meeting last week with about 50 people, including cast and crew members, student union members, Dysart and Darryl Peal, a student-union adviser and college staff member.
"We live in a society where people see stereotypes about African- American characters constantly," Dysart said. "They said we were censoring art, and that they had a right to do this no matter who it affected. But on the other side, if you're going to open a wound like racism up, you have to be more responsible.
"Edmond curses, spits on and kicks a pimp who tries to rob him, and a black prisoner rapes and sodomizes him... The title character comes out in the end smelling like a rose when he discovers his own spirituality, but at what cost?... I want (plays) to be a positive representation of my community."
Mamet, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright (Glengarry Glen Ross), is known for his frequent use of profanity and his stylized portraits of seriously flawed characters, especially modern American white men.
Otterbein's Edmond was conceived as a workshop, rather than a full production within the regular subscription series, because the Theater Department recognized that its disturbing subject matter and profanity would "not appeal to a mainstream audience," Romer said.
At the same time, "We believe strongly that the play also contains a journey of individual redemption and a spiritual awakening that includes... the subsequent shedding of past narrow-minded belief systems," Romer said.
The initial production was planned with "talkbacks" after each performance to encourage discussion of the play's issues, he added.
Professor Ed Vaughan, the workshop's announced director, will lead the classroom project for a "private audience" at a time and location to be announced, Romer said.
Copyright © 1998, The Columbus Dispatch.