Manhattan school cancels Shakespeare play over anti-Semitism concerns that parents argued would teach lesson
A middle school in Manhattan canceled its production of Shakespeare’s A Merchant of Venice last month after parents raised concerns over whether the play was appropriate for young students due to its anti-Semitic themes.
The play was to be staged by the seventh-grade drama students at 75 Morton, a Greenwich Village middle school, but was ultimately dropped by the first-year principal with little warning.
In her first year on the job, principal Valerie Leak was met with apprehension from parents, who questioned whether the play was appropriate for such young students, The New York Post reported.
A Merchant of Venice features, a 16th-century comedy, features a Jewish money lender named Shylock — a name that is now considered an offensive anti-Semitic slur.
Parents told The Post they weren’t entirely opposed to the play, which has been a theater company staple for decades, but felt the students may be too young to contextualize the show. Some parents said they had hoped if the school put on the production, it could be used as a teachable moment for the students.
‘The way that anti-Semitism is shown in this play, if you don’t have a minimum of knowledge and context you can’t understand how bad and dangerous it is,’ a member of the school community told the paper.
The school’s principal had allegedly promised to hold meetings on the matter with faculty and parents, as well as the theater company putting on the production, Theater for a New Audience.
But parents said the meetings never took place.
The Theater for a New Audience, a New York City non-profit focused on producing Shakespeare and other classic dramas had developed an original approach to the play in light of these concerns.
‘While the company designed the curriculum with input from the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) to ensure that the challenging themes of the piece would be treated with the proper critical analysis, sensitivity, and thoughtfulness, we have decided to move forward with a different unit with the Theater,’ the school said to parents in an email.
The school decided against putting on a new production. Instead, students will focus on curriculum centered around playwriting.
‘This decision did not come lightly, as we worked diligently with TFNA and listened to the members of our community to resolve concerns,’ the school said. ‘However, we believe this is the right decision to make at this time.’
The play being scrapped follows a troubling trend across the nation, where books that target topics like race and sexuality are getting banned from library bookshelves.
Most recently, a Tennessee school board removed the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Maus, a graphic novel about the Holocaust, from its eighth-grade curriculum. In an unanimous vote, the school board decided students should not be reading the book due to its ‘inappropriate’ language and a drawing it features of a nude woman
After making waves over the book’s banning, several different version of Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel topped the Amazon bestsellers list.
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