NOTES ON RECENT READING
James F. Wilson’s FAILURE, FASCISM, AND TEACHERS IN AMERICAN THEATRE: PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSORS (2023)
by Samuel L. Leiter
My friend and critical colleague, James F. Wilson, who serves as Executive Officer of the Theatre and Performance Program at the Graduate Center, has written a tidy, timely, and trenchant study titled Failure, Fascism, and Teachers in American Theatre (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023, 216 pp.), about how teachers have been treated in 20th-century American drama. His monograph, whose subtitle alludes to a major work by Brazilian theatre practitioner/theorist Augusto Boal, packs a great deal of valuable information and insight into its compact size.
Wilson’s aim is to consider how playwrights have examined the
multiple personal, political, and practical issues facing modern educators. Despite
being an academic work based on deep research, reflected in an abundance of
footnotes, his book is written in a refreshingly clear and cogent style, rarely
deploying the jargon you might expect to find in such a study. Wilson’s seven
chapters include an introduction followed by a look at “Schoolmarms, Spinsters,
and Superwomen Teachers.” Subsequent chapters present “Unfit Teachers” in plays
from the 1920s-1940s, the problem of “Radical Liberalism and Academic Freedom”
during the Red Scare years, fascistic teachers as represented by three
principal dramatic characters (Jean Brodie, Miss Margarida, and Sister Ignatius)
from the 1960s-1980s, and an account of issues related to masculinity among male
teachers in a profession dominated by women.
Many of the plays discussed will be known to theatre buffs,
among them The Corn Is Green, The Male Animal, and Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but once popular yet now forgotten works, like Decision
and The Velvet Glove, will be less familiar. Wilson thoughtfully provides
the kind of historical context that helps bring these plays alive by describing
not only the chief facts associated with their productions (theatres, length of
runs, stars), but whatever controversy they may have stirred when produced. Some
of these inspire what are among the book’s most memorable passages.
Failure, Fascism, and Teachers in American Theatre analyzes
the dilemmas faced by educators through the years while also discoursing on the
state of the teaching profession, be it in public schools, private schools, or
colleges and universities. Politics, sexual and psychological conflicts,
professional success or failure, issues of gender, teacher romances,
professional rivalries, and the like are explored, as are major educational
theories exemplified by the plays, such as those associated with Dewey, Neill,
and Piaget. Wilson always makes clear how pertinent the issues he examines continue
to be. It’s impossible, for example, not to pick up a newspaper today and read
about the limits being imposed on teachers regarding what they or, indeed,
anyone can say (or teach!) in class or public forums without provoking not only animosity
but danger.
Although Wilson concentrates on American drama—plays, not
musicals—he occasionally strays into premodern theatre, as when he discusses
how Aristophanes’ The Clouds treats Socrates, or when he covers Holofernes
in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost. But the vast bulk of the book is
concerned with plays produced in New York by 20th- and 21st-century
playwrights, mainly—but not entirely—American and British. Among the titles—in
addition to those already mentioned—are Young Woodley, Girls in Uniform,
Autumn Crocus, The Children’s Hour, Brother Rat, Schoolhouse
on the Lot, Women without Men, Trio, A Streetcar Named
Desire, The Rats of Norway, The Traitor, Picnic, The
Egghead, The Miracle Worker, Child’s Play, And Miss
Reardon Drinks a Little, Quartermain’s Terms, Butley, The
Heidi Chronicles, Oleanna, Wit, The History Boys, Office
Hours, Schoolgirls; Or the African Mean Girls Play, Confederates,
and Soft.
I may have skipped a play or two but even a complete list would
reveal how selective Wilson’s is. That’s made even clearer by the extensive
list of plays (and musicals) he provides in a chronologically organized appendix,
a list that Wilson will, hopefully, one day post online so it can be expanded. Some
selections in his text may seem more germane than others to his overall
concerns, but, viewed within the context of the issues Wilson identifies, most of
his choices deserve inclusion.
Failure, Fascism, and Teachers in American Theatre: Pedagogy
of the Oppressors will probably find its most common resting place on the
bookshelves of theatre professors for its useful survey of how drama has made extensive
thematic use of the world of education. As Jim Wilson demonstrates, it’s a domain
as significant for thoughtful dramatization as, for example, law, medicine,
journalism, the military, business, the arts, science, or politics. His book should
prove stimulating and informative even for teachers and administrators who
never set foot inside a playhouse.
