- Mar 22, 2024
- 7 min read
Updated: Mar 23, 2024
I rather enjoy publishing a blog post that announces a new publication. It is rather another thing to write one about the revocation of a publication, something with which I am generally unfamiliar and seems baffling that that’s even a thing.
In 2011, while I was the Artistic Director for the Pinson Valley High School Theatre Department, I realized a dream of mine since young adulthood—to write a theatrical play based on the reality, the myth, and the legend of the story of Pocahontas. Recently, I wrote about the production—it was the only time I ever really enjoyed a play of mine onstage.
Cry of the Native Children (2011), a loose adaptation of George Washington Parke Custis’ play Pocahontas, or The Settlers of Virginia, followed up my translation of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (2010). While I initially intended the play for adult audiences, I was teaching at a school, had a large cast of males, and the timing seemed right.
A Doll’s House was staged in the fall of 2010 and, to my excitement, was published the following year by Eldridge Plays & Musicals, a theatrical licensing company based out of Florida which provides plays for community theatres and schools. They had been remarkably appreciative of the translation and, through them, it has been performed twice since—once in Minnesota (where a lot of Norwegian-Americans live) and again in Alabama.
Since I had established a relationship with them, I submitted Native Children, and it was published in 2013. Nancy Vorhis of Eldridge wrote, “It is such a refreshing change from the ubiquitous and superficial versions of Pocahontas and Capt. John Smith. You make these historical people very real to an audience, facing situations which will determine the fate of future generations. As you note, these people are sometimes ‘right’ and sometimes ‘wrong.’ Our sympathies and affinities switches [sic] back and forth. The beautiful title also calls to our emotions and intellect. This is what theatre is made for!”
Another ringing endorsement.
Sadly, I have noticed through royalty reports and its inclusion on their website that other productions were not forthcoming, despite Thompson High School once asking me if they could do the play (before it was published). This offer was apparently forgotten, and Children has languished ever since.
There are many reasons for this. First off, its cast of mostly men is nearly impossible for most theatre troupes. Secondly, I made it clear in my introduction to the published version that I would prefer Native actors to play the members of the Powhatan tribe or, at the very least, that the cast should be completely racially blind (as it was in our World Premiere). The former solution would limit its value to schools due to the population of Amerindians, the latter could be seen as insulting to certain ideologically driven directors, especially when the play deals frankly with race.
Knowing these limitations, I asked Eldridge if I could submit a different version of the play, eschewing its poetical title for something more eye-catching (perhaps including Pocahontas in the title) and writing it from the perspective of the Native women. Somehow, I could never wrestle that alligator to the ground, and I came up short.
This Tuesday, Eldridge contacted me with the following: “We were honored to publish ‘Cry of the Native Children.’ While we think it is a wonderful play, unfortunately, it has not gathered enough interest for us to continue publishing this work.”
Huh.
On the one hand, from a financial standpoint, I understand: they are less about selling books than licensing shows. On the other hand, to my knowledge, Concord Theatricals, Dramatists Play Service, and other licensing companies continue to make available plays that barely get performed. (Perhaps their playwrights sign a more air-tight contract). Since most publishing companies for plays are Print-on-Demand, it seemed silly to me that Native Children could not have at least kept its life in the hopes of finding another production, but I am not in Florida and must bear this news up here, bewildered, frustrated, and hurt.
To their credit, they have offered to send me a few more copies of the script along with promotional materials (T-shirts, posters, etc.) that they provide for theatre companies so I can have some memory of this play being published. And also, to their credit, they are continuing (for the time being) to offer the Doll’s House script, which continues to sell copies, if not inspire productions (perhaps because there are many public domain translations for which you would not have to pay a royalty and many others by more skilled translators with recognizable names).
That being said, one begins to look at this decision from a variety of angles. Certainly, since 2013, issues of race have dominated the American stage, particularly following the George Floyd murder at the beginning of this decade. Rather than the exciting racial blindness that appears on London stages (recently, an Anglo-African actor played William F. Buckley, Jr. in an adaptation of the documentary Best of Enemies), American theatre has become racially divided with each company trying to not get sued every step of the way. In addition to this, issues of gender and sexuality have come to the fore and we live in a world where a heterosexual actor often chooses not to portray homosexual characters for fear of taking a job from someone who is actually gay. I guess the term “acting” doesn’t mean much anymore.
I have zero idea what an indigenous person might think of Native Children. As hinted at above, it portrays both the English settlers and the Powhatan as equally visceral, hostile, and mistrusting. There are no good and bad guys—only misunderstanding that leads to violence. Ya know, like the real world. Perhaps the story should be told from a Native perspective for a change.
But I still was put on Earth to write plays and, when I began practicing my craft again in 2021, I entered a world where 80% of the opportunities for publishing, awards, and productions have been cut off for folks like me. In a fruitless attempt (though well-meaning) to even the playing field, most theatres are only wanting plays by BiPOC or LGBT writers. In a sense, through DEI initiatives and white people trying to atone, I have been largely shut out of the scene. Very few of the companies I’ve looked at now look at scripts blind (a la without your name on it) and I wonder about my future in such a world.
The rights have been relinquished back to me and I don’t know what to do with them. I’m rather tired of self-publishing my plays.
Back then, I was writing under the moniker Robert Cole and so Native Children was published under that pseudonym. Cole is my middle name, and I chose Robert because it means “rich in fame,” something I wished for myself though I have no idea why, given that playwrights have to teach or write screenplays in order to make a living. This was practical when I was teaching as it seemed egotistical to put “Written and Directed by” in the program. Distancing myself somewhat from the material, I thought I could get away with more and “Tittle” is not the most appealing-sounding name in the world (You would not believe what I put up with in 2nd grade). The idea of someone in the future referring to my work as Tittlian (or Tittle-like) makes me groan. Yeesh.
So, perhaps, I could look at the positive and say one of Cole’s plays is no longer published, not mine. That being said, I wish I could go back and nix the whole “Robert Cole” thing altogether. The idea of my Doll’s House being performed somewhere without my actual name now causes me great distress. Tittle may be a funny name, but it’s mine.
Oh, well. You win some, you lose some.
Do I think Native Children is my best work? Far from it. While it has some intriguing ideas, when I repurposed it for teenage actors, I had to take a lot of the bite out of it and so what exists is an almost full-length play in one act that, I suppose, now has no real future.
Do I still hold out hope that there’s a place for me in today’s theatre? It’s slight. There are a few playwrights who look like me who have been grandfathered in—John Patrick Shanley, David Lindsay-Abaire, etc. But all the Pulitzer Prizes in the ‘20s have gone to playwrights of color. I hope they are winning for the right reasons—that their plays are great drama, not just the same old stuff from a different lens. But it’s hard to be optimistic as so many ideologically driven plays (and bad management) have led a lot of theatres to lay off 40% of their staff. After all, the people who can afford to go to the theatre are largely rich and progressive. Therefore, these new crops of plays that are trying to right previous wrongs are preaching to the choir: something that’s not going to bring blue collar audiences back nor engage tourists from other parts of the country. So, who knows if there will be anywhere to have your play produced, no matter your color or sexuality.
I hope this doesn’t seem like pretentious whining. The theatre has always been ahead of television and Hollywood in terms of craving other voices—from Amiri Baraka and Ed Bullins to David Henry Hwang and Philip Kan Gotanda to Paula Vogel and Ayad Akhtar, who wrote the last great contemporary play I read, Disgraced.
And disgraced perhaps is the proper word to end on. To admit to a failure is the hardest thing you have to do. Still, I think Cry of the Native Children was an artistic success—the realization of a dream. I got it produced, I got it published, and now it’s just a memory. But all plays are. While often published, plays are ephemeral, constantly being staged and struck. They go from realities to faint memories, except for the works of the masters. I am no better and no worse than others in the same position.
