Although third-year University of Idaho MFA candidate Shea King typically works with contemporary theatrical pieces, he was willing to make an exception for “The Children’s Hour” — a play once banned in Boston theaters, boycotted by a Pulitzer prize committee judge and whose author, Lillian Hellman, was blacklisted during the Red Scare in the late ‘40s.
“The Children’s Hour” will be performed for an 8-day run beginning 7 p.m. April 20 in the Hartung Theater. King is directing the play for his MFA exit project as he prepares to graduate.
When one of King’s advisors suggested he take on an American classic for his exit project, Hellman’s work stood out as relevant despite being an 84-year-old piece.
“I knew about the play and I knew about Lillian Hellman, and I reread it and just fell in love with it,” King said. “It comes from a queer feminist lens … that really spoke to me.”
The play tells the story of two women who successfully open an all-girls boarding school together, until one of their students decides to start a rumor about her instructors having a romantic relationship.
“The play deals with the buildup, the act of it happening and the aftermath of the powerful people coming in and attacking these young women,” King said.
The story of building a safe space and having it taken away by outsiders is something that King described as “all too familiar” to women, members of the LGBTQA community and members of minority groups.
“In 2018 this still happens to women, this still happens to gay people, this still happens to people who are not of a white heteronormative status in our culture,” King said. “Being a gay man (and) knowing there are limits to who I can talk to and where I can go even in this day and age … all of that just felt really contemporary to me and something that was important to share.”
The lack of legislation in the state of Idaho protecting the LGBTQA community from discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations wasn’t lost on King. While Moscow is one of a handful of Idaho cities to add sexual orientation and gender identity to their nondiscrimination ordinances, King said there is still more work to be done.
“Even in Moscow where there might be people who are more forward-thinking, there are still people suffering,” King said. “We can do more.”
King said he hopes his audiences will recognize the still-prevalent social issues raised in “The Children’s Hour” and leave the theater with knowledge they can do more to create a more inclusive community for all people.
“I think when you look at her plays she has been talking about these issues for a long time, in a way that was very specific and very pointed,” King said. “I think it’s important that we can move beyond her, and to honor her by making her plays irrelevant.”
King said it has been a new type of challenge directing a classic play where the author is deceased, as he typically directs contemporary plays where he is able to work directly with the author to produce the show. However, he said he has come to appreciate Hellman’s work all on its own and hopes to incorporate more American classics in his future projects.
“Lillian Hellman has become one of my true heroes both politically and as an artist and a writer,” King said. “She was writing about these things at a time when women weren’t prominent in the theater scene in New York, and stories about queer people were not around.”
Hellman’s work was not without risks. According to King, only 30 years prior to the release of “The Children’s Hour,” the entire cast and crew of the play “God of Vengeance” was arrested for portraying lesbianism onstage. Instead of shying away from the issue, Hellman became one of the first playwrights to take up the conversation.
King said he hopes the University of Idaho Department of Theatre Arts will continue to produce works by women and minorities.
“I think that we as a department can do better about producing works by women and producing works by people of color, and I think this particular season starting with Roof and ending with Lillian Hellman … is just really exciting,” King said. “I’m really proud to be a part of it.”
Beth Hoots can be reached at [email protected]