Greensboro College Play About Sexual Violence, IT STOPS HERE, Receives Heckling and Catcalls During Premiere Performance

Recognizing the growing need to educate students on the realities of sexual violence on college campuses, Greensboro College in North Carolina has adopted a new policy on sexual misconduct that includes requiring all first year students to attend a performance of IT STOPS HERE, a play written and directed by student Michaela Richards, utilizing accounts of sexual assault submitted by survivors.

Today on hesherman.com, arts administrator and producer Howard Sherman writes of instances of heckling, catcalling and other behavior that ridiculed and interrupted Wednesday morning's premiere performance of the piece.

Sherman writes, "'There was a certain segment of the audience that was joking and making crude remarks,' said Luke Powell, a senior theatre major who appears in the play. 'One of the first things I noticed was during one of the monologues. One of the girls was doing hers and I could hear that this portion of the audience was catcalling her during this story of a rape victim."

Another actor in the play, sophomore theatre major Makenzie Degenhardt, is quoted as saying she expected it to happen. "It's a topic people don't like to talk about. As soon as someone says rape, people get uncomfortable. People make jokes about things they're uncomfortable with, but in this case it was inappropriate."

The article goes on to describe how student actors were disappointed to see no faculty members present making an effort to discipline offenders and control the crowd, and details Sherman's follow-ups on the issue with school officials.

Click here for the entire article.

HOWARD SHERMAN is an arts administrator, advocate and writer. In February 2015, he was named director of the new Arts Integrity Initiative at the New School for Drama, focused on creative and academic freedom in the arts. He is concurrently the Senior Strategy Director (following a year as Interim Director) of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts in New York, dedicated to creating opportunities for artists of color and artists with disabilities in theatre, film and television. Sherman is also the New York correspondent for The Stage newspaper in London.

He was executive director of the American Theatre Wing from 2003 to 2011. During that time, his varied responsibilities included serving as executive producer and occasional moderator of the television program "Working in the Theatre"; creating and hosting the audio program "Downstage Center"; incorporating SpringboardNYC, the Theatre Intern Group and The Jonathan Larson Grants into ATW's programming; leading ATW's utilization of the web and social media for distribution of and communication about its programs; conceiving the book "The Play That Changed My Life"; and serving on the Tony Awards Management and Administration Committees. In addition, he was instrumental in the development of ATW's National Theatre Company Grants program, and secured the organization's first-ever funding from The Shubert Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts.

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