Hayley Brooks, a junior at Goshen College. Photo by Kate Stoltzfus
As some of you may know, we just performed Gadfly at Goshen College. Performing a play about Americans, as Canadians, for an audience of Americans, feels a bit strange at times. Although we always strive to provoke, “challenge and inspire”, the last thing we ever want to do is misrepresent. That’s why, when we read Hayley Brooks’ article “Queer erasure and representation in Gadfly” we knew we had some explaining/apologizing to do.
Hayley, a junior at Goshen College, was excited to see Gadfly because she assumed it would tell Jim Wenger’s story. Jim was both a roommate of Sam’s and a co-editor of Menno Pause; he also happened to be gay. Although he had not come out to his fellow classmates at the time, it was later brought to the President’s attention that Jim had taken out a personals ad in a California newspaper, seeking a male partner. Several suspensions later, paired with the controversial material of Menno Pause (an underground student newspaper), brought about the expulsion of Sam Steiner, Tom Harley, Lowell Miller and Jim Wenger.
Boiling down Sam’s life into an hour long performance was extremely difficult – especially after hours of interviews with Sam and Sue, archival research and historical dramaturgy. With a small cast, and a story filled with many fascinating characters, we were forced to combine entire groups of people into a few representational characters. Sam’s character was the focus of the play; the three other Menno Pause editors were combined into one character which we chose to be Jim Wenger.
Upon seeing a workshop performance of an early version of the play, Sam felt that the way we initially depicted Jim’s character did not accurately portray the person that Jim had been. Because Jim had passed away, and out of respect to his memory, Sam asked us to change the character’s name. We decided to combine the names Tom Harley and Jim Wenger to create the fictional: Tom Wenger.
Originally, there was a small reference to Jim’s sexuality in the script, but this one line did not dive into the complex issues of homophobia for fear of side tracking the focus of the story. We eventually decided to remove the reference altogether because we felt we couldn’t accurately explore and do justice tothe complexities of both Sam and Jim’s stories in the brief amount of time that Jim’s character was on stage. Perhaps a story like Jim’s is one for a future production.
We’ve always recognized that the issues surrounding the Civil Rights Movement discussed in Gadfly directly translate to issues of homophobia today. In the “Talk Back” after the show, Sam did not shy away from this comparison. He spoke openly about homophobia during the late sixties and alluded that Jim’s sexual orientation was probably a reason for his expulsion. This discussion seemed particularly fitting as we looked out over the crowd of purple shirts and pink/white wrist bands (showing Student solidarity for the “Where’s My LGBTQ Prof” movement).
Hayely’s article has served as an important reminder. By not acknowledging issues – like homophobia – in our histories, our plays, and our conversations, ignorance surrounding the issue will only persist. We apologize if the story we told was invalidating to experiences of the LGBTQ community who might have identified with Jim’s character. Please know this was not our intention. We truly respect Hayley’s courage in coming out to the Goshen community, and also in writing articles like “Queer erasure and representation in Gadfly“. Kudos young Gadfly, please continue to keep us accountable. Thank you for provoking, “challenging and inspiring” us.
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