Drama teacher put on leave after "Angels in America" complaint

Andrew Garfield as Prior Walter, left, and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as Belize, in Angels in America. (Photograph: Helen Maybanks)

A drama teacher at Temecula Valley High School in CA has been put on leave following a complaint from a parent over an assignment involving the play "Angels in America".

Last spring, teacher Greg Bailey gave his student an assignment where they had to read one of several Pulitzer Prize-winning plays. Other works on the list were August Wilson’s “Fences”, Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire”, and Mary Chases’ “Harvey”.

But one student chose to read Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America”. The play explores "the state of the nation"- the sexual, racial, religious, political, and social issues confronting the country during the Reagan years, as the AIDS epidemic spreads. The work won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and the Tony Award for Best Play.

Apparently while reading the text, the 15-year-old student became “distressed” reading some of the scenes and reported them to her mother. The mother, Tracy Nolasco, found scenes in the play to be inappropriate for a student to be reading.

"It’s more than sexually explicit, it’s sexual violence," said Tracy Nolasco to local news. "Once you read that information and you take it into yourself, it's not like you eat a bad meal you can throw it up. It's in your brain now.”

Nolasco claimed her daughter, a student of Bailey's, was "forced" to read "Angels in America”. That statement resulted in Bailey's paid leave and undecided future employment with the district.

Bailey described the play as life-changing for some students. "I'm not talking about LGBTQ+ students. I'm talking about students who are expanding their worldview or gaining empathy by thinking about other people's experiences," he told local news.

In a school board meeting in May, Nolasco stated that she attempted to email the teacher and intervene on her daughter's behalf, but her email was blocked by the school system and flagged as inappropriate content.

Following the meeting, in which Trustees Joseph Komrosky, Danny Gonzalez, and Jennifer Wiersma said "Angels In America" contained inappropriate content, Bailey was removed from the classroom.

It should be noted that Temecula seems to be ground zero right now for the fight over content learned in schools. Komrosky found himself in national headlines when he referred to Harvey Milk as a pedophile and the school board has been sued by the ACLU and Temecula Valley Educators Association over their banning of teaching Critical Race Theory.

According to a local report, “The three trustees were elected to the TVUSD board in November after financial backing from the Inland Empire Family PAC led by Pastor Tim Thompson of 412 Church Temecula Valley. The PAC works "to stop the indoctrination of our children by placing candidates on school boards who will fight for Christian and Conservative values."

So it’s definitely possible that this whole thing is due to politics as opposed to actual concerns over content in the classroom.

Now do I think “Angels in America” is appropriate for high school students? Yes and no. To read? At certain grade levels, yes. I think it’s fine for upperclassmen literature classes. But for a 9th grader? Perhaps not. I also absolutely don’t think it’s appropriate to perform at a high school level, but it’s that was never going to happen at Temecula Valley High School either.

To me, this is just another example of conservative politicians trying to control the content being taught. They argue that they are trying to prevent indoctrination when all they are doing is encouraging it to their side of the aisle.

I don’t see anything here that would warrant putting Mr. Bailey on leave and surely nothing here that should result in his dismissal from his position. My heart goes out to him and all of the students at Temecula Valley High School who deserve better.