Good Grief: How a Play Based on the Comic Strip Peanuts Led to Controversy at a Small Iowa College

Alyssa Oltmanns (right) with actor Rashidra Scott at the 2019 Broadway Teachers Workshop/Photo: Alyssa Oltmanns

COVID-19 has been blamed for a dizzying number of difficulties over the past months—most rightfully so, but how often has it been used as a scapegoat for an entirely unrelated issue? Alyssa Oltmanns, instructor of English and drama at Muscatine Community College, began planning and rehearsing a virtual version of “Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead,” a play she believed could unite her isolated students. But the show was called off, the administration citing campus closures due to the pandemic. But, according to Oltmanns, the real reason was censorship, shielded under the guise of public safety. 

Why do you think your show is being censored?

I’ve been trying to leave this out of the conversation, but my supervisor is a leader in his Mennonite Church. I can’t help but think that his objections to this play are grounded in his faith. While I respect his faith, I don’t respect it clouding his judgment as a public school administrator. When my students did selected scenes at a faculty luncheon, he told me afterwards, “If you were to do the full play we’d have people calling my office upset.” But he said, “I will never censor you,” and that stuck in my brain because I thought, okay, he can personally have nervous feelings about this play but he won’t censor me. It’s not a part of my contract to get my plays approved by him but this time was different. He tried to utilize my letter of accommodations to say that he had the right to approve this play. The letter only said that he had final approval over the modality—whether it was in person or virtual.

How did you find out that the play was cancelled?

I had already started auditions when the dean emailed me and said, “Per your letter of accommodations, you do not have approval for this play. Please select another.” I kept pressing him as to why and he just kept repeating the phrase “I have concerns” and would not get specific. I reached out to the playwright and he said, “I actually updated the script and took out a couple things that have been problematic, so send this revised version to your boss.” On the day I was supposed to hear from [my boss], the president of the college emailed me to say she had decided to suspend the fall play. She goes on to say, “We are unable to support a virtual performance at this time as we don’t have the available technical staff to ensure that it runs smoothly.” But just a week or so ago we had a district-wide in-service remotely, so clearly we have the technical staff. Had they communicated with me, they’d find out that this performance was going to be pre-recorded and didn’t need technical staff. Everything just reeks of trying to cover up the fact that my boss made a choice and stuck with that choice.

And this is a public school without any religious affiliation?

That’s what is alarming, because as a public institution they are bound by the First Amendment and cannot censor content. There are a growing number of faculty members that fear the college is trying to make a legal precedent to censor material moving forward. So what started as a concern for me and my theater program has grown. I have so many colleagues who are worried about being censored and so far it seems like that’s a plausible concern.

So you’re speaking up about it but you’ve also expressed fears that you’re going to lose your job.

This is my third year of a three-year probation before I make tenure. They can let me go at the end of this year and just say I’m not a good fit. Everyone believes that is what will happen. My union reached out to me, but since this occurred less than ninety days before I joined, they couldn’t represent me. A union rep followed up with, “Frankly, as someone with an art degree, I’m outraged whenever I see censorship raise its head. Under normal circumstances there would be a fifty-to-seventy percent chance we could reverse this decision and/or publicly embarrass the administration. But there is a real chance pushing this may result in the district letting you go. I’ve burned a lot of capital advocating for faculty during the pandemic. It pains me to say this but the best thing you can do at this time is keep your head down.”

How did you respond to the cancellation?

I thought, this play needs to happen because we’re all still excited about it and clearly we’re living in a society, specifically a town, where these messages are trying to be concealed. We are still doing two performances. When people buy a ticket they get an access code and can stream. I thought well, we could just put it up online and not make money but then I thought, let’s bring even more awareness to what I believe is the reason it got cancelled in the first place, LGBTQ issues. So the money raised will go to Clock. Inc, which is the LGBT center in Rock Island, Illinois that serves the Quad Cities. When I reached out to them about partnering on this, I said that my one ask is that in exchange for this benefiting your center that you start doing programming in Muscatine and the director said they would absolutely love to do that, once things are safe. We need that kind of messaging and support here, so that made me really happy.

What made you so excited about this show specifically?

It’s heartbreaking but reassuring at the same time. Here is a play that depicts the teen experience and, not only that, the queer teen experience was very realistic and included all of the ugly parts that need to be discussed. When I started at MCC, I used the play in my acting class and my students loved it so I started incorporating it into other classes that I taught. All of my students felt the same way. It was a very realistic depiction of the high school years that they had just wrapped up themselves. I had multiple students begging me to put on the show and telling me, “Please do this before I graduate, it’s my dream role,” or my dream show, so I knew that, at least, the teen and young adult community would connect to it. We need to talk about those issues and build community around them so that those experiencing what is confronted in the play don’t continue to feel so alone. When my boss told me in 2019 that he wouldn’t do the show if it were me, I thought well, I want to protect my job, I want my boss to like me. But with the state of the world right now I’ve had so many students whose entire families worked at Tyson and became ill with COVID, or worked at plants that weren’t providing masks for their employees. Everything right now feels like life or death and that’s kind of reality. I feel like a selfish, self-absorbed person, up in my ivory tower, if I’m thinking about my boss liking me and not about the students and the community I serve. In a time when everyone is feeling so isolated, we need to build community, especially in the communities that are kept hidden. So now is the time to do this show because things are already dark. It’s the perfect time to have a serious discussion.

“Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead,” a benefit for Clock, Inc, showtix4u.com/event-details/40924, November 20 and 21, 8pm. $5-$8.