Kevin Moriarty, executive director of the Dallas Theater Center, admitted candidly Tuesday that the city’s arts community “is trying to figure out how the hell to deal with it.”
“It” is Texas Senate Bill 12, which, despite a flurry of litigation, is scheduled to take effect Sept. 1. That may pose a problem for the DTC, which plans to usher in its new season on Sept. 23 at the Kalita Humphreys Theater with "The Rocky Horror Show."
As Clive Barnes wrote in The New York Times, reviewing the opening of the stage version in March 1975, “The Rocky Horror Show" is a mixture between a horror and science-fiction movie, a rock show and a transvestite display. So you see there should be something for everyone to like. Or dislike if it comes to that.”
The Texas Legislature might well fall into the latter category, the difference being that it has the ability to channel dislike into law. “Drag shows are sexually explicit and expose children to issues of sexuality and identity that should be reserved for adults,” said the bill’s author, Republican State Senator Brian Hughes, in May.
The original language in SB 12 singled out drag shows, but after an outcry that drew national attention, legislators cobbled out something new entirely. The bill passed in late May omits the word “drag,” instead criminalizing “sexually oriented performances on public property, on the premises of a commercial enterprise, or in the presence of a child.” Gov. Greg Abbott signed it into law on June 18.
Chunks of the litigation now challenging SB 12 center on how the law defines such performances. The gray area is, well, as big as Texas, say critics, who argue that police, prosecutors and municipalities have too much discretion over how to interpret it.
“The Legislature did a last-minute rewrite of this bill, trying to remove any word saying, ‘drag,’ but its impact now,” Moriarty said, “is very, very broad.”
In an effort to clear things up, arts leaders across the city gathered in a 6th-floor auditorium at the Wyly Theatre on Monday to spend two hours listening to Travis Fife, staff attorney for the Texas Civil Rights Project. Fife outlined the bill and answered questions, addressing the mounting fears engulfing Texas arts groups. Dallas Theater Center and the AT&T Performing Arts Center jointly hosted the event.
On a screen behind him, Fife showed a breakdown of how SB 12 defines sexual conduct.
Provision B, he noted, outlaws “the exhibition or representation, actual or stimulated of male or female genitals in a lewd state, including a state of sexual stimulation or arousal.”
In an interview with The Dallas Morning News, Fife elaborated: “The best way to understand the bill is that it imposes significant restrictions on any performance that touches on sexual themes or plot elements or character development. But it does it in what I think is a very haphazard way. When you reference sub-point B [above], that’s only one a five-part definition of sexual conduct. Parts A, B, C, D and E are all independent ways that a performance could be considered sexual conduct. In the event that a performance is considered sexual conduct that appeals to the ‘prurient interest,’ then the law lays out three different sets of restrictions and enforcement elements.”
And how does it do that? “It imposes civil liabilities on venues that host a sexually oriented performance in front of someone younger than 18. It also prevents municipalities and counties from authorizing those on public property and then it imposes individual criminal liability on the performers themselves.”
Fife’s organization, the Texas Civil Rights Project, is representing multiple plaintiffs in one of two lawsuits opposing the bill. The American Civil Liberties Union represents plaintiffs in the other case.
Asked after the presentation whether Section B might apply to such plays as "Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune" — which features full frontal nudity of the male and female characters on stage in a heterosexual relationship — or the Broadway musical "Hair" — which at one point shows the entire cast singing a song while completely naked — Fife said, “There’s no gender, queerness requirement or anything like that.”
Fife drew laughs when he noted that section E might well, in his opinion, apply to the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. Section E defines sexual conduct as: “The exhibition of sexual gesticulations using accessories or prosthetics that exaggerate male or female sexual characteristics.”
For Moriarty, that example came as no great surprise.
“We’ve been spending so much time on this that I’ve gotten used to it,” Moriarty said Tuesday. “And so, a moment like [Monday], just sitting in a room with other people, reminded me how chilling this is.”
Asked about the law’s impact on the DTC’s season-opening performance of "The Rocky Horror Show," he said, “We’re hopeful that there will be an injunction that will prevent this law from going into effect.”
He called "Rocky Horror," “a piece that is celebrating sexuality that is irreverent, that is at times titillating, at times provocative and at times nearly anarchic in its cult musical theater form.”
But the show itself is nothing new.
The screen version, titled "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," debuted in the fall of 1975 and became a staple of midnight screenings all over the country for decades. Richard O’Brien’s soundtrack includes such songs as “Sweet Transvestite,” which carries the lyrics, sung out loud at showings since Gerald Ford was president:
I’m just a sweet transvestite/from Transsexual, Transylvania, ha ha
“It’s a comedy,” Moriarty said. “It’s not a political work. It’s a very, very silly cult classic.”
How exactly policies would change at the DTC when the law takes effect is still to be determined. In Moriarty’s words, “We will have to, with our legal counsel, do our best to comply with the law. But for many reasons, putting barriers to art and negating the rights of parents to make their own decisions puts us in a really difficult position.”
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