The New York Times today features an article on New York University’s “Dramatically Stark” theatre program orientation. Orientation programs are invariably a heady mélange of cautions about “drugs and date rape, drinking and anorexia, depression and suicide.” Most offer, in skit or lecture form, quite realistic depictions of potential risks of drinking, sexual behaviors, and other disorders. They inevitably careen from depressing cinema verite to magical realism when approaching the topics of sexism or racism, offering depictions of misogyny and bigotry utterly disproportionate to situations faced by students at colleges. It seems appropriate, in this sense, that the NYU theatre program has parlayed their orientation program into a musical (I imagne Rent, but featuring Simon Legree). The performance is acknowledged as a showcase of “all extremes” but not all extremes are created equal. There is little that could be written about drugs, alcoholism, date rape, depression, and especially, most regrettably, suicide, that could seem too great an artistic leap at NYU. It seems quite a different matter with racism or sexism, whose renderings in these programs usually descend into pantomime, indicting American society, or collegiate settings, as unrecognizable hotbeds of virulent bigotry (look to an excellent Charles Alan Kors piece from Reason). Seeing as “The Reality Show: N.Y.U.” has not opened to a general public a description in the Times piece must suffice as evidence for the moment:

One scene that drew gasps was performed by a dark-skinned woman, who announced in a naïve-sounding patter: “So I got this letter the other day telling me to go back to where I came from, and it was all about ‘peace in the Middle East,’ and how my kind isn’t welcome in the United States. But I’m from New Mexico, and I’m not even Middle Eastern. So the letter obviously wasn’t meant for me. Should I pass it along to my friend Radia down the hall? I think she would really appreciate it.

These orientation sketches usually feature idiots, but this seems a new low, even for N.Y.U. students. One actor commented “we all had to be willing to play the most outrageous characters because to at least one person in the audience it’s not so outrageous.” God help NYU if it’s enrolling New Mexicans who find that experience relevant. One would hope that the gasps reflected incredulity at this patronizing insult. Anyone who found that sequence profound or shocking seems unfit to either attend college or watch works of theatre. The article interviewed a student who found the performance “thought-provoking.” Perhaps in other regards, but, as is usually the case when it comes to race in college orientation, the performance seems Dramatically puerile.