In front of three sold-out crowds, Kent State University’s School of Theatre and Dance brought the fiery topic of book bans and its effects on students and schools to campus Feb. 7-9 in “Trial by Fire,” a play written by the university’s own Eric Mansfield. Mansfield is assistant vice president for Kent State’s University Communications and Marketing.
With a cast of nine students under the guidance of Director Courtney Brown, along with the help of more than a dozen crew members, Mansfield’s play details the fictional predicament of Ohio teacher Georgia Grimm, a Kent State graduate under fire for assigning her high school students books recently banned by the governor.
When the high school tells Grimm, played by senior theatre performance major Iyona Nicole, it will fire her if she does not resign, her students become activists for their teacher and for the cause of autonomy, making a statement in their town and the state.
“That’s not where we should be when it comes to banned books,” Mansfield said. “We’re seeing banned books is a growing topic in Florida, Texas and elsewhere. So, I got the idea of, ‘Could this happen in Ohio? And if so, how could this play out?’ I really do think that, as you see in the play, a teacher being put on trial for allowing banned books in modern times could very well happen in this country.”
The play, which originally premiered in January in Akron, is inspired by the true story of Oklahoma teacher Summer Boismier, who had her state teaching license revoked and even received death threats for providing students access to books banned by the state’s government.
Mansfield said “Trial by Fire” is a mix between the film “Dead Poets Society,” where a teacher works to inspire his students to flourish, and the play “Inherit the Wind,” which follows the true story of a teacher who was found guilty in court and fined $100 for teaching creation in class in 1925.
“I wanted to create something that not only is a good story and keeps people entertained but also introduces them to information about a current topic that will get them talking,” Mansfield said. “You’ll see how the students themselves feel about having books banned and the things that they’re facing in America today. Our Kent State students who are playing the characters now, they’re playing today’s teenagers who are facing this kind of scrutiny where they no longer have access to books like ‘The Wizard of Oz’ or ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ or, among the top 10 across the country is, ‘Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret.’”
Inspiration and goals
Inspired by his journalist roots, Mansfield started writing plays less than 10 years ago. He said he’s previously had works produced about homelessness, military couples separated during the Iraq War and a mixed-race police family dealing with the George Floyd murder, among other contemporary topics.
“When you spend 20 years at NBC as a TV reporter, maker and concurrent, I spent 20 years in the military and went to places like Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, South America or Central America and other places, you meet people, you meet characters that would play out well to bring a story to life,” he said. “I started writing some short plays, and then I wrote some long plays, and then my plays started getting produced, and then I became a professional with the Dramatists Guild – it just got into my blood.”
The play premiered to six sold-out shows at Akron’s Firestone Community Learning Center, in partnership with Akron School for the Arts, in January of 2024.
Shortly after, Kent State’s May 4 Education Committee reached out to Mansfield with interest in wanting the play at KSU. The work launched this year’s May 4 Commemoration at the university. Mansfield said he and Brown worked to include a diverse cast to represent the student body.
Brown, a professional actor and voice, speech and movement specialist, is in her 10th year at KSU. She said rehearsals and casting for “Trial by Fire” started in September 2024.
“One of the things that I love most about theater is that it’s a really living art form, meaning that the context in which an audience sees theater is always shifting based on the context of the world, if that makes sense,” Brown said. “The context in which we find ourselves right now, with education and higher education and all the attacks and challenges to education and higher education right now and the attacks on LGBTQ plus peoples and communities, it’s a really prescient time to be telling the story.”
The topic of book bans remains relevant today, as the American Library Association reported 1,128 individual books were challenged in an attempt at censorship from Jan. 1 to Aug. 31 of last year.
Topics of bodily autonomy, the treatment of people of color and the LGBTQ-plus community and activism ring loudly in the work, according to Brown.
“The capacity that young people have, students have to make real, significant change in the world is especially important right now even when it feels like there’s nothing we can do,” Brown said. “The idea around building a coalition, building community and using that coalition and that community to create positive change is a really big theme.”
What’s next?
Next on the play agenda for Mansfield is the opening of his new work “Executing Eve” Feb. 13-22 at the Convergence-Continuum in Cleveland. This work is based on the Dobbs decision and tackles what the future of women’s access to health care would look like if there was an abortion ban in Ohio. It follows a woman named Eve who is facing a midnight execution in the state because she killed the judge who denied her sister an abortion.
While this work prepares to open, Mansfield hopes more schools will reach out to run “Trial by Fire” in their own theaters. The playwright said he’s received some interest from high school theater programs in Louisiana and Texas, and he’s hoping to find a publisher so it’s easier for other schools and theaters to produce the play.
Seeing “Trial by Fire” come to life for the second stretch has been a special feeling for Mansfield.
“I love that Courtney Brown and the actors who are involved are adding their own take to the role,” Mansfield said. “That’s really important to me, is that people get a much better product when it’s a collaboration, rather than just those hard lines. It’s exciting to watch it come to life and to see these characters and to watch the audience react to these characters. And I’m just really thrilled with the cast and crew here, and the cast and crew at Firestone was marvelous.”
Mansfield and Brown both emphasized their love for “Trial by Fire” also comes from the opportunity for the audience to walk away and determine what the story means to them in their own lives.
