A Drama Plays Out at School : Education: A principal’s decision to drop the curtain on Birmingham High’s stage productions embroils a campus in controversy.

It was an emotional moment. Myrna Winer, who taught drama at Birmingham High School for 18 years, was watching her best students perform this fall in the competition that means the most to high school thespians: the Fall Drama Festival of the Drama Teachers Assn. of Southern California.

Winer’s students won first- and second-place honors for acting and directing, but for her, it was a hollow victory. For although Birmingham students aced the awards, they won them for other schools. All three award-winning students--Eric Kaufman, Alex Lubliner and Josh Rooner--had transferred from Birmingham High in Van Nuys in June when Principal Mary Farrell canceled the school’s play production program for this fall.

Coming as it did at the end of what students called a very successful year, they were shocked by Farrell’s decision. “Drama class was at an ultimate high,” said Kaufman, now enrolled with Lubliner at Chatsworth High School. “We were bringing awards; more people than ever were coming to the shows.”

Indeed, of more than 60 Southern California schools that participate in the festival each year, Birmingham was for years among the top winners. Movie actress Sally Field and Cindy Williams, who starred in the sitcom “Laverne and Shirley,” are among its graduates.

And now it is one of a handful of district schools without a play in production.

Farrell’s edict touched many lives and has embroiled Birmingham in an ongoing drama--one that its students would probably rather act out onstage: Students and parents are outraged, the teacher’s life is tinged with sadness, the principal is unyielding and observers are mystified.

In May, after Winer and her students mounted an ambitious staging of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” word leaked out that play production had been eliminated from the fall schedule. The cancellation was never formally announced.

Students, parents and Winer resented the way Farrell handled the decision. “It was deplorable,” Kaufman said. “She didn’t even tell any of the kids or Mrs. Winer. We found out by accident.”

When questioned by students, Farrell said that when the teacher supervising set construction requested reassignment and a replacement teacher with the proper industrial arts credential fell ill, no one was available to fill the job. Winer, who said she would have been willing to supervise set building, went on medical leave in May, having been hurt in April during an earthquake drill.

Relying on a technicality, Farrell said Winer’s credential in drama with a math minor was inadequate for supervising stagecraft, and pointed out that the state and district were cracking down on teachers instructing outside their subject area.

A Los Angeles Unified School District spokeswoman confirmed that credentials have become more specialized in recent years, but added that state authorizations are available in cases such as Winer’s when necessary to provide the best programs for students.

Lisa Sludikoff, then a junior, appealed to Farrell, who told her that she could “pray or find a teacher.” Sludikoff said she tried to find a teacher with the proper credentials for set production, but finally gave up and submitted a petition with hundreds of signatures protesting the decision.

Parents, incensed at the loss of an important artistic outlet for their children, called the school and offered financial support to keep the program going.

And four of Winer’s top students announced that if they couldn’t put on a play at Birmingham, they would transfer elsewhere. Two enrolled at Chatsworth, one at Taft in Woodland Hills and another at Grant in Van Nuys.

But Farrell stood firm. Even the fact that the production scheduled for this fall was “A Chorus Line” and required no sets didn’t sway her.

“I’m always concerned when a student transfers, but I’m more concerned when a student drops out,” she said last week.

“Play production is just one in a long list of electives I would like to offer: chorale music, orchestra, vocational nursing, increased cooking and home economics sections. But if you don’t have the bodies, you can’t offer the classes,” she said.

Farrell estimates that only 25 students were affected by her decision, “a small but vocal minority in a school of 3,000.”

But drama teachers at surrounding schools as well as Winer herself attest to the value of drama classes and productions. “In a society that emphasizes the ability to articulate,” said Chatsworth High School drama teacher Donna Hill, “what better place than a performance-oriented program to help make students comfortable in front of other people?”

In addition, drama can often reach students who are having difficulty in other areas. “Drama caters to another kind of kid. It rounds out and enriches them,” Hill said.

For Winer, the situation represents another major disappointment in what was to be her 30th and last year of teaching before retirement. She is still at home, recovering from an injury and unable to return to work. And she is still upset over the way in which she heard the news--from a desperate student told by a counselor in May to rearrange his fall schedule.

Farrell insists that her decision was purely administrative, but Winer, parents and students believe that Farrell never really supported drama at the school. Winer recalled that in the spring, when the students staged their musical, the principal cut their performance nights from three to two, and they were not allowed to schedule a performance for Saturday night, usually the biggest moneymaking night.

At Chatsworth, drama productions usually run five nights, including weekends.

“When I first heard it, I thought it was a joke,” said Hill, who has been a colleague of Winer’s for years.

“She had a lot of community support,” Hill said of Winer. “It’s very unusual, given how well they were doing at festivals. Everyone was defeated: the kids, the parents, the teachers.”

Although Lubliner and Kaufman have immersed themselves in rehearsals at their new school, Birmingham is still in their thoughts. “It really pains me,” Kaufman said sadly. “That’s where we trained and that’s where our heart is.”