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www.broadwayworld.com: As BroadwayWorld reported earlier this summer, via blogger and industry professional Howard Sherman, South Williamsport, a high school in Lycoming County, PA, had been forced to cancel their spring production of Monty Python's Spamalot due to "controversial content," which includes a homosexual marriage.
2 comments:
Fiona Rhodes
said...
I think that this issue is very relevant-it addresses the real reason why we do theatre. Steven Schwartz explains in his letter that the very function of theatre is to challenge and provoke us, and says "your actions strike at the very heart of the function of art and culture, as well as the purpose of education". There are definitely valid reasons for cancelling a show, or choosing a different production, but this is not one of them. I am interested to see where this goes in the following weeks.
The one thing that struck me about the whole ordeal was the comparison that was made in the response to the cancellation. When it was brought up the nobody would cancel The Diary of Anne Frank in order to avoid offending any anti-semites or Holocaust deniers. Homophobes should not be put in that place where their views are put first and people go to lengths not to offend them.
Another point is although Spamalot does feature a Homosexual wedding, it also features a entire song about Jews on broadway, and the entire play itself is a parody of Christian tales. Monty Python is known for being slightly offbeat and sometimes offensive, thats the point of the show. The writers put a gay marriage scene in the show with the explicit note that "in hundreds of years, this still won't be okay." So far they've been proved right.
2 comments:
I think that this issue is very relevant-it addresses the real reason why we do theatre. Steven Schwartz explains in his letter that the very function of theatre is to challenge and provoke us, and says "your actions strike at the very heart of the function of art and culture, as well as the purpose of education". There are definitely valid reasons for cancelling a show, or choosing a different production, but this is not one of them. I am interested to see where this goes in the following weeks.
The one thing that struck me about the whole ordeal was the comparison that was made in the response to the cancellation. When it was brought up the nobody would cancel The Diary of Anne Frank in order to avoid offending any anti-semites or Holocaust deniers. Homophobes should not be put in that place where their views are put first and people go to lengths not to offend them.
Another point is although Spamalot does feature a Homosexual wedding, it also features a entire song about Jews on broadway, and the entire play itself is a parody of Christian tales. Monty Python is known for being slightly offbeat and sometimes offensive, thats the point of the show. The writers put a gay marriage scene in the show with the explicit note that "in hundreds of years, this still won't be okay." So far they've been proved right.
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