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Thursday, October 28, 2021
Two Ohio High Schools, Including Hudson, Cancel Fall Productions of the Same LGBTQ-Themed Play
Scene and Heard: Scene's News Blog: Though Hillsboro High School and Hudson High School are separated by more than 200 miles, they now share one thing in common: productions of the same LGBTQ-themed play have now been canceled on both of their stages.
Sometimes it feels completely unreal when things like this still happen in schools all across the country. What makes me the angriest is that their concern was that it was inappropriate for the audience but then chose The Crucible as the replacement. That play deals with topics of assault, murder, and sending people to their deaths, how on earth is that more appropriate than there being a gay character. She Kills Monsters is an incredible show that is both funny and heartfelt, and I loved it so much when I saw a high school perform it. It is incidents like this that continue to make young people fear coming out in school. Also, we like to think that theatre specifically is such a safe space for LGBT kids, because so many of us participate in it, but it still remains somewhere where we have to sensor our queerness for the comfort of others.
This article caught my eye very quickly for a lot of reasons. Partially because I am from Ohio, and honestly I can imagine some of the high schools that I worked in doing something like this. It is very easy to give excuses when cancelling a show, the true meaning of censorship gets blurry and hidden under piles of bureaucracy and PTA meetings. What is so interesting about these two cases is that this show was cancelled for two presumably different reasons. One was progressive, and the other was very conservative, which is pretty fitting considering the geographic foundations of these schools and the political climate of Ohio as a swing state. Another thing that grabbed my attention when reading this article was the idea that they were cancelled so close to their openings. As someone who was a part of high school theatre it breaks my heart to hear that, these kids live to work and play in this world, and for some it becomes a safe space, especially true because of the content of this specific work.
How is it that in my high school we got away with doing Mr. Marmalade by Noah Haidle yet somehow an amazing play written by a Vietnamese playwright that featured someone who was MAYBE GAY got cut? Like, how does that even make sense? If you've ever read the script of She Kills Monsters, it's a fun DnD play that goes more into a high school girl's traumatic life as she remembers her sister through a one-shot campaign. What right does a pastor have in a community to block a literal high school play from being produced? Why is it not acceptable for K-12 kids to enjoy a funny and adventurous show where it's implied maybe possibly perhaps a girl might like another girl? I know the director must have jumped through a lot of hoops to be able to produce the show, but to instead have to put on The Crucible? Incredible. Great work team.
I don’t know if these Ohio superintendent and principal know this, but sometimes people are gay. Whether or not you do shows that acknowledge that gay people exist is not going to change that. Also, fun fact, sometimes those gay people are in K-12 schools and would appreciate seeing themselves on stage in a production that does a really great job of telling a queer narrative. As someone who was in a production of She Kills Monsters, I think it’s a wonderful show for children. It uses fantasy tropes and comedic elements to create a really engaging story while acknowledging and getting into some more intense emotional beats. The playwright Qui Nguyen also did an excellent job of revising the script at the start of the pandemic to make it virtual-friendly. It makes me sad to hear that these students might miss out on getting to see this show, and while yes, She Kills Monsters is not the end all be all for queer representation it is a great example of it. Hopefully that summer production is able to happen.
It’s so weird to me how even still high schools are more than happy to put on plays with blatant racism or anti-semitism in them but god forbid they let gay people exist. The existence of gay people or anyone else under the LGBTQ+ umbrella is not inappropriate for k-12 since there are plenty of kids who are in those demographics. Demonizing them only further hurts those kids, rather than protecting them. She Kills Monsters seems like a pretty cool production and the fact that they cancelled it for a show like The Crucible is insane. We like to talk about how theatre is such a queer space when the reality of it is that stories that are not palatable to straight/ cis audiences are almost never welcomed. I really hope that the campaign to put on the production over the summer is successful and that maybe it can be a gateway to allowing more kinds of shows to be produced.
Why is this still happening? The same play gets cancelled at two different schools because one character “might be gay”? I feel like we should have been able to move past this by now. We should be putting on shows precisely because they have LGBTQ characters and roles in them, not the other way around! This sort of censorship is incredibly important to resist, because it erases the identities and existences of entire groups of people. Telling someone that they are not “appropriate” for children is unfathomably harmful. A resident of one of the two Ohio towns put it very well: “Our children deserve better than this”. This form of censorship is simply unacceptable, and it’s good to hear that one of the two productions will be going ahead anyway with independent funding. Still, the fact that this situation exists in the first place makes me very upset. Oh well.
Reading this article is disappointing. Qui Nyguyen’s She Kills Monsters seems like a very fitting and entertaining production for K-12 kids, a show that contains nothing that should warrant a sudden cancellation. It was also very baffling and ridiculous to me how The Crucible was cited to be the replacement of She Kills Monsters, as that production is chock full of murder and corruption and much more violent and inappropriate for a K-12 setting. It’s so absurd how even the implication that a singular character is gay is enough to drive the school to completely terminate the production. The difference in the reasons the two schools mentioned in the article chose to cancel their production of She Kills Monsters is also interesting to me. I wish there was further elaboration on what part of the queer representation in the show was inaccurate or displeasing to the northeast Ohio High School GSA club.
Being from Ohio, this is nowhere near surprising. Like Ari said, school administrations are eager to not doing anything when shows including themes of racism and anti-semitism. She Kills Monsters is a great show for high school students to produce and learn from, as well as a cool piece of theatre for younger audiences. I’ve never seen a more engaged audience of K-8 students than when my high school produced this show. I was lucky to attend an arts school growing up, but my friends in regular high schools experienced a disturbing amount of bullying from the “potential” of being gay. Both of these schools do not and will not care for the safety of the queer children in their schools. The parents advocating for the cancelling of these productions should never have been given the opportunity to raise children. If you go to great lengths to victimize and demonize children over a play, the deepest pits of hell are waiting for you.
I just commented on an article how progress is being made in the industry about being more accepting of the LGBTQ+ community. This article just goes to show that progress is not necessarily always going in the right direction. I feel like our general perspective of how much change is being made is fairly biased. We tend are presented with all the articles of positive change, as that is what appears in our feed based on our browsing history and our location, and all the negative change does not cross our radar because that is not what we typically look at. In addition, the two places I have lived in my life, Los Angeles and here in Pittsburgh, are very liberal. A large population of the school of drama identifies in some way with the LGBTQ+ community. That does not change the fact that much of the county are very conservative or religious with very homophobic views. It is really disheartening to read about an event like this because it is a stark reminder that much of the country (and the world) is incredibly homophobic, and to be frank, it sucks.
Geez, sometimes I forget that schools like these exist. I did this exact show in my senior year of high school, and I don't recall a single complaint about there being a gay character in the show (then again, we were a school that got the green light to do a production of the laramie project, so I guess our school district was pretty cool with us producing a lot of shows). It reminds me of a video PSA I saw earlier this week that looked like a scene from a movie depicting some really intense violence, drug use, and sexual abuse, then it panned over to two dudes kissing and was like "some people find this more disturbing than everything that was just shown" and I could hardly believe it, but turns out people are disturbed/offended by way less. Kind of astonishing. Also, they replaced it with The Crucible? Seriously? If that isn't the most tone-deaf replacement, then I don't know what is.
10 comments:
Sometimes it feels completely unreal when things like this still happen in schools all across the country. What makes me the angriest is that their concern was that it was inappropriate for the audience but then chose The Crucible as the replacement. That play deals with topics of assault, murder, and sending people to their deaths, how on earth is that more appropriate than there being a gay character. She Kills Monsters is an incredible show that is both funny and heartfelt, and I loved it so much when I saw a high school perform it. It is incidents like this that continue to make young people fear coming out in school. Also, we like to think that theatre specifically is such a safe space for LGBT kids, because so many of us participate in it, but it still remains somewhere where we have to sensor our queerness for the comfort of others.
This article caught my eye very quickly for a lot of reasons. Partially because I am from Ohio, and honestly I can imagine some of the high schools that I worked in doing something like this. It is very easy to give excuses when cancelling a show, the true meaning of censorship gets blurry and hidden under piles of bureaucracy and PTA meetings. What is so interesting about these two cases is that this show was cancelled for two presumably different reasons. One was progressive, and the other was very conservative, which is pretty fitting considering the geographic foundations of these schools and the political climate of Ohio as a swing state. Another thing that grabbed my attention when reading this article was the idea that they were cancelled so close to their openings. As someone who was a part of high school theatre it breaks my heart to hear that, these kids live to work and play in this world, and for some it becomes a safe space, especially true because of the content of this specific work.
How is it that in my high school we got away with doing Mr. Marmalade by Noah Haidle yet somehow an amazing play written by a Vietnamese playwright that featured someone who was MAYBE GAY got cut? Like, how does that even make sense? If you've ever read the script of She Kills Monsters, it's a fun DnD play that goes more into a high school girl's traumatic life as she remembers her sister through a one-shot campaign. What right does a pastor have in a community to block a literal high school play from being produced? Why is it not acceptable for K-12 kids to enjoy a funny and adventurous show where it's implied maybe possibly perhaps a girl might like another girl? I know the director must have jumped through a lot of hoops to be able to produce the show, but to instead have to put on The Crucible? Incredible. Great work team.
I don’t know if these Ohio superintendent and principal know this, but sometimes people are gay. Whether or not you do shows that acknowledge that gay people exist is not going to change that. Also, fun fact, sometimes those gay people are in K-12 schools and would appreciate seeing themselves on stage in a production that does a really great job of telling a queer narrative. As someone who was in a production of She Kills Monsters, I think it’s a wonderful show for children. It uses fantasy tropes and comedic elements to create a really engaging story while acknowledging and getting into some more intense emotional beats. The playwright Qui Nguyen also did an excellent job of revising the script at the start of the pandemic to make it virtual-friendly. It makes me sad to hear that these students might miss out on getting to see this show, and while yes, She Kills Monsters is not the end all be all for queer representation it is a great example of it. Hopefully that summer production is able to happen.
It’s so weird to me how even still high schools are more than happy to put on plays with blatant racism or anti-semitism in them but god forbid they let gay people exist. The existence of gay people or anyone else under the LGBTQ+ umbrella is not inappropriate for k-12 since there are plenty of kids who are in those demographics. Demonizing them only further hurts those kids, rather than protecting them. She Kills Monsters seems like a pretty cool production and the fact that they cancelled it for a show like The Crucible is insane. We like to talk about how theatre is such a queer space when the reality of it is that stories that are not palatable to straight/ cis audiences are almost never welcomed. I really hope that the campaign to put on the production over the summer is successful and that maybe it can be a gateway to allowing more kinds of shows to be produced.
Why is this still happening? The same play gets cancelled at two different schools because one character “might be gay”? I feel like we should have been able to move past this by now. We should be putting on shows precisely because they have LGBTQ characters and roles in them, not the other way around! This sort of censorship is incredibly important to resist, because it erases the identities and existences of entire groups of people. Telling someone that they are not “appropriate” for children is unfathomably harmful. A resident of one of the two Ohio towns put it very well: “Our children deserve better than this”. This form of censorship is simply unacceptable, and it’s good to hear that one of the two productions will be going ahead anyway with independent funding. Still, the fact that this situation exists in the first place makes me very upset. Oh well.
Reading this article is disappointing. Qui Nyguyen’s She Kills Monsters seems like a very fitting and entertaining production for K-12 kids, a show that contains nothing that should warrant a sudden cancellation. It was also very baffling and ridiculous to me how The Crucible was cited to be the replacement of She Kills Monsters, as that production is chock full of murder and corruption and much more violent and inappropriate for a K-12 setting. It’s so absurd how even the implication that a singular character is gay is enough to drive the school to completely terminate the production. The difference in the reasons the two schools mentioned in the article chose to cancel their production of She Kills Monsters is also interesting to me. I wish there was further elaboration on what part of the queer representation in the show was inaccurate or displeasing to the northeast Ohio High School GSA club.
Being from Ohio, this is nowhere near surprising. Like Ari said, school administrations are eager to not doing anything when shows including themes of racism and anti-semitism. She Kills Monsters is a great show for high school students to produce and learn from, as well as a cool piece of theatre for younger audiences. I’ve never seen a more engaged audience of K-8 students than when my high school produced this show. I was lucky to attend an arts school growing up, but my friends in regular high schools experienced a disturbing amount of bullying from the “potential” of being gay. Both of these schools do not and will not care for the safety of the queer children in their schools. The parents advocating for the cancelling of these productions should never have been given the opportunity to raise children. If you go to great lengths to victimize and demonize children over a play, the deepest pits of hell are waiting for you.
I just commented on an article how progress is being made in the industry about being more accepting of the LGBTQ+ community. This article just goes to show that progress is not necessarily always going in the right direction. I feel like our general perspective of how much change is being made is fairly biased. We tend are presented with all the articles of positive change, as that is what appears in our feed based on our browsing history and our location, and all the negative change does not cross our radar because that is not what we typically look at. In addition, the two places I have lived in my life, Los Angeles and here in Pittsburgh, are very liberal. A large population of the school of drama identifies in some way with the LGBTQ+ community. That does not change the fact that much of the county are very conservative or religious with very homophobic views. It is really disheartening to read about an event like this because it is a stark reminder that much of the country (and the world) is incredibly homophobic, and to be frank, it sucks.
Geez, sometimes I forget that schools like these exist. I did this exact show in my senior year of high school, and I don't recall a single complaint about there being a gay character in the show (then again, we were a school that got the green light to do a production of the laramie project, so I guess our school district was pretty cool with us producing a lot of shows). It reminds me of a video PSA I saw earlier this week that looked like a scene from a movie depicting some really intense violence, drug use, and sexual abuse, then it panned over to two dudes kissing and was like "some people find this more disturbing than everything that was just shown" and I could hardly believe it, but turns out people are disturbed/offended by way less. Kind of astonishing. Also, they replaced it with The Crucible? Seriously? If that isn't the most tone-deaf replacement, then I don't know what is.
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