NPR: Is high school theater the next battleground in the culture war?
In Florida, Indiana, Kansas and Pennsylvania plays and musicals have been challenged or canceled recently. Parents or school officials have complained that the content isn't family friendly.
One such case is a production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at Cardinal High School in Middlefield, Ohio. But there, the story took a different turn.
6 comments:
I think it comes down to the fact that schools should not produce shows that they know will be shut down by parents or deemed inappropriate. The situation with Putnam County Spelling Bee was the tipping point in many regards however schools have been producing shows they can not culturally and ethnically produce for years. Though shows like Putnum and Spring Awakening are often shut down due to the content of the shows, there is another issue that often is not considered when school pick shows, which is race. Especially with high schools fixed casting pools when it comes to race schools tend to put on shows that they can not appropriately produce. An example of this is the schools that try to put on all white productions of Hairspray using things like hair color or some other distinguishing factor changing the integrity of the shows being produced. Overall high schools need to pick shows they can appropriately produce.
Theo
I think I’ve read dozens of articles about a highschool canceling X Y Z show for some reason or another whether that be it deals with too serious topics, it’s not family friendly, it has LGBTQ+ representation, etc etc. Yet it’s not the small minded parents that baffle me as much as the fact these cancellations always seem to happen AFTER auditions, rehearsals, and sometimes even tech weeks have occurred. Like how it takes WEEKS for parents to hear word of what the show is about and then decide to stomp on in and destroy weeks of the cast and crew’s progress. In the article I also liked the mention that drama, especially musicals, are not just spectacles, but actual stories with characters, themes, and narratives that are not always happy and fun like a Disney musical. Dramatical productions are at the end of the day stories that visually and audibly show expression, and if you don’t want to watch a play or a musical that goes deeper than a singing fish who tap dances then don’t go.
Theater is being banned nowadays simply because it contains topics that are controversial or that people don’t like. High school directors are having to censor their shows, carefully decide what shows to try out, and hope against hope that whatever show they pick is one that people won’t get mad at and shut down completely. Students have to be afraid that they won’t get barraged by angry parents for simply being in a show they don’t like. This is not the world that we should have to be living in. Art, and especially theater, is supposed to be about breaking boundaries, sometimes pushing the line, and sometimes putting on shows that have controversial topics in them. There are very few shows that don’t have any characters in them that aren’t perfect and nice and most shows contain at least some little thing that people find controversial. These shows should not be banned simply because people don't like them.
It is disappointing to hear this school district canceled the high school’s production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. It is such a fun show to do, not only with fun songs and characters, but with great audience interaction. I believe by canceling the show, the school sent a message of intolerance and hostility. While I can understand that it may seem insensitive to have Jesus talk to one of the characters, the message behind it is positive, that even if this young girl fails, Jesus still loves her.
Also, the district should have read the script or looked at the song titles before approving the musical. The show quite literally has a song titled “My Unfortunate Erection”. How could they miss that? It was cruel that the students and teachers who put so many hours of work into this production were shut down because some administrator did not take ten minutes to research the show. The director even commented that they would be doing the alternate version of the song entitled “My Unfortunate Distraction”.
Before reading this article, I thought of something contradictory about this. In the past, high school theatre and arts programs were very typically written off or overlooked, or even nonexistent in many schools. So, I guess the only thing that would bring attention to it - the attention of those who don’t care as much about theatre / arts in schools - would be something “offensive.” Two things: a) Spelling Bee is one of my favorites, and b) this high school’s situation is something I am VERY familiar with. Multiple times, administrators of my high school did not read the script before approving productions, and stepped in halfway through to condemn it. Like the article says, it’s heartbreaking to students. Now, on the other end of this spectrum - I was in a production of Spring Awakening last summer, which was chosen by a previously rather modest playhouse. At the first rehearsal, the owner explained that while it wasn’t a super easy sell to the board, they eventually agreed that it was a story that needed to be told. This is what the article is emphasizing, and what those who “pearl-clutch” often fail to see.
There’s been a lot of articles come out recently about censorship of theater and high schools and I really like the way that NPR was able to get all sides of the story here and really just fully flesh out why this is occurring and what people are doing about it. It’s understandable that many of our beloved child should be altered for younger audience is for and I think it’s a very good thing to do because we don’t want to expose the students to something they would be uncomfortable with which is often happens in high school theater but it’s not regulated though when some schools begin to over regulate and censor some parts of shows it begins to limit what people view as acceptable for a high school student. I think that this article brings up a really good point with the K gods in Putnam County spelling bee because if they were to take them out, you’re basically saying that it’s not OK for highschoolers to have gay dads when some of your students may have gay or lesbian parents, or could identify as LGBTQ plus themselves
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