Playbill: A Texas school district—Keller Independent School District—has cancelled a high school's spring production of The Laramie Project, the groundbreaking play about the murder of Matthew Shepard. Parents of students at Timber Creek High School received an email February 23 announcing that the production would be replaced with something along the lines of Mary Poppins or White Christmas, according to a local news report.
2 comments:
This article caught my eye because my high school also caused a commotion around a production of the Laramie project. Far before my time (around 2005) my high school was doing a production for the Laramie Project, which gained the attention of Westboro Baptist Church, who decided they were going to hold a protest outside the school. The production went on, and the publicity actually ended up boosting ticket sales, rather than decreasing them.
I think that censoring theater is generally a bad idea. If you disagree with the message that a production is sharing, you can personally boycott the production, and encourage your friends not to go. Trying to enforce larger action is going to get you on the news, and probably end up actually raising awareness and ticket sales of the production. Theater is a very difficult thing to shut down, because any efforts which are made to stifle it, can actually be used to reinforce its message.
It's eye-opening to read these types of articles. I think I was privileged enough to grow up in a high school theater program that actually encouraged stories like this. Like every high school there was always a little bit of censoring things they were afraid that went too far. But in the end, we were allowed to put on the production of the Laramie project and several other productions that I have seen canceled in other high schools. It shocks me that these cancelations and censorships still happen. I am not naive enough to not understand why these things are getting canceled but I am still disappointed. I think it will be a long time for all different types of people to understand why these shows are performed but it is even sadder when there are people who are willing and want to put it on that are being prevented from doing so
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