Controversy! Scandal! Music?

In my last blog post I started researching the benefits theatre programs have on high school and middle school aged students. Going out of the order of my original blog post I will now be touching on the hindrances these programs face with the controversy around the shows that they choose. What comes to mind when we think of a controversial show? One of the most widely accepted controversial shows since it's original play form back in the 1800's is Spring Awakening dealing with topics like sex, teenaged pregnancy, abortions, suicide, and disregard of authoritative figures, then in 2007 it was adopted into a muscial that's still considered widely controversial by most of the theatrical community.

However most of the controversy surrounding shows at least at the high school level centers around Rent. For those of you unfamiliar with Rent it is a show set in New York in the early 1990's focusing on the lives of a struggling film maker, a just out of rehab rock star who is living with AIDS, a school teacher expelled from NYU for promoting the focus on AIDS, a drag queen in love with the school teacher who also has AIDS, a homosexual female lawyer, a rather flirtatious diva hopeful, and a young stripper who falls in love with the rock star who is also a heroin addict. Needless to say at a high school level it's quite certain most parents will flip. The main reason for the controversy is that in the high school version the only thing censored within the show is the use of swearing. In an article I found in the New York Times it was actually noted that when the high school version of this show was about to go up in California, Texas, and West Virginia they were all cancelled due to the administrative board and parents feeling uncomfortable with the content in the show.



Some productions, like the one pictured above, are school versions of the show (this particular production was in May and June of 2012).

Actually according to a list found in the Educational Theatre Association's website Rent was primarily cancelled or banned from some areas in 2008-2009 due to varying arguments by school administrators. While going through both of these sources I've begun to question why some theatrical productions are censored. Obviously in high school we're not going to send the students up on stage to have any nudity or swear without purpose in the show, but why is subject matter censored? If they really want to censor subject matter then they would have just as easily censored Shakespeare. Now is controversy on topics the only reason shows are hindered? Of course not, there is a financial issue as well, but that will be covered in the next post.