On The Front Lines, In School And In Theatre
I am tired. I am tired of reading posts about “my rights” to a hobby that includes automatic rifles. You like guns, fine. But accept the fact that guns are dangerous and require strict regulations. I...
View ArticleQuotation Marks Don’t Soften a Slur in Chicago
Now there is a redaction, an editor’s note, and an author’s apology. But for roughly 24 hours between Wednesday and Thursday this week, in a theatre review in the Chicago Reader, the racially...
View ArticleAt One California High School, Gender Neutral & Color Conscious Casting in...
Editor’s preface: Austin Tichenor of the Reduced Shakespeare Company wrote an extensive Facebook post after seeing a production of 1776, directed by his sister, the author of this essay, at their old...
View ArticleWorry About The Censorship and Homophobia First, Then The Prayers
As word about a scuffle over a theatre production at Mitchell High School in Mitchell County NC has started to make its way beyond the local North Carolina media, accounts seem to be placing their...
View ArticleTeaching Students & Audiences About Swastikas, The SS and “The Sound of Music”
If you see a stage production of The Sound of Music, here are some words you won’t hear: Nazi. Hitler. Here are some words you will hear in the stage version: Gauleiter. Anschluss. Third Reich....
View ArticleTina Landau: “A Home in the Theatre”
I was asked to deliver the Keynote Address for BroadwayCon, a three day expo for fans of Broadway theater. The theme of the Opening Ceremony was “Home,” and included performances by Susan Egan...
View ArticleAt Neil Simon Festival, A Contest Entry Fee That’s No Laughing Matter
If one looks around the website of The Neil Simon Festival, a yearly theatre event held in Cedar City, Utah, there’s a list of donors to the company. On that list are seven entries at the $100+ level....
View ArticleC-a-n-c-e-l-i-n-g ‘Spelling Bee’ at a Maryland Middle School
The communication announcing the cancelation of a production of the musical The 25thAnnual Putnam County Spelling Bee at Hyattsville Middle School in Maryland could not have been more terse....
View ArticleDespite Pandemic, High School Shows Still Being Shut Down, For New Reasons
Given the disastrous reduction in live theatre that has marked the pandemic since March of 2020, one might assume that incidences of high school shows canceled over content concerns would have been...
View ArticleAt a Kansas University, Censoring a Student’s Anti-Censorship Project
The irony is almost too neat: a college student plans a program of songs from musicals that have faced censorship – and with less than two days’ notice, her university informs her she has to take it...
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