My school banned replica weapons in drama productions.

[lightningandsnow]

Ugh. This is ridiculous, as they are a) replicas, b) used in context, and c) this means a lot of the people directing one-acts have to rewrite their scripts.

Not showing or talking about violence doesn't get rid of it.

Stupid high school.

We have a facebook group protesting this... PM me if you want the link. (I don't want to advertise what school I go to publicly, for obvious reasons)

[oberliner]

1. What was the play?

What sorts of weapons?

[muryan]

8. My high school did Romeo and Juilet

where everyone lives at the end, including romeo and juliet. It was the biggest abortion of a theatre production ive seen in my life.


edit: meant to reply to the OP, oops

[oberliner]

9. Seriously?

How did they revise the ending?

[leftyclimber]

14. Oh, Bowdlerizing.

There was a dude in the nineteenth century, logically named Bowdler, who rewrote a bunch of Shakespeare plays to have happy endings, no violence, all sorts of crap. It wasn't suitable for Victorian sensibilities.

I have long been curious exactly what he did with Titus Andronicus.

[ColbertWatcher]

23. The Disney version?

Wow, I had never heard of that.

[leftyclimber]

26. Yeah, it's not new.

Unfortunately, it's something that we apparently haven't escaped from.

I'm frickin' steaming about this.

[ColbertWatcher]

31. I guess the holier-than-us...

...always use "the children" as an excuse for censorship.

[leftyclimber]

33. And sometimes the women.

Of which I am one. :eyes:

[leftyclimber]

43. There was also Theobald

Who did something similar with the endings, but also decided Shakespeare's plays were just Too Damn Long and cut them to more "tolerable" lengths (like 45 minutes or an hour) along with the "improved" endings.

I used to have a copy of Charles and Mary Lamb's Shakespeare (from the late 19th century), in which they included Titus as follows: "We forbear comment on this tragedy." :rofl:

[muryan]

29. They families chipped in to buy them a house

an equal distance from both the Montague and Capulet estates. They also brought the families together in "harmony", and in my case...large amounts of vomit

[leftyclimber]

34. IIRC the parents magically realized they'd made a horrible mistake,

R & J got married, and it was all happy-wappy.

:puke:

[muryan]

36. Of course, the other versions are anti-american

[ColbertWatcher]

44. Anything that is not truthy is not American! Welcome to DU, BTW! n/t

[Posteritatis]

10. What, were they worried that characters dying would harm the snowflakes' self-esteem? (nt)

[leftyclimber]

17. Probably that they were promoting suicide.

Stupid, stupid, stupid people.

[muryan]

30. "Violence has no place in school"

And neither did sex-ed, or non-christians.

[The Inquisitive]

18. wait wait, has there already been an opening night?

if not get the actors to simply strike and claim the school has no right to infringe on the artistic integrity of Shakespeare for political reasons. Absofuckinglutely outrageous, shit like this really makes my blood boil. That play is a travesty, an affront to not just theater, but all of artistic expression as a whole. I'm sorry, but this just really ruined my night... well that and the six hours of reading I need to take care of.

[muryan]

28. It was 4 years ago

I think attendance was limited to friends of cast members and family. They scratched the saturday and sunday night showings (it opened on a friday).

[The Inquisitive]

37. then we have no choice

We must go back to 2004 to correct the timestream!

[DS1]

2. There's been too many school shootings

I can understand this policy. The last thing you need is having someone walking by and seeing weapons (even in stage) and calling the police, because they will come in heavy.

When I did a camouflage demonstration for my college speech class, I went to the campus police and told them that I would be in full camo, just to prevent any freakout.

[Eric J in MN]

11. When has that happened? NT

NT

[DS1]

16. When has what happened?

[Eric J in MN]

47. When did it ever happen that cops raided a school play rehersal...

...because prop weapons were being used?

[DS1]

48. I never said it did.

[bean fidhleir]

53. There's an international standard for prop firearms: a red barrel tip

It's intended to prevent police overreaction.

[annabanana]

58. you have voluntarily curtailed your own freedom to accomodate the police state

[Duke Newcombe]

3. B-b-but...you don't UNDERSTAND...

..."It's for the CHILDREN", you see.
:sarcasm:

Duke

[The Straight Story]

4. you should do a play about that subject

Could have some humorous overtones :)

[mike_c]

5. use a rubber chicken....

It makes a statement, right. "This is ridiculous."

[The Straight Story]

6. Tell em you want to do a play about WW2 without any Nazis

:)

[leftyclimber]

15. Make it Cabaret.

You'd have to cut the entire second act, and a good chunk of the first.

[aikoaiko]

7. zero tolerance is for administrators who can't think

its sad.

[mach2]

25. And for an electorate who won't.

:shrug:

[mitchum]

54. That would be ALL administrators

I know of what I speak

[texasleo]

12. The pussification of North America continues.

:eyes:

[leftyclimber]

13. Oh, for Pete's sake.

We got in trouble 20-odd years ago for doing a play that had "Goddamn" in it at my high school, and we thought THAT was ludicrous. What the heck are you guys supposed to do? Nothing but productions of Magic Theatre? ("I'm a balloon!" Let's all jump off boxes and pretend we're little kids! ... Ugh.)

I have a trick gun somewhere with a "BANG" flag. It's left over from a production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. It's been modified to look pretty darn real.

If I can find it in the attic, y'all can have it.

FWIW, if you have to "rewrite" a play, the various licensing services (Dramatists', or whoever) can sue your (read, the school district's) asses off for changing the playwrights' words. It is completely unacceptable to modify a script, and a violation of your contract with, say, Dramatists' or whoever.

In the meantime, PM me your facebook link. I'll protest it with you, and proudly.

Ridiculous.

Signed,

A pissed off old fart who used to run a theatre company.

P.S. As revenge, you should do lots of Shakespeare and Aristophanes, and play up the dick jokes to the point where even the thickest people in the audience can't miss them. They'll give you your guns back in no time.

[The Straight Story]

20. "A pissed off old fart who used to run a theatre company."

You've got to start a thread about some of the stories you have about that :)

Would love to read it!

[leftyclimber]

27. Not much to tell, really.

I left the theatre for two reasons:

1. I was sick, when I went on "outside" auditions, of being told I needed to be 20 pounds underweight.
2. I was sick of theatre losing its subversive edge (I'm a Brechtian by nature, and went on a three-day orgasm when Dario Fo won the Nobel Prize) and being all fluff and no substance. I blame the rise of the overproduced English musical for this.

Then again, there was the story of the actor who decided, in the middle of a show to get stoned outside of the theatre, which was next door to the police station, and...

;)

[mach2]

24. LOL! Amerika has been dumbed down so much they wouldn't appreciate a dick joke

from Shakespeare if it knocked them up. :eyes: We just need another Constitutional Amendment:
"Pursuant to the passage of this Amendment, no person shall be offended at any time or for any reason."

That oughta fix 'em.

[leftyclimber]

32. It's amazing what one can express

with the right, er, crotch-al gestures. :evilgrin:

[proud2BlibKansan]

19. Is it a state law?

It is where I teach. So the schools have no choice. You might want to look into that.

[lightningandsnow]

21. I live in Canada, and I don't think it's a law where I live...

I could be wrong, though.

On edit: I was in a school production of West Side Story when I was in grade 7. We used a realistic-looking gun filled with blanks... and this was a middle school. So I highly doubt it's a law.

[proud2BlibKansan]

35. The law could have passed since then

A lot of states are passing very draconian laws regarding weapons at schools.

It is actually a pretty good rule of thumb to check your local laws before you blame your school for something. Much of what we do is regulated by the govt.

[leftyclimber]

39. And if this is the case you need to make a lot of noise.

Your MPP is a good place to start.

City-TV is another.

You won't be able to get it fixed in a week, but you'll do future students a huge favo(u)r by stepping up to the plate.

Geez, are you guy supposed to write plays that take place at Jane and Finch where everyone exchanges flowers once they've realized what a terrible mistake they've made about Romie and Julie not dating, prior to anything actually awful happening? Make the local theatre companies aware. The little oddball ones on Queen Street West and Church and Wellesley shoudl back you, but also talk to the biggies, like Canadian Stage (of whom I'm not a fan, but if you can get them onside, they'll be a powerful ally).

The press is your friend. The professional theatre companies are your friends. So is your MPP (whom, I'm assuming, isn't a jackass). And don't forget your city councillor.

[ColbertWatcher]

22. Not showing or talking about violence doesn't get rid of it.

Well said.

It reminds me of this push to remove the Twin Towers (from photographs and TV shows and movies) after the attacks.

As if not seeing the towers would erase what happened or something.

American society has a problem making the distinction between real death and drama.

(EDITED to fix my grammar)

[The Inquisitive]

38. not true!

If we can get EVERYONE to bury their heads in the sand the plan will work.

[ColbertWatcher]

41. And if we bury our heads deep enough...

...we can get our jobs back, and own our houses and gas prices will go down while the dollar goes back up!

Oh, and the surge in Iraq is working!

Ta-da!

[leftyclimber]

40. Kick for the thee-ah-tah.

[Beregond2]

42. Oh good grief.

Do they seriously imagine that young people are incapable of telling drama from reality? Do they not know that re-writing an author's work without his permission (which they will never get) is against the law?

[Chan790]

45. Mock it with comedic violence...

replace every weapon or death with blood-red whip-cream pies.

Stage a trio of Titus Andronicus, Three-Penny Opera, and The Orestia (or The Bacchae) showing the long tradition of theatrical violence back-to-back-to-back...have the respective corpses remain on-stage throughout all the plays. The school just will not know what to do...you've clearly bested them with the bloodiest HS stage production ever to not feature a single weapon.

(Really...never listen to me. I'm a bad seed.)

[leftyclimber]

46. Don't forget

Lysistrata (for the sex)

Corpus Christi (not for the body count, for the controversy ... I want to stage it on a raked donut revolve, preferably a Tim Horton's cruller ;) )

Carousel (for the wife-beating)

Mother Courage (for the war carnage)

'Tis Pity She's a Whore (for the incest, as well as the general carnage ... the on-stage late-term abortion is a plus)

QUILLS (by my favo(u)rite playwright, Doug Wright, for the free-speech issues as well as the scatology ... while you're at it, go for The Stonewater Rapture, for the anti-fundamentalism)

Marat/Sade (for the general weirdness)

The Kiss of the Spider Woman and Bent (for the homosexuality)

Stop me now. I can go on forever, especially now that I've had some bourbon.

God, I miss doing theatre.

[Posteritatis]

49. Applause and a flashback

That's how to be properly subversive in those kinds of environments. I approve! (And the mental image is awesome.)

Back In The Day(tm), my high school had a substantial violence problem. It was in a crappy neighborhood, and had not one but two rival high schools who were themselves in crappy neighborhoods. Nobody got killed or seriously injured, but a lot of people routinely got into fistfights and the like.

The principal of my school at the time was a rather aggravating tool of a man, some guy who had a doctorate in developmental psych, who thought that made him omniscient in the field of highschoolology, and used the degree as a club to beat his students with. (He'd suspend people who called him "mister" instead of "doctor," claiming it was a personal insult.) After a particularly messy incident at school one day, the guy snapped, decided that the reason for all the fights wasn't a combination of school rivalries, class issues, simple racism and the various other things that make life 'interesting' in high schools. No - he decided that it was because people were disagreeing with one another, and since minors can't do that competently yet, it must be causing the violence.

So he puts this tirade over the PA about how students at the school are no longer allowed to disagree with one another, because that's a prelude to violence and serves no other purpose. Anyone who disagreed with anything anyone else said was required to keep it to themselves or be suspended for (ISYN) fighting.

Enter a couple of my friends. That announcement was shortly before the lunch hour began. As soon as it did, they wandered over to the entrance area of the school where the offices and the like were, sat down outside of the principal's office, and proceeded to have an argument about English literature, sounding belligerent and aggressive in their tone but using entirely civilized, class-discussion-friendly language and vocabulary. In, of course, plain view of the principal and any number of students and teachers who were heading out on lunch break.

So the guy came off looking like an idiot in front of, oh, a thousand people by the end of the lunch hour, when they went back to other things and deemed the point to have been made. The guy never even tried to get on their case for it - or anyone else's, for that matter.

[lightningandsnow]

55. Oh my god. That sounds hilarious.

[krispos42]

50. Well, this is stupid

No basis in reality. None.


You'd think that at some point parents would realize that on many subjects getting your knickers in knot maes something more likely to happen?


Hell, school schootings didn't become in vogue until vast quantities of America decided that GUNS WERE BAD and spend their time hammering that into kids' skulls and freaking out whenever some 4th-grader points a finger at another kid and says "Bang! Bang!"

Teen pregnancies go up when school districts decide that SEX IS BAD and spend all their times preaching abstinance-only education to the exclusion of anything resembling sanity.


Etc., etc., etc.

[mitchum]

56. High school shootings didn't come into vogue until the mandatory "moment of silence"...

pledge of allegiance, dress codes and/or school uniforms, that "meet me at the flag day" nonsense
Apparently, conformity, religiosity, and mindless jingoism lead to school violence.

[lightningandsnow]

51. Even better, they've now banned CURSING in plays.

Well, fuck that shit.

[leftyclimber]

52. Guns first, cursing second?

We could have all the guns we wanted, but ix-nay on the ursing-cay.

Then again, I went to an American high school.... ;)

[Xenotime]

57. Sorry but your school is right. Too many people have been hurt by guns.

The last thing we need is more "advertisement"