My last entry was about the predilection of modern playwrights to rely upon blue language. My next entry was going to be about how this trend is making it more and more difficult to bring relevant theatre into the world of budding young theatre students and vice-versa.

But then something happened that made me drop my jaw on my keyboard in complete and utter disbelief: Music Theatre International has announced that a rated PG-13 version of “Avenue Q” is now available for amateur licensing.

To quote Seth Myers of SNL’s Weekend Update: REALLY ?!?

The obnoxiously funny puppet show for adults that works because it turns upside-down the notions that puppets are for kids and musical theatre can never be anything like a “South Park” episode (well, at least before Parker and Stone’s “The Book of Mormon” opened on Broadway this year)…sanitized so that the family can now enjoy it? And it’s even titled “Avenue Q: School Edition.”

Really?!?

From the Music Theatre International website: “Because the original AVENUE Q has some content elements that previously made it a difficult choice for some high school productions, MTI has worked with the AVENUE Q authors to … make it more appropriate for high school audiences and performers.” Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but I thought that the whole beauty of this show was just how INappropriate those puppets could be.

Difficult choice? Not difficult at all, if you ask me. There are some shows that just need to be understood as being off limits for high school performers. There are some shows that should be ‘Adults Only’ …and that’s perfectly okay. Understand, though, that I am not just considering the language factor. A friend and I were having the conversation recently that there are some plays that high schools (and even middle schools) attempt to produce because they are ‘classic’ that are really beyond the emotional scope and experience of the average 15 year old. “Our Town,” the most widely produced high school play in America is really not a play for teens – its perspective of memory can only be fully realized by actors who are actually old enough to look back on their formative years from a distance of more than a grade or two. Many popular musicals that have no objectionable content are really not written for amateur singers or musicians, and yet so many attempt them.

I have a confession: when I was a high school theatre director I felt the pressure to “keep up” with my fellow high school directors in terms of the hipness and cool factor and up-to-date relevance of my play selection. A few years of distance allows me to see that I made some choices that were not in the best interest of my students, but were more likely about being cool, hip and edgy among my colleagues.

Sometimes I wonder about the motives of my compatriots when I see them making choices that are surprisingly ‘adult’ – not just in language or content, but in the emotional scope and skill required by the performers (Sondheim, anyone?). What is the purpose of secondary level educational theatre, after all? What are we trying to accomplish with those choices for our students? And is “Avenue Q: School Edition” really the answer? Because if it is, then if I were still directing high school theatre I'd be singing "It Sucks to Be Me."

For a playwright, words are the heart and soul of a character. My drama students are currently (hopefully) learning this as we delve into scene analysis before we even begin thinking about performance. The words are the key to all dramatic action – every impulse, every look, every gesture has to grow from an understanding of the playwright’s words. The actor serves to bring those words to life with full import and understanding.

So why in tarnation can’t modern playwrights offer us something not so liberally seasoned with salty language?

Last month I saw Neil LaBute’s play “In a Forest Dark and Deep” at the Vaudeville Theatre in London. It was a play worthy of merit for many reasons: a perfect example of Aristotle’s principles of unity of time and place, a well-crafted exploration of a dynamic relationship, a play with characters and subject matter that would entice people to the theatre who might not normally think they like theatre. Two fine actors that most people recognize from their television work – Matthew Fox and Olivia Williams -- were yet another reason to like this play. It’s the kind of work I’d love to point out to my students as an example of what theatre should be, or recommend advanced high school students use for forensic competition or scene study…but I can’t.

My reluctance isn’t so much a reaction to the references to drugs and sex (the characters are adults, after all) as it is held in check by one simple distracting element: the language. Billy, the brother played by Fox, is limited to a vocabulary that uses 4-letter Anglo-Saxon crudities in every possible grammatical form. Betty’s language is only half as seasoned as her brother’s, but then her character is a professor of English.

In fact, it seems like so many modern playwrights and screenwriters have fallen into the vulgarity trap that it is becoming increasingly challenging as a person who loves words to find anyone who can still turn a phrase or craft a delectable sentence in a film or play with modern characters that does not involve cursing. Is this because playwrights are holding to the adage that ‘art imitates life’, and, if so, is this really what our modern life has been reduced to? Have expletives become so much more acceptable in social discourse than I remember from my teen years just two decades ago? I can wield a blue phrase with the best of them, but am still amazed to hear so many people younger than myself using such language with no hesitation about time or place or present company.

I’m no prude – I just think language should elevate our thoughts, especially language used in performance. What the playwright gives to the actor to craft a character should be richly layered with meaning and nuance. A four-letter epithet now and again should add zest and spice to a character, or give us a momentarily enhanced glimpse of that character’s world view, but should not be the main ingredient around which actors are forced to craft an entire performance.

Next: thoughts on what this means for educational theatre

“Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” This flawed adage has suddenly found new life among those in the private sector who have discovered the “enemy” among public workers, especially teachers. The idea that the country’s pool of teachers comes primarily from a slew of failed private-sector workers is baffling. I recall a strong majority of my college cohorts in the school of education being like me – fresh out of high school and full of enthusiasm at the prospect of one day being just like the teachers who inspired us. At the tender age of 18 or 19, none of us had any ‘real world’ experience from which to fail that made us ‘fall back’ on teaching as a second-choice profession. Sure, there were non-traditional students among us who had decided to become teachers after leaving a first career. That choice was not made because they ‘failed’ in the private sector, but was made because they saw a better use of their skills: teaching students to become passionate about the same interests that drew them into the private sector in the first place.

I once overheard a fellow actor say “all high school theatre teachers are just failed actors.” After I sputtered a moment with indignation at walking in on such a loaded statement, I replied that “Some of us become theatre teachers because we want to inspire others to love the performing arts as much as we do,” and then promptly left the room before I said something I would regret. I never tried to ‘make it’ as an actor, as much as I love performing. My high school theater teacher was less than inspirational. I decided that if I wanted to inspire people to love the arts, being an actor would be less effective than being a well-trained theatre teacher.

As for the idea that teachers are people who cannot make it in the ‘real world’ – our classrooms bring us face to face with the realities of our society every day. Teachers deal with the real world effects of poverty, hunger, medical attention (or lack thereof), social legislation, cultural trends, influence of families, and economic policies in a way that very few private sector jobs would. Especially at the middle school, we see students beginning to define themselves and develop ideas of who they will become and what kind of citizens they will be – we see the future of our nation taking shape. Unlike many private sector jobs, our job in the classroom affects the future of all aspects of our society and economy.

Teachers are very much in the ‘real world,’ and some of us do find out sooner or later that teaching is not our true calling. Let’s revise the adage: “Those who can…teach. Those who can’t…have to settle for trying to make it in the private sector.”

School plays are exciting events, especially if it's the first one that your friends or relatives have participated in. Most of us like to capture those magic moments for digital perpetuity with cameras, cell phones, and video cameras. If you're taking the camera along to an elementary school event, you can expect that pretty much everyone else in the audience will be snapping lots of photos and that's just part of the experience. However, when those kiddos get to junior high and high school, the rules of the photo game change. There are three major considerations: audience etiquette, respect for the performers, and legal issues.

Junior high is where we begin introducing theatre as an art form -- it's more than just getting kids involved in the 'school play.' It's also about teaching them all the conventions of theatre, including audience etiquette. We recognize the unique quality of the audience being in the moment with the performers on stage depends on not being distracted by things such as crying babies, ringing phones, crinkly candy wrappers, loud conversations, people arriving or leaving in the middle of scenes...and the electronic tones, whirs and illumination of a digital camera being readied for a shot. That glowing LCD screen is a distraction to those around you, and might even be blocking someone else's view.

Junior high students have so many distractions in their moment to moment existence. We directors spend six to eight weeks trying to focus them and move them beyond those distractions to create believable characters and captivating stories...which they do quite well until they are faced with the reality of going on stage in front of an audience. The flash of a camera can take the actor on stage out of the moment and bring a startling reminder that someone is watching very closely. These young performers take on a demanding task -- they only make it look easy, that's why it's called acting. They deserve to have their work seen by an audience who is practicing what the students have been taught about audience etiquette.

The last consideration is the least popular and most difficult one to explain to anyone who is not in my position, and that is the legal issue of copyright. Face it, most everyone is baffled by the complexities of copyright laws. Let me make it simple: I sign a production contract that gives me the right to produce a playwright's work. I do not automatically gain the rights to reproduce that work in electronic or recorded form (it says so right on the contract and on the inside of the script). A representative of a publishing company told a group of theatre teachers at a conference I attended that the theatre director would be the person held responsible for any breach of that agreement. My school board has a policy that says it won't be held liable for any monetary damages incurred by a teacher in any legal matter. In short, people take photos or video during a performance I direct that get shared and discovered by a publishing company and I am the one who pays the thousands of dollars in fines and possibly won't be allowed to get any further production rights from that company. That would not only be a blow to my family's personal finances, but also put a crimp on being able to do my job selecting plays for my students.

So, if you go to a school play and the printed program has a notice or the director makes a speech that requests no photos or videos be taken during the performance, please take the request seriously for the reasons mentioned above. If you desperately want photos, contact the director a couple of weeks in advance of the performance and ask to take pictures during dress rehearsals. Offer to share the pictures with the director, cast and crew and you'll ingratiate yourself like you can't imagine. Besides, when 'the play's the thing,' you should be enjoying the show from a wider vantage point than an LCD screen or viewfinder.

During our school theatrical productions, I am usually backstage managing students. My assistant supervises the students in the booth running sound and lights, and so has a great vantage point when it comes to seeing what is going on in the audience. After opening night of our spring production, he made the following plea to our teenage cast and crew members: Tell your friends that they at least owe you the respect and courtesy to not sit in the audience and text while you are performing your heart out on stage.

I echoed the same plea to the audience during my pre-show curtain speech that night, and got a round of applause -- from parents, I assume.

Seems like we as a society just can't put the cell phone away, or even bear to turn it off. I could understand if people in the audience were super-duper top secret government agents and had to rush off to save the world on a moment's notice, or even if parents kept their phones on to be in quick reach of a babysitter at home, but let's face it -- most of us don't have any real life or death need to be in constant communication with the outside world for the time it takes to watch the average play. See, what makes theatre unique is immersing oneself in the experience of the here and now, which one cannot fully appreciate when deciphering the latest "hey wt r u doin?" message flashing in the dark. Not to mention that everyone next to and behind the person with the phone is distracted by the blue light illuminating that area of the darkened house.

It's disruptive! It's disrespectful to the audience as well as to the performers! And, despite what some people think, it really does interfere with some of our sound equipment in the theater (which I found out firsthand last fall during a dress rehearsal). So to those who feel they ought to be hard-wired into life outside the building they're in: stop and think about the moments happening in front of you that you're missing out on while you stare at that little blue screen. And have a good answer when your friend asks "Hey did you see me on stage when I...?"

The Spider-Man Broadway Musical proudly announced that it has a title -- "Turn Off the Dark" -- and it goes into previews January 2010. Say ....wha???
Yep, here's the official website: http://spidermanonbroadway.marvel.com/

And there it is...the poster in all its glory -- proclaiming the music written by Bono and The Edge and directed by Julie Taymor. Say it ain't so, Spidey, say it ain't so!! It's enough that producers on the Great White Way don't seem to want to bankroll any musical production that isn't based on a movie, play, book, or something that has intense marketing potential (must've taken a seminar from Disney or something). Now I have to look on in horror as my teen musical idols sell themselves out to one of the most unnecessary pop-culture adaptations of a super hero story? So here is my plea to them, in lieu of fan mail that I never sent...

Bono, Edge (and Adam, Larry)...I've loved you since that rainy day in 1981 when I defied my mom and watched some MTV while waiting for the school bus and heard for the first time that glorious sound that defined the rest of my adolescence and early college years. I defended you when everyone said you'd sold out during the Zooropa Tour. But to have it come to this? I'll just download "War" and "Joshua Tree" to my mp3 player and mourn for our lost relationship in morose silence.

And Julie -- you had me at "Fool's Fire." And the "Lion King" design still makes me weep every time I see it on stage. I was going to watch "Titus" but now...oh Julie, why? Why???

Look, I know that the two of you found "Across the Universe" a thrilling escapade, but couldn't your Broadway debut have been on a project more worthy of your talent? Something classic, something edgy..."The Tempest" or perhaps "Crime and Punishment"?

Wait...what's that ad on the right side of the Collider.com entertainment web page where I read the story of your demise? "High School Musical 4" now casting...

...Oh, the inhumanity...