<p>A local high school - known for presenting fabulous musicals - was going to do Sweeny Todd this year. The Powers That Be have decided that it is not appriopriate for high schoolers…so they are doing Sound of Music. </p>
<p>What do you think? Appropriate or inappropriate?</p>
<p>DragonMom, what is your opinion?</p>
<p>I think that Sweeny Todd would have been appropriate, and much more interesting than the Sound of Music, which probably more people have seen.</p>
<p>The paper said that the students voted for Sound of Music. I think it was a sarcastic vote myself. After ST was nixed, they wanted to do Footloose, but that apparently has teen drinking in it, so it was also deemed “inappropriate.” If I know HS kids (and theatre directors), I think they came up with Sound of Music because it was the most blatantly wholesome musical they could think of.</p>
<p>I’ve never seen Sweeny Todd, so I looked up the synopsis online. Oh my gosh. It sounds horrible! I love musicals - absolutely love them. But this one would give me nightmares.</p>
<p>I think it is naive to think that a high school musical is only for mature teens. In our area, the musicals are looked forward to by the entire community, and it is common to see young kids there. The shows are quality produced, and low cost, and generally fun. </p>
<p>Although I do think schools sometimes err on the side of caution, I’m with them on this one. There are dozens of appropriate shows available. Why does everything always have to shock to be considered good, or “art”? And why is “wholesome” always used as a bad word?</p>
<p>I’m on the fence, Binx. I was in theatre in HS and all of my college friends were theatre majors. They get so excited about the edgy stuff.</p>
<p>But we started taking our kids to the HS musicals when they were little. With tickets to the touring shows that come to Dallas and Ft. Worth in the $90+ per person range, it’s nice to be able to introduce kids to musical theatre at $5-$10 per ticket.</p>
<p>Sweeney Todd is one of my favorite musicals, but that said, binx has a good point about the community. While I think it’s fine for highschoolers, I wouldn’t be too thrilled about younger siblings seeing it. It’s got some very gruesome bits.</p>
<p>My youngest daughter has a good friend whose older sister was very into theatre. They were always playing the ST sound track at their house-I think my daughter had the soundtrack memorized by the time she was 7 or 8!</p>
<p>I appreciate this question – I can tell I’m going to be thinking about it all day. </p>
<p>I wonder, if one of our students produced this plot in language arts, would he be censored? Would authorities be called? Would it be considered threatening or disturbed? Killing. Cannabalism. I’ve seen kids called out for much less; in fact the VA Tech shooter apparently had written some stuff that wasn’t even blatantly about killing, but was enough to make some folks uncomfortable.</p>
<p>“Edgy” writing is okay only if written by non-students? (Just asking; not rhetorical.)</p>
<p>Hi missypie,
A “school edition” of Sweeny Todd has been made available with Stephen Sondheim’s help. It is rated “PG.” Many high schools are doing this production this school year. The major licensing agent for many musicals, Music Theater International, has slowly been introducing “school editions” with the consent of the author/composer/lyricist. For example, one of my sons performed in a school edition of RENT this summer, and his twin performed in a school edition of Les Mis. (This was at a performing arts camp and the audience age ranged from 10 and up.)</p>
<p>This particular school has done the school edition of Les Miz and was one of the very few schools in last year’s test group of the school edition of Phantom.</p>
<p>Binx, when Son was in 5th grade, he wrote an epic poem for a school contest…it was fairly soon after 9/11 and everyone was really on edge. It contained some fairly typical 5th grade boy violence…I admit that I didn’t allow Son to submit it - I was afraid we’d be getting a knock on the door from the police.</p>
<p>momof3sons, do you know what’s been cut from Sweeny to make the school edition? </p>
<p>Sweeny is one of my favorite musicals. binx, the synopsis would sound pretty horrid, but the show really is art; it’s essentially an opera. The movie version was very gory, but the stage version isn’t ( I saw the original (on tour) casting with Angela Lansbury, and the recent tour where the actors were also the musicians). That said, there is a huge emotional wallop at the end of Sweeny. That’s another reason that I think it’s like opera, or like a Shakespearean play: even though you know the ending, because it’s a classic, it still shakes you. </p>
<p>binx’s point about community is great. If the high school put on “Carmen” or Hamlet, no one would object that it’s not appropriate for high school students. But most people wouldn’t be bringing 7 year olds. Put on a musical, though, and people think all is going to be sweetness and light and easy-to-understand storytelling.</p>
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<p>QFT.</p>
<p>We never would’ve been allowed at my school, but we all would’ve leapt at the chance to do Sweeney Todd.</p>
<p>Sure, the movie version was gorey. This is Hollywood we’re talking about. The Broadway version really isn’t that bad.</p>
<p>I think ST is a really great musical…beautiful music, great plot, you never see the ending coming. It’s like Slithey said…not every musical is sunshine and rainbows and puppies. What about Chicago, RENT, Assassins…the list goes on.</p>
<p>I think the school not allowing Sweeney Todd is really a shame. I understand some desire to put on musicals that the whole community might enjoy, people of all ages. But I happen to think this show is appropriate for high school kids to be putting on and it really should be about the participants. I also don’t like the idea of limiting what theater pieces are OK and which are not as that is a slippery slope and where do you draw the line? I would want my kids exposed to all the musicals that are out there and not have any limitations (same with books). </p>
<p>Sweeney Todd happens to be one of my daughter’s favorite musicals and has been from a young age. She also loves Sondheim and studied him extensively in elementary school and high school (independent projects/papers) I am grateful that my daughter went to a theater camp that did not stick to all the happy, safe musicals that are commonly thought of as ones kids should put on (Annie, Sound of Music, Oliver, etc). In fact, I have seen them stage Sweeney Todd many times during her 8 summers there (they put on 39 full scale productions per summer). They put on the full scale Sweeney before this new HS version came out. As a matter of fact, my daughter’s theater camp was the one to develop/workshop the school edition of Sweeney Todd in 2007 and also the workshop/first production of the school edition of RENT (all in conjunction with MTI). They put on many musicals that are not “kiddie fare”…examples: Jekyll and Hyde, Carrie, Nine, RENT, Assassins, Merrily We Roll Along, Follies, Chicago, Cabaret, Miss Saigon, Sweeney Todd, The Wild Party, Mack and Mabel, Bat Boy, and so on. </p>
<p>At our own HS, after a production of Cabaret, and some uproar in the community over the costumes (where WERE inappropriate), the school started moving into “safer” shows…Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Into the Woods, Wizard of Oz, Guys and Dolls, Oklahoma (all good musicals but obviously a shift). So, I am very grateful for the shows and roles my daughter got to do at her theater camp. And I am really glad that she also was exposed to the great works of musical theater and not just pre-selected ones deemed right for her age. My child loved RENT from a very very young age and knew every word of it and studied it and wrote extensive papers on it in elementary school. Exposing children to the great works of musical theater is a positive thing, in my opinion. </p>
<p>In any case, MTI now has even created the high school versions of some of these works (though her camp put some of these on in the full scale versions). I am truly against high schools outlawing certain shows (I have heard of one high school that outlawed The Crucible and another that outlawed La Cage Aux Folles).</p>
<p>Is it really any worse than the typical Shakespeare tragedies and historical plays that are required reading in most high schools? The body count gets pretty high in Macbeth and several of the other historical plays, Hamlet is just as bloody and adds themes of suicide and incest, we have children murdered in Richard III, we get murder, teen suicide and premarital sex in Romeo and Juliet, and more murder and suicide in Lear, after all.</p>
<p>Agree with you BassDad. The themes and actions in Sweeney Todd are not that different than those in some of the great works of literature read in HS. I am not into censoring this stuff at all in school.</p>
<p>To stray off topic a bit, is anyone aware of a college ever doing Equus with the nudity? Back in the day, my school did it and while they didn’t get naked for the auditions, they told the students trying out for the male and female part to be prepared to be nude for the rehearsals/ performance. After they cast it but before they got very far along in the rehearsals, someone official said, “Hey, this is a State school and the State does not want nudity on stage.” So they pantomimed the clothes taking off part.</p>
<p>Is that still what happens with that show at the college level? (Yes, I know about Harry Potter…)</p>
<p>I don’t know about Equus (my daughter just saw it this past weekend on Broadway with Daniel Radcliffe). However, my daughter’s college does put on shows with nudity (have not done Equus while she has been there). My daughter was nude on stage in a musical last winter, in fact…a new musical so you will not recognize the name of it. They also did Hair and Full Monty, both with nudity. It is not a state school.</p>
<p>I saw a Rollins College production of Equus last year. It included male and female full frontal nudity just like occurred in the professional production I’d seen at the Kennedy Center 30 years ago.</p>
<p>Musical choice: audiences count. Attendance at S’s high school musicals was sold out for Sound of Music, so-so for Into the Woods and pretty sparse for A Little Night Music, despite the high-quality of the production. He loved doing the Sondheim shows (maybe because he had big parts! and the music is interesting to learn and perform) but the audiences didn’t react the same way that they did with SOM. And there were few little kids. Makes a big difference. This year they are doing Grease (I hate Grease!) to get back the crowds.</p>
<p>The school does Shakespeare every year, and plays that lend themselves to active staging–The Tempest, Macbeth, Taming–do much better than the shows with more talking (Measure for Measure, for example). That’s life. I have to admit that I liked The Tempest and Macbeth better than Measure.</p>