Wednesday, October 03, 2007

School District Halts Shakespeare Production

It was supposed to be a two-hour Shakespearean comedy attended by 700 Higley Unified School District sixth-through 12th graders.

But it was not to be.

About 40 minutes into the play, a district official halted the show Monday at the Higley Center for the Performing Arts.

"We stopped the show because we feel that this was inappropriate and not a kind of performance that we want them to see," said Tara Kissane, the district's director of visual and performing arts.

"There was inappropriate language and the content was very suggestive. I don't care what students hear on the streets, that's not what we believe in presenting to our students," Kissane said about the "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged).

Kissane did not give specific examples of what she deemed inappropriate.


Our Shakespeare was censored in high school as well. We never mounted a play, but the text version were cut, to take out the naughty bits. We were taken to Polanski's Macbeth, and our teacher almost died.

Read more here.

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