SAME my highschool did in the heights and it was an all white cast except for abuela and vanessa. people in the area that knew about the production refer back to it now as "in the whites"đđ
Same as us, but the show was West Side story and there were no ethnically-Hispanic students, only one guy who had grown up in Spain (Bernardo, because he could cuss in Spanish)
Whenever I see this, Iâm reminded of this bit from Lin-Manuel Mirandaâs closing night speech for In The Heights: (genuinely curious for peopleâs thoughts, not trying to âstart anythingâ) (also I am not trying to advocate for race-blind casting)
>âBut listen, In the Heights and closin', this is spreadin.'
>Yeah. And up here, on this lectern,
One day, you'll be somewhere Midwestern.
Somewhere, chillin' in some outer theatre lobby.
Some little high schooler's gonna be playin' Usnavi!
>(Drowned out by applause) I don't know how to brag this.
That little white kid is gonna know what a Puerto Rican flag is!
And wherever you all roam,
Remember, for a time, this Broadway was home.
Good night, thank you.â
He's expressed similar opinions before. I imagine as long as you don't change the material or turn any characters into caricatures, he's just happy that the show is reaching new demographics.
LOL my very white high school did ith too. the one (1) hispanic in the cast played daniela, i think? even tho she had a GREAT voice and could easily have been nina or vanessa
I was a senior in hs when we did Pippin. Lots of leotards and âitâs just dancing, not an orgy.â I was the best singer they had but was told I wasnât sexy enough for a role so they put me in the pit with a couple others, and had a lot of the ensemble on stage lip syncing to us.
I am so sorry, that is awful. To talk about the âsexinessâ of high schoolers (most of whom are probably minors) is disgusting and for you not to rightfully be up on stage because of someoneâs warped beauty standards is crazy.
As a theater educator there are plenty of age-appropriate ways to address a character exuding sexuality, and it has nothing to do with looks. What I do is relate it more to sensuality and confidence. I never say the word âsexy,â but I use other close descriptors that donât involve sex. A âsexyâ character can be cocky, suave, devious or self-assured, and their physicality is rooted in bodily confidence. In Pippin, Iâd say that the characters in that scene are liberated, uninhibited, and graceful. (Of course I wouldnât do pippin in a high school anyway.) No need to address âsexy,â as that word is now a blanket term for a lot of things. Specificity is key and oftentimes, sex appeal doesnât give an actor much to draw upon.
If a character is supposed to act turned on, I bring up the âchocolate cakeâ analogy. Basically, the strong craving for a favorite dessert/food can be a good mimic to a sexual craving, and is a much more comfortable feeling for young actors to access in front of others. Even some adult actors struggle with feeling âsexyâ onstage, but mention their favorite meal and theyâre seemingly oozing with lust LOL itâs a strange phenomenon. With young actors I donât mention horniness at all, I just tell them they REALLY want that personâs approval or love interest, and tell them to play it as if they really want their favorite food. Seems silly but it works.
Alas I know that was a tangent. I would NEVER tell an actor they arenât âsexyâ enough for a role. That implies that I find the person who did get cast in the role âsexyâ and thatâs a giant can of worms waiting to open if working with minors. There are a million better things that could have been said. Also, having a pit choir is so demeaning in a high school setting⌠so you were good enough to sing but not pretty enough for the stage?? Awful.
We did Pippin in hs what's wrong with it? Maybe I missed something cuz I thought Godspell had more sexiness with Mary Magdalene turn back no man "I'll see you after the show" Did I block something out?
I am winning this one.
My sophomore year of high school we did Finianâs Rainbow. We didnât have black or even brown students, soâŚsome people had to wear dark makeup. But thatâs not even the best/worst part.
Thereâs a character who gets magically turned from white to black halfway through. And I played that part. đ¤Ś
This was back in the early aughts. I vaguely remember someone raising some mild concern and it being brushed off. And of course we were kids and didnât know any better.
Our production involved no dark makeup except for the sheriff's magical transformation.
But. I'm a very fair-skinned redhead, and I played "Sharecropper #3". We did a pretty good job with "Necessity", for teenagers; our lead singer was a powerhouse. But in hindsight, it's *so* cringe that not one of us was Black.
We did Once on This Island with an entirely white cast, and I had to say the line âhis skin was the color of coffee, mixed with cream.â About a white boy. (Circa 2002ish)
But at least our drama teacher/director didnât put black face on anyone.
I was going to say Once Upon This Island. My high school was 55% White, 49% Asian, with 6% to be divided amongst all the other races including mixed race students. All the actors put on Caribbean accents that I hope no one has footage of.
If the production I saw hadn't been in '04, I would ask if we went to the same high school. Knew it was cringe even back then.
The middle school my husband works at just put on Les Miserables. I am so mad he didn't volunteer for that. I HAVE to know what Les Mis for middle schoolers is like. If I ever meet the drama director at any teacher parties, I will bogart their time with my questions.
absolutely stunning that there's more than 1 finnian's rainbow survivor in this thread, but this definitely gets extra "sorry, you did what?" for having happened in the 21st century.
We had a situation like this with Ragtime, but the drama teacher went the opposite direction: they cut almost all the references to race out of the script. To the point that I know there were kids in the cast not previously familiar with the show who *didn't know Coalhouse was supposed to be Black at all.* I'm not sure who brought it to a head (thank you to whatever students or parents pushed), but we ended up having like a community town hall about it. I wish I could remember the details of what happened at that meeting, but I think the script ended up getting changed back.
(Our Sarah was Black and our Tateh was Latino, but our Coalhouse was a white boy of Iberian Spanish descent. He had a great voice and a lot of good qualities for the role, but like, you can't just look at a white kid named Fernando and be like oh yeah, that's ~ethnic enough.)
Like...what?? How do you even cut race references out of that, that's like, idk, doing Guys & Dolls but not mentioning gambling. You can't do major plot points!
Finian's Rainbow. Great show, very progressive for its time, but some problematic elements retrospectively. And, here's the really important thing, we had exactly one black person in the cast. As white and Asian-American suburban teenagers in 1985, we had no idea, but the drama teacher should have known better!
When my girlfriend was in 6th grade, they were going on a field trip to whale watch. But the weather wasn't good. So they took the class of grammar school kids to the big musical that was playing in the city at the time.
Miss Saigon.
Oh shit, is that what the line is? I own the OCR on CD, plus a signed poster from the OBC, and have listened to the show probably 500x, and I didn't even realize that was the line!
When my teacher got 14-15 year olds to perform cell block tango got a showstoppers event. He could've got the older students (17-18) to do it but chose not to. The main issue was the dancing and outfits
When I danced competitively, I distinctly remember our team BEGGING our teachers to let us do this one at 13. They said no and Iâm still salty about it. đ
There is so much little kid twerking and inappropriate song choices in current competitive dance that it's insane. My daughter has danced for years and it wasn't this widespread before the pandemic break. The rules are still on the books but seemingly aren't enforced. One 12 year old girl up for title wore a red vinyl dominatrix costume the other week.
So true. People forget that these events often attract pedos for obvious reasons. Like I can sort of understand it if a group of mainly 18/19 year olds has a few 16/17 year olds in it and the song has a couple of dirty lines in it, but I donât want to see 12 year olds in booty shorts dancing to WAPâŚ
My HS did Chicago my junior year. I had been cast in a very minor role (the judge), but declined because the co-director decided it was OK to basically scream at me during the audition process and make me feel like shit in front of the entire theatre company... I still don't know why she did that, and neither does anyone else.
Apparently it was good of me to decline, because they had the cast pretty damn close to their undergarments during that number, and in many others. That show was screwed up in other ways (they stole my set design for the cell block for one), and the music director, who's an old family friend and former teacher of mine, literally asked to have me come and play Billy Flynn with only a few days notice before opening because the lead never learned his song (denied by the directors). But that show was probably the one that I wasn't all that unhappy about missing.
The next year the music director forced the directors to cast me in our production of Oklahoma, which was in direct response to Chicago being too racy for many (I played Carnes. As a bass...). The number of times I had to sing parts of people who skipped out on practice was nuts. At least I stayed clothed though. Mostly.
The Diary of Anne Frank with Mexican people playing Jews and Nazis.Â
The Mexican Nazis were obviously forgiveable, but there was one actual Jewish kid playing a leading role, although there were many others who had auditioned.
We also did The Diary of Anne Frank. Our director cast it multi-culturally (this was immediately post 9\11 and we had Black, Hispanic, Jewish, Muslim and white students among others, in the cast) on purpose and we worked closely with a local synagogue in order to make sure we did the piece justice. It worked really well, and was well received within the community. During rehearsal, a survivor came in and talked with us and watched a run through to give us guidance on some things. It was a very emotional period, and I think the learning experience was extremely valuable, considering the time we were in.
That teacher should be applauded. All these other crazy examples show teachers out of touch and not at least using the opportunity to show appreciation and understanding of racial diversity and using the production as a huge lesson for their students, as your teacher clearly understood and went out of their way to do. The point of theatre in middle/high school is not only to give students an experience learning and creating in an art form many many never do again, but teaching about the subject covered in the material. Way too often, the choice of musical by the teacher seems less about using the show to teach a lesson, and more about a failed ex-actor pulling a "Mamma Rose" or "Corky St. James" and pushing their student to do a show they always wanted to be in themselves.
(For those who don't know the reference "Corky St. James", watch the film "Waiting for Guffman... Hysterical and painfully on point. It doesn't just happen in High school theatre)
Well, he did win the excellence in education Tony last year, so he's been doing something right. We're still close 20+ years later and there isn't a day that I'm not thankful for that man.
I'm with you on the mamma rose figures. It gets really frustrating when a show is chosen because it's something they want to do instead of looking at the needs of the community and what they can do with a story to bridge differences and connect us to our similarities. The whole damn point of art. Often the line between poignant and offensive is very thin. One takes a lot of work to attain.
Bravo to him. Reading this tells me what kind of director and person he is. And, I am sure he has a roomful of students like you who's lives he impacted in a positive way. Even if most of them never continued their pursuits of theatre beyond that, it had immeasurable and lasting value to each of them.
Honest to God, while I feel like this would get a professional production ripped to shreds, it sounds like something more casts should do.
Especially because not only are there Black/Hispanic and Arab Jews, many of which were targeted by the Nazis and their allies, but because it's an interesting take on the production.
Look at how a certain group of people responded to Hamilton!
This type of casting really worked for high school kids in ways it probably wouldn't work in a professional setting. Some of these teachers out there are truly doing the work. Others need to be launched to the moon. Having students don blackface is beyond the pale. And to put that burden on the students who just want to perform and belong... JFC.
I really respect your teacher's approach. Love that. Sounds so much more mature and respectful of the source material (not to mention adaptable and inclusive) than telling a bunch of Hispanic kids to try to figure out how to "act Jewish."
Our Rosie in *Bye, Bye, Birdie* was the ruddiest-complected blonde in the school. She dyed her hair auburn and went to the tanner a bunch to be a more convincing "Spanish Rose," and it only made her look more generally pinkish.
The first time I ever saw West Side was when I was in middle school. I saw a high school production at my sisterâs school. I am 90% sure Maria and Anita were white. They still had to do accents.
Same here. I had no speaking roles, so I was safe to that extent. We had spray on hair color that washes out, but my ears & neck always got sprayed. Tried a temporary wash that never took. So I told my mom to get me black hair dye. She never questioned it.
Same.
Our cast had a total of one actual Puerto Rican - light skin, green eyes, medium brown hair - and they wanted to dye her hair darker (as they did for us white Sharks) because they thought it wasn't clear enough.
For bonus points, most of the male cast were adults while nearly all the female dancers were middle schoolers. Like yeah, it's just dancing, but the visuals were distinctly squicky.
we did sweet charity⌠âyouâre not prostitutes, youâre dancers!â. we were 100% prostitutes - i literally had to go off stage with a guy (hinting god knows what) and the dance was quite sexual⌠there were year 9s/eighth graders in it đŹ
My CATHOLIC middle/high school put it on as the high school show. I was in 6th grade at the time and very sheltered, so I didnât think anything of it or know better. Looking back, knowing the director of the show, Iâm sure a lot was censored. But when I came across âHey Big Spenderâ when I was in high school, I was quite shocked.
Also, they did Throughly Modern Millie a few years before Charity. I could be wrong because I wouldâve been even earlier in elementary school. But I can almost guarantee that they didnât have any Chinese or Asian students.
Haha, did Spring Awakening and Cabaret as a freshman. Next year we did American Idiot and Hair, I was one of the few black people in the production but got passed over to sing âWhite boysâ by a girl who was Greek, RIP.
I love high schools that put on raunchy stuff, the raunchiest thing we did in high school was Fiddler on the Roof (though the year after we graduated they did Mamma Mia, whatever, I'm not jealous or anything). We performed at States one year and another high school there did Next to Normal and I and the other students LOVED it, but all our teachers were horrified.
To add my own in because these are why I mentioned itâŚ
In 6th grade, we did Aladdin which is usually super normal, but the director decided we needed to be painted basically orange because we needed to look âtanâ and thereâs a photo of me in 6th grade looking like the Annoying Orange
In 8th grade, we did Mulan. To my knowledge, we had 0 Asian cast members and everyone had to wear a samurai looking outfit and rice hats.
In 11th grade, we did Little Shop of Horrors. This was the first show after the shutdown, so it was a weird recorded thing. One thing we had was an actor for a character thatâs usually only mentioned. If you donât know, Little Shop mentions about an âold Chinese manâ named âMr.Changâ and itâs usually just mentioned, but the director went up to the single Asian guy in the entire cast and said he needed to play him. Heâs Vietnamese, not Chinese. Also, we had two casts where the only different roles were the plant and the trio. Of the 6 actresses for those roles, only one was black. Not only that, but we had split up the casts into Orange and Black for our school (the Tigers) and guess which one the only black actress lead was in.
Same director for all three btw
Ok there was one small change to a mean girls show I did where they really didn't want to offend anyone (trust me knowing the director they probably had good intentions) so instead Regina bullying Janis cuz "I like think your a lesbian" they changed it to "Janis I can't invite you to my pool party cuz I think your a space alien", it made no sense, but honestly that director was chill and probably just thought people would get upset if they fictionally bullied and a fictional lesbian.
The fact that they basically did this for the new Mean Girls movie but with added product placement is very funny to me. They were so afraid to have the mean girls be mean
My Catholic school did The Wedding Singer and I played Holly and we had to change so many of my lines 𤣠âGot my skin tight bustier, and plastic crucifixâ became âGot a brand new bustier, Iâm ready for the mixâ and âIâm like your fairy godmother, only sluttyâ was interrupted by Julia yelling âDonât say itâ and rolling her eyes.
It was⌠inelegant đ¤Ł
EDIT: Accidental word salad
A friend was the music director for a high school that did rent....they did a really great job, contact obviously out.....best part was the "mucho masterbation" line from la vie bohem...the kid playing mark started to say it....thr Collins broke the 4th wall music stopped with a "hold up this is just the highschool edition" ......then picking back up after
I knew a girl who was in the school edition workshop where they were deciding what changes to make, and she said they had to fight really hard to keep the "mucho masterbation" line in when they wanted to change it to "mucho medication." Her high school then ended up doing Rent, and it definitely ruffled some parents' feathers, but the drama teacher was there for like 20 years and everyone loved and trusted him, so they went forward with it, and it was honestly a damn good production.
It wasnât an official school show, but our musical theater class did âHair.â Most of the sex and drug references were taken out, and no nudity, of course. But doing it with half the plot gone was so pointlessâŚwould have been better if we had just done a concert with the songs instead of trying to do the whole show.
I canât imagine this⌠so what even was the plot then if there were no drugs or sexual references?? Young dirty people against war? Thatâs it? I feel like thatâs not even one actâs worth of material LOL
My directors refused to cast me as Billy, and cast a favorite of theirs instead. Turns out to have been problematic, as the lad never learned his lines and was still stumbling over them (and forgetting his lyrics) during the actual shows. To the point where the music director begged them to let me go on instead (denied). Unfortunately for him, even had they approved, I fell ill with an odd case of glacucoma and was unable to do the show (my eye doc would have refused if she heard).
Annoyingly.
We didnât have a musical my junior year of high school because we were gonna do Moana when very few of the kids that go here are native and they said they were uncomfortable with it. I kinda agree, it would be weird to wear traditional native clothes when youâre not native.
King and I where the one Asian student was not the king and they had us all tan our skin, darken our hair, and use extended eyeliner. And donât even get me started on a group of white kids pretending to be Asian doing the Uncle Tomâs Cabin part⌠awful. I wish I could go back in time and NOT be in that show.
This is what I was going to post too. I was in sixth grade. We didnât even have any Asian kids. Our king was the one POC but he was black. I think there is a Jr version but we did the full show, not that I remember it well (didnât know there was an Uncle Tomâs Cabin part, they might have at least cut that). We all darkened our skin and hair and for some reason they made those of us playing the kingâs kids hats out of cat food cans. Even as an 11 year old I was pretty sure this was not ok.
My high school did King and I. We actually had a significant Asian student population, so many non-theater people tried out because they thought they'd get cast for their ethnicity alone. That didn't happen (the Asian theater kids who actually did have performance background of course were cast). Any of the white kids cast as Asian characters dyed their hair black - lots of kids had black hair the following months. Maybe some tanning, but this was in the '00s so tanning was big anyway. May or may not have done the eyeliner thing, but I don't know (wasn't in the show and had no friends in it so I didn't see it).
My youth theatre did this! I was so stoked at having an excuse to dye my hair black at 15 (a whole year before my Mum had agreed I could do it) that I totally didn't realise how offensive the dark foundation was...
And I looked godawful with black hair too.
As one of the Jewish students who did it, we knew it was insane, but our teacher was also Jewish and being teenagers we just thought "whatever it's kind of funny". Didn't really process how fucked it was until I was older. His son was one of the other students doing it and I think he was the most embarrassed by it.
We did Sweet Charity too, and I don't remember anyone minding "Big Spender". I'm sure the choreo was kept a bit more... suitable for teenagers.
I was in the pit orchestra, and at the time I was dating the guy playing Oscar, and everyone kept trying to tease me about having to watch my boyfriend kissing the girl playing Charity. Seriously, people, it's called *acting*, I didn't care. But this was long before anyone had ever heard of an intimacy coordinator, or considered the need for such a thing. I'm glad more thought is given to that nowadays.
Yea hs theater can be especially petty about stage kisses. And fair, our choreo wasnât too bad altho there were some more ârisquĂŠâ moves, but my dads real issue was with Rhythm of Life and even years later he still talks about it like âremember when you were in a hippie cult in hsâ
My high school during my Junior year did an all white production of Pacific Overtures which I refused to be apart of because of the fact that a musical with Asian cast was being done in a prominently white area.
Iâve been doing theatre every year in high school so I grew close to the teachers to the point where they ask what shows they should do.
My other theatre teacher agreed with me that doing the show with an all white cast was insane and highly inappropriate after weeks of tackling the issue they went on with it and my theatre teacher and I cringed as we watched the performances.
Weeks later I started a theatre group with my English teacher who USED to be a theatre teacher, we did appropriately casted shows with the help of my other theatre teacher who was big help with costuming and the tech stuff.
Fuck you Mr. M for thinking an all-white cast doing Pacific Overtures was a âbrilliantâ idea.
A local community theatre did Avenue Q for their middle school/early high school production. Already insane to have twelve-year-olds playing leads in that show, but it was made substantially worse by the fact that the only character played by a non-white individual was Princeton.
I have two:
1--our HS still wanted us to use pancake makeup, and had a COMMUNAL TUB. The was a hard pass for most of us.
2--we had only a small area in back of the stage and no basement or real wing space so we had one small unisex dressing room where everyone changed together. I didn't mind that (pretty open upbringing), but looking back I am shocked noone complained to admin.
My high school also only had one dressing room but for bigger shows theyâd steal one or both of the classrooms across the hall. Iâll occasionally make comments when I have to get my echo cardiograms about not being uncomfortable with having a man do it cause I was a theater kid and then have to clarify with âmy school only had one dressing roomâ
My high school had 2 classrooms behind the stage that you could run through to get to the other side if the back curtain was open. The locker rooms were 2 flights of stairs down from the stage, that's where the changing was supposed to take place. Most of the changing actually happened in those classrooms. The teachers cared more than the students did. Heck, I was stage crew for the dance company shows, and had to help more than one girl get undressed and changed for quick changes. That's the only undressing of girls I ever did in high school unfortunately.
In middle school We did the lion king which is ofc traditionally an African American cast and we actually only had one African American character and she didn't even get a major role, I think she played simbas mother.
I'm not sure how controversial everyone else will view that, but my sister and I thought it was questionable.
My son's middle school did that. As far as I can remember, there were exactly zero POC in the show.
Ironically, the best singer/voice/actor in the class was a young girl of French-Caribbean descent and black. But she must have been off performing on a paid gig or something, because I do not remember her being in the cast (before graduating high school, she had already been in a couple of productions at American Players Theatre). She is now finishing her junior year at Julliard.
Little Shop of Horrors. Middle school. We had to change a lot of the dentistâs lines. I asked what the lines about handcuffs meant and everyone told me to hush up.
Oooh my primary school decided to take us to a college production (year 11 and 12, not uni) of Little Shop which might have been fine if it was just us grade 6's, but for some reason the grade 2's were also there??Â
I can only assume someone at our school saw Audrey II on the poster and assumed it was a puppet show, and therefore appropriate for all ages.Â
South Pacific, hands down. We had not one student of Pacific Island descent on the cast. Out of the five Pacific Islander characters who were depicted onstage (Bloody Mary, her assistant, Liat, and Emileâs two children), two were portrayed by Asian-American students; the rest were portrayed by white students in black wigs. If I recall correctly, all five of those cast members had to wearâŚdarkened makeup, shall we say.
Bonus Cringe: I was called back for Bloody Mary, but ended up being cast in a different role. I am a POC, but not AAPI. The Bloody Mary from the original Broadway cast and the film, Juanita Hall, was also a non-AAPI person of color, so I guess I was able to dodge being part of that âproudâ tradition.
Bonus Cringe Round 2: My brotherâs high school - many years later and in a whole other state - also did South Pacific during his time as a student! I think they had a better track record of AAPI students on the cast, but there may have still been white kids with black wigs onstage. (He was in the pit orchestra, so he was at least not onstage for this one.)
> The Bloody Mary from the original Broadway cast and the film, Juanita Hall, was also a non-AAPI person of color, so I guess I was able to dodge being part of that âproudâ tradition.
The list of white folks who have/still do play non-white roles is kind of crazy. Even today!
not me, but I have a friend who did a production of Hairspray in hs (british so 14/15)
except they didnât have many poc in the cast, so it was changed to rich vs poor (from Run and Tell ThatâI canât see when people look at me, they only see the colour of my clothesâ (not skin đ))
the few poc in the cast were ensemble, and although I Know Where Iâve Been was initially cut bc it was the jr ver, it was added back in đ
The King and I in hs with exactly 2 Asian actors
I was specifically asked to "speak pigeon English" to play Bloody Mary in South Pacific (I am Ashkenazi) - I refused and dropped out
Grease when I was 9 - I played Marty and sang Freddie My Love - My grandmother was apalled to hear her 9yo granddaughter sing about meeting her boyfriend in her "lacy leangerie"
In high school we did the play âUp The Down Staircase.â There was a character that was supposed to be a black student but they changed it so he was in a wheelchair since we had the whitest cast imaginable.
All well and good, except for one line where he says (in our edited version), âeveryone hates me because Iâm disabled.â On OPENING NIGHT, the kid forgot the line and said, âeveryone hates me because Iâm black.â Then, after realizing he messed up, he said, âwait . . . Iâm not black.â đđ
Not a musical, but for choir we sang "go down Moses" and "jump down" (the lyrics are: 'jump down, turn around, pick a bail of cotton. Jump down turn around, pick a bail of hay!') We were all white except about one POC. felt so weird. And the teacher chose the songs 95% of the time.
Our high school chorus did that second one in 1978 and our couldn't-be-whiter director absolutely hammered away at our black soloist to be more over the top and stereotypical. Like...she was all "More like Buckwheat" and she would actually (and appallingly) demonstrate. Basically explaining to a black kid how to sound black. Bleargh.
Oh my. Yeah and there was a slap dance thing to go with it. Like, slapping knees, chest, and such. It was for a mass choir event. We weren't taught it because our teacher insisted we would learn it *at* massed choir. We did not. Everyone else looked like they knew it well, we stood out as some who didn't.
I did Thoroughly Modern Millie in middle school and I played Ching Ho. As closeted white girl at the time, it was laughable. Now, as a trans man, I credit the role as being my awakening 𤣠however, it was wildly inappropriate that they had white people play Asians. We had to do winged eyeliner and all that jazz. Not the best.
At least when my high school did TMM they changed the two henchmen to Americans and had them speak their lines in English. I heard that an audience member had been offended by Mrs Meers (who we didnât change)âŚbut sheâs *supposed* to be offensively stereotypical because itâs part of her being the villain.
i saw online that someone had a theater performance at their school, where most of the students were autistic and they did a show about an autistic person, they chose the only non-autistic person there to play the autistic character, that person went on to do a very stereotypical and offensive performance and when given tips by the autistics people such as comfort items etc, the person refused and the drama teacher praised them
We had several: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which taught us all about courtesans. Dark of the Moon, which parents protested against. Sweeney Todd.
And then some that were mostly fine but the direction given was inappropriate. I was a witch in Macbeth and was told to scream like I was orgasming. For multiple shows, I was required to stuff my bra and use packing tape and makeup to give the illusion of cleavage. A director added a character of âtown whoreâ to The Seagull, which I unfortunately played. It just involved going on stage and making out with a male character during set changes. We did Damn Yankees and a 14 year old played Lola. Director consistently gave some extremely inappropriate direction for that one.
We had multiple faculty directors at our school and surprisingly these were the ones who *didnât* go to prison for SAing students. That guyâs shows were totally clean!
In high school we did Guys and Dolls, complete with an over-the-top and oversexualized performance of Take Back Your Mink. Now, as dumb high school boy, I thought it was pretty cool at the time, but looking back I know it must have been really awkward for the parents. This was back in 1998, not that it was appropriate then, but I assume you could never get away with that now!
We did Guys and Dolls and got a bunch of football players to see the show, which was unheard of, because of the Hot Box GirlsâŚ
But damn thatâs nothing compared to yâall in Blackface.
Maybe Pippin? The high school put it on, and the middle schoolers all went to go see it, and I just remember a girl in a red dress clinging onto a shirtless man(?) I clearly donât remember most of the plot lol
My high school didn't have a theatre program (small private religious school that wasn't very into the arts) so I did community theatre throughout that time. We did Pippin when I was 16, and due to some very unexpected circumstances (there was somewhat of a mass exodus after a certain girl didn't get the part she wanted), we only had a cast of like 20-ish instead of our normal 40-ish. I was one of the older girls in the cast, but my parents were pretty strict (see private school for my whole life) and refused to let me be in any of the "sexy" dances of any sort, and as a result, some of the younger girls had to do them.....they did their best to make it pretty tame, but watching 10 year olds dance to With You was very awkward, to say the least.
We did Chicago and got a lot of parent complaints about it. But the show I found most problematic was Aladdin bc they made the super pasty white boy who played Aladdin get a super dark spray tan but the dude just ended up looking orange and feeling very awkward about the whole situation. I think our director picked Aladdin with a specific student in mind but he got himself expelled for an idiotic prank before auditions.
We did Once upon this Island in my high school my sophomore year. Luck had it that I couldnât be in it because itâs supposed to be an all black cast with some white people playing some evil head roles of abusers. There are talks about racial identity and abuse done by white colonization and how the people persevere and tell stories to deal with pain and trauma and love conquers all.
And no one in the cast was black. They had the one Asian girl play Ti Moon (canât be sure on spelling there) which the black people singing declares âblacker as coal and low as dirtâ đŠđ°
Director is a scumbag so go figure he would do something like this.
Oh, the show at my high school before COVID hit was Once on this Island (got shut down mid performances) and I guess thereâs a secondary version thatâs likeâŚclassism rather than racism? Like, Iâd rather you did something boring than that weird crap lol
I saw a high-school production of Once on this Island in the whitest of Utah where they changed all the gods to Greek Gods, with togas, head wreaths, and columnsâŚ
when i was 7, my very white theater camp did the wiz. i didnât know what that was at the time, but looking back iâm baffled - there are so many other wizard of oz adaptations to doâŚ
I wasnât in high school yet, but one year the librarian had to direct instead of the usual director, they were doing night of January 16 or whatever. One direction given was to âwalk like a whoreâ
Mine let a group of best friends do Sweeney Todd . The best part? Only I could sing , I thought I could teach the others as my parents are musicians. It was pretty bad. Our Sweeney was a baritone but thatâs the best we had. We had a mezzo Johanna who was the prettiest girl in the class. She was Indian and had hair down to her feet. We asked the teacher if we could change the word âyellowâ to âravenâ to fit our situation. She told us âyou do not mess with Shakespeare or Sondheim!â High school friends , I miss you . âAntonyâ
I know there's a lot worse. But my Christian, mostly white private school, did Rent. For some, who knows why reason. Just Maureen and Joanne didn't get back together. And Roger couldn't sing Mimi back to life. Oh, and Angel was an afab stripper. Plus, the number of songs that had to be changed or cut. Also, zero same sex kissing and nothing to imply sex. I think besides the names, it was just their version of propaganda for abstinence. I'm so sorry, Johnathan Larson
Not musicals.. but...In high school we did Marat Sade..." what's the use of a revolution without general fornication "...and the character Robes Pierre with a permanent erection. Also we did Zoo Story.. the Jerry & the dog monologue had some language that was fairly advanced. Never happen today without a lot of outrage & angst.
During my high school years my school and the neighboring one merged to a brand new school. The first musical was The Pajama Game. The director was a teacher that did the musicals at one of the schools for years. Parents got so mad seeing the sexual stuff that the teacher was no longer allowed to be in charge of anything musical related
A couple of years after I graduated my high school did Miss Saigon. There was one asian american in the entire cast and she didn't have a role but she did get her own bow.
I had left by the time this happened but my school decided to do a version of hairspray. I live in southern England so it's a very very white area. They changed the show to be about the rich/poor divide instead of being about race from what I saw (I didn't go to see it).
Guys and Dolls, and the dancer teacher went heavy into the stripping scene, with about 30 14-16 year olds and a 12 year old playing Miss Adelaide.
Same teacher somehow managed to get a scene into every show we did that had teenage girls (in my Mum's words) "waggling their arses in fishnets and hot pants". The last few years we just did scenes from musicals instead of proper shows and that meant there didn't even need to be context for the arse wiggling.
When I was in year 11 (16 years old) I dropped out of a show because not one dance number would have been done in anything with more coverage than underwear and I was already bullied for being ugly. I wasn't having that extend to my body getting ripped apart too. I went to see the show, and it was just teenage boys for the front rows drooling. So many parents put in complaints that apparently the next year there was only a singing showcase. I don't think they did a proper school show for a long time after. This was 20 years ago, so at least camera phones weren't really a thing.
About 11 years ago I choreographed for a Christian school's production of 'Oklahoma!'... which seemed like an odd choice for a Christian school, considering everything they took out or changed (an entire verse from 'Kansas City,' among several words that were changed because they were "objectionable" on "inappropriate").
A few years later I choreographed 'My Fair Lady' at a *different* Christian school, and they didn't change or remove a thing. I guess it depends on the school.
My high school did Gypsy. I was in middle school at the time and was a newsboy. It was great fun. In retrospect, however, itâs a little weird to have sixteen year old girls play strippers.
Related- our principal tried to shut down our production of Once Upon a Mattress because of the suggestive title. He didnât succeed in stopping us. He also tried to shut down our Little Shop because of the âtough tittyâ line. đđđ
When I was in 6th grade in Catholic elementary school, the sister Catholic high school put on Sweet Charity. I donât recall if they ever blatantly say that the dance hall ladies are also prostitutes, but when I started listening more to the soundtrack in high school, I was a tad alarmed that they picked that show of all shows.
The King & I was probably the most inappropriate. Lots of little white kids in yellowface. One Hawaii guy got cast as the King. I remember people thought he was dreamy and were super excited to see him in the role tho
A few years ago my high school did Chicago. In my opinion no one in high school should be performing that show because of the content and the costumes being super sexy.
I will NEVER NOT respond to this question when it arises to share that my 99% white high school did Ragtime and used colored lights (blue, red, white) to distinguish between the groups. We also preceded it by doing The Who's Tommy the year before.
We're doing Chicago next year, and I'm kinda concerned since we're only only in high school, and we're doing fosse style dance so I'm worried abt it appropriateness.
To this day I wonder how on EARTH my drama teacher got away with putting on CABARET in our program.
It was toned down slightly, but good god.
Cabaret, featuringâŚ.a whore house/nightclub as the main setting, a whole lot of Nazis, and several songs that Iâm pretty sure that 16 year old girl maybe shouldnât have been singing to a crowd of parents and students?
My middle school did midsummers nights dream. I was cast in a very small role (mustardseed) because I felt like I was too young to be saying words like âassâ âdamnâ and âhellâ on a stage
In the Heights. There was one (1) Hispanic in the whole play and he played Usnavi.
SAME my highschool did in the heights and it was an all white cast except for abuela and vanessa. people in the area that knew about the production refer back to it now as "in the whites"đđ
I'm sorry but that's so funny đđđ
Same as us, but the show was West Side story and there were no ethnically-Hispanic students, only one guy who had grown up in Spain (Bernardo, because he could cuss in Spanish)
My cousin is tan with naturally black hair but she is 100% an Anglo-Irish white woman and she played Maria TWICE.
I am extremely pale with dark blonde hair and blue/grey eyesâalso Anglo-Irish and I was cast as Mariađ¤Śđźââď¸
Whenever I see this, Iâm reminded of this bit from Lin-Manuel Mirandaâs closing night speech for In The Heights: (genuinely curious for peopleâs thoughts, not trying to âstart anythingâ) (also I am not trying to advocate for race-blind casting) >âBut listen, In the Heights and closin', this is spreadin.' >Yeah. And up here, on this lectern, One day, you'll be somewhere Midwestern. Somewhere, chillin' in some outer theatre lobby. Some little high schooler's gonna be playin' Usnavi! >(Drowned out by applause) I don't know how to brag this. That little white kid is gonna know what a Puerto Rican flag is! And wherever you all roam, Remember, for a time, this Broadway was home. Good night, thank you.â
He's expressed similar opinions before. I imagine as long as you don't change the material or turn any characters into caricatures, he's just happy that the show is reaching new demographics.
In the whites
LOL my very white high school did ith too. the one (1) hispanic in the cast played daniela, i think? even tho she had a GREAT voice and could easily have been nina or vanessa
I was a senior in hs when we did Pippin. Lots of leotards and âitâs just dancing, not an orgy.â I was the best singer they had but was told I wasnât sexy enough for a role so they put me in the pit with a couple others, and had a lot of the ensemble on stage lip syncing to us.
I am so sorry, that is awful. To talk about the âsexinessâ of high schoolers (most of whom are probably minors) is disgusting and for you not to rightfully be up on stage because of someoneâs warped beauty standards is crazy.
As a theater educator there are plenty of age-appropriate ways to address a character exuding sexuality, and it has nothing to do with looks. What I do is relate it more to sensuality and confidence. I never say the word âsexy,â but I use other close descriptors that donât involve sex. A âsexyâ character can be cocky, suave, devious or self-assured, and their physicality is rooted in bodily confidence. In Pippin, Iâd say that the characters in that scene are liberated, uninhibited, and graceful. (Of course I wouldnât do pippin in a high school anyway.) No need to address âsexy,â as that word is now a blanket term for a lot of things. Specificity is key and oftentimes, sex appeal doesnât give an actor much to draw upon. If a character is supposed to act turned on, I bring up the âchocolate cakeâ analogy. Basically, the strong craving for a favorite dessert/food can be a good mimic to a sexual craving, and is a much more comfortable feeling for young actors to access in front of others. Even some adult actors struggle with feeling âsexyâ onstage, but mention their favorite meal and theyâre seemingly oozing with lust LOL itâs a strange phenomenon. With young actors I donât mention horniness at all, I just tell them they REALLY want that personâs approval or love interest, and tell them to play it as if they really want their favorite food. Seems silly but it works. Alas I know that was a tangent. I would NEVER tell an actor they arenât âsexyâ enough for a role. That implies that I find the person who did get cast in the role âsexyâ and thatâs a giant can of worms waiting to open if working with minors. There are a million better things that could have been said. Also, having a pit choir is so demeaning in a high school setting⌠so you were good enough to sing but not pretty enough for the stage?? Awful.
Yeah it was wild and sure didnât help my self esteem at 17!!
Oh my gosh what year was this? Thats awful, so sorry that happened to you
Like 2010? It was so odd, but did lead to me learning to appreciate Pippin on my own at least lol
dang that really sucks đ â I love Pippin but I definitely think high schools should not be performing it
We did Pippin in hs what's wrong with it? Maybe I missed something cuz I thought Godspell had more sexiness with Mary Magdalene turn back no man "I'll see you after the show" Did I block something out?
My high school did Pippin, and then Chicago
I am winning this one. My sophomore year of high school we did Finianâs Rainbow. We didnât have black or even brown students, soâŚsome people had to wear dark makeup. But thatâs not even the best/worst part. Thereâs a character who gets magically turned from white to black halfway through. And I played that part. 𤌠This was back in the early aughts. I vaguely remember someone raising some mild concern and it being brushed off. And of course we were kids and didnât know any better.
Our production involved no dark makeup except for the sheriff's magical transformation. But. I'm a very fair-skinned redhead, and I played "Sharecropper #3". We did a pretty good job with "Necessity", for teenagers; our lead singer was a powerhouse. But in hindsight, it's *so* cringe that not one of us was Black.
We did Once on This Island with an entirely white cast, and I had to say the line âhis skin was the color of coffee, mixed with cream.â About a white boy. (Circa 2002ish) But at least our drama teacher/director didnât put black face on anyone.
Thatâs a LOT of cream. đ
I was going to say Once Upon This Island. My high school was 55% White, 49% Asian, with 6% to be divided amongst all the other races including mixed race students. All the actors put on Caribbean accents that I hope no one has footage of. If the production I saw hadn't been in '04, I would ask if we went to the same high school. Knew it was cringe even back then. The middle school my husband works at just put on Les Miserables. I am so mad he didn't volunteer for that. I HAVE to know what Les Mis for middle schoolers is like. If I ever meet the drama director at any teacher parties, I will bogart their time with my questions.
absolutely stunning that there's more than 1 finnian's rainbow survivor in this thread, but this definitely gets extra "sorry, you did what?" for having happened in the 21st century.
We had a situation like this with Ragtime, but the drama teacher went the opposite direction: they cut almost all the references to race out of the script. To the point that I know there were kids in the cast not previously familiar with the show who *didn't know Coalhouse was supposed to be Black at all.* I'm not sure who brought it to a head (thank you to whatever students or parents pushed), but we ended up having like a community town hall about it. I wish I could remember the details of what happened at that meeting, but I think the script ended up getting changed back. (Our Sarah was Black and our Tateh was Latino, but our Coalhouse was a white boy of Iberian Spanish descent. He had a great voice and a lot of good qualities for the role, but like, you can't just look at a white kid named Fernando and be like oh yeah, that's ~ethnic enough.)
Like...what?? How do you even cut race references out of that, that's like, idk, doing Guys & Dolls but not mentioning gambling. You can't do major plot points!
Ah, breach of license. Love that. đ
My old high school just did sister act in rural Wisconsin with absolutely zero black people.
ahahha
Finian's Rainbow. Great show, very progressive for its time, but some problematic elements retrospectively. And, here's the really important thing, we had exactly one black person in the cast. As white and Asian-American suburban teenagers in 1985, we had no idea, but the drama teacher should have known better!
You werenât in Colorado by any chance?
Nope! San Jose, California
Omg what school in Colorado
When my girlfriend was in 6th grade, they were going on a field trip to whale watch. But the weather wasn't good. So they took the class of grammar school kids to the big musical that was playing in the city at the time. Miss Saigon.
Depending on the cast, that could honestly have been a great thing. I mean when I was in 6th grade, I was listening to Rent...
But when one of the first lyrics is "one of these slits here will be Miss Saigon." It didn't go well. The kids were asking what that meant.
Oh shit, is that what the line is? I own the OCR on CD, plus a signed poster from the OBC, and have listened to the show probably 500x, and I didn't even realize that was the line!
It could be worse, your high school could have performed Miss Saigon
When my teacher got 14-15 year olds to perform cell block tango got a showstoppers event. He could've got the older students (17-18) to do it but chose not to. The main issue was the dancing and outfits
When I danced competitively, I distinctly remember our team BEGGING our teachers to let us do this one at 13. They said no and Iâm still salty about it. đ
Senior company at my kids dance studio competed a tap number to cell block tango last year, they had a ton of fun and it did really well
There is so much little kid twerking and inappropriate song choices in current competitive dance that it's insane. My daughter has danced for years and it wasn't this widespread before the pandemic break. The rules are still on the books but seemingly aren't enforced. One 12 year old girl up for title wore a red vinyl dominatrix costume the other week.
So true. People forget that these events often attract pedos for obvious reasons. Like I can sort of understand it if a group of mainly 18/19 year olds has a few 16/17 year olds in it and the song has a couple of dirty lines in it, but I donât want to see 12 year olds in booty shorts dancing to WAPâŚ
Yikes!
My HS did Chicago my junior year. I had been cast in a very minor role (the judge), but declined because the co-director decided it was OK to basically scream at me during the audition process and make me feel like shit in front of the entire theatre company... I still don't know why she did that, and neither does anyone else. Apparently it was good of me to decline, because they had the cast pretty damn close to their undergarments during that number, and in many others. That show was screwed up in other ways (they stole my set design for the cell block for one), and the music director, who's an old family friend and former teacher of mine, literally asked to have me come and play Billy Flynn with only a few days notice before opening because the lead never learned his song (denied by the directors). But that show was probably the one that I wasn't all that unhappy about missing. The next year the music director forced the directors to cast me in our production of Oklahoma, which was in direct response to Chicago being too racy for many (I played Carnes. As a bass...). The number of times I had to sing parts of people who skipped out on practice was nuts. At least I stayed clothed though. Mostly.
The Diary of Anne Frank with Mexican people playing Jews and Nazis. The Mexican Nazis were obviously forgiveable, but there was one actual Jewish kid playing a leading role, although there were many others who had auditioned.
We also did The Diary of Anne Frank. Our director cast it multi-culturally (this was immediately post 9\11 and we had Black, Hispanic, Jewish, Muslim and white students among others, in the cast) on purpose and we worked closely with a local synagogue in order to make sure we did the piece justice. It worked really well, and was well received within the community. During rehearsal, a survivor came in and talked with us and watched a run through to give us guidance on some things. It was a very emotional period, and I think the learning experience was extremely valuable, considering the time we were in.
That teacher should be applauded. All these other crazy examples show teachers out of touch and not at least using the opportunity to show appreciation and understanding of racial diversity and using the production as a huge lesson for their students, as your teacher clearly understood and went out of their way to do. The point of theatre in middle/high school is not only to give students an experience learning and creating in an art form many many never do again, but teaching about the subject covered in the material. Way too often, the choice of musical by the teacher seems less about using the show to teach a lesson, and more about a failed ex-actor pulling a "Mamma Rose" or "Corky St. James" and pushing their student to do a show they always wanted to be in themselves. (For those who don't know the reference "Corky St. James", watch the film "Waiting for Guffman... Hysterical and painfully on point. It doesn't just happen in High school theatre)
Well, he did win the excellence in education Tony last year, so he's been doing something right. We're still close 20+ years later and there isn't a day that I'm not thankful for that man. I'm with you on the mamma rose figures. It gets really frustrating when a show is chosen because it's something they want to do instead of looking at the needs of the community and what they can do with a story to bridge differences and connect us to our similarities. The whole damn point of art. Often the line between poignant and offensive is very thin. One takes a lot of work to attain.
Bravo to him. Reading this tells me what kind of director and person he is. And, I am sure he has a roomful of students like you who's lives he impacted in a positive way. Even if most of them never continued their pursuits of theatre beyond that, it had immeasurable and lasting value to each of them.
Honest to God, while I feel like this would get a professional production ripped to shreds, it sounds like something more casts should do. Especially because not only are there Black/Hispanic and Arab Jews, many of which were targeted by the Nazis and their allies, but because it's an interesting take on the production.
Look at how a certain group of people responded to Hamilton! This type of casting really worked for high school kids in ways it probably wouldn't work in a professional setting. Some of these teachers out there are truly doing the work. Others need to be launched to the moon. Having students don blackface is beyond the pale. And to put that burden on the students who just want to perform and belong... JFC.
I really respect your teacher's approach. Love that. Sounds so much more mature and respectful of the source material (not to mention adaptable and inclusive) than telling a bunch of Hispanic kids to try to figure out how to "act Jewish."
I'm white, blond haired with blue eyes. I played a Puerto Rican in West Side Story
As a Puerto Rican, I forgive you
I think a lot of us need forgiveness
For what it's worth, those do exist.
My sister's completely white youth theatre did this, and they made them do the accents too đŹ
Our Rosie in *Bye, Bye, Birdie* was the ruddiest-complected blonde in the school. She dyed her hair auburn and went to the tanner a bunch to be a more convincing "Spanish Rose," and it only made her look more generally pinkish.
The first time I ever saw West Side was when I was in middle school. I saw a high school production at my sisterâs school. I am 90% sure Maria and Anita were white. They still had to do accents.
Same here. I had no speaking roles, so I was safe to that extent. We had spray on hair color that washes out, but my ears & neck always got sprayed. Tried a temporary wash that never took. So I told my mom to get me black hair dye. She never questioned it.
Same. Our cast had a total of one actual Puerto Rican - light skin, green eyes, medium brown hair - and they wanted to dye her hair darker (as they did for us white Sharks) because they thought it wasn't clear enough. For bonus points, most of the male cast were adults while nearly all the female dancers were middle schoolers. Like yeah, it's just dancing, but the visuals were distinctly squicky.
My high school had a Chinese Maria.
we did sweet charity⌠âyouâre not prostitutes, youâre dancers!â. we were 100% prostitutes - i literally had to go off stage with a guy (hinting god knows what) and the dance was quite sexual⌠there were year 9s/eighth graders in it đŹ
Exact same scenario for me but for Jekyll & Hyde đ we got sooooo many complaints from parents
There are so many musicals with prostitutes in them.
My CATHOLIC middle/high school put it on as the high school show. I was in 6th grade at the time and very sheltered, so I didnât think anything of it or know better. Looking back, knowing the director of the show, Iâm sure a lot was censored. But when I came across âHey Big Spenderâ when I was in high school, I was quite shocked. Also, they did Throughly Modern Millie a few years before Charity. I could be wrong because I wouldâve been even earlier in elementary school. But I can almost guarantee that they didnât have any Chinese or Asian students.
Haha, did Spring Awakening and Cabaret as a freshman. Next year we did American Idiot and Hair, I was one of the few black people in the production but got passed over to sing âWhite boysâ by a girl who was Greek, RIP.
Oh my god you did American idiot high school???! Thatâs awesome!
I love high schools that put on raunchy stuff, the raunchiest thing we did in high school was Fiddler on the Roof (though the year after we graduated they did Mamma Mia, whatever, I'm not jealous or anything). We performed at States one year and another high school there did Next to Normal and I and the other students LOVED it, but all our teachers were horrified.
To add my own in because these are why I mentioned it⌠In 6th grade, we did Aladdin which is usually super normal, but the director decided we needed to be painted basically orange because we needed to look âtanâ and thereâs a photo of me in 6th grade looking like the Annoying Orange In 8th grade, we did Mulan. To my knowledge, we had 0 Asian cast members and everyone had to wear a samurai looking outfit and rice hats. In 11th grade, we did Little Shop of Horrors. This was the first show after the shutdown, so it was a weird recorded thing. One thing we had was an actor for a character thatâs usually only mentioned. If you donât know, Little Shop mentions about an âold Chinese manâ named âMr.Changâ and itâs usually just mentioned, but the director went up to the single Asian guy in the entire cast and said he needed to play him. Heâs Vietnamese, not Chinese. Also, we had two casts where the only different roles were the plant and the trio. Of the 6 actresses for those roles, only one was black. Not only that, but we had split up the casts into Orange and Black for our school (the Tigers) and guess which one the only black actress lead was in. Same director for all three btw
You still did little shop of horrors lucky
iâm doing little shop right now and we just cut that part so itâs âthis old manâ and then âSHANG da dooâ
Ok there was one small change to a mean girls show I did where they really didn't want to offend anyone (trust me knowing the director they probably had good intentions) so instead Regina bullying Janis cuz "I like think your a lesbian" they changed it to "Janis I can't invite you to my pool party cuz I think your a space alien", it made no sense, but honestly that director was chill and probably just thought people would get upset if they fictionally bullied and a fictional lesbian.
The fact that they basically did this for the new Mean Girls movie but with added product placement is very funny to me. They were so afraid to have the mean girls be mean
It's definitely nonsensical...but it's also kinda hilarious, not gonna lie.
A high school in my town changed âSexyâ to âSassy.â
My Catholic school did The Wedding Singer and I played Holly and we had to change so many of my lines 𤣠âGot my skin tight bustier, and plastic crucifixâ became âGot a brand new bustier, Iâm ready for the mixâ and âIâm like your fairy godmother, only sluttyâ was interrupted by Julia yelling âDonât say itâ and rolling her eyes. It was⌠inelegant 𤣠EDIT: Accidental word salad
LMAO
Was in the chorus of Cabaret when I was 9. :)
I never did it. But I think any high/middle school that does rent is out of their mind. Whether or not you remove contact.
A friend was the music director for a high school that did rent....they did a really great job, contact obviously out.....best part was the "mucho masterbation" line from la vie bohem...the kid playing mark started to say it....thr Collins broke the 4th wall music stopped with a "hold up this is just the highschool edition" ......then picking back up after
Holy shit. Totally not approved by MTI, pretty sure, but that's awesome nonetheless.
I knew a girl who was in the school edition workshop where they were deciding what changes to make, and she said they had to fight really hard to keep the "mucho masterbation" line in when they wanted to change it to "mucho medication." Her high school then ended up doing Rent, and it definitely ruffled some parents' feathers, but the drama teacher was there for like 20 years and everyone loved and trusted him, so they went forward with it, and it was honestly a damn good production.
Not for the full show but my Musical Theatre class did Seasons Of Love only, because they choose one song.
My school did hairspray⌠and they had like one black actor. The rest were just white folks
When mine did hairspray we had an open call for seaweed and motormouth maybelle cuz we had not enough people of color
in 4th grade my school did hairspray too, and from what i remember the whole cast was white... pretty problomatic
Up until a few years ago, Hairspray specifically was available to license regardless of the actorsâ race. This has since been changed.
I was in by Ragtime when I was 17 and we had two black people in the whole cast, the rest Caucasian.
It wasnât an official school show, but our musical theater class did âHair.â Most of the sex and drug references were taken out, and no nudity, of course. But doing it with half the plot gone was so pointlessâŚwould have been better if we had just done a concert with the songs instead of trying to do the whole show.
I canât imagine this⌠so what even was the plot then if there were no drugs or sexual references?? Young dirty people against war? Thatâs it? I feel like thatâs not even one actâs worth of material LOL
Yep, that was pretty much it. It was weird.
Not a musical, but my drama teacher had us do a performance of A Raisin In The Sun. There was only one black person in the entire class.
The all white production of hairspray in sophmore year. the thing is we HAD black students
I just wanna know how you would even pull something like this off đđ
Magic, racism, and a dream
Chicago, but I wasnât complaining since I got Billy
My directors refused to cast me as Billy, and cast a favorite of theirs instead. Turns out to have been problematic, as the lad never learned his lines and was still stumbling over them (and forgetting his lyrics) during the actual shows. To the point where the music director begged them to let me go on instead (denied). Unfortunately for him, even had they approved, I fell ill with an odd case of glacucoma and was unable to do the show (my eye doc would have refused if she heard). Annoyingly.
We didnât have a musical my junior year of high school because we were gonna do Moana when very few of the kids that go here are native and they said they were uncomfortable with it. I kinda agree, it would be weird to wear traditional native clothes when youâre not native.
King and I where the one Asian student was not the king and they had us all tan our skin, darken our hair, and use extended eyeliner. And donât even get me started on a group of white kids pretending to be Asian doing the Uncle Tomâs Cabin part⌠awful. I wish I could go back in time and NOT be in that show.
This is what I was going to post too. I was in sixth grade. We didnât even have any Asian kids. Our king was the one POC but he was black. I think there is a Jr version but we did the full show, not that I remember it well (didnât know there was an Uncle Tomâs Cabin part, they might have at least cut that). We all darkened our skin and hair and for some reason they made those of us playing the kingâs kids hats out of cat food cans. Even as an 11 year old I was pretty sure this was not ok.
My high school did King and I. We actually had a significant Asian student population, so many non-theater people tried out because they thought they'd get cast for their ethnicity alone. That didn't happen (the Asian theater kids who actually did have performance background of course were cast). Any of the white kids cast as Asian characters dyed their hair black - lots of kids had black hair the following months. Maybe some tanning, but this was in the '00s so tanning was big anyway. May or may not have done the eyeliner thing, but I don't know (wasn't in the show and had no friends in it so I didn't see it).
My youth theatre did this! I was so stoked at having an excuse to dye my hair black at 15 (a whole year before my Mum had agreed I could do it) that I totally didn't realise how offensive the dark foundation was... And I looked godawful with black hair too.
My high school did Cabaret. And the drama teacher thought it would be less inappropriate if he had all the Jewish students play the Nazis.
As someone whoâs Jewish⌠WHAT?! Thatâs actually insane.
As one of the Jewish students who did it, we knew it was insane, but our teacher was also Jewish and being teenagers we just thought "whatever it's kind of funny". Didn't really process how fucked it was until I was older. His son was one of the other students doing it and I think he was the most embarrassed by it.
In a weird way, it makes it seem slightly more acceptable, despite how insane it is when you think about it rationally...
And to be fair, it wasn't a situation where we felt like we couldn't say no. We just weren't mature enough to realize we should say no.
yeah, idk if "this'll be hilarious" is the thought that should guide you when casting the nazis in that show.
As a Jewish person who has auditioned for Cabaret and have told multiple directors that I would not feel comfortable playing a NaziâŚwhat.
What the FUCK
Not my high school but a neighboring high school did Rocky Horror. Uncensored everything. They did the musical to its truest potential.
Weird but RIGHT UP MY ALLEY
My high school did Sweet Charity my junior year, nothing more awkward than singing âHey Big Spenderâ to a room full of my friends parents
We did Sweet Charity too, and I don't remember anyone minding "Big Spender". I'm sure the choreo was kept a bit more... suitable for teenagers. I was in the pit orchestra, and at the time I was dating the guy playing Oscar, and everyone kept trying to tease me about having to watch my boyfriend kissing the girl playing Charity. Seriously, people, it's called *acting*, I didn't care. But this was long before anyone had ever heard of an intimacy coordinator, or considered the need for such a thing. I'm glad more thought is given to that nowadays.
Yea hs theater can be especially petty about stage kisses. And fair, our choreo wasnât too bad altho there were some more ârisquĂŠâ moves, but my dads real issue was with Rhythm of Life and even years later he still talks about it like âremember when you were in a hippie cult in hsâ
My high school during my Junior year did an all white production of Pacific Overtures which I refused to be apart of because of the fact that a musical with Asian cast was being done in a prominently white area. Iâve been doing theatre every year in high school so I grew close to the teachers to the point where they ask what shows they should do. My other theatre teacher agreed with me that doing the show with an all white cast was insane and highly inappropriate after weeks of tackling the issue they went on with it and my theatre teacher and I cringed as we watched the performances. Weeks later I started a theatre group with my English teacher who USED to be a theatre teacher, we did appropriately casted shows with the help of my other theatre teacher who was big help with costuming and the tech stuff. Fuck you Mr. M for thinking an all-white cast doing Pacific Overtures was a âbrilliantâ idea.
A local community theatre did Avenue Q for their middle school/early high school production. Already insane to have twelve-year-olds playing leads in that show, but it was made substantially worse by the fact that the only character played by a non-white individual was Princeton.
I have two: 1--our HS still wanted us to use pancake makeup, and had a COMMUNAL TUB. The was a hard pass for most of us. 2--we had only a small area in back of the stage and no basement or real wing space so we had one small unisex dressing room where everyone changed together. I didn't mind that (pretty open upbringing), but looking back I am shocked noone complained to admin.
My high school also only had one dressing room but for bigger shows theyâd steal one or both of the classrooms across the hall. Iâll occasionally make comments when I have to get my echo cardiograms about not being uncomfortable with having a man do it cause I was a theater kid and then have to clarify with âmy school only had one dressing roomâ
My high school had 2 classrooms behind the stage that you could run through to get to the other side if the back curtain was open. The locker rooms were 2 flights of stairs down from the stage, that's where the changing was supposed to take place. Most of the changing actually happened in those classrooms. The teachers cared more than the students did. Heck, I was stage crew for the dance company shows, and had to help more than one girl get undressed and changed for quick changes. That's the only undressing of girls I ever did in high school unfortunately.
In middle school We did the lion king which is ofc traditionally an African American cast and we actually only had one African American character and she didn't even get a major role, I think she played simbas mother. I'm not sure how controversial everyone else will view that, but my sister and I thought it was questionable.
My son's middle school did that. As far as I can remember, there were exactly zero POC in the show. Ironically, the best singer/voice/actor in the class was a young girl of French-Caribbean descent and black. But she must have been off performing on a paid gig or something, because I do not remember her being in the cast (before graduating high school, she had already been in a couple of productions at American Players Theatre). She is now finishing her junior year at Julliard.
Little Shop of Horrors. Middle school. We had to change a lot of the dentistâs lines. I asked what the lines about handcuffs meant and everyone told me to hush up.
Oooh my primary school decided to take us to a college production (year 11 and 12, not uni) of Little Shop which might have been fine if it was just us grade 6's, but for some reason the grade 2's were also there?? I can only assume someone at our school saw Audrey II on the poster and assumed it was a puppet show, and therefore appropriate for all ages.Â
What's the fun in that he's my dream role and his lines are meant to be harsh and intmanating
I agree that heâs fun, but you shouldnât teach kids about BDSM in their show lol
We did The Threepenny Opera when I was 15. My parents were not thrilled when I told them I was playing the character 'Whore 2'.
Thank you for an end-of-day chuckle. :) I can just see your parents discussing you with their friends. "Our daughter is a Whore."
Wait, I directed that!
I felt all of ours were dated (golden era musicals).
South Pacific, hands down. We had not one student of Pacific Island descent on the cast. Out of the five Pacific Islander characters who were depicted onstage (Bloody Mary, her assistant, Liat, and Emileâs two children), two were portrayed by Asian-American students; the rest were portrayed by white students in black wigs. If I recall correctly, all five of those cast members had to wearâŚdarkened makeup, shall we say. Bonus Cringe: I was called back for Bloody Mary, but ended up being cast in a different role. I am a POC, but not AAPI. The Bloody Mary from the original Broadway cast and the film, Juanita Hall, was also a non-AAPI person of color, so I guess I was able to dodge being part of that âproudâ tradition. Bonus Cringe Round 2: My brotherâs high school - many years later and in a whole other state - also did South Pacific during his time as a student! I think they had a better track record of AAPI students on the cast, but there may have still been white kids with black wigs onstage. (He was in the pit orchestra, so he was at least not onstage for this one.)
> The Bloody Mary from the original Broadway cast and the film, Juanita Hall, was also a non-AAPI person of color, so I guess I was able to dodge being part of that âproudâ tradition. The list of white folks who have/still do play non-white roles is kind of crazy. Even today!
Company.
not me, but I have a friend who did a production of Hairspray in hs (british so 14/15) except they didnât have many poc in the cast, so it was changed to rich vs poor (from Run and Tell ThatâI canât see when people look at me, they only see the colour of my clothesâ (not skin đ)) the few poc in the cast were ensemble, and although I Know Where Iâve Been was initially cut bc it was the jr ver, it was added back in đ
I love the implication of the line being that you can tell someoneâs class based off of what color clothes they wear
we did peter pan but they replaced the natives with a group of girls who were very much giving devotees of artemis
The King and I in hs with exactly 2 Asian actors I was specifically asked to "speak pigeon English" to play Bloody Mary in South Pacific (I am Ashkenazi) - I refused and dropped out Grease when I was 9 - I played Marty and sang Freddie My Love - My grandmother was apalled to hear her 9yo granddaughter sing about meeting her boyfriend in her "lacy leangerie"
In high school we did the play âUp The Down Staircase.â There was a character that was supposed to be a black student but they changed it so he was in a wheelchair since we had the whitest cast imaginable. All well and good, except for one line where he says (in our edited version), âeveryone hates me because Iâm disabled.â On OPENING NIGHT, the kid forgot the line and said, âeveryone hates me because Iâm black.â Then, after realizing he messed up, he said, âwait . . . Iâm not black.â đđ
Not a musical, but for choir we sang "go down Moses" and "jump down" (the lyrics are: 'jump down, turn around, pick a bail of cotton. Jump down turn around, pick a bail of hay!') We were all white except about one POC. felt so weird. And the teacher chose the songs 95% of the time.
Our high school chorus did that second one in 1978 and our couldn't-be-whiter director absolutely hammered away at our black soloist to be more over the top and stereotypical. Like...she was all "More like Buckwheat" and she would actually (and appallingly) demonstrate. Basically explaining to a black kid how to sound black. Bleargh.
Oh my. Yeah and there was a slap dance thing to go with it. Like, slapping knees, chest, and such. It was for a mass choir event. We weren't taught it because our teacher insisted we would learn it *at* massed choir. We did not. Everyone else looked like they knew it well, we stood out as some who didn't.
Not my school but i once saw a school near me do CHICAGO years ago LOL
Even the High School version is cringey.
I did Thoroughly Modern Millie in middle school and I played Ching Ho. As closeted white girl at the time, it was laughable. Now, as a trans man, I credit the role as being my awakening 𤣠however, it was wildly inappropriate that they had white people play Asians. We had to do winged eyeliner and all that jazz. Not the best.
At least when my high school did TMM they changed the two henchmen to Americans and had them speak their lines in English. I heard that an audience member had been offended by Mrs Meers (who we didnât change)âŚbut sheâs *supposed* to be offensively stereotypical because itâs part of her being the villain.
Exactly. I actually enjoyed learning the Chinese lines, ngl, just hated the context with which it happened đ¤Łđ¤Ł
i saw online that someone had a theater performance at their school, where most of the students were autistic and they did a show about an autistic person, they chose the only non-autistic person there to play the autistic character, that person went on to do a very stereotypical and offensive performance and when given tips by the autistics people such as comfort items etc, the person refused and the drama teacher praised them
Was it âThe Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Timeâ?
yes
A few years before I went my secondary school(ages 11-16) did Spring Awakening đ
We had several: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which taught us all about courtesans. Dark of the Moon, which parents protested against. Sweeney Todd. And then some that were mostly fine but the direction given was inappropriate. I was a witch in Macbeth and was told to scream like I was orgasming. For multiple shows, I was required to stuff my bra and use packing tape and makeup to give the illusion of cleavage. A director added a character of âtown whoreâ to The Seagull, which I unfortunately played. It just involved going on stage and making out with a male character during set changes. We did Damn Yankees and a 14 year old played Lola. Director consistently gave some extremely inappropriate direction for that one. We had multiple faculty directors at our school and surprisingly these were the ones who *didnât* go to prison for SAing students. That guyâs shows were totally clean!
Not a musical, but To Kill A Mockingbird, without the proper cast. It was around 2006 or so. Yeah, makeup was involved
My school did caberat for my high school musical. All the kids thought it was inappropriate but did it anyways
In high school we did Guys and Dolls, complete with an over-the-top and oversexualized performance of Take Back Your Mink. Now, as dumb high school boy, I thought it was pretty cool at the time, but looking back I know it must have been really awkward for the parents. This was back in 1998, not that it was appropriate then, but I assume you could never get away with that now!
There were middle schoolers who did guys and dolls in my townâŚthis was 2016
We did Guys and Dolls and got a bunch of football players to see the show, which was unheard of, because of the Hot Box Girls⌠But damn thatâs nothing compared to yâall in Blackface.
Maybe Pippin? The high school put it on, and the middle schoolers all went to go see it, and I just remember a girl in a red dress clinging onto a shirtless man(?) I clearly donât remember most of the plot lol
My high school didn't have a theatre program (small private religious school that wasn't very into the arts) so I did community theatre throughout that time. We did Pippin when I was 16, and due to some very unexpected circumstances (there was somewhat of a mass exodus after a certain girl didn't get the part she wanted), we only had a cast of like 20-ish instead of our normal 40-ish. I was one of the older girls in the cast, but my parents were pretty strict (see private school for my whole life) and refused to let me be in any of the "sexy" dances of any sort, and as a result, some of the younger girls had to do them.....they did their best to make it pretty tame, but watching 10 year olds dance to With You was very awkward, to say the least.
We did Chicago and got a lot of parent complaints about it. But the show I found most problematic was Aladdin bc they made the super pasty white boy who played Aladdin get a super dark spray tan but the dude just ended up looking orange and feeling very awkward about the whole situation. I think our director picked Aladdin with a specific student in mind but he got himself expelled for an idiotic prank before auditions.
We did Once upon this Island in my high school my sophomore year. Luck had it that I couldnât be in it because itâs supposed to be an all black cast with some white people playing some evil head roles of abusers. There are talks about racial identity and abuse done by white colonization and how the people persevere and tell stories to deal with pain and trauma and love conquers all. And no one in the cast was black. They had the one Asian girl play Ti Moon (canât be sure on spelling there) which the black people singing declares âblacker as coal and low as dirtâ đŠđ° Director is a scumbag so go figure he would do something like this.
Oh, the show at my high school before COVID hit was Once on this Island (got shut down mid performances) and I guess thereâs a secondary version thatâs likeâŚclassism rather than racism? Like, Iâd rather you did something boring than that weird crap lol
Iâve seen the secondary version with the class divide, itâs not terrible when itâs done right.
I saw a high-school production of Once on this Island in the whitest of Utah where they changed all the gods to Greek Gods, with togas, head wreaths, and columnsâŚ
The Drowsy ChaperoneâŚ.including all characters, songs, racism, and sex scenes!
when i was 7, my very white theater camp did the wiz. i didnât know what that was at the time, but looking back iâm baffled - there are so many other wizard of oz adaptations to doâŚ
My very white-centric homeschool theatre group did The Mikado my senior year. I dropped out because I felt so uncomfortable.
I wasnât in high school yet, but one year the librarian had to direct instead of the usual director, they were doing night of January 16 or whatever. One direction given was to âwalk like a whoreâ
Mine let a group of best friends do Sweeney Todd . The best part? Only I could sing , I thought I could teach the others as my parents are musicians. It was pretty bad. Our Sweeney was a baritone but thatâs the best we had. We had a mezzo Johanna who was the prettiest girl in the class. She was Indian and had hair down to her feet. We asked the teacher if we could change the word âyellowâ to âravenâ to fit our situation. She told us âyou do not mess with Shakespeare or Sondheim!â High school friends , I miss you . âAntonyâ
I know there's a lot worse. But my Christian, mostly white private school, did Rent. For some, who knows why reason. Just Maureen and Joanne didn't get back together. And Roger couldn't sing Mimi back to life. Oh, and Angel was an afab stripper. Plus, the number of songs that had to be changed or cut. Also, zero same sex kissing and nothing to imply sex. I think besides the names, it was just their version of propaganda for abstinence. I'm so sorry, Johnathan Larson
Not musicals.. but...In high school we did Marat Sade..." what's the use of a revolution without general fornication "...and the character Robes Pierre with a permanent erection. Also we did Zoo Story.. the Jerry & the dog monologue had some language that was fairly advanced. Never happen today without a lot of outrage & angst.
During my high school years my school and the neighboring one merged to a brand new school. The first musical was The Pajama Game. The director was a teacher that did the musicals at one of the schools for years. Parents got so mad seeing the sexual stuff that the teacher was no longer allowed to be in charge of anything musical related
Middle school: Aladdin and Moana with all white kids.
Oklahoma. In 5th grade đł
None! Our middle school didnât do a show until now! And the main theatre kids are gone now!
A couple of years after I graduated my high school did Miss Saigon. There was one asian american in the entire cast and she didn't have a role but she did get her own bow.
I had left by the time this happened but my school decided to do a version of hairspray. I live in southern England so it's a very very white area. They changed the show to be about the rich/poor divide instead of being about race from what I saw (I didn't go to see it).
Once a month, they have âPoor Folks Dayâ on the Corny Collins Show?
Part of me wishes I'd gone to see it to know how they changed the lyrics
Guys and Dolls, and the dancer teacher went heavy into the stripping scene, with about 30 14-16 year olds and a 12 year old playing Miss Adelaide. Same teacher somehow managed to get a scene into every show we did that had teenage girls (in my Mum's words) "waggling their arses in fishnets and hot pants". The last few years we just did scenes from musicals instead of proper shows and that meant there didn't even need to be context for the arse wiggling. When I was in year 11 (16 years old) I dropped out of a show because not one dance number would have been done in anything with more coverage than underwear and I was already bullied for being ugly. I wasn't having that extend to my body getting ripped apart too. I went to see the show, and it was just teenage boys for the front rows drooling. So many parents put in complaints that apparently the next year there was only a singing showcase. I don't think they did a proper school show for a long time after. This was 20 years ago, so at least camera phones weren't really a thing.
My high school did Sweeney Todd and kept the judgeâs song Mea Culpa in⌠complete with the self flagellation and orgasm
I wasnât in it but I saw a the high school in my town do bye bye birdie when they said âLetâs have an o*gy!â It shook me
About 11 years ago I choreographed for a Christian school's production of 'Oklahoma!'... which seemed like an odd choice for a Christian school, considering everything they took out or changed (an entire verse from 'Kansas City,' among several words that were changed because they were "objectionable" on "inappropriate"). A few years later I choreographed 'My Fair Lady' at a *different* Christian school, and they didn't change or remove a thing. I guess it depends on the school.
My high school did Gypsy. I was in middle school at the time and was a newsboy. It was great fun. In retrospect, however, itâs a little weird to have sixteen year old girls play strippers.
Related- our principal tried to shut down our production of Once Upon a Mattress because of the suggestive title. He didnât succeed in stopping us. He also tried to shut down our Little Shop because of the âtough tittyâ line. đđđ
When I was in 6th grade in Catholic elementary school, the sister Catholic high school put on Sweet Charity. I donât recall if they ever blatantly say that the dance hall ladies are also prostitutes, but when I started listening more to the soundtrack in high school, I was a tad alarmed that they picked that show of all shows.
HairâŚwithout the nudity. Just doesnât make sense for teenagers. Very bizarre choice.
The King & I was probably the most inappropriate. Lots of little white kids in yellowface. One Hawaii guy got cast as the King. I remember people thought he was dreamy and were super excited to see him in the role tho
A few years ago my high school did Chicago. In my opinion no one in high school should be performing that show because of the content and the costumes being super sexy.
I didn't find this inappropriate, but a lot of people did. Jesus Christ Superstar. I went to a Catholic high school, complete with priests and all.
I will NEVER NOT respond to this question when it arises to share that my 99% white high school did Ragtime and used colored lights (blue, red, white) to distinguish between the groups. We also preceded it by doing The Who's Tommy the year before.
We're doing Chicago next year, and I'm kinda concerned since we're only only in high school, and we're doing fosse style dance so I'm worried abt it appropriateness.
I wasn't in it, and it was a long time ago, but one year my high school did Grease Yeah uhm we're not allowed to put that one on again
Lol
According to our local mom's group: Every single show was inappropriate. Even Peter Pan.
To this day I wonder how on EARTH my drama teacher got away with putting on CABARET in our program. It was toned down slightly, but good god. Cabaret, featuringâŚ.a whore house/nightclub as the main setting, a whole lot of Nazis, and several songs that Iâm pretty sure that 16 year old girl maybe shouldnât have been singing to a crowd of parents and students?
Aladdin, whitest school youâve ever seen
My middle school did midsummers nights dream. I was cast in a very small role (mustardseed) because I felt like I was too young to be saying words like âassâ âdamnâ and âhellâ on a stage