Inside Higher Ed reports on this week’s candidate for Dumbest Administration Ever: Arkansas Tech:
After the Virginia Tech murders a year ago, Yale University banned the use of stage weapons in a student theatrical production — infuriating actors and educators who believed audience members could distinguish drama from real life. After a few days of ridicule, Yale backed down.
A year later, after another gun tragedy, college officials are still trying to figure out how to make their campuses safe — and theater still is a target. A student production of Assassins, the award-winning musical, was to have premiered Thursday night at Arkansas Tech University, but the administration banned it — and permitted a final dress rehearsal Wednesday night (so the cast could experience the play on which students have worked long hours) only on the condition that wooden stage guns were cut in half prior to the event and not used. Assassins is a musical in which the characters are the historic figures who have tried to kill a U.S. president.
You know, I can understand it when schools attempt to imitate the things that the Ivy League does right. But, really, it takes a special brand of stupid to decide to imitate the widely ridiculed failures of the Ivy League. This deserves some sort of Andrew Burt Order of Merit award.
The best sentence in the article, though, is:
Adding to the anger of many on the campus is that the film American Gangster, featuring plenty of blood and violence — and none from singing historical figures — was screened on campus this week.
Scott Jaschik wins the Internet this morning just for that aside.
(The post title is a paraphrase of something a coach at a basketball camp said to me a long time ago: “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Those who have no fucking idea officiate.”)
Well, this DOES take place in Arkansas… Exactly what I would expect. Kudos to their theater department however, for TRYING to bring a little culture to a backwater state, where most of the adults ARE dumber than a 5th grader.
Time to contact Jeff Foxworthy and have him update his material:
You might be a redneck, if your state has banned Assassins.
No, it’s an idea of pure administrative genius to ban gun props from a theatrical production. I know everytime that I went to see the production of Wicked, I suddenly thought I could fly. I actually tried jumping off a roof a few times as a result, and who knows how many other people were afflicted with the same reaction? Therefore, the reasonable thing to do is cut out the scene for the showstopping song “defying gravity”. Watching Guys & Dolls makes me want to gamble, so maybe they should take the dice and money out of that production as well. And don’t forget to remove any mention of AIDS from Rent because so many people have and are dying from that. Pure genius.
When musical theater is outlawed only outlaws will have musical theater.
J. Daly,
I sincerely doubt that the driving force behind a freakout over the use of wooden stage weapons comes from a demographic known for having gun racks on their pickup trucks. But don’t let that knock you off your high horse or anything.
guns + singing = bad idea.
Paint Your Wagon
razors + singing = good idea
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
guns + razors = Indian Jones in Egypt
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Two for three in favor of guns.
This is coming from a University that has no free press. Every article is previewed and approved by the Head of the Speech, Theatre & Journalism Department! They do not report campus crimes. They do not report on anything negative about the school.