Modern twist to fairy tale
Published 12:50 pm Sunday, February 7, 2010
Truth, as they say, is stranger than fiction.
Plus, you can’t make this stuff up.
Once upon a time, in the land of Kirk, on the east side of Lake Washington, the principal at Robert Frost Elementary School, at the urging of several teachers, had directors of a school play remove parts of the script that they felt violated the school’s human-dignity and anti-bullying policies. The play in question: An adaptation of “Snow White in the Black Forest.”
The protective editing includes: Characters can’t make the “crazy gesture” by circling a finger next to their heads; a character named “DimWitty” was stripped of his moniker (was it changed to “DarnSpecial”?); characters can’t call each other “stupid”; no jokes about senility, orphans or short people. And a female character can’t sing about being proud that she is curvy. (That violates which policy?)
Kirkland’s Studio East says it has put the same show on at the school twice in the past without complaints. The children’s theater describes the play on its Web site: “Something has gone wrong in the forest and Snow White isn’t the only storybook character who’s lost, confused and not amused. This Monty Python-like musical pulls out all the stops as Dorothy, the Tin Man, Little Red and others try to find their way back home.”
We’re confused too, but we can be a little DimWitty.
“Our concern was that in certain instances, the specific nature and/or degree of put-downs for humorous purposes was excessive or inappropriate,” principal Sue Anne Sullivan told the Seattle Times.
Maybe the directors can set that quote to music and a character named, oh, “Grumpy,” could make it part of the show, where one of the jokes is supposed to go.
Here’s the elementary school’s namesake, Robert Frost: “Forgive me my nonsense, as I also forgive the nonsense of those that think they talk sense.”
As the school is well aware, if it is concerned about the content of a play, the answer is to find a different production — not edit the script. The school administrators know this because the director dumped the first play she proposed, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” after too many changes were insisted upon, the Seattle Times reported.
That’s correct. “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” UnWittyingly, a modern performance of that very fable.
Robert Frost again: “There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you can’t move, and the kind that just gives you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies.”
