Excellent Amy Goodman article about Iraq war school play.

[MonteLukast]

Recently, a high school play, "Voices In Conflict", made it to the off-Broadway world, where it earned its teenage stars a standing ovation.
Lucky? Yes. But you could also say, they had nowhere else to go. The principal of Wilton High School banned this play after the school administration canceled its production:

Superintendent Gary Richards wrote: “The student performers directly acting the part of the soldiers ... turns powerful material into a dramatic format that borders on being sensational and inappropriate. We would like to work with the students to complete a script that fully addresses our concerns.”

And that's not all. Apparently you're not allowed to even talk about the war at Wilton High:

I asked the student actors about their opportunities to discuss the war at school. Jimmy Presson, 16 years old, said his U.S. history class has a weekly assignment to bring in a current-event news item, with one caveat: “We are not allowed to talk about the war while discussing current events.” The students said that they can discuss the war in a Middle Eastern studies class, but, they said, it is not being taught this year.

You can imagine the smoke of rage coming out of my ears.

But I just smiled knowingly when I came to this part:

After The New York Times published an article on the Wilton High censorship scandal, Ira Levin, the author of “The Stepford Wives,” wrote the paper a letter: “Wilton, Conn., where I lived in the 1960s, was the inspiration for Stepford, the fictional town I later wrote about in ‘The Stepford Wives.’ I’m not surprised ... that Wilton High School has a Stepford principal. Not all the Wilton High students have been Stepfordized. The ones who created and rehearsed the banished play ‘Voices in Conflict’ are obviously thoughtful young people with minds of their own.”

Hmmm..... "inspiration for Stepford", "Stepford principal"... ;-)

(From Amy Goodman's "War And Censorship At Wilton High": http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/54077)

[EFerrari]

1. Amy Goodman is a treasure.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. The story about this play and one of the high school actors meeting the GI he is playing, was on

ABC evening news either Friday or Saturday night.