Teen actors moved by war denied a stage

Teen actors moved by war denied a stage

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/319683_amy14.html

Last Sunday night, as millions of Americans tuned in to the two Tonys -- the final episode of "The Sopranos," to see whether Tony Soprano lived or died, and the Tony Awards, celebrating the best in American theater -- actor Stanley Tucci (who played "Nigel" in "The Devil Wears Prada") was in an off-Broadway theater, the Culture Project, watching high-school students perform a play about war.

The production, "Voices in Conflict," moved the audience to tears, ending with a standing ovation for the teenage actors, still reeling from a controversy that had propelled them onto the New York stage. Their high school principal had banned the play.

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."

With the evening winding down, the kids were already talking about their next performance, this one at the famed Public Theater, another prominent New York institution, which will be attended by some of the soldiers the student actors play

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*Play about Iraq War divides school

Alison Leigh Cowan
New York Times
2007-03-24 16:46:00

Student productions at Wilton High School range from splashy musicals like last year's "West Side Story," performed in the state-of-the-art, $10 million auditorium, to weightier works like Arthur Miller's "Crucible," on stage last fall in the school's smaller theater.
Timothy H. Canty, the principal of Wilton High School in Wilton, Conn., canceled the production, saying it lacked context and political balance.

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30F11F63E540C778EDDAA0894DF404482