I was in Toronto for the weekend (more on this later) and will send off just a very quick post to tide y'all over until this evening.
At Yale, home to ostensibly the best theatre training program in the country, administrators have banned the presence of weapons onstage.
Never mind that most -- if not all -- stage weaponry is fake and cannot be used to maim or kill anyone (though if you drop one of those fake broadswords on your toes, it really hurts).
Here's the beginning of the article from Inside Higher Ed:
It was six hours before opening night. Sarah Holdren, director of a Yale University student production, had just entered the theater for a routine pre-performance errand when the man who runs the hall gave her an update: In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, a Yale administrator decided that she didn’t want any weapons used or portrayed during theatrical productions.
Please read the entire article here.
And if you're at Yale and thinking about recycling some of those wooden or aluminum weapons, please... um... don't bother. Because if you happen to be brown and Asian, people might think that you are a terrorist trying to put a bomb in with the newspapers and soda cans. (Yes, this really happened at a school in Pennsylvania.)
As I've stated recently, we aren't doing a very good job of teaching -- or practicing -- critical thought these days.
1 comment:
Oh yes, the answer is clearly to ban fake weapons instead of real ones. Brilliant!
Meanwhile the NRA will ensure that real weapons are available to anyone who wants it... So at Yale, you can't brandish a fake weapon, but you can walk into New Haven and buy a real one... so ridiculous!!!
Post a Comment