I think...- Page 2

[Type_A_Tiff]

Posted: 8/26/04 at 9:28pm

Eh. If I dropped $100/ticket, I'd still sit through the whole thing, even with kids. (Just cover their eyes and ears and enjoy!)

Isn't the tagline of Avenue Q something like "Warning: Full frontal puppet nudity"? How can you miss that?

Poor kids though - I'd be traumatized if a puppet that sounds like Ernie from SS was suddenly being called Princeton. Heh.

[Delphine]

Posted: 8/26/04 at 9:51pm

Ah, you've got it all wrong! Ernie is called Nicky.

[WiCkEd4LyFfE]

Posted: 8/26/04 at 10:08pm

You guys are acting as if I was the woman with her kids going to see the show. :) geez. I dont know if she took the kid out more than once, I didnt listen to the whole conversation. I do agree, if you are to spend your money, she should have done some research.

Updated On: 8/26/04 at 10:08 PM

[LadyGuenevere]

Posted: 8/26/04 at 10:10pm

No one's criticizing YOU, just that woman.

[millie_dillmount]

Posted: 8/26/04 at 10:11pm

Do the research.

[Ebonic_Singer]

Posted: 8/27/04 at 1:26am

I agree with the lack of sympathy. I mean, if you spend a few hundred dollars on an appliance, you research it and everything. You can spend the same amount a show and should do the same amount of research.

[InTheMoney]

Posted: 8/27/04 at 8:31am

Ah but it's like DRACULA. There's more complaints about the nudity than there are about the blood-sucking and murder.

[JohnPopa]

Posted: 8/27/04 at 8:41am

There's also a responsibility on the production to properly market the material, not just in terms of saying 'hey there's nudity' but creating an advertising 'tone' that helps people know what sort of show it really is.

But if you have pointless nudity in your show, especially a show that's a known property, you have to fess up about it at the beginning or else you're just going to piss people off.

[eyeonbroadway]

Posted: 8/27/04 at 9:45am

I am a "tourist" and I can easily understand a non-theatre tourist being oblivious to the "age appropriateness" of certain shows. If the thought was, "hey, while we have the kids in New York to see the Empire State Building let's see one of those Broadway shows...oh, look...here's one with puppets...and didn't that win some award?". I can see that happen. She shouldn't be mad at anyone, though, other than herself because it is a parental responsibility to determine what you're going to expose your kids to. In the cases of Avenue Q and Dracula, there has never been any secret about the nature of the content and even the most minimal amount of research would have raised the eyebrows of a responsible parent of young kids. No sympathy here. I don't know how producers are marketing Dracula, but Avenue Q has always been upfront about its content. She should have done her parental job.

[glitzguy3]

Posted: 8/27/04 at 9:49am

parental job? nowadays what is that? i don't think anyone even knows from the looks of it!

[eyeonbroadway]

Posted: 8/27/04 at 10:06am

Ok, Glitz you got me there...There doesn't seem to be a "norm" for what a parent's job is anymore...Not that there was ever a time when all parents fit a mold, but "protection of the offspring" used to be a pretty basic parental instinct and that included some level of protection from situations that were too adult for them to understand or deal with. That sometimes takes a little work and sacrifice. In this case, the parent should have worked a little harder and I can't help but think that what could have been one of those revelatory "theatre" moments, for a young child taken to the right show at the right time, was instead shrouded in confusion, boredom, negativism. God...it's still too early to be this philosophical!

[glitzguy3]

Posted: 8/27/04 at 10:10am

wow! that's deep!

bottom line, too many people are parents who shouldn't be.
i can't speak from experience, but i would think that protecting your child would be "natural".

[ChiChi]

Posted: 8/27/04 at 10:18am

I tend to agree. I would never spend money on a theatre ticket unless I had a general idea of what the show was about.

[glitzguy3]

Posted: 8/27/04 at 10:19am

EXACTLY!

i check things out before i go. why wouldn't a parent? it really bugs me!!!!

[Broadway Matt]

Posted: 8/27/04 at 10:31am

I do think the theatres and ticket companies could do a little more to make it known when a show contains "objectionable material". Not that they're at fault when something like this happens, but with something that could really upset people, it shouldn't be assumed that the public will be as observant or resourceful as it should be.

In a world where the blame is always someone else's, people need to be spoonfed information so they have no excuse when they make the wrong move. It's sad that with so much information available online at the push of a button, there are still so many uninformed consumers. On the other hand, I believe in a more natural approach to regulating what a child sees. If they are old enough to sit through it, I think they are old enough to be there. Anything over their heads should probably stay there, and any new words/ideas they retain are probably worth knowing. I'm glad to have learned my profanity from theatre and gangster rap rather than on the street. I may have been sent to the corner a little more often than the other 1st graders, but I had the satisfaction of having enriched the lives and vocabularies of my classmates.

[eyeonbroadway]

Posted: 8/27/04 at 10:57am

Matt, you're right. The "dumbing" of America seems to be happening at an odd time in history considering the incredible access to information today. And, I was pretty liberal about what I allowed my kids to be exposed to...but it's because I knew them, how I'd prepared them to handle things, and because I'd consciously decided to be "responsibly liberal" with them on just about any subject. I was challenged in that decision a few times...I distinctly remember driving down the road listening to "Evita" in the car when my 5 year old son piped up from the back seat with, "Daddy, what's a whore?" Anyway, I just feel that it's a parent's job to decide how best to encourage the postive growth of their offspring and that takes a little work. I'm guessing your parents were pretty liberal, too, and your attitude about it bears out that, for you and your situation, this was a good approach.

[Elphaba984]

Posted: 8/27/04 at 11:11am

Ok I've seen Dracula... and my opinion, I sat right orchestra toward the center aisle and you could barely see the 2 nudity scenes. It's not that blatantly (yeah i know i spelled that wrong) obvious. That's like how my aunt was a little "iffy" on taking me to see The Full Monty. I was begging and begging to see the show. Eventually she did take me. But I was also a junior in high school at the time doing theatre in school. We both knew about the nudity at the end (which you didn't even see anything). And I think I was the youngest person in the audience.

Posted: 8/27/04 at 2:37pm

How about a revival of "Oh Calcutta!" and by the way, it's not about Mother Theresa.