Ok as a Theatre Teacher here's my two cents:
1st Jocks do like Theatre. Some of the leads from my Bye Bye Birdie this year were Varsity lettermen and they rocked. Jocks for whatever reason take theatre (mostly thinking easy A or lots of girls) end up loving it. Some of my most talented kids this year were in theatre for the first time and are now hooked and giving up sports or wishing they had prior. So I just wanted to defend them first.
2nd It's amazing what guys are willing to do to get laughs. So I wouldn't rule out Pageant or La Cage. I had a couple of very straight guys do some crazy things this year.
3rd It really depends on the school, administration and area what schools can do. My school is super conservative and we can't even say Crap onstage, but my friend directed Rumors and could say pretty much everything but the F bomb. His school is only like 20 min. away.
4th Most Performing Arts schools will attempt all the shows no matter what. So they break the mold as far as attempting shows high schools should not be doing. In some cases the PA schools shouldn't do them either...
5th Although regular high schools have alot of talent, most of us theatre teachers should be smart enough to stick with the normal stuff. I see so many bad productions of easy shows, that unless you are 100% sure you can pull it off...DON't. I'd love to do different shows, but thinking about the audiences is what we have to do.
A school did Dreamgirls a year ago. Scary. I think Avenue Q won't make it to a regular school ever. A student version of Rent is a MISTAKE and I'm very sad now about it.
Be the change you want in the world....