OK, so I actually attended the community meeting last night. At least based on what I saw, the community clearly favors presenting the show as written. Several of the students performing in the show spoke out against the changes, including the students cast as Sarah and Willie Conklin.
A small but vocal minority remain in favor of the change.. The vice-president of the local NAACP branch said (I'm closely paraphrasing) that the use of the N-word in a work of art delegitimizes it, and don't try to tell me differently. So, that's the attitude they're dealing with on the other side.
The school principal is still in favor of the change, and commented that in his opinion, using the N-word "continues to give it life." He said that he had contacted MTI to request permission to alter the script. He was asked what, if any, possible substitutions there would be for the N-word and his reply was that he didn't know.
I would say that there is a very strong chance the production might be canceled, which would be a loss for all involved.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
Updated On: 1/25/17 at 09:36 AM
