Remember all the wrangling it took to get administrators at Orange County’s Corona Del Mar High School to let students stage Rent? And how, when they finally did, America’s leading comedy troupe
Westboro Baptist picked the thing? Well another high school, this time in Kansas, is putting on Rent — which deals with gays and AIDS and lighting candles — and guess who plans to show up?
Westboro!
The drama club at Shawnee Mission North High School will be performing Rent this week, but first it’ll have to say hello to Fred Phelps & Co., their Kansas neighbors.
Jeez, if you want to see it that bad, Westboro, we’re sure there are still tickets available.
How about we take this to the next level?
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(Video report here.)
alan brickman
hopefully the students will show up in boas and picket him!!
Nickadoo
FYI, in related news, I received a Facebook message yesterday from the Corona del Mar High School “Save Rent” page yesterday. This was the content of the message:
RON MARTIN, DIRECTOR OF “RENT” NEEDS OUR HELP!!!
Ron Martin, the director who fought so hard to put on Corona del Mar High School’s award-winning production of “Rent,” is now being retaliated against by the Newport-Mesa Unified School District and received notice today (Oct 20, 2009) that he can no longer go on campus or speak with students. The timing on this is significant for two reasons. First, this week was to be the first official meeting of the school’s brand new Gay Straight Alliance (GSA)–a social and support group for kids who are gay/questioning or kids that care about protecting and supporting friends who are gay. Mr. Martin is the group’s faculty advisor and, without him, it will not be able to meet. Second, now that the ACLU lawsuit has been settled, Mr. Martin is vulnerable to the school’s retaliation for putting on “Rent” and for his efforts on behalf of the gay students and women students at the school. Ron Martin has been creating a safe and creative place for students for years in a school that is famously and dangerously homophobic and misogynistic. We need to flood the school and district phone lines and email with complaints and DEMAND THAT RON MARTIN BE RESTORED TO HIS POSITION AS CORONA DEL MAR HIGH THEATRE DIRECTOR AND GSA ADVISOR IMMEDIATELY. Newport-Mesa Superintendent Jeffrey Hubbard can be reached here, [email protected] or 714-424-5033. Corona del Mar High Principal Tim Bryant can be reached here, 714-424-5000.
Greg
SM North is in the same school district in the Kansas City suburbs as the high school (SM East) that had a gay homecoming king and where hundreds and hundreds of students and parents turned out to counter-protest Phelps. Kansans are used to (yet still embarrassed by) Phelps at this point.
Really, if you’re doing any sort of art/theater, a Phelps protest is simply de rigueur.
chillax
Ooh, I wish I grew up in the heartland and had the chance to put on one of these shows. As it happened, here in NYC at least, the most controversial thing I remember in school was when Mr. Bachman got busted giving students pot and alcohol at his Murray Hill house party back in 98. Don’t go crazy guys, it was only bud lite. But the pot was ok. Heh, those were the days.
Cody
When are Fred Phelps and Anne Coulter going to make babies? It just seems like the only logical thing left for either of them to do…..
Cody
And by logical I mean “holy shit homos, get in your bunkers! The spawn of Satan hath cometh!”
terrwill
Did you all know that Fred’s Grandson Jacob is GAY!!!!