What's next for NLISD?

North Lamar High School just finished their production of "Urinetown." What's next for them? I predict that next year the drama instructors will pick "Rent." Rowlett High School is currently involved in a controversy over their drama department's decision to stage "Rent" this year. Those who want to do the musical claim that it is a play that "promotes love and acceptance." Ryan Clark, a Rowlett senior student said, "This society, including me, could use a lesson in acceptance." What the play promotes is acceptance of homosexuality and a deviant lifestyle. Other proponents of the production said that the high school edition of the play has less profanity than the original, and a song that was inappropriate for teens was removed. My question is, "Why do a musical that has to be edited for teenagers?"

I went out to the internet to garner some information about the musical. Draw your own conclusions.

"Rent" evolved from playwright Billy Aronson's desire to do a musical based on Puccini's opera La Boheme, but replacing Puccini's settings with the coarseness and noise of modern New York. Jonathan Larson wrote the music and lyrics. Here's a cast of characters from the play:

• Mimi Márquez, an exotic dancer with HIV
  Rodolfo, a poet
  Roger Davis, a musician who is HIV positive
  Marcello, a painter
  Mark Cohen, a filmmaker
  Musetta, a singer
  Maureen Johnson, a lesbian performance artist
  Schaunard, a musician
  Angel Dumott Schunard, a gay drag queen percussionist with AIDS
  Colline, a philosopher
  Tom Collins, a gay philosophy professor and anarchist with AIDS
  Alcindoro, a state councilor
  Joanne Jefferson, a lawyer, who is a lesbian (Also partially based on Marcello)
  Benoit, a landlord
  Benjamin 'Benny' Coffin III, the local landlord and a former roommate of Roger, Mark, Collins, and Maureen

Here are some portions lifted from the plotline:

• Angel . . .is a flamboyantly homosexual man who performs a song and dance number and sometimes wears women's clothing;
• Mimi Márquez, a nineteen-year-old junkie and S & M dancer at the Cat Scratch Club. She lives in the apartment downstairs and asks Roger to light a candle for her because her electricity and heat have also been shut off. Mimi also needs the candle to prepare her heroin, which she drops inside the loft and then employs as means to flirt with Roger.
• After leaving Life Support, Mark saves a homeless bag lady from being beaten by a police officer.
• The scene turns to a bed containing all the couples, with the implication that they are all having sex (Mark is absent), which quickly transforms into a frustrating and awkward situation for all of them.
• Collins arrives with money, revealing that he rigged a nearby ATM to dispense free cash with the PIN "A-N-G-E-L".
• Joanne catches Maureen kissing another woman and angrily stalks off
• Collins is heartbroken, and at Angel's (the flamboyant drag queen) funeral, he declares his undying love.
• She and Roger embrace, and everyone is touched and relieved as they are reminded of the fleetingness of life and reaffirm that there is "no day but today."

So from what I've read, the message is "do whatever you want, for tomorrow you die." Sounds like a really inspiring, uplifting message for today's teenagers, doesn't it? And remember, you heard the title of North Lamar's next production here first!

"Some parents want student production of 'Rent' evicted." The Dallas Morning News; December 6, 2008; p. 1B.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_(musical)