NAU's 2011-2012 Theatre Season

Dear Readers,

Well, another college school year has arrived, and with it has come Northern Arizona University's 2011-2012 Theater season. I criticized last years' plays in this post. And now in this post- you guessed it- I'm going to criticize this season's plays. Here's the list of the plays they're going to do followed by my biased, Christian, judgmental, and politically conservative thoughts:

The Two Gentelmen of Verona: The Musical, adapted by John Guare & Mel Shapiro, based on the play by William Shakespeare

Shakespeare set to rock and roll. I guess that's cool. I don't have much to say about this play, but I want to make the observation that William Shakespeare is a pillar of Western Civilization, and this play seems to put a few cracks in that pillar. Instead of doing a Shakespeare play in a traditional, respectful production style, (you know, tights, capes, swords, corsets for the ladies) NAU has chosen to do a modern, messed-up version of Shakespeare.

The modern liberal University seems to have a love-hate relationship with William Shakespeare. Academicians love him because he's such a gold mine of great literature. They can't deny his skill, his genius, and his enduring popularity. But they hate him because they hate Western Civilization. You see, the more college professors read Shakespeare and talk about Shakespeare and teach Shakespeare, the more they perpetuate the greatness, or at least the influence, of Western Civilization, of dead white men. Some scholars satisfy both their desire to study great literature and their desire to bash dead white men by teaching Shakespeare in disturbing new ways. For example, they teach The Tempest from a postcolonial view, and they teach The Merchant of Venice from a homosexual view.

Nickle and Dimed by Joan Holden, based on the book by Barbara Ehrenreich.

This is the play I have the most to complain about. The woman who wrote the book that the play is based on, Barbara Ehrenteich, is married to a union organizer, she's worked with ACORN, the SEIU, and is really really concerned with gender inequality and economic inequality. In short, she's a threat to good Republicans everywhere.

Gee whiz.

Last year the theater department brought on lefty lefty leftist left-winger Luis Valdez. They had him bash Sheriff Joe and bash Republicans and bash SB 1070, and they had him talk a little bit about theater, too. This year they're producing a play, Nickle and Dimed, that's straight-up communist propaganda.

What's going on? Is anyone criticizing the theater department's hyper-political, hyper-liberal play selection but me? There's a bunch of young, impressionable college students (not to mention publicly-subsidized college students) who are genuinely interested in theater. They arrive at NAU's doorstep eager for knowledge, eager for direction, eager for enlightenment, and what do they find lurking behind the theater's dark curtains? Leftist political indoctrination! Moral degradation!

These 18-year-olds and 19-year-olds want to be actors, they want to be directors, they want careers. They're not paying tens of thousands of dollars in tuition and fees to be indoctrinated with liberalism! The Theater Department might as well host an Occupy Flagstaff rally, inspired by the stupid and dangerous Occupy Wall Street movement. The professors might as well make the students chant "Income Equality Now" at the steps of Flagstaff city hall!

The production of Nickle and Dimed is an outrage. America is the greatest country on Earth. There is more social mobility here than anywhere else. There are more opportunities to fulfill your dreams here than in any other country. This is a blessed land, and to have cowardly theater professors produce anti-American plays while coolly sipping lattes and enjoying their cozy tenure infuriates me. I encourage anybody reading this to write a letter to the NAU Theatre department voicing your concerns with the play's controversial content. You can send a letter to: Department of Theatre / PO Box 6040 / Building 37/Room 120 / Flagstaff, Arizona 86011. Or you can email them at Theatre@nau.edu Your voice, small though it may be, can make a difference.

A Bonus Project - Puppets

I have no idea what they're going to do with puppets... but even a socially/fiscally/national defense conservative like myself has to admit... puppets are pretty cool. I'd pay to see this show. Hopefully the puppets will recite the Lord's Prayer and/or Paul Revere's Ride by Longfellow. But it's more likely that the folks who pull the strings will put on a interpretive dance inspired by the Communist Manifesto.

Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel

I've never heard of this play before, (which isn't surprising because I'm an uncultured factory-working suburbanite these days) but I learned from reading the blurb that the play is set in Ireland. Is it just me, or does the NAU theater department have a preoccupation with Ireland? Check this out. The department recently produced The Cripple of Inishmaan, which was a dark Irish play about sad dark Irish people, a woman on the faculty is named Darby, another woman on the faculty has a last name that starts with the letters "M" and "c," which are immediately followed by a capitol letter, and now here we find that the NAU theatre department fixation with all things Irish has not yet been satiated. They're doing another play set in Ireland.

I wanted to get an idea of the moral content of this play, so I could pass the information on to you, my dear readers, so I went to a website called "Movieguide: the family guide to movies and entertainment," which is a movie-review site from a Christian perspective, and I found a review for a film adaption of Dancing at Lughnasa. I found this:

"Mild Christian worldview with Christian prayers & familial love, but strong anti-Christian content including an insane priest who loves African pagan practices & a bitter, puritanical home leader"

I won't be seeing what other "strong anti-Christian content" the play has to offer, fortunately, since I will not be attending the play.

Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring

Now here's a great play the whole family can enjoy. I've only seen this play performed once, and it was a dreadful high school production. But Arsenic and Old Lace is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser, an American theater staple, and I've heard it can be done very well. Good play selection, NAU theatre! It's almost as good as A Christmas Carol, which, to NAU's credit, they produced a few years ago. Unfortunately, these types of plays- the plays that promote the goodness of Western Civilization and Christianity- are too few and far between.)

Love Letters by A R Gurney

This sounds like a play I'd like to see. Yeah, this one sounds really neat. Though, if I were to oppose NAU's selection of the play on moral grounds, I would say that Love Letters romanticizes marital infidelity. And that's a bad thing. It sells tickets, for sure, but it's still a bad thing.

Sincerely,
Telemoonfa