Dare I say it. Times they are changing. How do I know it? Well at one time the Old Howard was prohibited from showing nudity during its routines. You know about banned in Boston. It was only a Boston thing though and in 1953 the Old Howard was closed when Rose la Rose, shown seated, was accused of having been nude just at the end of her strip tease act .
It appears in other parts of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts nudity was accepted. In Provincetown over a century ago if this article is correct Louise Bryant, a woman who led an interesting life, appeared nude in a play put on by the Provincetown Players.
I assume Boston has now caught up with P Town. I really don’t know because I have not been to a play recently. And, before going I’d read about it. If it had nudity I would skip it. It’s not my cup of tea. But that is just me and if others liked it so be it.
I read that right now the Boston Children’s Theater is having a 21-year-old guy parade around on the stage for about half-minute totally bollocky after an 18-year-old high school girl tells him to take off his towel. Now I’d have no objection to this if the theater did not bill itself as a children’s theater. I’d suggest it might want to changed it perhaps “the New Old Howard.”
This theater advertises itself as “Boston’s Theater for Young People.” In the play that it is presently on stage the ages of the cast range from 15 to 25. I suppose it would be a fair question to ask: “where are the young people?”
I know about this because the Globe’s theater critic Don Aucoin apparently received a call from the director of the show Burgess Clark who told him he had been laid off because of the nudity scene. That was untrue. According to the chairman of the board it did not fire or let Clark go nor did it censor him. Two of the directors were concerned about nudity in a children’s theater (I wonder why?) and they were discussing it.
Clark, though, in a fit of pique yelled censorship because the directors did not think nudity was OK around children. He threatened to resign because of what he called, “unacceptable interference with artistic prerogatives.” Then he makes the profound observation, “Censorship is a much larger issue than one organization. If I lose my job, it was worth it.” What billiance! What fortitude!
Aucoin is on Clark’s side. They have a previous relationship. Aucoin called his play about a boy who wanted to bring a boy to his prom an “incisive adaption” of a book which produced a “fine play” noting: “Clark deserves credit for challenging his audience with tough-minded subject matter and trying to expand the definition of “children’s theater.”
It seemed to me that Clark is not so much expanding the definition of children’s theater but the definition of children. Lead actors age 18 and 21 and others up to 25-years-old are not children. Perhaps because Obamacare requires parents’ insurance to cover children up to 26-years-old Clark thinks he too can make those in their early twenties into children.
Aucoin then proceeds to ask one of the dumbest questions I’ve ever heard. It is something that I’d expect a member of NAMBLA (North American Man Boy Love Association which in telling who they are writes: “Boy-lovers and boys alike respond to the needs of those they love — needs for affection, understanding, and freedom.”) He queries: “whether there should be limits on freedom of expression in a children’s theater?”
It would be my hope that all would know that children are children and they need to be protected from certain things until they reach a certain level of maturity. Some places believe that applies to persons under 18-years-of-age. See here. A theater that advertises itself as a children’s theater should not be able to present whatever it desires but must limit itself to what is appropriate for children.
Apparently Director Burgess Clark who was hired nine or more years ago is slowly chafing at the bit that limits him to working with children. If that is the case he should remove the bit and get out from under the children’s cover and get a job in adult theater. He should not be pushing the boundaries to where he can corrupt the youth by putting before children things they are not capable of handling.
As for Aucoin I’d just say he should know better. If a society cannot protect its children then it has failed.
wa-llahi! In-sha Allah, you’ll have a comment dealing with the Comey firing! Let ‘er rip , Matt.
Matt
Appears Trump has fired Comey. Your thoughts and analysis?
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-has-fired-fbi-director-comey-white-house/ar-BBAXgwy?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout
So I guess this testimony from Comey was a bunch of bull:
WHITEHOUSE: …Why not the search warrant first?
COMEY: Well I pressed him very hard on that. And found credible their responses that there was no way — no way they could review the volume of information they saw on the laptop in the time remaining.
WHITEHOUSE: Except that they did.
COMEY: Well they did, and — because our wizards at our operational technology division came up with a way to de-dupe electronically — that as I understand it involved writing a custom software program that’s going to help us in lots of other areas. But investigative team said, sir we cannot finish this before the election.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/05/03/read-the-full-testimony-of-fbi-director-james-comey-in-which-he-discusses-clinton-email-investigation/?utm_term=.2d5473dc622d
1. Fordham University (Jesuit) bans Chic-fil-a because the company had donated to Christian groups which opposed same-sex marriage. The beat goes on! Even the Jesuits cave in!
2. The murderer of two doctors in Boston was an immigrant on a green-card. Did Mayor Walsh’s Sanctuary City Policy prevent Boston Police, Probation, the Courts, from notifying ICE that he’d been arrested and imprisoned for two bank robberies in Boston? Did the Sheriff or DA notify ICE? Was Obama’s ICE notified and failed to act? How did this guy get a green card in the first place?
His son Francis W. Hatch Jr. wrote one also, but about the Old Gardner called:
“It Was Very Embarrassing To All Of Us”
And it goes uh somethin’ like this:
“The museum’s trustees also felt they were being kept in the dark about the status of the investigation. Trustee Francis W. Hatch, Jr. recalled one meeting held ostensibly to gain a briefing from the agent and supervisor on the case. “They wouldn’t tell us anything about what they thought of the robbery or who they considered suspects,” Hatch recalls. “It was very embarrassing to all of us.”
There was a sequel too called:
“A Pall Has Been Cast” (“Boy I’ll Say”)
… Hatch convinced the trustees that the museum needed to hire a firm to investigate, and stay in touch with the FBI on its probe. IGI, a private investigative firm based in Washington begun by Terry Lenzner, who had cut his teeth as a lawyer for
the Senate Watergate Committee, was put on retainer, and the executive assigned to the case was Larry Potts, a former top deputy in the FBI… the FBI’s supervisors in Boston complained to US attorney Wayne Budd, who fired off a memo warning the museum that it faced prosecution if it withheld information relevant to the investigation. Hatch responded, saying in his letter that he was “shocked and saddened” by Budd’s attempt to “intimidate” the museum and that it cast “a pall over future cooperative efforts.”
Those were the stormy days of the Gardner Museum FBI relationship. But nowadays, since the Gardner Museum has retained the services, in-house, of FBI High Echelon Gaslighter, Anthony Amore, they don’t need the FBI to embarrass them anymore. They can embarrass themselves.
Thank liberalism.
“By their fruits ye shall know them!” Now they seek to corrupt the young! Mandatory LGBTQI indoctrination in grammar and middle schools: gay-themed subplots in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Artistic expression? Remember the artists whose works degraded Christian symbols? Serranos’s Crucifix in Urine? Prominently displayed in Art Museums?
What do you expect?
A recent Pew Survey: about 1-2% of those born before 1960 identified as LGBT. Among millennials, 7% so identify. The indoctrination is working; more are being steered into the gay lifestyle. The liberals cheer.
2. The Supreme Court declared nude dancing (for adults) constitutionally protected expression. Historically, the censors went too far banning Ginsburg’s “Howl”; Nabokov’s Lolita; etc. Today the censors fear the PC police and as Tadzio and GOK indicated, “anything goes!”
3. Lincoln had it right: America will die from suicide, loss of values, unless it rejects liberalism and embraces conservatism.
The PC police will be out after you for the crime of commonsense.
You might enjoy this old song by Frank Hatch, Sr.
It has been the case for some time that society’s lines of decency get crossed on a regular basis. For any given line-crossing, some are offended, some are not. After a while, in many cases, those lines are erased, never to be seen again.
And so each generation groans at some things they see, yet is OK with (or completely ignorant of) other things that used to shock earlier generations. (For a wonderful ‘summary’ of this notion, check out the lyrics to Cole Porter’s tune “Anything Goes.”)
The cumulative effect of such actions is a slippery slope. As we slide slowly down that slippery slope, it seems nigh impossible to reverse direction. But as more and more lines of decency get crossed, one may wonder whether there might be a point at which society decides that enough is enough.
Something tells me, however, that there is no such point, and that to think the present generation marks that point evinces a certain conceit regarding this generation. More likely, then, this generation and generations across the ages experience their distinct versions of Dante’s nine circles of hell.
Such a pathetic incident, representing so much that is wrong with so-called adults these days. More later…