Back in April students at Wilton High School in Wilton, CT were cut off by their principal from performing a play that told the tales of our troops overseas. The play was based on letters that soldiers wrote home and how those soldiers lived...and sometimes died. Principal Timothy Canty barred the students from putting on the performance for fear of offending the community. Hiding from the truth is apparently the Wilton way, as Ira Levin opined that Wilton was the basis for his book "The Stepford Wives."
Thankfully not all of Wilton mirrors the book, and these budding thespians showed that when they put on their play this weekend. The theater was packed and the students received a standing ovation, but it did not take place in Connecticut, it happened right here in Manhattan. The off-Broadway Public Theater hosted the students and the tremendous audience that followed them.
From ABC News:
Although the students were silenced on their own stage in Wilton, Conn., they were given another -- Off Broadway in New York City.
Nick Lanza, a performer in the play, said it isn't about the war, it's about the troops.
"For us, it's pro-troops," Lanza said, "It's about the troops' feelings, what's happening to the troops, not whether or not war is an issue."
Telling the story of our soldiers should not be something to be silenced. The principal in Wilton may want to numb the minds of his community, but when a story needs to be told people will hear it. The funny thing is, because of his effort of censorship, the students got an even bigger audience, at the Public Theater in New York and across the blogosphere and even mainstream media.
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