Two school boards in Ontario, Canada have decided to cut funding for a youth theatre program after the selection of a musical that depicts the true events of two gay teens fighting to attend their prom.
The Thames Valley District and Catholic District School Boards decided to withhold a combined $30,000 (CAD) from the Grand Theatre's high school project's production of Prom Queen.
Prom Queen is based on the real-life experiences of Marc Hall, who in 2002 sued the Durham Catholic School Board when they refused to allow his then 21-year-old boyfriend to attend his prom, on the grounds that it went against Roman Catholic teaching.
Despite winning the battle, the war raged on, and in 2005, Hall dropped the case against the school board after learning that the broader aspects of the fight could drag on for years.
When the Grand Theatre representatives presented the choice to the school boards, they were told the decision was "problematic" for two reasons, one due to the language within the play, as well as the way adults (specifically authority figures in schools) were depicted.
According to the , the London Catholic District School Board's superintendent of education, Ed De Decker, said he had concerns the play also depicted "dated stereotypes" of Catholic priests and educators.
"It presents a principal who is fixated on rules for the sake of rules [and] portrays the Catholic Church as something that is rigid, not inclusive, not accepting, not welcoming — a message that is very different from the one that we receive regularly from Pope Francis."
Just as a note, Prom Queen's events take place in and around 2002, Pope Francis was elected Pope in 2013.
Meanwhile, the Thames Valley District School Board chair, Matt Reid, had concerns regarding some of the derogatory terms (anti-gay slurs) as well as "other more alarming aspects including having a priest blackmail a student... and having a teacher betray the student and lie [in court] under oath".
A 2016 production of 'Prom Queen'.
"The portrayal of adults in the script," Reid continued, "is not consistent with our approach and belief in the critical and caring roles that our adults play in the lives of our students".
Just another quick note, other musicals the High School Project have put on in the past include Grease, a musical entirely around high school students having sex and drag racing cars, Les Miserables which is mostly about war, sex work, and thieves, and West Side Story, a musical about gang race riots and murder.
That being said, it wasn't curtains for the Grand Theatre just yet, as they set up a crowdfunding campaign to raise the missing funding. With over two months to go in their campaign, the High School Project has already raised more than $57,000 of their $30,000 goal.
