Although SING! is meant to be an entirely student-run production, there is a certain amount of administrative review that goes into the process,
The administration previews dances to cut out potentially dangerous moves. The principal reviews all costumes. The Coordinator of Student Affairs (COSA) must approve, and can censor, scripts and song lyrics. SING! coordinators, the students’ liaisons to the administration, also assist in this prior review.
The script of this year’s Soph-Frosh SING! was edited significantly in such a review session. The SING! charter requires that the COSA and coordinators “instruct the Slate of each SING! to make any necessary corrections in order to sustain propriety on the Stuyvesant Stage.” This requirement is necessary to prevent content unsuitable for audience members from being performed.
According to COSA Lisa Weinwurm, the majority of the corrections this year were minor jokes that could be considered racist, offensive, or otherwise inappropriate. Names were changed and the ending was rewritten.
Some of the omitted content, however, is no more inappropriate than content that has been approved in previous years. Each year, the administration is becoming increasingly stringent. The plot of Soph-Frosh SING! 2005, for example, was built around one bawdy penile joke, with many more such quips scattered throughout the performance. According to 2008 Soph-Frosh SING! scriptwriter Wes Schierenbeck, Weinwurm and the coordinators considered a character’s death to be indecent. But a major theme of Soph-Frosh SING! 2006 was the idea that more people in the world should be dying.
Although much of the script censorship process is subjective, some basic guidelines prohibiting certain words, actions and kinds of jokes should be adopted. While the scripts are a continual work in progress, corrections should be made as early as possible. Late changes place actors and crewmembers, who have limited time to rehearse and prepare stage materials, at a disadvantage.
A handbook would allow scriptwriters to edit out portions themselves earlier in the process. Allowing scriptwriters to self-edit would result in scripts that stayed truer to their original visions.
In the future, slates should also be prevented from taking over script-writing responsibilities. For the past two years, the slates of the SING!s of the class of 2008 have written their scripts by themselves. This discourages other students interested in writing scripts from participating in SING!. The job of the producers and directors is not to write the script, but to select submitted ones and fine-tune them.
This production is the epitome of our student life and the paradigm of what makes our school community so special. Increased censorship is representative of the overall increase in the administration’s oppressiveness. This only lessens SING!’s value. We must remember that no matter who comes to see it—parents, teachers, administrators, or siblings—SING! is for the students.