Theatre Design & Technology - May 1972 - 33

(Continued from page 28.)
"flowering of a new sexual freedom." Morris L.
Ernst, Esq., a champion of free expression and of
full freedom for it, has said that he "resents this
tawdriness and pandering." Dr. Spock has called it
"a debasing of sex when the sexual intimacies are
of this loveless kind." The Australian Supreme
Court referred to Oh, Calcutta as "an excursion
into depravity." The Boston, Massachusetts License Bureau Director said of Hair: "If this is art,
then Heaven help the theatre."
The New York City Criminal Court that had the
author, the producer, and the cast of Che before
it, found them all guilty. The learned Bench held
that there was no redeeming social value in sexually active nudes wandering about the stage, who
could portray such scenes with alacrity, and who
would not be inhibited about doing so; and the
court declined to find that our social "development" was ready for this.
Specifically, the court held that:
Standards so sharply and so
shockingly different cannot be said
to be established because a few
commercially inspired producers
try to see how far they can go.

and those of the bad, and how to teach them. He
will be able to open the mind and the emotions to
an understanding of the one, and to a suspicion of
the other. He will know that the natural home of
love is not under the moon, nor in the parks, and
the abandoned huts, and the deserted lofts of the
ghettoes.
As he follows the careers of his drop-outs, wandering hither and thither, in error and confusion.
seeking a center, and a goal, he will realize that
an Odyssey which starts on the wrong road, will
go astray.
On the right road there is no need for an officer
of
the law, booming: "YOU there-MOVE
ALONG!"
We have struggled under our Judeo-Christian
heritage and aspirations for nearly twenty centuries:
to develop and hand along what is permanently
important in man. A Serpent in our midst has been
substituting a partial world for this, with nothing
real in it to live for or to die for, stocking it with
knowledge from the wrong trees, and soliciting truants to occupy it.
It is time that we vigorously resume our interrupted work.

Under this decision, department heads will not
be permitted to hide behind assistants nor executives behind their titles. All are principals, chargeable with knowing what is going on, and standing
by while it was going on.
Under this decision, so too would be the dean
of the drama department, and the president of the
college, too. "And why not?," we ask.
If he has studied Ovid in his own undergraduate
days, shouldn't he tell his own undergraduates how
two thousand years ago the centers of education were heavy with love and its follies? And
should he not point to the similarities that caused
the collapses of that period and that are coming
out on today's campuses?

ACTING
DIRECTING
SCENE DESIGN
COSTUME DESIGN
3 THEATRES

Shouldn't he introduce lectures on the Reformation: a time when theatre was padlocked for almost half a century for a way of conduct that theatre is aping today.

EXTENSIVE SHOP FACILITIES

LIGHTING DESIGN
TECHNICAL THEATRE

LARGE PRODUCTION PROGRAM
B.A & MA PROGRAM IN DRAMA

If he remembers the Restoration period: a time
of illicit sexing, he will be mindful that love is a
dangerous toy, and he will watch today for signs
of yesterday's excesses.
If he is anything of a religious man, he will
know that the ecstasies of the spirit do not lie in
nudity and in other disordered ways of life. He will
have learned to identify the sounds of the good,

THEATER DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

MAY. 1972

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