School Play Makes Her Squirm :...

Lights dimmed in the Bernardo Heights Middle School multipurpose room. Conversations hushed. People settled as comfortably as possible in folding chairs, as the music began. I pushed aside the twinge of regret that I had been unable to persuade my own seventh-grade son, The Athlete, to attend the school play, and instead congratulated myself that at least my daughter, age 8, would be exposed to art. While she admired the action on stage, I would delight in watching youth accomplish a milestone.

Wrapped in adolescent cloaks, these bundles of extremes were about to meet the magic of theater. To pretend to be someone else with a whole set of different hang-ups, or none at all. To cover the zits with pancake makeup, to style hair according to a well-defined personality. To not be embarrassed by words or actions because, hey, they’re not your own. To lose one’s identity while gaining self-confidence, to work with a team toward one goal--what a challenge.

The music ended as floodlights illuminated the fresh-faced young cast of “Grease.” By Scene II, my memory was jogged. Yes, I had viewed the movie years ago. Yes, I had been unimpressed with this story of 1950-ish high-schoolers. Yes, I knew this at the time I purchased tickets, but I didn’t give it much thought, didn’t remember specifics of the plot. After all, this was a middle-school rendition. I wasn’t going for the dramatic experience, but to watch kids I know create something wonderful from within themselves. Right?

Then the hero started singing thinly disguised phrases of sexual encounters with a girl at the beach. I prayed, “Lord, just let this fly right over my child’s head.”

The unfolding plot revealed that the hero lied about the heroine in order to impress his friends. After apologies, the hero and heroine resolved to stay together, but obstacles such as his unsuccessful attempt to seduce her and her challenge that he do something besides “hang out” kept them apart until the end.

In the meantime, the class valedictorian and a student council member were portrayed as losers. Everyone else, except the heroine, drank beer and smoked. (The phony cigarettes were great--they actually glowed and emitted smoke.) Annette Funicello and Sandra Dee were lambasted for their virginal roles in that era’s movies.

Though I cringed at the sight of the heroine wearing a strapless prom dress that revealed an exceptionally developed 14-year-old chest, I rooted for her character as she prayed that the hero would return her love. I wanted him to become the disciplined athlete (or disciplined anything besides hood) and her to remain true to her convictions.

I squirmed in my seat until another girl, the darkest character, sang a solo about giving boys exactly what her flirting promises. A sadness enveloped me as I realized what I was watching: an extremely talented 13-year old swaying her hips beneath a tight, short black skirt, acting like someone who has granted sexual favors to many boys. She was very convincing, and I wanted to know why adults allowed this prostitution of her gifts at the age of 13.

In the end, the heroine is influenced by her, is convinced to dress seductively, smoke, drop kindness from her speech and promise the hero that, if only he’ll go slow, she’ll quench the fire he has just sung about. For him, this sure beats running with the track team.

In real life, middle-schoolers dress seductively and smoke and drink and have sex and are confused and fearful. They make wrong choices. They are still children in desperate need of role models who make right choices.

My squirming and sadness at the show that night have given way to an outrage against the blatant conclusion that to be straight is an impossibility if you want to feel part of the group, a condition which everyone knows is the ultimate need in an adolescent’s life.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard wrote: “Art may imitate anything but disorder. In this structural unity lies integrity and it is integrity which separates art from non-art.”

I think I exposed my daughter to non-art. No doubt someone can rationalize an art form in the realism of “Grease,” but, in my mind, disorder rules the play when enacted by 11- to 14-year-olds. There is no integrity in a so-called comedy that, in the end, offers children only a bleak future of drugs, alcohol, promiscuous sex and hiding from parents and police. Yes, we must allow them to ask life’s difficult questions, to explore answers through role-playing, but let’s allow them at least another choice, one with hope and morals attached to it.

Do I blame the drama teachers for selecting “Grease”? Do I blame the administrators, if they were even approached, for granting permission? Do I blame parents for not questioning the appropriateness of the tune their child is dancing to?

Yes, I do, even as I realize that the blame, of course, filters down to me. Though my son is uninvolved in this specific area, it shades the environment of his school, and that makes it partly my responsibility.