<p>MomCares, my D hates High School Musical and so we haven’t had to deal with it. :)</p>
<p>keepingcalm, my D actually did Grease in her final year of HS (in her case, that was junior year), in the fall, at a regional theater in our state. I get what you mean about the themes and messages, but it doesn’t bother me so much and it feels like a period piece. I respect that others feel differently, however.</p>
<p>My kids saw RENT in elementary school. They also saw Full Monty and Hair, both which involve nudity. I’m glad that my kids were exposed to a wide range of musicals from a young age as it impacted them positively.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s positive, to have an underage girl or boy watching full nudity live performances</p>
<p>I don’t know what age you consider “underage.” </p>
<p>The Full Monty’s nude scene lasts mere seconds with big flashes of light. Can barely see a thing and it is comedic in nature. </p>
<p>The themes of Hair are important ones and represent a period of history. My younger kid did extensive independent studies on the '60’s when she was 13. The nudity in Hair is very tasteful and brief. The themes and the show itself impacted my kids. I can’t recall their exact ages when they saw Hair. We took an entire birthday party of girls out of state and camped out overnight and saw a production of Hair…was for older D’s birthday, at some point in high school and so younger D may have been in middle school, but I can’t recall.</p>
<p>Under 18. Explain too us how any circumstances an under 18 year old child should see full male or female nudity???..because it’s “tastefully” done, as you say? Once again your advice is wrong from a parenting stand point and an acting education view</p>
<p>There is no right or wrong and we each have our own standards. I do think that my kids benefitted from seeing a wide range of theater and I have to say that RENT and Hair, in particular, were big influences on my theater kid and she studied them extensively in her youth. (RENT didn’t have nudity but has some adult themes)</p>
<p>By the way, many PG13 movies have nudity (I saw one last night in fact) and my kids saw PG 13 movies prior to age 18. My younger D went to college at 16 and could see whatever she wanted for that matter at that point.</p>
<p>Regarding Grease: I took my D to see a high school’s production of Grease when she was in middle school because an older girl she knew from dance was in it. After we saw it, she said to me: “So basically, the plot is, the girl makes herself all trashy so the guy will like her, right? That’s not a very positive message for teenagers.”</p>
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<p>She got it right, and one can also summarize The Little Mermaid, Sound of Music, Cinderella, My Fair Lady and ever so many other musicals as "So basically, the plot is, the girl makes herself {insert whatever the guy wants her to be} so the guy will like her, right? </p>
<p>Strange how few musicals involve the guy doing that… maybe Carousel and Guys and Dolls?</p>
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<p>Also agreed. ;-D</p>
<p>college_query - that is exactly my objection. It makes ny skin crawl but I also realize that is me. D sees this message but is just not so concerned.
As for nudity, I have my own hang ups around this and is not something I personally deal with well. When D was in HS one of the local theatres was doing the show with the baseball players where one very long act is a shower scene and all the men are naked (I can’t remember the name right now). D skipped this one because she knew some of the men in the show and didn’t think she wanted to see then nude. It wasn’t so much the nudity but the fact these were people/adults she interacted with and that was just plan wierd. I have to say, I was glad that she didn’t come with us.
It is all so relative to how things are dealt with in each family.</p>
<p>This happened to my D last year. She was in a production where there were 4 short pieces with thems of connectedness. A young man who had written a show she had just done was cast in one of the pieces and was nude for the entire piece - much of time under a sheet as he and the other actor were in bed but not all the time. She said she didn’t care about the nudity - it made total sense in the piece - but it was weird seeing someone she had worked so closely with and considered kind of like a “theatre big brother” that way. </p>
<p>I fall in the “if it makes you uncomfortable don’t go see it/take your kids to see it” camp. I think it is important for parents to make sure they understand what the show is about before taking their children. But I was always willing to process themes/issues with my D so wasn’t worried about it. She will probably be auditioning for Hair this summer if she is home and I’m cool with that.</p>
<p>“Full Monty’s nude scene lasts mere seconds”</p>
<p>so you knowingly take your young (under 18) daughter to a live play to watch mere seconds of full frontal male nudity? really??</p>
<p>in some states that’s a felony:)</p>
<p>I believe the play keepingcalm referred to was Take Me Out. My daughter and I went to see it a few years ago, and she was asked her age by an usher as we entered (she was a very young looking 21 - LOL). The show required the nudity - but I also knew one of the cast members, which made it a little more strange than if they were all strangers to me. I believe that it is a personal decision of whether to attend a show with nudity, or whether to perform in one, but personally, I have doubts about the necessity of having it done in an educational setting (even college)-- more appropriate for an adult to make that decision in a professional setting.</p>
<p>I think someone here mentioned that when Northwestern did Hair recently, kids had the choice of being nude or not. That seems to me to be a reasonable way for a University to handle it.</p>
<p>It is an interesting discussion. I guess one never completely leaves behind differences of opinion about what is or isn’t appropriate on stage, even after one’s final high school musical. </p>
<p>But hey, at least our kids will always have a choice about whether or not to audition, right – or are there programs where auditioning is mandatory?</p>
<p>At NYU, auditioning is not mandatory. There have been shows that involve nudity and my D has been in them but nobody has to do them and it is made clear in advance what the show entails. </p>
<p>pacheight, I know you already think I am a bad parent as on another thread on CC (not the MT Forum), you asserted that sending my kids to a rural public school was not good parenting because meth is rampant in rural areas (not at our school however). </p>
<p>It’s a felony for those under age 18 to see nudity? I don’t think so. As I said, there are PG13 movies with nudity and those under age 18 may see them…I just saw one the other night myself that was rated PG13. It showed a lot more than The Full Monty musical. In Full Monty, you really cannot see the nudity barely (no pun intended) at all. In fact, that scene was on the Tony Awards show! (any kid can watch TV!) The guys strip and take off the final covering just as a big flash of light comes and you really can’t see much of anything but you know that they have gone “Full Monty.” </p>
<p>I doubt it is a felony to see nudity. I took a birthday party of teenagers to see Hair which had nudity. Doubt the theater was worried about some crime being committed! In fact, my parents took me to see Hair when I was a teen too. The bad parenting must run in my family. :rolleyes:
:D</p>
<p>DS’s final HS musical was “Little Shop of Horrors”. Nothing too controversial about that musical for a public HS performance, except the 3 seconds regarding buying cocaine on Skid Row. No one batted an eye, as far as I could tell.</p>
<p>However, two weeks later, many of the same students who were in the musical did a series of monologues and scenes from various plays for the public in our school’s Black Box theater. These scenes/monologues were selected by the students themselves. No nudity involved, but the many of the topics were edgy, including performances regarding sexual awareness, abortion, anarchy, and teen depression/suicide. Several “F-Bombs” were dropped, as well as some usage of other graphic language. If this were a movie, it would have been rated “R”. Unfortunately, the audience wasn’t prepared for this. There were children in the audience, and I could see the horror on the faces of many parents, who came in expecting something much different than what ended up being performed.</p>
<p>Lesson learned. Future performances will have a disclaimer in the publicity if there are themes and/or language that may be offensive. As austinmtmom says … “I think it is important for parents to make sure they understand what the show is about before taking their children.”</p>
<p>Nudity being appropriate versus gratuitous and in bad taste is all about context, IMO.</p>
<p>BTW the Texas UIL One Act version of Equus was done wearing nude color body stockings. To me, that only slightly lessens the shock value of it - the story itself is far more disturbing than any quick (or even not so quick) shot at someone’s bits and pieces. Though I’d be getting less and less comfortable the longer a nudie part lasted, just speaking personally.</p>
<p>And if that was on the UIL’s approved play list, here in conservative Texas, then if it’s okay with the kids and their parents to do it, it’s not personally my place to judge.</p>
<p>As a parent you have to wonder - supposing your kid did actually have enough success, to where they were offered a big role in either a play or a film and it involved something dark? Something with nudity? A rape scene? An explicit love scene? A really bad drug message or something? By then they would be adults but they are still YOUR BABY. Would you be able to deal with that? It’s something that you probably won’t have much of a say in if they are all grown up and on their own, but would you have them pass by what might be their really big break by turning it down? Now I am not talking about something exploitive that is basically the casting couch at play on stage or on camera, but something that really is artistically necessary and that even a big name who could afford to pass it up would be okay with taking on account of the whole context. I mean, you have to think how you would deal with that should they ever be lucky enough to have that dilemma.</p>
<p>Daniel Radcliffe would probably not have put his career on the line if he’d refused Equus, (I don’t think his career is at risk no matter what he does or doesn’t do) but if it was an unknown who had that shot after months and years of scraping? Would you prefer your kid turn that kind of opportunity down, you have to ask yourself, on account of the “ick” factor.</p>
<p>Of course there are a lot of plays where everyone stays fully dressed throughout that have been done for centuries that are about as dark as you can get, hello Shakespeare and Greek tragedies…so is it about the content or is it just about showing skin? Or some combination?</p>
<p>For me personally, it falls to context.</p>
<p>I’d rather my kid see Hair, Monty, or even Equus than those horrible slasher flicks like the Saw franchise, personally. <em>shudder</em></p>
<p>As my kid was over 18, it was up to her to decide what roles to accept or not. I have no problem with it myself, but it is her decision. At college, she performed with nudity twice. Once was as a lead in the mainstage musical and there were sexual themes to the show and she was topless and had simulated sex on stage. The other time was in a workshop production in her studio with a Tony winning director/playwright and the cast created the show and elected to be nude in a scene. It was their own idea.</p>
<p>None of this was to further her career. In the first case, it was integral to the topic of the musical…sexual exploitation of children. She was actually portraying a 12 year old turning tricks and in fact, this was based on real-life news stories.</p>
<p>~I do agree that a disclaimer for subjects that, were they in a movie, would get an R rating, might be appropriate for plays in educational settings. People might not want their 11 year old getting an education they didn’t expect. lol. Though I suspect most of them are a lot more educated on some things at an earlier age than we would like.</p>
<p>I think that most of the time, the type of audience that attends plays tend to be familiar with it before they go, unlike movies, so usually people know whether or not it’s what they would want their kids exposed to. But I have no problem with a warning about content, as long as ultimately it is left to the parent to make the choice.</p>
<p>Of course once they are adult they decide those things for themselves. I believe my D can make good decisions about whether the content is important to the artistic integrity of the production so personally, I am not worried much about it - I’m have other issues that concern me considerably more!</p>
<p>Sutton Foster has managed to keep most of her clothes on as far as I know and avoid simulated sex while obtaining a remarkable career. Other singers we admire have done the same. I hope there’s a school where a girl can keep her clothes on and leave the sex mostly up to the imagination. (Love, love the scene where Rhett carries Scarlet up the stairs into the darkness! Oh for those days…)</p>