"The Realignment"

This event is occurring right now in the theatre department. President Sam., the dean of Theatre and Media Arts, and all faculty members are required to participate in what is called, "The Realignment".

Apparently, the avid audience members of both the film and theatre departments are fed up with the inappropriate content that the zoobie student population is hashing out. This realignment is said to bring the focus of plays, films, and animation back to a religious origin and provide for our audience members content that anyone kind find suitable.

For the past few days, I have been a little worried. I mean, we already live in such a heavily concentrated group of LDS people. How are we to "experience" the effects of the "real world" if we can't even portray that on stage?

Granted, the audience members that attend the productions are middle-aged, greying, mid-life-crisied Mormons who are afraid of accidentally saying the word "penis". These are the people who make the university money, because these are the people who pay over $18.00 for tickets. It makes sense. But at what cost?

The student's cost. Instead of catering to our needs as the future generation, we are bending over backward to cater to those who will--sooner than ourselves--turn into dust.

But, all hope is not lost.

We just have to worry about what content is performed on the main-stage productions. Student productions, Mask Clubs, class-room projects are not going to feel the affects of the "realignment" as much. Why? Because Zoobies are freakin' awesome.

If our creativity on mainstage productions is going to be thwarted, then our creativity behind closed doors will thrive. This is just like when the Puritans closed down all the Elizabethan theatres during the 1500s. Only a select few were allowed to perform theatrical pieces. However, those that couldn't performed "drolls". Musical adaptations of classic stories. The drolls became more popular with the general public and those that actually cared about theatre.

I think I'm going to start my own drolls as well. I don't need my creativity to be thwarted for catering to the people who drop the serious cash. I want to cater to creative minds. I want to cater to those who want to experience the real world. I want to cater to students who have dreams, goals, and will do whatever they can to achieve them.

Realignment? What realignment?