BANNED!

Photo: Christy Atomare, Kyle Riabko

SPRING AWAKENING has been banned in different places for 70 years because of its controversial subject matter. 

When SPRING AWAKENING was first introduced to German society, the script was ordered to be destroyed and performances were to be banned.  While the play was eventually performed, it was censored in Germany until 1912.

The first English performance was in New York City in 1917.  The New York City Commissioner of Licenses claimed the play was pornographic and wanted the performance to cease and desist.  In spite of the author, Frank Wedekind, getting an injunction from the Supreme Court to allow the play to go on, it closed after a single show.

Literature has been banned for many different reasons by many different groups.  Some of the organizations which have banned literature include:  The Anti-Defamation League, the CIA, Christian Voters League, NAACP, Roman Catholic Church, Parade Magazine and the National Federation of Decency.  Click here for a list of organizations that ban literature.

QUIZ: Which of the following plays have been banned?

Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Tartuffe by Molière
Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Marriage of Figaro by Pierre Augustin Caron De Beaumarchais
A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
The Importance Of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan
The Three-Penny Opera by Bertolt Brecht
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Kismet by Edward Knoblock
Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
West Side Story by Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee
Jesus Christ Superstar by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber
Hair by Gerome Ragni, James Rado, and Galt McDermott
Angels in America: Millennium Approaches by Tony Kushner
Fences by August Wilson
Master Harold and the Boys by Athol Fugard
Brighton Beach Memoirs by Neil Simon
Miss Saigon by Alain Boubil, Claude-Michel Schonberg, Richard Maltby, Jr.

If you said ALL of these plays have been banned…you are correct!

The American Library Association celebrates the freedom to read the last week of September each year with a Banned Books Week.  For more information, check with your local library or click here.

For more banned literature, visit these websites:
http://classiclit.about.com/od/bannedliteratur1/tp/aatp_bannedplay.htm
http://author.forbiddenlibrary.com/
http://www.adlerbooks.com/banned.html

Or read:
Banned Plays: Censorship Histories of 125 Stage Dramas by Dawn B. Sova.
The Wicked Stage:  A History of Theater Censorship and Harassment in the United States by Abe Laufe.