The recent banning of a school play in Sherwood has a long tradition. In the end, the banners usually come out looking like a fool, as here locally. But the Sherwood authorities won't quit. They confiscated the teacher/playwright's computer! Looking for other material to ban? I suspect a lawsuit is down the road and the teacher will take a nice vacation to an island somewhere.
"Nook-Shotten Norwegians"
On this day in 1891, Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts premiered in London, an event so "controversial and epoch-making," says biographer Michael Meyer, that it is now regarded as "one of the most famous of theatrical occasions." Theater historians report that the scandal over this single performance elicited over 500 printed articles and made Ibsen "a household word even among those Englishmen who never went to the theatre or opened a book."
Although published a decade earlier, and not the first volley in Ibsen's attempt to "torpedo the ark" of social propriety, the play had provided his critics with a lot of return ammunition. Because of its references to syphilis, free-love, incest and euthanasia, the play had been damned, constrained by censors, and shunned by most major and state theaters in Europe. It was regarded as too shameful to even have around the house in print
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