Small Town Culture War
Who would have guessed that a high school musical production of Grease, based on America's quintessential coming-of-age film, and the proposed production of The Crucible, Arthur Miller's iconic American play about free speech, would have such a negative impact in a small Missouri town? A New York Times front page story -In Small Town 'Grease' Ignites Culture War- depicted the town as a national joke. Two years after the story broke, filmmaker Amy Mack began talking with people in the town where she works and lives part-time, determined to find truth and the heart of the story. Globally, the New York Times article elicited enough interest to generate a TV pilot, two sketches on Saturday Night live, mention in a teen blockbuster film, enough newspaper and magazine articles to generate a stack of paper three inches thick, and become the topic of theatre major theses papers across America. What happened to merit this global interest? Amy Mack set out to discover the truth. Talking with people directly and indirectly involved in the conflict-she discovered that no single opinion at either end of the spectrum could define the thought of an entire community. What she chose to celebrate was open discussion of the issues, particularly the grass roots efforts of an ad hoc group that came together to stand up for the drama students and their teacher-and for the First Amendment rights of Americans everywhere. Their efforts never made the front page. Names and locations in Small Town Culture War, a docudrama, have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved. Everyone who appears in the film, including the narrator and musicians, reside either in the town or within thirty miles. Written by Dave Collins