Cry Havoc and Let Slip the Bulldogs of War!

I think people should start thinking about other people rather than trying to feel sorry for themselves and thinking that the administration is trying to thwart their creativity.... They're not using their own intelligence.... We have to think of the people who might be affected by seeing real-life weapons.

So said Yale's Dean of Student Affairs, Betty Trachtenberg, whose opinions regarding deference to the religious or sexual sensibilities of the theater-going public I would be most interested to learn.

Still, in a reversal of Trachtenberg's earlier outright ban on realistic looking stage weapons, Yale decided instead merely to institute a "policy of announcing the use of stage weapons in advance will hold for all future campus productions." The world's once more the student thespians' oyster, which they with sword can open. Or something like that.

Speaking of how people might be affected by seeing realistic looking stage prop weapons, I worked as a stagehand one season many years ago at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. Aside from the fact that I was paid rather less than a migrant farm worker, it was a great experience, the highlight of which occurred during the first (and, I have good reason to suspect, only) American theatrical production of an Australian play that shall remain nameless in deference to maintaining good American / Australian relationships. In any case, in one scene one of the actors was supposed to pull out a revolver and brandish it wildly. Unfortunately, one night he waved it about a bit too wildly and it flew from his hand, landing some ten or twelve rows into the darkened house.

Silence. More silence. The actors on stage stood frozen in a tableau, there being no proscenium curtain to drop, and tried valiantly not to join in the titters of laughter as the audience slowly realized what had happened. Finally, some fifteen or thirty seconds later, the stage lights were lowered, the house lights were raised and the stage manager sent another stagehand into the house and announced through the PA system, "Would whoever has our gun please return it so we can continue the play?"

Ah, the magic of live theater!