The 2005 Turkey Awards
We wish we could clear the air, but ...
The Real Tuna, Texas, Is One Ugly Pecker
The boys-will-be-girls comedy Greater Tuna has been a theatrical fave around these parts for years. The show is so familiar that people tend to forget it offers some fairly barbed commentary on mean-spirited conservatism in small Texas towns. (Our favorite part is about concerned Tuna-tonians removing Alex Haley’s Roots from the library because it doesn’t present both sides of the slavery issue.)
Now, the tale of one rainbow sticker on a theater window has revealed that the town of Granbury may be the real Tuna, Texas, though the results aren’t so much knee-slapping as bizarre and embarrassing. Texas Star Theater artistic director Tom Morrissey was sent packing back to New York City in September after some Baptist and Methodist church members complained about the appearance of the “diversity” rainbow symbol, which has been popular for years in the gay and lesbian community, on the Granbury Opera House window. Hood County News gave Stickergate prominent coverage, right up there with Hurricane Katrina news. At around the same time, callers and letter-writers bitched about the “pornographic and obscene” content of TST’s productions, especially — and we’re not kidding — Grease and Gypsy. Citing financial issues that have since been disputed, the board of directors temporarily closed the theater and reopened (sans Morrissey and the sticker) with a revue called — the irony is choking us — Warm Country Heart.
Do Texans have a right to complain about being caricatured by East Coast elites when this kind of rank ignorance takes hold? Granbury’s family values crusaders didn’t even get their targets right: Grease is, like, the most hetero Broadway musical ever.
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