Refund offer for performances

By Jane Stephens

The season performing arts series and the River Campus have been a resounding success for Southeast Missouri State University and the Cape Girardeau community, and we thank everyone who has attended the theater, music, dance and art performances over the past year and a half. More than 35,000 people have taken the opportunity to attend some type of cultural arts event at the River Campus since its grand opening in the fall of 2008.

More than 670 individuals recently took the opportunity to attend the Christopher Duran play "Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All to You" at the Wendy Kurka Rust Flexible Theatre. Although advertisements for the play carried the warning that this production contained materials for adults only, I understand several of you found it offensive.

I want to assure you that we are concerned, and we apologize to those of you who found the theme and/or content to be in poor taste. We believe it is important to expose our students to a wide array of ideas, concepts, cultures and themes, but we understand that some may find specific materials offensive.

While we fully support academic freedom and the responsibility as a university to present cultural arts themes and materials that challenge thinking and ideas, we do believe these types of productions should not have been pressed on patrons through the season ticket series.

Patrons are cautioned that the university theater production of "Angels in America," a Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning play scheduled for March, deals with homosexual issues and AIDS and also contains adult themes.

Consequently, the box office will be sending a letter to all season ticket patrons offering a refund for either or both the above performances.

I want to assure you that in the future, we will be careful in selecting performances for our season series ticket sales, and we will make every effort to inform our patrons of the themes and content of our productions so they can make an educated decision as to whether or not to attend.

Again, I want to thank all of you for your continued support of Southeast Missouri State University and the arts at the River Campus.

Jane Stephens is the provost of Southeast Missouri State University.