My high school, in 1970, put on a bowdlerized performance of South Pacific, with all references to miscegenation, racism, and especially pre-marital sex removed, which made it pretty much incomprehensible. When I finally encountered the uncut version, I understood why it was a worthwhile play. I'll never understand why that particular performance occurred, unless perhaps the choir director wanted to give a subversive demonstration of why it's wrong to gut a play of its meaning. It was even more bizarre given the overall political climate of the time and given that the school had just been desegregated four years before, with the first black girl ever admitted serving at that time as the president of the senior class (she is now a federal judge in Michigan, and the school brags about her at every opportunity. I guess I do, too).

The following year, the choir director was replaced. For the next several years, school musicals were Gilbert and Sullivan, set safely in the far past.