Emmy nominee Carrie Coon is calling out the Ohio high school she graduated from after it abruptly canceled a student production of the LGBTQ+-themed play She Kills Monsters, just two days into rehearsals.
A Rehearsal Cut Short
Copley High School's drama club, in Summit County, Ohio, had already cast She Kills Monsters, playwright Qui Nguyen's 2011 dramedy about a young woman who discovers her late sister may have been queer, and were two days into rehearsals when administrators told them the show was off. The abruptness stunned students and parents, who say they were given only a vague explanation.
Coon, who graduated from Copley High in 1999 and now stars in HBO's The Gilded Age, first spoke out on Facebook before joining a conference call with the school's drama club students. "I just wanted the students to feel supported because it's ridiculous," she told The Akron Beacon Journal. "They know, as I know, that theater is a refuge. It's a refuge for marginalized communities. It is an important place, especially for LGBTQ students."
The District's Explanation, and Its Gaps
Copley Superintendent Aimee Kirsch insists the cancellation had nothing to do with the play's LGBTQ+ themes, saying instead that the production had not gone through proper administrative review. "I want to be unequivocally clear: Exploring diverse characters, stories or perspectives is not the reason for this decision," she said, adding that the district has a "responsibility to ensure all performance materials undergo a consistent, transparent review that respects age boundaries, publisher agreements and district standards."
But Kirsch also acknowledged that her review was prompted by a parent's letter expressing concern the community would be "upset" that the school was hosting a play that "explicitly explores sexuality and LGBTQ identity." The district has not said what specific content it found objectionable, whether it sought permission from the publisher to alter the script, or whether the play's LGBTQ+ storyline would have survived a revised production.
That's a chilling message to send the students at this high school.
Carrie Coon
Tiffany Jamison, the parent of a student cast in the show, pushed back on the procedural framing. "If the play was not approved, that's not reason enough to cancel it," she told the Beacon Journal. "It's reason to review it." Coon was blunter still: "The kids are not stupid. They knew that wasn't the reason why."
A Familiar Script for This Play
Copley isn't the first district to pull She Kills Monsters over queer content while citing other reasons. Two Ohio schools, Hillsboro High School and Hudson High School, canceled productions in 2021. Hillsboro's superintendent claimed the youth-adapted "Young Adventurers Edition" wasn't appropriate for a K-12 audience, though Hillsboro drama students later raised nearly $24,000, far exceeding their $5,000 goal, to stage the play independently at a community theater. A Wisconsin principal made a similar procedural claim in 2024, and a school outside Des Moines postponed its own production last year over concerns it didn't "align with the core values" of the district.
That popularity isn't incidental. She Kills Monsters was nominated for a GLAAD award for its portrayal of LGBTQ+ characters and has been praised for how it handles grief, family, and identity for teen audiences. Arts administrator Howard Sherman told the Beacon Journal that cancellations of the play have now cropped up in multiple states, suggesting a pattern rather than a series of unrelated administrative hiccups.
MQ's Take
There's a script schools reach for when they want to drop LGBTQ+ content without saying so out loud: blame the paperwork. It's a tidy story, until you notice, as Kirsch herself admitted, that the whole review only started because a parent objected to gay characters. Students spent weeks preparing a show they were proud to present with dignity, in Coon's words, because so many queer characters in theater get played for laughs. Pulling that opportunity two days into rehearsal, then dressing it up as a scheduling technicality, tells LGBTQ+ students something loud and clear about how much their stories are actually welcome on that stage.
The silver lining here is that a community pushed back fast, and loudly, including someone with a national platform. The Akron Civic Theatre's offer to host the show mirrors what happened in Hillsboro, where a canceled school play became a bigger, better-funded community production. Censorship attempts on this particular play keep failing to actually silence it. That's worth remembering the next time a district tries the same move.
Source: LGBTQ Nation
Cover photo: K6ka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
