I've been doing theater for the better part of my 20 years of living. It's something that has grown to be apart of me, and something that has shaped me into the woman that I am today.

Most of my acting career took place in my Catholic high school, where our drama department had to meet incredibly strict guidelines in order to put on a show. Cursing, drinking and inappropriate content was taboo. Shows would be completely revamped in order to be performed on the stage. While this was something I could understand (again, we were a Catholic school), I believed it to be a little over the top at some points.

Shows such as Spring Awakening, The Heathers, Cabaret, The Laramie Project and RENT, just to name a few, are explicit in content for reasons varying from language to sensitive topics such as suicide and premarital sex, but remain to be incredible works of art. They tell stories with deep meanings that are applicable to modern life no matter what time period that they're set in.

Spring Awakening is a show that has been controversial for many years, and many school boards prefer to give it the ax due to it's subject matter, including but not limited to, premarital sex, abortions, homosexual relationships and suicide.

If we presented this show to my high school principal (who is also a nun, mind you) as a potential production, we would've put her in an early grave.

However, Spring Awakening is much deeper than it's content matter. It's a coming of age story, set in 1800s Germany, about a group of teenagers searching for more in their lives than just what the Bible tells them. It's meant to leave an impression on you. It's meant to force you to question everything that you thought that you knew.

When it comes to shows such as these, many audience members may find the material to be shocking. But for the focus of the characters, these are their lives and their stories, fictitious or not. It's raw and not sugarcoated for a reason.

Don't get me wrong, I do believe that high school students, especially those attending Catholic schools, should do shows that are appropriate. But consider why a show is the way it is before you nix it without a second glance. What is the playwright trying to convey with their message, no matter how raunchy it may appear?

If the touchy subjects are the only thing that an audience member got out any production, no matter how controversial, then I'm sorry, but you missed the point.