A viral TikTok highlights that students say a production of She Kills Monsters was canceled at Hillsboro High School because the show features a gay character. Ohio news outlet WKRC reported that parents of students at Hillsboro think a local pastor "pressured the school to pull the play."
"I am beyond livid,” Hillsboro student and former cast member Chris Cronan told WKRC. “We worked very hard on this play – we had a lot of people in that school who are in the LBGTQ community.” Both WKRC and Out reported that the cast had been rehearsing for multiple weeks before the show was canceled.
Outrage about the school administrator's decision was not contained to the school's student body.
"My blood is boiling," TikToker Jake Zora said of She Kills Monsters's cancellation. The show is about a woman whose family is killed in a car accident. When looking through her sister's Dungeons and Dragons belongings and writings, the woman discovers her late sister was queer.
Out reported that Hillsboro was putting on a "Young Adventurer's Edition" of the show "with aged-down characters and less sexual content."
Duncan Pickering-Polstra, another Hillsboro student, told Cincinnati.com that the school has "put on countless shows with sexual references and sometimes explicitly sexual scenes."
However, in a statement to Out, Hillsboro City Schools Superintendent said that “the district’s decision to cancel the fall play is based on the play being inappropriate for our K-12 audience" and denied that the aforementioned pastor had "influenced" the decision in "any way."
Pickering-Polstra told Cincinnati.com that the cancellation was "not about the sex."
“It’s about gay people," he told the outlet. "And if anyone tells you otherwise, they’re lying.".
Pickering-Polstra's brother, Zebediah, started a GoFundMe to help students put on the show in the summer.
"These kids, my siblings included, have poured their heart and soul into this show," Zebediah Pickering-Polstra wrote in the GoFundMe's description. "We want to see their aspirations realized."
The Daily Dot could not reach Hillsboro High School. Zora did not immediately respond to the Daily Dot's request for comment.
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