Open Forum

Good Morning,

I am not only the Director of our fall play and spring musical, but the head cheer coach. I have looked into doing "Bring It On," but unfortunately our community is very conservative and are not as open minded as I would like for them to be. Sooo... because of one of the characters we would not be able to consider it. BUT... from a cheer coach stand point there are many illegal stunts and pyramids in the broadway version I had seen and you would probably need to look into your states rules and regulations regarding what you can do legally (if you have an experienced cheer coach at your school she/he should know the rules well enough to answer your questions and/or be able to suggest stunts that would work best for theatre students playing cheerleaders). For example, in Missouri our MSHSAA rules state: No toss stunts (basket toss for example) can be performed in an indoor surface without the use of a mat and in a toss stunt no props can be in the flyers hands. My first thought when looking into this show was IF and when they would put more restraints into the safety/state rules. I think because the show is so new over the past few years for High School's to perform that eventually there might be more safety precautions required such as mandating physicals and following your state cheerleading rules just to keep your students safe. I would also highly encourage you to see if you can build a relationship with your cheer coach and see if they would help teach the actors important technique that is required when executing stunts, so that you don't lose any of your actors to injuries. If you can I would try to keep the mats out the entire show- since they build behind the acting portions of the show maybe putting them just upstage where you wouldn't necessarily have to mat the entire stage, but just when there is pyramids incorporated in behind the leads?