Watertown’s interim superintendent did not read the room. He barely understood the source material.
James Feil took over the Watertown Unified School District on August 1. Weeks later, he killed the high school’s planned spring musical, Flashdance, after “some individuals” raised their eyebrows. He told the Watertown Daily Times he had never watched the 1983 film. Then he called it “X-rated” anyway. The movie is rated R. Those are not the same thing. Getting that wrong is not moral seriousness. It’s a man claiming moral authority and cosplaying as a puritanical community censor over “raised eyebrows.”
Principal Jason Widiker and choir teacher Ryan Moldenhauer had already approved the show under district policy. Students say the director “scrubbed” the script further, moving the dancing from a nightclub to a diner. Feil conceded the teacher cleaned it up, then asked why anyone would pick a title that might make someone stay home. That is not a content standard. That is a heckler’s veto from a know-nothing superintendent.
WISN’s Ben Yount reminded everyone about content in other famous musicals. “No one tell Watertown Schools about West Side Story or Les Mis. I’m with them on the Stonewall song, but Flashdance? Come on…” He is right on both counts. The board’s spring fight over A Mother of a Revolution! was about a concert piece celebrating Stonewall and a transgender activist. It was a gratuitous, provocative middle finger to the community’s standards. You can defend that decision and still admit Flashdance is a different animal. Now Watertown seems to be adopting the same overly prudish beliefs from the setting of Footloose, ironically performed at Watertown High School in 2025.
If Feil’s test is “could a parent raise an eyebrow,” the American high school musicals are finished.
While schools can produce musicals with official School Editions and local cuts to remove certain controversial themes, many well-known musicals still include those same themes. Grease is a high school staple. It is also packed with sexual innuendo, a pregnancy scare, smoking, and drinking. West Side Story has gang violence, racism, an attempted sexual assault, and murders. Les Misérables puts prostitution, poverty, revolution, and a pile of corpses on a high school stage, then asks the audience to clap for “Do You Hear the People Sing?” Carousel includes domestic abuse. A Chorus Line is built on adult audition monologues about sex and failure. Miss Saigon is a war story with a bargirl, a child, and a suicide. All of them get produced in high schools, after being adapted for a High School Drama department, and the director takes a red pen to any less-than-suitable lines. That is how school theater works. You do not ban Oklahoma! because Jud Fry is a predator. You stage the show the students can actually perform.
Feil framed this as protecting “the audience we’re preparing for.” About 85 to 150 people showed up outside the district office to tell him the audience was already there, and it wanted the kids to dance. Students were left in shambles. Parents called it appalling that someone with no knowledge of the production could unilaterally take it away. The one unelected interim, new on the job, vaporized months of student work to “mend some fences.” He mended nothing, just created another toxic national story in five months.
Parents have every right to demand schools not smuggle ideology into a band concert. They also have a right to expect the superintendent to know an R from an X and a movie from a high school adaptation. Flashdance is a blue-collar kid chasing a spot at a dance school. The hook is “What a Feeling,” not a civics lecture.
Feil now wants a “family-friendly” replacement and a new director. He talked down to the students, calling it a lesson in resilience. The real lesson is smaller and sadder. Watertown will lecture teenagers about grit, then flinch at the title of a show the final decision-maker won’t even sit through. If that is the standard, pull Grease off the list before somebody notices Rizzo.
