CHESHIRE, Conn. — It's time for “people of faith” to stand together and let public officials know that they cannot use taxpayer money to offend them.

That's the response of Brian Brown, executive director of the Family Institute of Connecticut, to a town-sponsored play which, critics charged, bashed Catholics and celebrated homosexuality.

“We are receiving more and more reports of towns supporting these sorts of attacks on people of faith,” Brown said.

Residents who protested a town-funded adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in Cheshire, Conn., believe their fight can serve as an example for Catholics in other small towns. They stood outside a public school building in which the play was performed three nights in late July and attended a regularly scheduled meeting of the town council to urge more careful screening of taxpayer-funded productions.

After reading the script, the leaders of the protest, residents Lynne O'Luanaigh and Kerri Davison, contacted the Connecticut Catholic Conference and the Family Institute, a non-denominational group fighting moves to liberalize Connecticut's marriage laws to include same-sex couples. The Family Institute sent an email to its members, urging them to call the town's councilors and arts committee.

O'Luanaigh and Davison based their complaints about the play, Shakespeare's R&J by Joe Calarco, on the script and published comments made by the director of the Cheshire production.

As produced in Cheshire, a town of 28,500, the play featured four young women in a strict Catholic boarding school. (The original script calls for four young men.) The women secretly act out Romeo and Juliet, and two of the actresses engage in courting and kissing.

Calarco posted a response to what he called “Shakespeare's R&J Connecticut Censorship Controversy” on his website.

“As American citizens, we have the right to protest, just as we all have the right to free speech,” he wrote. “I created the piece as a celebration of the timeless appeal of Shakespeare and as a depiction of the transformative power of art.”

Deacon David Reynolds, legislative liaison for the Catholic Conference, wrote to Michael Milone, Cheshire's town manager.

“It is important to understand that some forms of prejudice or offensive stereotyping may go unnoticed by some, except those who are members of the group that are the focus of the actions and comments,” Reynolds wrote. “Many Catholics are beginning to become very offended by the Catholic stereotyping that has been so commonplace, and apparently socially acceptable, in our society.”

Taking Offense

Sylvia Abbate, executive producer of the play and a member of the town's arts committee that staged it, said the play was not intended to be anti-Catholic or about homosexuality. Three of the four actresses are Catholic, she said, including her daughter Elizabeth, who is 23 years old. The other three actresses are 18 or older.

“We had advertised widely that the play would have four young women and was rated PG,” Abbate said. “People who weren't comfortable with that could decide not to come.”

Abbate said an important aspect of the play is the fact that young women get to play male roles in a Shakespeare production. She also pointed out that in Elizabethan England, women's roles were usually played by male actors.

“Art is supposed to stretch us a little bit,” Abbate added. “If you start writing guidelines so that you'll never offend anyone, you can't do it. You might as well forget about art.”

Diane Visconti, a member of the town council, said the production was about the interplay of the passion of Shakespeare's genius and the passion of youth, which can lead to extremes of behavior. She said she saw no signs of anti-Catholic sentiment or promotion of homosexuality.

But Richard Rinaldi, a Catholic who traveled from Waterbury, Conn., to see the performance, said, “It was Catholic bashing.”

“It opens with the girls marching in a regimented manner as one reads a passionate passage and the others kneel to recite pious Catholic prayers,” he said. “It highlights the strains on the students in a repressive environment. It all leads up to this scene that went on for an uncomfortably long time, with flirting between the two girls and a kiss…. You shouldn't be introducing young people to these sort of ideas.”

Abbate said she would take the observations of the protestors into consideration in the future.

But a town meeting Aug. 10 ended without a resolution. O'Luanaigh and Davison asked for an apology from the Cheshire Performing and Fine Arts Committee and asked the town council to appoint an official to oversee the committee, stop inappropriate projects and help make people aware of what offends the Catholic community.

“Basically, we got no answers at all,” O'Luanaigh said. The call for a town official to check future projects was dismissed as a form of censorship, she said.

Although no member of the New York City-based Catholic League was involved in the meeting or the initial protests, Louis Giovino, the league's director of communications, said that in general, when Catholics have something to say in these situations, there is talk of censorship. “These organizations have a legal right, but it doesn't mean they have a moral right,” he said.

“Either artistic freedom or censorship is thrown up,” Giovino said.

Cheshire mayor and town council chairman David Orsini saw the meeting as a good first step but said it would take several months to resolve the issue. “Now we can begin the process of working through the comments to see if we can't resolve the issue to the satisfaction of as many people as possible,” he said.

In the meantime, O'Luanaigh said council member Tim White invited her to sit on the performing and fine arts committee to give a more socially conservative perspective. She's decided to accept the invitation. “The best way to go,” she said, “is to sit on the committee.”

Stephen Vincent is based in Wallingford, Connecticut.

Joseph Pronechen is based in Trumbull, Connecticut.