Massachusetts school officials defend Tony Kushner play

School officials in Adams, Mass., said a performance criticized as antiwar propaganda will go on as scheduled Thursday night at an elementary school. Oscar-winning actress Marcia Gay Harden plays Laura Bush in a reading from the Tony Kushner play Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy, in which the first lady has a dialogue with dead Iraqi children and an angel. The play's content angered Bill Donovan, a North Adams city councilor who asked school officials to stop the event, saying it should not be held on public property, WNAW-AM reported. Adams-Cheshire schools superintendent Alfred Skrocki said Wednesday that the performance will go on because the schools cannot discriminate against a point of view. The event, at C.T. Plunkett Elementary School, is a fund-raiser for Topia Arts Center, a nonprofit group that is trying to revive the old Adams Theater. Harden is friends with the center's founders. Harden, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 2001 for her role in Pollock, performed in Kushner's Angels in America on Broadway. (AP)