Did Parent Complaints Cause a High School to Change “She Kills Monsters” Without Permission?

by Chris Peterson

I just read some news this morning about a situation in Perry, Iowa, and the more I read about it, the more unsettled it feels.

Perry High School had spent weeks rehearsing She Kills Monsters: Young Adventurers Edition, a show that countless schools across the country perform every year without incident, and then — hours before opening night — everything came to a halt. The district postponed the production, announced that “appropriate modifications” were suddenly needed, and left everyone wondering what exactly wasn’t acceptable anymore.

And before getting too deep into the controversy, it’s worth remembering what this play actually is. She Kills Monsters is a heartfelt, funny, surprisingly emotional story about a high-school girl named Agnes who, after her younger sister Tilly dies, dives into Tilly’s Dungeons & Dragons campaign to understand who she really was. The “Young Adventurers Edition” is the PG-13 school-friendly version — lighter language, softened edges, and themes that are honest without being remotely explicit. It’s a story about grief, sisterhood, identity, and the worlds we build for ourselves when reality feels too sharp.

So the idea that this script was too “inappropriate” for students never quite tracks. I’ll always stand by the belief that sexually explicit content has no place in high-school theatre. That’s a boundary I think most people agree on. But nothing about this script crosses that line. The one element that seems to have triggered the backlash was something much simpler: LGBTQ representation. Tilly is queer. Her character has a gentle, innocent crush. And for some parents, even that was too much.

At the school board meeting, that tension came through with a clarity that felt hard to ignore. One parent specifically complained that students were “aggressively making out on stage,” a description that doesn’t match the script, the licensing company’s content description, or the reports from students who actually rehearsed the show. It was a claim that felt more like a projection — a discomfort expressed as exaggeration — and it makes you wonder what people were really reacting to.

Because here’s the thing: the school almost certainly purchased the rights. The licensing process is straightforward, and this is a title produced nationwide. So yes, Perry High School had the rights to perform the play.

But once the complaints started rolling in, something shifted. The administration sent out that vague message about “core values” and “modifications,” and suddenly a fully rehearsed production needed last-minute corrections. And now that the rescheduled performances have already happened, we’re left with a big, frustrating question: what exactly did they change?

If the modifications were just technical — costumes, staging, maybe some blocking adjustments — that’s one thing. Directors do that all the time. But if dialogue was cut, lines were rewritten, or moments involving Tilly and Lily were softened or removed, then we’ve crossed into completely different territory.

Because changing dialogue in a licensed script without permission isn’t just a creative choice. It’s a violation of the contract.

And that’s where the lack of transparency becomes so troubling. The district hasn’t said whether they asked the publisher for permission to make changes. They haven’t said what the “inappropriate” content actually was. They haven’t said whether the LGBTQ storyline — the heart of Tilly’s character — was allowed to remain intact. They’ve simply said the show needed to be modified to better reflect their values.

Meanwhile, the students were left in the middle of it all. They showed up, learned the material, built the world, and treated the play with the respect and care that theatre students always do. And then, at the very end, they watched adults wobble because a few people were uncomfortable with a story that dared to include queer characters.

It’s the kind of moment that stays with young artists, and not in the way you hope.

I keep coming back to the fact that the Young Adventurers Edition is already tailored for schools. It’s age-appropriate by design. If this production felt risky or controversial to some parents, it wasn’t because of explicit content — it was because the show acknowledges that queer students exist. And when that alone is enough to spark a last-minute crisis, it’s hard not to feel like the real “modification” wasn’t about appropriateness at all. It was about erasing discomfort, even if that meant erasing part of the story.

I don’t know exactly what changed in Perry. Maybe nothing textual was touched. Maybe the script remained intact. But without clarity, you can’t help but wonder whether someone quietly went in and trimmed out pieces they didn’t have the authority to touch.

And that’s why this story keeps tugging at me. Because this isn’t just about a play in Iowa. It’s about what stories students are allowed to tell, and who decides which identities are “appropriate” for them to portray. It’s about whether administrators trust their educators, their licensing agreements, and their own students. And it’s about whether a community’s discomfort can outweigh the integrity of a story that countless other schools have performed without issue.

In the end, She Kills Monsters is a play about understanding someone after they’re gone — seeing them fully and honestly for who they were. It’s a shame that, in this case, the push to make things “appropriate” may have clouded that message instead of lifting it up.