There are stories floating around of several well known playwrights shutting down High School and Community Theatre productions based on changing one "profane" word, Damn to darn, etc.  Is the playwright being a bit of a prick, sure, is that his right? yes. 
The fact is, if you chance something and get caught and get served with a cease and desist, now what do you tell your high school students?  "Sorry I broke the law and got caught, no show tonight"?
 
nuff said.

I sat in on a forum where someone asked if they had legal right to cut smoking and references to smoking from a script because of local smoking bans.  They were pretty sure they could, the answer was simple, it is not a right to do any show you want, you have to choose shows based on what you feel is appropriate and make changes only with permission.

Giving High School kids the message that "It's okay to break this law, everyone else is doing it" is reprehensible.  They get that message enough, do we really need their teachers reinforcing it?

Originally posted by jayzehr Just for the record, I wasn't advocating changing a script without permission. This has been a frequent and enduring topic here and I thought it was of interest that these playwrights were encouraging altering their script.

Originally posted by Nyria Sorry - I should have read all this but I'm lazy ;)   So someone might have said this... You can always contact the playwright (or their agent) and ask. They are humans and you can talk to them. :P   Some are OK with it (not many - but some)