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      *Officials in suburban Chicago's Wilmette Park District shut down a planned outdoor staging of the play Ragtime, citing concerns that passersby on the park grounds would take offense to the N-word, which is used several times in the script and score.

      "We had grave concerns that people would take the language they heard over the amplified sound system out of context from a performance that was being held in the bowl," Wilmette Park District executive director Tom Grisamore told the Pioneer Press.

       The district got the rights to present Ragtime in January, but the content of the show was not examined until recently. Grisamore announced the play's cancellation on June 25.

       "This is something we very honestly should have known about and hopefully we could have acted on this sooner, but we did as soon as we found out what was there," said Grisamore.

      Ragtime, a show about racism, community, family and justice, was already in rehearsals with a cast of more than 40 when the bad news was handed down. According to Playbill.com, a June 17 letter from Wilmette Park District's performing arts supervisor, Robert Bierie, to the show's licensing agent, Music Theatre International, asked for the script to change the N-word to the no-less-offensive (out of context) words "darkie," "coon" and "boy."

      "I find this sad and also hilarious," Ragtime lyricist Lynn Ahrens told Playbill.com June 27 of the letter. "It seems to sum up the blind ignorance of people who sit busily cherry-picking bad words, while not even bothering to read the script they are producing to understand its ideas or the context in which these words are spoken. We authors have always said that if people were uncomfortable producing the show, they shouldn't produce it. We feel the language is accurate and honest in the context of the era, and important to preserve. That hasn't stopped Ragtime from being produced in numerous theatres, high schools and colleges, where the heads of these institutions don't underestimate the intelligence of their audiences, whether comprised of children or adults, nor feel the need to censor and protect them from their own national history."