Play About Lenny Bruce Gets Cancelled After Anti-Racism Protests; Backlash Follows

“Half a century after Bruce’s death, the social satirist and free-speech champion is a character in a drama unfolding at Brandeis University, where theater and arts faculty decided to postpone the planned fall staging of a script by a distinguished graduate, playwright Michael Weller, after some students and alumni complained the work vilified its black characters and the Black Lives Matter social movement. Weller then withdrew the work, entitled Buyer Beware, to premier the play with professional actors ‘elsewhere,’ according to a Brandeis spokesman.