Time to shoot the trigger warning in theatres

There’s a lot to alarm anybody who goes to the theatre, but at least they know what they are in for. In The Weekend Australian, Rosemary Neill reports on trigger warnings that theatres provide in advance to protect patrons from upsetting scenes.

There was advice of cruelty to crustaceans in a play in Perth. In Britain, there was a warning for people a bit behind on the news that Nazis occupy Austria in The Sound of Music.

It is an extension of the intent, now universal on university campuses, that people should be protected from content that could trigger fears and memories of a dreadful event, now extended to include anything that might upset anybody about anything. But unlike the contemporary campus, theatre exists to surprise and alarm as much as to delight, to present the complexity of human experience, to make audiences think.

Australia’s best-known playwright, David Williamson, is right to ask: “Why has theatre become so timorous?” People who do not want to watch anything challenging can stay at home and sit through endless British series about midwives and detective priests on ABC television. If theatres are so concerned about upsetting audiences, it will surely lead to a new trigger warning – that their productions will bore you to sleep.