Pre-performance trigger warnings for violence, risqué language, loud noises, the 1970s, cancer, and even “distressing scenes of music, family and romance”, among other things, have become a commonplace fixture of modern theatre.
Those on the woke, safetyist left often argue that trigger warnings – or ‘content notes’ as they term them – simply allow people to make informed choices about what they see or read. Others say that the power of art to agitate, challenge and provoke is integral to its value, and that trigger warnings instil a fear of the unfamiliar in an audience’s mind.
Dame Judi Dench has this week outed herself as a member of the latter camp, joining a small but distinguished group of performers, including Sir Ian McKellen, Ralph Fiennes and Simon Callow, in calling on theatres to ditch the trigger warning.
In an interview with the Radio Times, she told theatregoers that they shouldn’t go to plays if they are “that sensitive”, and expressed concern about increased used of trigger warnings before productions.
Dench, whose long list of stage and film credits includes Lady Macbeth, was uncomfortable that audiences are routinely warned about potentially distressing content, including abuse, violence and loud noises.
“Do they do that?” Dench asked. “It must be a pretty long trigger warning before King Lear or Titus Andronicus. I can see why they exist, but if you’re that sensitive, don’t go to the theatre, because you could be very shocked. Where is the surprise of seeing and understanding it in your own way?”
Dame Judi Dench’s comments about the seemingly inexorable de-risking of the arts came after Ralph Fiennes recently criticised the use of trigger warnings.
The actor, who is renowned for his roles in Schindler’s List, The English Patient and the Harry Potter film franchise, and recently starred in an immersive touring production of Macbeth alongside Indira Varma, said the aspect of surprise is “what makes theatre so exciting”.
Speaking on BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show in February, he was asked if attendees had gone too “soft”.
“I think audiences have,” he replied. “We didn’t used to have trigger warnings. There are very disturbing scenes in Macbeth, terrible murders and things, but I think the impact of theatre is that you should be shocked, and you should be disturbed. I don’t think you should be prepared for these things and when I was young, we never had trigger warnings before a show.”
“Shakespeare’s plays are full of murder and full of horror, and as a young student and lover of the theatre I never experienced trigger warnings like, ‘oh, by the way, in King Lear, Gloucester’s going to have his eyes pulled out’,” he added.
“Theatre needs to be alive and in the present. It’s the shock, it’s the unexpected, that’s what makes an actor in theatre so exciting.”
Last year, Sir Ian McKellen criticised as “ludicrous” trigger warnings for his play Frank and Percy, which is about two retired men who meet on Hampstead Heath. Audiences at The Other Palace in London were told to beware “strong language, sexual references, and discussions of bereavement and cancer”.
The actor Simon Callow also called for an end to the practice, after it emerged that Chichester Festival theatre had issued a warning about the “distressing” themes of “music; family; romance; the threat of Nazi Germany and the annexation of Austria” included in its production of kitsch family favourite, The Sound of Music.
Warnings of this kind, he said, demonstrated “a fundamental failure to grasp what the theatre is: not a model for behaviour but a crucible in which we look at what it is to be human”. The theatre is “not a pulpit, but a gymnasium of the imagination,” he added.
Sadly, examples of this “fundamental failure” abound.
Earlier this year, a play about Queen Elizabeth, the late Queen Mother was given a trigger warning by a London venue, because it is set in the 1970s, “and consequently reflects some of the attitudes, language, and conventions of the time”.
Shakespeare’s Globe in London also recently issued “content guidance” for its production of Antony and Cleopatra to warn audiences of “depictions of suicide, scenes of violence and war and misogynoir references”. (Misogynoir is apparently a portmanteau term for discrimination against women and black people.)
Last November, a production of Macbeth featuring David Tennant included a quasi-medical trigger warning for those who might be suffering from postnatal depression. “This production explores psychosis and contains suggestions of post-combat and postnatal mental health concerns,” the content note cautioned, before adding: “On stage there is blood, scenes of violence and depictions of death.”
Executives of London’s Globe Theatre received heavy criticism back in 2022 after warning ticket holders that a performance of Julius Caesar contained “depictions of war, self-harm and suicide, stage blood and weapons including knives”.
A repeat offender, the Globe Theatre also prompted controversy when it began issuing trigger warnings for trauma survivors, and sharing the Samaritans’ helpline number before performances of Romeo and Juliet.
As to whether trigger warnings deliver the benefits their advocates claim for them, a recent meta-analysis carried out by Australian academics concluded that in some instances actually exacerbate anxiety. Citing a number of studies that “experimentally tested emotional reactions in the anticipatory period after giving a warning but prior to exposure to the warned-about content”, the researchers wrote: “This literature consistently demonstrates that viewing a trigger warning appears to increase anticipatory anxiety prior to viewing content.”
