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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Comment
Arifa Akbar

We go to the theatre to feel something – and people do. Trigger warnings don’t stop that

Andres Velasquez, Louise Wilcox and Eygló Belafonte in Rewind by Ephemeral Ensemble at the New Diorama theatre, London.
‘I was in bits after watching it.’ Andres Velasquez, Louise Wilcox and Eygló Belafonte in Rewind at the New Diorama theatre, London. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

CONTENT WARNING: This column may include opinions with which you forcefully disagree along with big name actors wading into the breach and, quite possibly, unrestrained below-the-line rage or rebuttal.

So we’re back here again: the debate on trigger warnings has become so persistent and volatile that the discussion might require its own trigger warning these days (as per above). Is the act of alerting an audience to sensitive, potentially triggering, content such as sex, violence and suicide (and that’s just in Romeo and Juliet) a helpful access aid or it is infantilising us and neutering the power of theatre?

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