Some five years ago, my wife and then-teenage daughter went out for a night at the theater. In an adventuresome mood, they ended up with front-row seats at Washington’s Studio Theatre taking in a play they had heard some buzz about. But they hadn’t heard that the players would soon go the full monty.
The play featured an extended boys’ locker room shower scene, in which the actors delivered their lines in the costumes God gave them. My wife is no prude, but she wouldn’t have minded knowing in advance that sitting in the front row meant she and our daughter would be confronted by the members, if you will, of the cast.
Last weekend, my theater-loving daughter was home from college and took in several plays over a couple of days. One was at the suburban Signature Theatre, which makes a practice of providing “content warnings.” Before a new work called Gun & Powder began, she knew the production would contain “theatrical haze, one gunshot and two instances of guns pointed at the audience (but not shot).” This last is no doubt a relief — though I do wonder if one needs to be alerted there will be a gunshot in a play with “gun” as the first word in its title.
Signature provides content warnings for all its shows. They even warn theatergoers about the warnings, which contain “detailed plot information, so if you are spoiler-sensitive proceed with caution.”
These advisories place Signature squarely on one side of a debate that has roiled the theater world for a couple of years now. [Warning: What follows is a description of a dispute that has caused much unpleasantness. Those who are conflict-averse may wish to skip the rest of this paragraph.] Stage Left are the snowflakes who wish to be shielded from any representations that might “trigger” traumatic memories. Stage Right [Warning: This is a faulty metaphor, as, politically speaking, there is no Right in theater circles] is a generation that thought it was liberal until it got outflanked by the wokesters. They find themselves uncomfortably aligned with conservatives who say if you want dramas that deal with mature material, don’t be babies.
Take the play Escaped Alone. Signature warns us it “contains multiple satirical monologues about apocalyptic scenarios that are not depicted on stage.” If one is too emotionally fragile to handle satirical monologues about things “not depicted on stage,” one might want to rethink theatergoing.
Then, there are the warnings that make you wonder where the producers have been for the last 50 years. Hair is being staged at Signature this season, and we’re advised it “includes significant full male and female nudity and depictions of marijuana use. Marijuana will be simulated with herbal cigarettes on the stage.” Is there anything to Hair other than nudity and cannabis? Is there anyone who needs to be alerted to that?
This suggests even the best-known entertainments will have to come with advisories, and some will have to be extensive. Consider the many warnings needed to protect audiences watching the doings of Shakespeare’s gloomy Dane. In an effort to be helpful, I’ve provided here my own suggestion for a standardized content warning for Hamlet.
• Spectral apparition making murderous demands
• Leftover luncheon meats from a funeral buffet served at widow’s wedding
• Depictions of aboulomania
• Spectral apparition growing impatient
• Suggestions of adultery and (if certain lines are spoken lasciviously enough) incest
• Suicide, suicidal thoughts, morbid handling of disinterred skeletal remains, grave-hopping
• Herbal-floral sensitivity notice: Those allergic to rosemary, pansies, fennel, columbines, ruta graveolens, or daisies — please alert the usher, who will lead you out of the theater during Act IV
• Poisoning, poisoning, poisoning, and a theatrical representation of poisoning
• The juice of cursed hebenon (See poisoning, above)
• Unsportsmanlike conduct in a fencing bout (See poisoning, above)
[Warning: Spoiler alert]
• Everybody dies.
Come to think of it, Macbeth could probably use a caveat or two, which would give us the opportunity to use the word “mysophobia.” (Keep scrubbing those hands, Lady!) Then again — and this may be one of the reasons to have theater at all — that play is itself one long warning.
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
