Actors of the stage are speaking out against recent trigger warnings provided to audiences prior to viewing stage productions, including Dame Judi Dench. While the theater has long been a place for shock and discomfort coupled with entertainment, trigger warnings have started to be issued to warn audiences of the types of content they will be subject to during the shows. For many actors, this doesn’t sit well with them.
Dench has been gracing the stage for decades
Dench’s acting career actually began on stage in 1957 when she starred as Ophelia in Hamlet. She then starred in several other Shakespearean plays, including playing Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and Lady Macbeth in Macbeth. In the early years of her career, she worked for the National Theatre Company and the Royal Shakespeare Company, cementing herself as one of the most significant British theater performers to grace the stage.
Her experience with theater early in her career has certainly changed over the years. Attending the theater has significantly changed. Nowadays, content warnings have been provided to audiences to warn them of potentially disturbing content, and this has significantly split the theater community. While some say that they serve a similar function to warnings about strobe lights for those susceptible to seizures, others argue that they greatly diminish the power of the arts to shock and disturb audiences.
She says stay home if you’re sensitive
Dench was unaware that trigger warnings were being issued to audiences prior to viewing productions and was surprised to learn about them. “Do they do that?” she said on UK’s Radio Times. “It must be a pretty long trigger warning before King Lear or Titus Andronicus.”
After learning about them, Dench quickly criticized the audience’s sensitivity to the content included in plays. “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?”
She’s not the only one to speak out
Dench isn’t the first person in theater to speak out against the trigger warnings being provided to audiences of stage productions. Her commentary follows that of fellow actors Ralph Fiennes and Sir Ian McKellen, as well as others.
In an interview with BBC, Fiennes said that visitors of the theater have “gone soft” compared to the audiences of yesteryear. “The impact of theatre should be that you’re shocked, and should be that you’re disturbed, I don’t think you should be prepared for these things,” he said. “It’s the shock, it’s the unexpected, that’s what makes an act of theatre so exciting.” McKellen separately shared a similar sentiment, saying, “I think it’s ludicrous. I quite like to be surprised by loud noises and outrageous behavior on stage.”
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We are curious to see who else might speak out against these trigger warnings.