It can be pretty frightening going to see a play.
At least, that’s what Bush Theatre seems to think, which has published a “self-care” guide for one of its shows.
I first discovered the production Lady Dealer through Facebook. Nowadays I get advertised a huge amount of theatre and artistic content on social media – mainly because of my Substack series Woke Waste (below) – where I investigate examples of taxpayer-funded wokery (as I am to do in this piece).
The algorithms are consequently convinced I am an avid consumer of the arts (which I am, incidentally, just not woke art, meaning I rarely buy tickets).
Almost every time I see a play now I can predict it will be woke in some way.
Lady Dealer looked okay, though, on the surface:
For Charly, every day is the same: neck some coffee, answer the phone, sell some drugs. The flat she once shared with her ex, Clo, is now the base of her growing business. And she’s fine with that. She’s fine! Charly is fine.
I can’t say I was rushing to buy a ticket, but it was a relief to have a break from the usual themes of woke: transgenderism, climate change, race, or all of them intersecting through a non-binary lens of eco trauma.
But not so fast. When I scrolled down the page I saw this:
A self-care guide
Until I opened Bush Theatre’s guide, I thought ‘self-care’ was something Gen Z-ers said when putting on a scented candle before recording a TikTok video about their mental health. But it seems trigger warnings have been rebranded as ‘self-care guides’ – and there’s worse news: these are even longer than original trigger warnings (this one being 12 pages, in fact).
Bush Theatre’s explains:
This document contains information about ways to look after yourself before you visit.
(You’d think you were headed to a remote cave inhabited by rabies-infected bats.)
It adds that its self-care guide has been informed by another organisation (more on this later):
Thank you to Clean Break for bringing their care practices, including Self-Care Guides, to the Bush Theatre during our co-production of Favour (2022). Clean Break is a theatre company working with women with lived experience of the criminal justice system or at risk of entering it.
“The concept of self-care comes from the Black Feminist movement. Self-care is important because it’s about recognising that we experience discrimination and oppression because of how others react to who we are, or what we’ve experienced.” — Clean Break
In writing this document, we were also inspired by recent approaches taken by several other companies, especially the Nouveau Riche and Royal Court teams.
Bush Theatre’s self-care guide goes on to offer warnings that Lady Dealer contains “fatphobia” and the “depiction of alcohol consumption”, along with other dangerous content.
There’s also a warning about “herbal cigarettes”:
And helplines to call (“Hello, I’ve seen a herbal cigarette!”)
Plus, here are practical steps audiences can take if pushed to the brink by herbal cigarettes and fatphobia, such as “breathe” and “find some nature”:
Think we’re done yet? Nope.
It turns out that Clean Break has made numerous self-care guides tailored to different shows. For instance, if you’re seeing the play Dixon and Daughters, you might need first aid (mental health first aid, that is):
Clean Break has also kindly turned “content warnings” into symbols, so you can eventually become adept at recognising triggering content:
Here is a particularly dangerous scene – as told through the symbols for ‘addiction/alcohol /mention of drugs’, ‘sexual violence/child sexual abuse’, ‘prison/criminal justice system’ and ‘problematic mother-child relationships’. Got that?
The strange thing is that Clean Break is, forgive the repetition from above, a “theatre company working with women with lived experience of the criminal justice system or at risk of entering it”. But it treats imprisonment and criminal justice experience as an area that needs ‘Content Warnings’. It’s like a supermarket giving a content warning about trolleys, or someone warned about seeing their own face in a mirror.
Best not to ask questions, though.
In addition to recommending Clean Break, Bush Theatre has also acknowledged The Royal Court Theatre (RC) and the company Nouveau Riche as leaders in the self-care guide space.
Here’s RC guidance for its play Sound Of The Underground, described as:
Legends of the London queer club scene come above ground to take over the Royal Court Theatre. Part-play, part-raucous cabaret, part-workers’ manifesto, join eight underground drag icons as they spill the tea, free the nipple and fight the shadowy forces that threaten their livelihoods. Bring some change. Tip generously.
It sounds kinda fun – that’s until you find out that the play contains “Discussion of pay disparity and financial hardship”.
Helplines are provided if you struggle with, say, “the effect capitalism has on the queer community”. You can also reach out to organisations like Stonewall:
Then there’s Nouveau Riche, an Associate Company resident at Broadway Theatre, which published ‘self-care’ guidance for its play For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy by Ryan Calais Cameron at New Diorama Theatre.
The guide reads:
We know this show might be challenging to engage with for some audiences, especially if you’re affected by the content.
In an analysis of racism, racial discrimination and racist stereotypes, the show explores a group of characters whose experiences include violence, toxic relationships and forms of trauma including sexual abuse and child abuse. There are themes of suicide and suicidal ideation throughout.
Content warnings include “toxic masculinity”:
I have a feeling that I could go on pasting self-care documents forever. But let’s get to the crunch: how much is this costing taxpayers?
Woke Waste tot up time
To add, as I’m sure you don’t need spelling out, there’s no specific ‘self-care guide’ budget figure. So I’m going to present how much each theatre is receiving in total from taxpayers. Below I’ve pasted:
- The number of Government grants the theatres have received since 2019 (logged on the Charity Commission website, a register of charities in England and Wales)
- Arts Council England (ACE) funding per year for its 2023-26 Investment Programme
£4.19 million – Bush Theatre (titled Alternative Theatre Company Limited)
ACE annual funding: £656,234/ total for three years: £1,968,702.
———————–
£453,640 – Clean Break
ACE annual funding: £220,173/ total for three years: £660,519.
———————–
£13.15 million – The Royal Court (The English Stage Company Limited)
ACE annual funding: £2,236,073/ total for three years: £6,708,219.
———————–
Nouveau Riche
As an associate company resident at Broadway Theatre, Nouveau Riche doesn’t appear to have similar accounting figures.
But it’s worth saying that Broadway Theatre itself has done well out of taxpayers over the years – receiving a £7 million makeover, funded by Lewisham Council, in 2022.
This month Lewisham Council and Nouveau Riche are also to hold a new “Black and Global Majority Arts Festival”.
All in all (considering the total taxpayer funding for the companies), a lot is being spent on theatres producing trigger warnings – oh sorry, I mean ‘self-care guides’.
Conclusion
The problem with these theatres is one that’s rife across the public sector and publicly-funded arts: a lack of secularism, just not in the way we conventionally consider it. Secularism is, of course, the separation of state and religion. But a new religion or ideology has been enshrined in our public institutions (and in many private institutions too), in which documentation like self-care guides act as quasi-scripture, and pronoun badges as symbols of having been baptised into all things woke.
State funding is, in my view, the oxygen that keeps woke alive. We can complain about woke all we like, but nothing will change until we starve it of this. Were state funding removed from organisations that inflict woke ideology on Brits, market forces would extinguish or at least severely diminish their ability to survive. It is telling that, even when given huge amounts of state funding, the arts sector is always ‘on its knees’. Probably because audiences don’t want to see plays about Joan of Arc being non-binary (as was the case at The Globe).
I began my Woke Waste series to shed light on every type of taxpayer-funded wokery, partly as an exercise for myself (I have been shocked by the extent to which taxpayer money is used for woke ends) but also to spread public awareness. I believe this is the main step we need to take to control the issue; to know the bills, and to ask for a refund and rethink from our politicians. I have also started listing ideas for how to remove it from our public institutions, which I think is actually doable – despite the extent of the problem (think the woke equivalent of Japanese knotweed across the U.K.)
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