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.)
If you would like to support the Woke Waste mission, please subscribe here.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Thank you Toby for a cracking ‘taster’ into what is becoming an extremely invidious subject. Although I fell out with the Catholic Church many years ago and my anti-stance has hardened these last 2.5 years I remain a Christian and very much support Christian beliefs. I have nothing to say in favour of Islam and it is unquestionably, diametrically opposed, I believe to the Christian way of life. So I agree the undermining of Christianity seems to have been matched by the growth of wokery and the results are bad and getting worse.
The trans / alphabet brigade are very much a minority within a much larger group of people but unfortunately make far too much noise. The vast majority of trans people would I am sure prefer to live quiet lives under the radar.
If the Church went back to basics and ensured the Christian basics were reasserted once more a firmer push back against wokery might commence. Unlikely I know and especially with their current hierarchy.
The wokery infecting our society is evil and unless stopped will grow. It is certainly a nasty element in the push to break apart our society and like all other attacks we must resist and stand up for basic common sense.
“After a brief flurry of feminine freedom towards the end of the last century, once again men are the self-appointed experts on everything female.”. A “brief flurry”?. “towards the end of the last century”?. Not a single word of blame goes to the swivel-eyed loons that are ‘progressive’ women. We’re into the 9th decade of increasingly aggressive feminism and it’s no coincidence that life is becoming increasingly shite. Men must give up their masculinity and women must be more masculine (so few people seem able to see the bizarrely obvious double speak). Where could this campaign possibly end? Men wanting to be women, and women wanting to be men. Suck it up Julie, you’ve got a lot to answer for. Get comfortable in that bed.
Why has she got a lot to answer for?
Look up her previous rants about men. This woman absolutely hates males – hates with a venomous passion. That hatred has consequences – 60+ years of consequences.
Yes, I’m blaming womem like Julie; I’m just saying it out aloud. You sometimes have to dig deep to fnd the roots of a problem.
Well I don’t know anything about her. And I don’t even know if a word exists which is the female equivalent of ‘misogynist’. But I do like men, as long as they aren’t tossers. Women can be complete tossers too. What I will agree with this woman on is her opinion of a man being appointed as “Period dignity officer”. No idea what that job entails but it does sound like something straight from a Babylon Bee skit. I can imagine JP having a lot of fun with that one too.
“Rise of the New Puritans”.
For some time I have been imagining members of this new cult asking (in a “Southern” drawl): “Are you woke? Do you accept woke as your personal…” etc.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…
Four hundred years ago, one could say that the difference between the Catholics and the Protestants was that one set wanted to follow rules, while the other set wanted to think.
The same two sets exist today. Instead of it being Protestants and Catholics, what should it be? Sceptics and Wokesters?
I don’t know. Some Catholics are very sceptical. Have you read The Song Of Bernadette? And some Protestants for that matter are not very sceptical ( the clergy at Durham Cathedral?).
Note that the religious tend to not fall for the wokerati tricks — and the more religious they are the more they’re immune.
Perhaps society needs a religion, and in the absence of any of the traditional theologies people will get suckered into ‘belief’ in whatever is being pushed by the media.
Depends what one means by religious. I tend to consider some of the atheist cults as religious. And by the way, I don’t particularly buy the distinction that the atheist crimes of the 20th century were not in the name of atheism .Even if they were not specifically in its name or about converting the world to atheism, it won’t make much difference to their many victims, but I suppose the likes of Dawkins have to try and distance their religion from these crimes, and I suppose some are bound to buy it. Meanwhile, the maxim that if people cease to believe i n God, they don’t believe in nothing but rather in anything, seems to have a lot of truth in it. Innit? No coincidence that there is a big interest in “the aliens” in post Christian towns in South Wales.
If I say I have no idea about any gods and just want to focus on doing what I believe is the right thing for myself and those I love, what does that make me?
A Christian.
Agnostic I suppose if you don’t claim to know for certain. Nonetheless, there are likely to be other things that you do believe for certain without having seen. These may or may not include “aliens” (as I said), the origin of life, the provenance and age of fossils, whether or not Scottish shrimps are really likely to remain unchanged for 300 million years if molecules to man can allegedly happen in 4,000 million years (according to “the science”), whether T-rex DNA is really likely to survive for millions of years, where matter came from and how much there is and why, what the mind is (atoms arranged in a certain way (which would mean you could theoretically be duplicated and thus one person with two bodies), your own atoms (even though almost all are replaced over a life time), your own DNA (which would mean identical twins were one person with two bodies), or perhaps the dwelling place of the soul), whether the “big bang” is scientific (the universe came from a dot and the dot came from nothing and that idea gets printed in a journal as “science”), how much space, time and matter there is and why (if they are infinite, could anything happen (if so, why isn’t there more than one of me, and if not why not, how much of them is there and why?). why the missing links that Victorian amateur naturalist fretted about remain missing (and what said naturalist would have made of the stunning discoveries of DNA and the mindboggling complexity of the cell), about whether macro-evolution can happen by random chance despite lack of proof and seeming statistical impossibility (amino acids to protein, an eye forming etc.), and why the many natural laws (and many conditions of the unique planet Earth in its unique solar system) just happen to be perfectly calibrated to allow life to exist.
My point is that, whilst atheists and agnostics and “nones” might traditionally be considered as non-religious, they may very well be believers, simply arguing on essentially philosophical grounds that their belief is more reasonable than other beliefs (as indeed most people do to be fair).
And I should add that those atheists who place themselves at the centre and effectively make gods of themselves are effectively atheistic satanists (man made god is a key definition of this). Christians on the other hand aspire to love their enemy and do good to those that hate them. This is a very difficult thing, but very commendable (and to be fair, some atheists and agnostics try to do this. Always worth learning from other beliefs as our old friends the Amish have shown us with “vaccines”).
Which athiests make gods of themselves? So now they’re satanists?
And loving your enemy is commendable, doing good to those who hate you?
Sounds like being stuck in an abusive relationship to me and makes somebody a massive mug.
Just more sanctimonious cobblers and further proof that those of us without religion and happy in our lot seem to really rub the devout up the wrong way. The fact we do not feel we are lacking in the slightest and can have a fulfilling existence without subscribing to organized belief systems really gets up some noses doesn’t it?
Loving your enemy= treating them with respect and recognizing their humanity and agency; not snogging them and giving them your wage packet.
What has characterized all the lockdown protests and resistance movements (e.g trucker protests) has been their decency, kindness and good behaviour.
The religious are not, on the whole ‘rubbed up the wrong way’ by atheists. What rubs many of us up the wrong way is the mealy-mouthed caving-in of some of our own leaders -like the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Kudos to the Canadian pastor who roared at the cops who tried to close his church.
Why on earth would you treat your enemy with respect?? What humanity? Surely if they had any they wouldn’t be considered your enemy? No offence but I’m not someone who enjoys being treat like a doormat because I get to polish my halo and earn some brownie points before I reach your pearly gates. Nope. Treat others as you want to be treat yourself. Simple as.
But I do agree with that Bishop, and the pope actually, being utterly disingenuous in their preaching, and the Polish dude totally rocks. Got all the time in the world for people like that. His video went viral for a reason.
It makes you a decent and compassionate human being, and you do not have to belong to any particular club to be one of those. We aren’t living in primitive times where our very life depended on choosing a side.
“We aren’t living in primitive times where our very life depended on choosing a side.”
We have come very close Mogs. In places like Canada, New York, Australia and the others with ‘vaccine” mandates, for many they really did have to pick a side.
I am an Atheist, i.e. I do not believe in God(s), Angels, Archangels, etc.
That is all being an “Atheist” means.
To construe “not believing in God” as “believing in nothing” is illogical.
To construe “not believing in God” as “believing in anything” is merely puerile.
BTW Christian Cults have been murdering each other throughout history.
There’s always the English Divine Liturgy. Mar Mari Emanuel would get me back into a church.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i1QgjDenQ_s
“Note that the religious tend to not fall for the wokerati tricks”
Well that is a mile off the donkey’s nose. I come from a large and committed family of Catholics and unfortunately they have fallen for the scam hook…
Two churches I know well – Catholic and Baptist. C1984 believers up to their eye balls.
There are smaller groups within Christianity standing up to the nonsense (including that Canadian pastor and certain Catholic groups), however it is hard to think of leaders of any of the major Christian denominations who have made a stand, and many of them inspire little (or no) confidence. What I would say is that the Church is better than its leadership at any given time, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I trust Christ, even if I do not trust some Christian leaders so much.
I’m not alone in being both not religious and impervious to woke claptrap. Society “needs” religion like it needs mask mandates or a harnfull novel injection. All examples of completely unnecessary belief systems in order to live as a decent human being in a functional and civilised society.
But what people will use to virtue signal to the max nevertheless.
Ok… Except for “the child-raping of the Catholic Church”. I am aware of the scandals that prompted Ms Burchill to smear the whole Church in this way, but child rape is NOT part of the (Catholic) Christian religion.
“Far safer to kick the Christians instead” indeed.
I think I’ve spotted a typo in “…bullying cults…”