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Freedom of Expression - The Debate Spreads

Dateline: 21st March, 2005

After a depressingly slow start, the debate about freedom of expression in theatre had begun to spread. It is now quite a hot topic on the SCOTS-NITS email discussion group, where some interesting points have emerged.

What is rather worrying, for those of us who really believe that theatre should not be restricted in the subjects it deals with and the way in which is deals with them, is a claim from the director of a theatre company that he has had funding refused because she is known as a committed Christian. This was never stated formally, she says, but informal discussions after the fact led her to believe this to be the case. And she was not trying to get funding for a Christian show, but for something that was mainstream theatre.

She did not say who the funding body was. It could have been a body which funds according to content (i.e. one of the many charitable trusts which give funding to theatre productions if they fit into the Trust's remit) or it could have been a general arts funding body. If it was the latter, it is as disgraceful as the actions of Christian Voice. Surely the only criterion to apply in such a case is that of quality? If arts funding bodies start making decisions based upon the personal beliefs of the director of a company, then we had better give up the argument for freedom of expression here and now!

Of course, she may have been misinformed or even mischievously led astray. Odd as it sounds, I hope that is the case - but if it is, the person concerned should hang his/her head in shame and consider if (s)he is a proper sort of person to be administering arts funds.

On a much more positive note, there was an excellent comment/suggestion from Joyce McMillan, who is the theatre critic of The Scotsman and probably the leading theatre journalist in Scotland. With her permission we reproduce it here, with the reminder that it was written, not for The Scotsman but for the SCOTS-NITS group. Thanks, Joyce!

Surely, in relation to Jerry Spinger and theatre censorship, what we need to be discussing is not whether religious people have a right to protest (peacefully) against shows they find offensive - of course they do - but how theatre managements should react to that? The frightening thing to me about both the Bezhti and Jerry Springer affairs was not that people protested, but that managements, sometimes backed by the political authorities and the police, just caved in to those protests, as if security/public order was something that mattered, whereas freedom of speech didn't matter at all, or nor nearly so much.

I think, following these incidents, theatre managements in Britain really need to get together and hammer out some kind of common line on how they are going to respond to these pressures, and what support they are going to demand frtom police etc. in responding to them. Otherwise any small protest group with a grievance, and a willingness to claim some spurious moral authority by calling itself religious, is going to be able to stop any show simply by sending bullying emails, or staging a small demo and breaking some windows. Which would be worse than the Lord Clamberlain, wouldn't it?

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