"…a theatre that fears offending is a theatre with broken teeth" Lyn Gardner
Disassociating art from the artist can be hard. The work often reveals something about the artist that isn’t always comfortable.
Or it may be it is their personal conduct. Viewers of stand-up comic Hannah Gadsby's Netflix show Nanette may now view the work of Pablo Picasso very differently or not at all. I know someone who will not see Man of La Mancha because of its lead Kelsey Grammer's strong views on Trump.
If we take away the work of the Chaucers and Ben Jonsons (who is known to have killed someone) we leave holes in our cultural history for future generations and we make censors of those who will choose for us which artist's behaviour and what art is acceptable.
For everyone to live in harmony with our artistic heritage, we need education, freedom of choice and societal change, not censors.
I believe in the artist's right to provoke, polarise opinion, shock and disturb, in short to challenge, and on a personal level I try to maintain a healthy disregard for offence.
No one has the right to live without ever being offended, and I see it as too transitory a notion to get really heated about.
Bound up in time and cultural upbringing, offence is here today and gone tomorrow with what was once considered morally corrupting becoming entertainment.
The 1960s had Lady Chatterly and the 2010s had Fifty Shades; the 1980s had the Human Earrings exhibition and the 1990s had Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall serving placenta; the 1980s had Romans in Britain the 2000s, Jerry Springer: The Opera and 2019 has Downstate.
Offence is an indulgence of the unaccommodating, too often used to get a message taken down, one party denying another's right to have or express a different view, and in so doing also denies the audience the freedom to self-select.
Censorship silences minority voices and shuts down debate on the very topics that society may need to be open about.
The discussion generated by the Online Harms White Paper illustrates the wide-ranging concern about this. Proposing codes of practice for dealing with everything from child sex abuse to illegal sales with severe to draconian penalties for offenders, Internet platforms could be forced into caution whilst content providers will self-censor.
The consequences for the theatre industry are not yet clear but publicity or blogs related to a play on one of the 'harmful' subjects could inadvertently fall foul of this proposed legislation.
Neither is it clear whether private WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger conversations will come under this legislation, which could be another concern for an industry that benefits from word of mouth.
No matter what, artists must be allowed to present illegal, culturally sensitive or controversial subjects without the risk of being accused of promoting them.
Do we really want to live in a world without provocateurs?
If artists cannot continue to bust taboos, innovate and push at boundaries of acceptability, we may not just be failing to make progress, we could be going backwards more than 50 years.
The next time we find a play shocking or 'offensive', before we challenge the artist we need to ask ourselves some questions.
As consumers we need to get over our fear of being proved wrong, old-fashioned or biased; putting hubris to one side we must climb out of our comfort zones and venture into uncharted territories. Go upstream, not mainstream.
Pick new writing against classics, support emerging artists as well as established ones, sit in studio venues instead of the main house, eschew the high profile for the fringe and explore unfamiliar genres.
If we want our artists to take risks, the least we can do is take a few of our own.
My thanks to Julia Farrington of Index on Censorship for her assistance with my questions and answers, and Simon Sladen Senior Curator at Victoria and Albert Museum (and BTG's panto editor) who took the time to speak to me following my visit to the V&A exhibition on censorship.