Theatres have long been places of public expression and discourse, and never has this been clearer than it is now. Lots of new plays that tackle contemporary issues such as poverty, climate change and racial divides can be seen as protest theatre, since they call out for the change that needs to happen. However recently, the theatre has been even more clearly defined as a space of protest with Just Stop Oil interrupting a performance of Les Misérables in the West End last October
and Extinction Rebellion NYC interrupting a press night of An Enemy of the People on Broadway in March this year. Both of these protests were motivated by climate concerns, and both groups chose shows with themes that already aligned to their cause.
Protests at the theatre are generally not directed only at the particular audience in the house on the night. For these activist groups, publicity is much more important: both of the protests made international headlines and, therefore, their audience was not limited to the people who had tickets for the particular performances they interrupted. Instead, they have caused widespread discussion about the place that protests have in theatre with strong opinions being voiced on both sides.
Those who support the use of theatres as a space for these protests have argued that they are effective and necessary because of the fact that they cause disruption and get into the news, and that if policymakers see that they are causing enough of a disruption, then they might do something to change the situation. Miles Grant, a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion NYC even said: “we want to disrupt the things that we love, because we’re at risk of genuinely losing everything the way
things are going.”
I think that this point of view makes complete sense because why should the
things we love be exempt from protests that aim at making our world a better place? Some theatre practitioners have even voiced their support for protests in theatres, saying that they haven’t been violent and as such, banning them would be very controversial.
On the other hand, other theatre practitioners have stated that protests that interrupt performances can be quite scary for the actors because they don’t know what is going to happen. This is particularly the case when the protesters come on stage because the actors are the ones who would be in the most danger if things got violent. Moreover, theatre audiences are generally against protests that disrupt the shows that they have paid to see, with videos from both the West End Les
Misérables protest and the Broadway An Enemy of the People protest showing the audiences booing the protesters.
In the end it is theatres who are forced to foot the bill for refunds, with the Les
Misérables protest costing the theatre over £80,000 in refunds. These costs could potentially harm the theatre industry, especially as some people, both audience members of interrupted shows and people who read about the protests in the news, might be put off going to more shows due to the fear of them also being disrupted.
Whilst I think that protests in theatres probably are worth the protester’s time because it has now been proven that they achieve mass publicity, it is important to consider the impact that they will have on an already unstable industry. Nevertheless, I do think that they are possibly more effective than protests that are directly targeted at policymakers because they cause more discontent among
ordinary people which is likely to cause more pressure to be placed on policymakers.
Furthermore, they are much harder to ignore because they happen less often, so they don’t become commonplace in news headlines or in people’s lives. Finally, I think that staging protests in theatres is the most effective form of activism in the theatre since they lead to more publicity than protest plays, which are likely to only attract people who are already invested in the subject of the play, or “noble calls” where the curtain call is interrupted by an invited speaker with a point to make.
