A Midsummer Night’s Dream - Royal Exchange

x.com/TheStage/status/1836458544280797641?t=9C8BRJvLZmeymt7cDqiJ-A&s=19

Strong from equity calling it censorship

The production sounds totally hideous on so many levels. How on earth does this concept fit into Dream ? #shoehorn

This is such a sensitive subject though, would anyone in the company who disagreed with the director necessarily feel comfortable speaking up and expressing that view to other cast members or creatives? Particularly when the theatre management's concerns appear to have been received so badly.

It's all anonymous at the moment though. Why would it be contentious to say it to one of the papers?

If the exchange is censoring artists cos of 'pressure groups', that's something relevant for artists isn't it?

I think if i was a member of Equity and I thought they were using my hard earned monthly contributions to try and control the programming at a regional theatre, I’d have a problem with that. 

www.equity.org.uk/news/2023/equity-calls-for-a-ceasefire-in-gaza

From Novemebr 2023

"Equity encourages any members who are worried about blacklisting or censorship to speak to their union for support and advice."

From the sounds of it, the production creatives had issues with censorship though.

if we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended...............

You're badly misrepresenting what happened, in a way that risks promoting antisemitic tropes (of the wily, manipulative Jew who is powerful enough to control the media).

The Soho incident with Paul Currie involved three audience members, and more than one has spoken about it publicly. Has it been officially, reliably confirmed that Eitan is a "former Israeli intelligence officer"? I googled, and I can find no mention of this except on a very dubious "independent thought" website, and two tweets referencing that same website. (The website and both Twitter accounts are full of rantings about evil Zionists controlling the world.)

Reginald D Hunter's racism upset and scared a lot of people, especially since he doubled down afterwards and spent weeks ranting on social media about 'The Jews', how wily and money grubbing 'The Jews' are (not one word about Israel, just 'The Jews'). He's also been RTing all kinds of terrifying stuff from American far right commentators, including people like Candace Owens.

His Edinburgh show wasn't cancelled, the incident took place on 11th August and he kept performing right through till the end of Ed Fringe in the last week of August. Later, he had two regional gigs cancelled, both in Jewish areas, but he finished his Ed run and most of the gigs on his tour haven't been cancelled.



And his online behaviour really has been abhorrent. RDH sent a tweet to the family of one of the murdered Hamas hostages saying, "I will see you and your kind ended, even if it costs me EVERYTHING."

And another tweet saying (in a tweet that also referred to Jews as being Nazis): "I HATE these people and am committed to their destruction."

He's also tweeted misogynistic and unpleasant sexually explicit images to women.

So we can't know if the two gigs were cancelled because of the Edinburgh incident, or because of RDH's social media activity in the days and weeks following it. You can't tweet sexual images, harass the family of murdered Jews, send death threats to Jewish women, and imply you intend to see all Jewish people genocided, and not expect that people won't feel safe working with you.

Actions have consequences.

Reading a bit more about what Equity have been saying and it seems that they are playing a political game that goes beyond the remit they have to represent their members.

Freedom of expression should be protected but it does come with limits and it is certainly not carte blanche for a director to do whatever they want. Every venue has the right to decide what appears on their stages.

Equity mentions the term 'censorship' but does not make a direct link to recent events.They repeat terms like 'dignity' and 'integrity' many times but again put forward no evidence to demonstrate what happened to affect these things. This is all being spun.

The theatre does need to put out a clear statement so that the media narrative is not controlled by Equity and unnamed sources.

It is too easy these days to use buzzwords to try to manipulate reactions.

I think this is when Equity (pushed by vocal members of Equity leadership) making a political "statement" taking a side on the Israel/Gaza war in October 2023 becomes a huge problem. I can't take anything they say regarding any piece of art re: Israel or Palestine as nothing more than biased to their own political aims.

This is why the Writers Guild and other unions in the US declined to make political statements regarding the conflict. It really hurts their standing when they try to arbitrate situations like these.