This year marks four decades of freedom of speech in England’s theaters. Only 40 years ago, all plays were censored by the state for any “profanity or impropriety of language, indecency of dress, dance or gesture; offensive personalities or representations of living persons or anything calculated to produce riot or breach of the peace.” In 1968, Member of Parliament Michael Foot overturned this outdated system and introduced a new Theatres Act which abolished the Lord Chamberlain’s power to censor and ban plays (the office had been in operation since 1843).

In 1968, theater found itself at the forefront of the period’s huge social and cultural upheavals. Playwrights had become ungagged, and theater suddenly rekindled its relationship with politics, culture and society. In other words, theater rediscovered its active ingredient and became a “spokesperson” for the growing counterculture movement.

We should not forget that this move was no accident – rather, it was the result of a rapidly changing society that demanded a reconsideration of the relationship between the individual and the state.

The sexual liberation movement (both heterosexual and homosexual) demanded that the body be liberated from state control, hence the feminist maxim: “The personal is political.” Through protesting and the more promiscuous sexual practices of the British and American people, the physical presence of the body as a social and sexual weapon was brought to bear upon the political sphere.

Unsurprisingly then, naked bodies immediately appeared on stage after the new bill was passed. Infamously, the musical Hair (1968) and Oh! Calcutta! (1969) both depicted full-frontal nudity – an act which had become highly politicized.

State Intervention

Today, it seems almost incredulous that state intervention has shaped many of England’s modern classics. Would Samuel Beckett have taken his bleak existentialism in other directions? Was Joan Littlewood’s political voice curtailed in any way?

One of the last plays to be censored was Harold Pinter’s Landscape which was originally scheduled for production at the Aldwych Theatre in the months preceding the introduction of the new Theatres Act. Reading Landscape today highlights the absurdity of the situation – it is a gentle, melancholic play and contains no politically subversive material. Yet, the Lord Chamberlain’s office objected to the words “fuck all” and “bugger,” which read quite naturally in their original context.

“As I believe you know, I am willing to cut the phrase ‘fuck all’ but I see no good reason to change the word bugger,” wrote Pinter to Sir George Farmer, the then chairman of the Royal Shakespeare Society. “How childish the whole thing is, and what a pity one word is now between us and public performance.”

Eventually, Pinter’s play was recorded for BBC radio instead – an area over which the Lord Chamberlain had no jurisdiction. It was ludicrous that a play deemed too offensive for a small theater audience could be broadcast uncut over the radio to a mass audience.

Should We Be Celebrating?

Although there is no formal theater censorship in England, slanderous, blasphemous and racially aggravated productions can still be closed down. In the UK, the ongoing fight to protect freedom of speech now has to face growing pressures from the religious right.

Famously, the evangelical Christian right have dogged worldwide tours of Jerry Springer: The Opera since it opened. These attacks against the freedom of speech in theater have been highly organized. When the BBC decided to screen Jerry Springer: The Opera, an organization called Christian Voice led street protests, and the Christian Institute unsuccessfully attempted to prosecute the BBC.

Can small, cash-strapped theaters in the UK really be expected to confront these large (and in some cases wealthy) organizations committed to restricting freedom of expression? In 2004, the Birmingham Rep closed their production of the controversial Sikh play Behzti after the theater was subjected to violent attacks on opening night from the Sikh community.

The pre-1968 campaign for freedom of speech was united by a single cause: the abolition of the Lord Chamberlain’s office. Today, a single focus for the campaign is near impossible to identify – it is a clandestine mixture of political lobby groups and religious fundamentalists. The fight is far from over, and Britain’s theater scene is in dire need for support to help fight these growing movements.

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