I called this session because - as a black woman running a black theatre company with a commitment to black artists and black audiences - I see a lot of black work. Some works are courageously - and rightly - turning their lens on whiteness but in doing so, have created painful experiences for me and other black people - who, by the way, have to hide in DMs or WhatsApp groups to be able to safely critique the work because we feel disloyal speaking about our experiences publicly. Across two weeks I'd seen both Fairview and Slave Play and am oh so hurt. Often the plays will look like they're for me - black casts, sometimes black creative teams - so I'll turn up and out ready to celebrate and emerge two hours later retraumatised (by language, images or the simple fact of sitting in the minority amongst white people getting their kicks at my expense) and hurt realising that those plays weren't for me at all. They were about me but not for me, they relied on me being there but wouldn't acknowledge I was there. This work should absolute exist but can it exist without hurting me?

- Can theatres provide safe spaces but actually safe spaces suggests "victims" but actually we all need space to digest theatre.
- Re. sexual violence: replicating = awareness but replication doesn't equal interrogation
- Do we always need to show trauma? Is there more craft in interrogating it without replicating it?
- Trigger warnings?
- Trigger warnings can help prepare you for content but how do we prepare you for the feelings? How can we provide a trigger warning for the feeling of watching white people laugh at "blackface" or "whiteface". How do we talk about hurt feelings?
- Benevolent risk assessment
- If we know the response, is there more to be done to interrogate the response - Rita, Bob and Sue too drew attention to the audience reaction by keeping them light by the car lights
- What is the role of dramaturgy here?
- Can a play have double narrative - two narratives for two audiences, the oppressed and the oppressor
- If the work only functions by retraumatising then there is something wrong with the work
- You might have the right people in the room (black artists) but still sell out the audience because its systemic
- we need decompression spaces in theatres: theatre bars are becoming more popular and so don't provide the right context for quiet recovery
- post show discussions as space to sit with the play - Daughter at BAC
- if there was more black work then I could make a more educated choices. The lack of work means I don't even read about the work before I book so keen to support.
- Appropriate at The Donmar: white actors asking to a majority white audience about racism instead of black actors talking to a majority white audience about racism.
- Kiri Pritchard-McLean’s ‘Victim, Complex'
- How do we put the audience first? And which audience comes first?
- Octoroon and Fairview are very different programming contexts and yet both retraumatising for (some) black audiences
- Are you ready to care for the audience you want to support>
- "race blunts complexity"
- duty of care to/from artists
- even if we find a way to express it on stage, the building retraumatises some audiences: behaviour policing etc.
- whose responsibility is caring for the audience - company, venue, producer?
- the work that we're generally talking about (instigating examples) are American - how much does that impact our experience of the work?
- common wealth and Glass House as good example of care
- theatre experience doesn't allow for feedback / dialogue - it thinks the communication is one way: from stage to audience but doesn't really allow for audience to audience or audience to stage
- the reasonable audience by Kirsty Sedgman: theatre is structured to oppress its audiences
- union for audiences? welfare officer? relationship manager for audiences?
- define the limits of the intensity of trauma you are presenting
- protect / cater for the most vulnerable first and everyone else will be fine: Angela Davis
- great example of that is Salt by Selina Thompson
- examples of good care tend to come from performance art: does theatre not care? Can theatre not be kind?
- due diligence: start early