And so to Warwick

Last weekend I was at Warwick University for a theatre conference - All Together Now? The British Theatre after Multi - Culturism - a topic that the conference was successful in avoiding for most of the two days. There were some real high points, amongst them were Michael Boyd on Shakespeare's own relationship to history both cultural, historical and personal, Stewart Lee and Richard Bean and particularly Kenan Malik on the nature of offence. And it was good to see colleagues and to meet new people. But I wish we had spent more time discussing how we move onwards to a more inclusive theatre.
One of the speakers looked forward to a time when theatre audiences can be shocked and offended rather than the offence being reserved for those on the outside of the building holding the banners. But we can't be seen to be offended even if we are, because we're all part of the same club, and to be offended would mean that we lacked the sophistication to understand the metaphor, and we also assume that whatever happens on stage can't really be about us. I resisted An Inspector Calls for years but when I saw Stephen Daldry's revival I realised that it was so much more than an amdram warhorse, it was a precise and brutal dissection of the hypocrisy of the very people who would have been sitting in the stalls on the first night. But of course, like us, each one of them would have been convinced that the play was about someone else, not them.