Dear Writers - Stay Woke
As much as I don’t want to give oxygen to the bullshit competition offering two grand to any writer than can write a ‘non woke’ play, I do feel that it’s an important perspective to recognise.
Even if it is just to belittle it for being the wailings of the artistically redundant.
The idea of art being ‘overly political’ is laughable in the first instance, as all great art is political. It’s protest. During times of peace, it’s protest against the self, and in times of conflict it’s protest against the status quo and oppressive powers. That could be as overt as swastikas and Nazi’s (see the literal hundreds of WWII plays, films, TV series etc.) or it could be as abstract as the waves of political opinion (see any comedy, TV series, and film set during or about the Thatcher era).
These days, the predominant topic of art is something called ‘woke’, which is a term used by adopters to mean people who are open, tolerant, and understanding of the fact that there’s 8 billion people on the planet who all have different but equal needs and desires. It’s also a term used by nay sayers to mean… well, kind of the same thing, but bad?
While the ‘war on woke’ will be endlessly stupid to me and anyone with two braincells to rub together, it has now become a rallying cry for populists and right wing grifters across the English speaking world. But this isn’t the place to have that debate.
No, this article is singularly focused on a publishing house that has launched a playwriting competition specifically to counter the political focus of modern theatre, something they say means plays won’t be remembered in years to come.
Firstly, I’d like to agree.
The theatrical marketplace is awash with politically charged solo shows, plays, and performances. They’re everywhere. Just based on sheer volume alone, it’d be ridiculous to suggest that most of these plays will be culturally remembered in years to come.
Unlike in years previously of course, where every single play, performance, and script lives in the archives of our collective consciousness…
There are writers who spent their whole lives writing, producing, and putting their work out there that only some die hard fans and archivists know about in 2026. That’s how time works.
So yes, there is an absolute barrage of plays being performed right now that won’t be remembered in years to come. The same as there always is. The difference is, where die hard fans and archivists would be the sole record keepers of plays long past, now they’ll live in the libraries of cancer charities, queer homes, disabled networks and more. Why? Because there’s finally a play for them.
For us.
The production house also stated that they wanted to “add to the pool of human achievement” with this competition. Something that Phoebe Waller-Bridge will be delighted to hear about after her absolute flop, Fleabag, failed to make any cultural impact. Lin Manuel-Miranda will be similarly overjoyed to hear this after Hamilton torpedoed his career.
Instead of all that insignificant waffle, the production house wants writers to, “like Shakespeare”, pull from the Lives of Plutarch. So instead of that incredibly restrictive device of being able to tell a story about anyone, writers are instead freed to retell the stories of a single individual! How liberating.
You can probably tell I’m feeling a little cynical about this “event of 2026”. I should say that all competition organisers are free to run their competitions however they see fit. If they want to run a ‘be the next Shakespeare’ competition, where writers are invited to, as Shakespeare did, write tales inspired by the Life of Plutarch, then fine! Great, in fact.
There are competitions running all the time with various restrictions. Different production houses have different needs, different tastes, and different goals. That’s why a script can win one competition and be left on the reading pile of another. That isn’t my issue. My issue is with the framing.
Most production houses will frame their competitions as an opportunity to lift up a voice, often a neglected one, and give them the opportunity to stand in the spotlight. They’re about sharing the light. This competition, though it’s framed as an opportunity for the winner to be “acclaimed on the theatre floor by the entire audience of a large London stage”, it feels like this is less about sharing the light, and more about pushing people back out of it.
When talking to The Telegraph, the director of the company even stated that they wanted to “take back the stage from the agitprop and overtly political nature of most modern theatre and stage, to a more serious form that is focused on the stage as a place to perform art”. He then went on to accuse the industry of “naval gazing” before talking about his Plutarch and Shakespeare inspired competition without an ounce of irony.
I, much like this publishing house, would like to see a theatre industry that isn’t “naval gazing”, and that’s why I love theatre right now! Is it all a bit preachy? Yes, absolutely, but all therapy sessions are after the patient gets comfortable. Once the preaching is done, and the soul has been purged, the landscape of theatre will shift again. And I, unlike this publishing house, would like that shift to be forward, not backwards.
So, to all writers of all walks of life, stay woke. Share your experiences with the world. Share the light.
