Shot, Shocked, Saved

HowlRound: In the main, theater avoids the burden of film, which can descend to a mere pornography of violence, bloodless and gory both. But with the responsibility of our form’s more delicate relationship between art and reality, we as theater artists must instead be careful not to descend to the tactics of terrorism—most commonly, shock. I’ve been wrestling with whether I can start denouncing shocking or unpleasant theater wholesale. On the one hand, I don’t want to be shocked or assaulted. Nobody does.