First-Person: Brad Fraser on Censorship

(Photo Credit: G. Elliot Simpson)

CENSORSHIP AND ME

A lecture

I’ve been a censored being from the beginning of my career...

By Brad Fraser

I’m going to deliver a 45 minute lecture on censorship. That’s a rather broad subject so I’ve narrowed it down to something more manageable.  This lecture is completely personal and subjective and about the long and interesting relationship I’ve had with censorship. It’s seen mostly through the prism of my experience as a playwright and as a gay man; two roles that know a lot about being censored. In fact, I’ve been a censored being from the beginning of my career, as you’ll learn.

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PART ONE

...we now lived in a society where you had to warn people if you were going to make them think.

Wikipedia- we all work online okay- defines Censorship as “the suppression of speech or other public communication which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the general body of people as determined by a government, media outlet, or other controlling body.” 

My personal experience with censorship starts early in my career. In 1978 I wrote a play called “With Love from your Son” which won the Alberta Culture Playwriting Competition. Along with the cash prize was the promise of a summer in the Banff Centre’s Playwrights Colony and a production with a new theatre in Edmonton. 

I was informed that the theatre wouldn’t be producing my show but would be producing the second place winner instead.

I worked with the Artistic Director of that theatre later that summer in Banff.  Toward the end of our time at the centre I was informed that the theatre wouldn’t be producing my show but would be producing the second place winner instead. When I asked why the AD told he knew what his audience wanted and it wasn’t plays about sons who go out and sell their ass to other men in order to provide their dying father with the medicine that he so badly needs. It was his discreet way of saying no homo stuff.

So I got the prize money and someone else got the production. Nobody at Alberta Culture or the theatre seemed to have any problem with this and having just turned 18 and not actually being out at that time I wasn’t sure what I could or should do. I did stew about it. I knew I’d written the better play and it really burned my ass that the winner of SECOND PLACE was going to get my prize because they didn’t have a gay character in their play. It didn’t matter that mine was the better written script, which was why it got FIRST PLACE, because someone at a brand new theatre had decided what his non-existent audience did or did not want to see. That’s how it worked and there was nothing I could do about it.

This started what was probably the conscious beginning of my sense of an outsider, a gay person and an activist. It was also the beginning of a rather turbulent pattern that would dog me throughout my career. 

Now flash forward a couple of years after I’ve been kicking around Edmonton and working at The Walterdale Playhouse, a well respected amateur theatre which was not known for its edgy or original work at that time. I was acting, stage managing, designing, working backstage and basically doing everything I could that would keep me in the theatre and away from whatever stunningly disposable day job I had at the time. I got a reputation for being brash but reliable and for a couple years this place would be my version of the university education most of my friends had gone for. 

Then one day, just a few weeks before auditions, I got a panicked phone call from the Artistic Director.

Eventually the artistic director, Vivien Bosley, who had finally programmed some very provocative plays and knew of my playwriting accomplishments, asked me to write a show for the theatre next season. There was no money involved but they’d produce the play as well as let me direct it. Of course I agreed immediately and spent the next year writing that play while still working during the day and doing shows at night. I showed the script to a few friends and mentors and everyone thought it was quite strong although they also all had ideas for changes and rewrites.

Then one day, just a few weeks before auditions, I got a panicked phone call from the Artistic Director. Apparently a couple of board members had finally deigned read the play and were objecting to its portrayal of teen-age delinquents, the foul language, the generally negative tone and the gay character in the play. She assured me that she and many others at the theatre were on my side but that there would be a battle and she wasn’t sure if we could win it. I reminded her no one had ever given me any parameters for the play or even asked to read it while I was working on it. She understood but wasn’t sure those facts would help us.

I was very proud of Mutants and after a couple of sleepless nights I decided this would not be a repeat of the Alberta Playwrighting Competition thing.

To say I was very upset was an understatement. I’d just written an epic tale of seven kids who escape from a youth correctional facility and take the head of the institution hostage to protest the sexual abuse they’d been receiving from the sadistic guards. It was called Mutants and based on a newspaper article I’d read a couple of years earlier. It was filled with the blunt language and simplistic attitudes of the very young. It wove every theatrical convention I could think of together to become a kind of cacophony of pain and anger directed at an indifferent adult world. I was very proud of it and after a couple of sleepless nights I decided this would not be a repeat of the Alberta Playwrighting Competition thing. I would not be denied another production because of a “gay character”. A board meeting had been called to decide on the best course of action to take with the play and I swore I would be there with both guns blazing. 

At that all important board meeting the AD kicked things off by asking the people who objected to the play to articulate their concerns. Most of them were not particularly eloquent, mumbling apologetically about profanity and frightening situations while looking at the floor but a few of them - and I respected these ones the most - were very up front about their objections. They didn’t like they play. They thought it was offensive and rude and entirely unsuitable for this theatre.

“We can’t censor this boy.”

After they’d each had their say the floor was opened up to the other side. There was a lot of lame to and fro-ing until finally Judy Tilley, a rather unassuming actress who would later go on run the theatre very well, said, “We can’t censor this boy.”

Things got very quiet because in those days it was generally thought of as shameful to censor things - even if you were very right wing. It was a different time.

Judy said something to the affect of - “What does it say about us as a theatre if we ask Brad to write a play and then tell him we won’t produce it. We produce a lot of playwrights here and the only thing they have in common is that they each see the world in a unique way. Just because we don’t like the way he sees the world doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”

At that point Vivien, the AD, chimed in and said, “We agreed to bring this to a vote but before we do, Brad, we would like to hear from you.

"I’ve consulted a lawyer and if you vote to cancel the play after the time and energy I’ve put into this theatre and this play then I will sue you."

I leaned forward in my chair. I looked around the room, making sure I caught the eye of everyone I could and said in my most confident voice - “I’ve consulted a lawyer and if you vote to cancel the play after the time and energy I’ve put into this theatre and this play then I will sue you. We may not have a contract but we do have an agreement and I will sue your asses off if you cancel this production.”

The whole thing about the lawyer was a lie but I was naive enough to think I could get away with it and I may have because they all voted a few minutes later and the majority agreed the play should go on. I kept my outraged-slash-hurt face on long enough to get out of the building but once I was alone all of that tension finally came rushing out of me and I thought “Yes! Yes! This is the best thing that ever could’ve happened. Omigod this is better than being banned by the Catholic Church!” 

The play opened later that spring and was one of the biggest hits of the season. I’d hoped my peers would come and they hadn’t let me down. The weeks spent in Edmonton’s clubs and bars telling stories about almost being censored had paid off and brought the club kids and the hipsters into the theatre- along with the traditional audience. 

After that being censored was kind of “my thing”.  It was what “I did”.

After that being censored was kind of “my thing”.  It was what “I did”.  I wrote plays that pissed off old people and drew a new audience into the theatre. I didn’t write intellectual arguments between smart characters. I wrote raw, visceral, blatantly theatrical stories that frightened everyone involved with them- including me at times. I wanted to create a kind of theatre that would appeal to my generation. Theatre that didn’t take all of its influences from earlier theatrical work but that integrated the power and energy of my very non-theatre influences including comic books, club music, advertising, television and everything else that fed my creativity at the time. 

...it wasn’t about a family where sexual abuse was the dark secret and it wasn’t composed of long scenes that made you want to fall asleep.   

In 1989 a play I’d been working on for a few years called Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love - hereafter referred to as Human Remains for the sake of brevity - opened in Calgary to considerable consternation. This play, still my biggest hit, is the story of a gay waiter, his sexually confused female room mate, his married but cheating best friend, a lonely, aggressive lesbian, a straight bartender with anger issues and a psychic dominatrix who is fifteen - their shared lives, their search for love and the gradual realization that one of them may be a serial killer. Not your usual Canadian fare of the time as it wasn’t set in a kitchen, it wasn’t about a family where sexual abuse was the dark secret and it wasn’t composed of long scenes that made you want to fall asleep. 

It was dark but funny, sexy but scary and composed of short little scenes that were a bit like watching something through a shattered mirror. In fact, when I wrote it I intentionally set out to break every rule of playwriting I’d learned so far because following them wasn’t getting me anywhere. After spending three years trying to convince various theatres they should do it, when it was finally produced, with laughable caution, in Calgary as part of Alberta Theatre Projects’s new play festival it had more warnings than a shed filled with TNT. Nudity. Foul language. Disturbing imagery. CONTROVERSIAL LIFESTYLE.

I love that one. Controversial Lifestyle. What does that mean? It means someone in the play is gay because there’s nothing controversial about plays where all of the characters are straight.

You might as well just put a big sign outside the door that says IT’S GOT HOMOSEXUALS. 

Oedipus kills his father, marries his mother and puts his own eyes out. Is there a warning? No, nothing controversial about that lifestyle. Hamlet knows his stepfather has murdered his true father in order to marry his mother and he will later cause his young love to commit suicide - but is there a warning on that? Nope. No controversial lifestyle here. What about Suddenly Last Summer? Beautiful but troubled young woman is lobotomized by her rich aunt when she reveals the aunt’s son was a homo who was eaten by the very street urchins he’d been buying. Okay - that one might have caused some controversy but it still didn’t get a warning about Controversial Lifestyle. You might as well just put a big sign outside the door that says IT’S GOT HOMOSEXUALS. 

I don’t think of them as warnings. I think of them as enticements.

I have nothing against warnings. The theatre should always surprise and it needn’t always be in a pleasant way - but no one going into the theatre should feel like they’ve been ambushed. If there’s nudity, profanity or smoking they should know as those things make some people so uncomfortable they’d rather not attend. And honestly, I don’t think warnings keep people away who would normally come to the kind of theatre I create anyway. On the contrary I think people knowing there’s violence, swearing and especially nudity is the very reason why they come. I don’t think of them as warnings. I think of them as enticements.

So I got very used to warnings and so did the people who saw my shows. 

The Ugly Man - my blood spattered adaptation of the classic revenge tragedy “The Changeling” about a terribly disfigured yet compelling man who exposes the extreme ugliness within a group of beautiful people - Warning violence and sexuality. There were no people who identified as gay so there was no Controversial Lifestyle Warning.

The AD who’d programmed the show decided it was too spicy for their theatre but then faced a full-out rebellion from his co-workers and associates.

Poor Super man - the story of a gay painter having an affair with a married straight man as the painter’s best friend, a troubled transsexual, is dying of AIDS - Warning Nudity, Sexuality, Profanity and Controversial Lifestyle - this one nearly had its premier cancelled in Cincinnati where they’d famously censored Robert Maplethorpe just a few years earlier. The AD who’d programmed the show decided it was too spicy for their theatre but then faced a full-out rebellion from his co-workers and associates. Pressure was exerted and he changed his mind about the cancellation but not before everyone had heard. When it finally opened press from all over the world was there to cover the show and there were armed guards at the door. Really. 

The vice squad and the armed guards stayed home for this one despite the TO production having the most convincing sex scenes I’d ever staged...

Martin Yesterday - a very caustic tale of a young cartoonist’s relationship with an older politician that examines questions of personal responsibility and HIV transmission - came with all of the usual warnings despite being produced in North America’s largest gay theatre – Buddies in Bad Times in Toronto - but no one thought to add Warning, Many People Will Hate You for Writing this Play - I could’ve used that one. This was also the only play I’ve ever written where all of the characters are gay. The vice squad and the armed guards stayed home for this one despite the TO production having the most convincing sex scenes I’d ever staged - but the wave of disapproval from the straight audience, many of whom seemed to feel betrayed that I’d written a play where they weren’t represented, was palpable in all of its subsequent productions.

Snake in Fridge - my homage to Shirley Jackson, the story of nine disparate people, most of whom are young and work in or on the fringes of the sex industry, sharing a haunted house in Toronto - it had everything, rape, murder, incest, cannibalism, a snake, the most uninhibited beautifully profane dialogue I’ve ever written - including the use of every derogatory racial epithet ever known to man in a single monologue about a race riot that brought the house down every night. There weren’t enough warnings in the world for this play. I think they actual wrote Warning: A Character Will be Slowly Dismembered And Fed To a Snake In The Course Of This Show. Seriously.  It’s still one of my favourites shows. It opened at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester just after I’d turned forty.

I didn’t realize it at the time but it was also the end of an era.  

Snake in Fridge was kind of the climax to a fascination with horror, sex and pop culture that had been building in my work through my twenties and thirties. I wrote it to celebrate the strange new world I was seeing around me with the advent of the internet and the sudden democracy of sexuality that came from unimaginative people being confronted by many erotic choices they’d never considered before. I didn’t realize it at the time but it was also the end of an era.

A few months after Snake in Fridge closed I started thinking about writing another play.  Whenever I start thinking about a new play I always ask myself how I can make it different, both in content and style, from the last show?  What haven’t I done before? As I thought about new challenges it slowly dawned on me that if I was serious about doing something new I couldn’t write plays with warnings anymore.

I had to write a more “grown up” play.

Things were different. I’d changed and matured. My ideas of theatre and what it can and should be had evolved. My concerns were not so pop culture saturated anymore. I didn’t hang out at bars until all hours drinking, doing drugs and getting into trouble very much. I didn’t know all the latest songs, I hadn’t seen all of the latest movies and I was no longer having three serious relationships a year. And even more importantly - I’d also blown my wad on the last play. There was no way I would ever top the magical atrocities and mad poetry of Snake in Fridge. I had to write a more “grown up” play. 

So I wrote this play called Cold Meat Party about a group of middle-aged friends, who’ve known one another since university. They arrive at a B and B in Manchester England to bury one of their own who has died. It’s my take on the classic drawing room comedy and The Big Chill only with a feminist, a washed up pop star, a right wing politician and their assorted children, partners, mysterious stranger etc. discovering startling, new information about one another as they interact. There is not much profanity, no nudity and only implied sex - nothing that should require a warning. Imagine then my surprise then when I walked into the Royal Exchange one day and saw a warning about “controversial subject matter” displayed at each entrance into the theatre.

I raced up to the office of Artistic Director Braham Murray, who has been my friend and greatest supporter for fifteen years, and demanded to know “why the hell there was a warning about 'controversial subject matter' for the play.” I reminded him why I’d written it. What I hoped to accomplish. Their warning was ruining all of that.

Braham said, “It’s very disturbing stuff. The PR department felt a warning was appropriate.”

He said, “Brad you’ve written a graphic monologue about a boy castrating himself with an x-acto knife as the climax of the second act.”

I said, “It happened in the past. He doesn’t actually DO it.”

Braham said, “It’s very disturbing stuff. The PR department felt a warning was appropriate.”

I said, “We have to warn people when we’re going to disturb them now?” 

He nodded and shrugged. What could he do?

I was livid. Shakespeare contains scenes of rape, dismemberment, baby killing, wholesale slaughter- all beautifully rendered in amazing language - did anyone slap a warning on Shakespeare? Ibsen, Shaw, Strindberg, Chekov, O’Neill, Williams, Miller? Did they get warnings posted at every entrance to the theatre? Shouldn’t we expect to be challenged when we walk into any theatre? Shouldn’t we expect to be disturbed?

Apparently not.  The warnings stayed. I was devastated. This time I wasn’t being censored by repressive forces who were frightened of me, I was getting it from my closest ally. The director I’d worked with the most and who understood my writing like no other. My partner in crime. He knew this show was designed to be warning free but had betrayed me for his PR people. 

Sex, nudity, swearing - I got that we had to warn people about those things - but ideas, images, thoughts, those things we create in our minds to impart to the minds of other people - now we had to warn audiences about that? I realized if that was the case, no matter what I wrote, it would always need a warning because we now lived in a society where you had to warn people if you were going to make them think. I left the theatre after that and didn’t write another play for six years. Cold Meat Party is, so far, my least produced play.

PART TWO

Gay people have been censored from history.

I did a lot of interesting things in those six years, I directed a film version of Poor Super Man called Leaving Metropolis, I hosted two seasons of a talk show called Jawbreaker on the world’s first queer, and highly unsuccessful, television network, I had a biweekly column that ran in a Toronto magazine and I wrote for this American show that filmed in Toronto called Queer As Folk. 

I also realized that this ever present threat of censorship had been one of the best things to ever happen to me.

It was while working on Queer as Folk that I realized almost everything I’d ever written had to have a warning on it. I also realized that this ever present threat of censorship had been one of the best things to ever happen to me.

For example the battle over censorship has kept me believing in the basic, innate decency found in most people. Because every person who wanted to shut me down was always matched by another person who would fight for my right to speak freely. Every time some politician in Virginia demanded a ban on any future Brad Fraser productions in the state because of a synopsis of Human Remains he’d heard on the radio - true story - there was someone like Judy Unwin at Walterdale Theatre who would fight for my right to free speech even though she barely knew what the hell I was talking about most of the time. Censorship has led me to some very strange and unexpected allies and their influence helped me greatly in later battles.

When people saw my picture in the paper I wasn’t just the playwright, I was the playwright they tried to censor.

The attempts to censor my work also led to them being exposed to more people than they might have been otherwise.  The idea of art being something one used for communication and change rather than to just seek approval was very exciting to me. I’d grown up idolizing the counter-culture heroes, the rebels, the romantics, the beats, the hippies and the punks - and in the currency of that world there is nothing of greater value than having been censored or banned. Anyone who created anything that frightened the authorities so much they wanted to suppress it had to be worth checking out. So, for many of my generation, to learn that something is being censored automatically makes it more interesting than something which is not censored. When people saw my picture in the paper I wasn’t just the playwright, I was the playwright they tried to censor.

Censorship also made me strong. From the moment the second place play got that production in Edmonton that should’ve been mine I was aware that, as a writer and as a person, there were always going to be people who disagreed vehemently, not with just what I wrote, but also with what I am. I knew if I didn’t stand up for myself they would beat me down. It takes balls for a nineteen year old kid to stare down a flotilla of middle-aged amateur theatre board members and tell them, if they cancel his play, he’s going to sue them with a lawyer he doesn’t have. You’ve got to have your shit together if you’re going to go toe to toe with a right wing politician trying to win easy points by attacking the gay playwright. You’ve got to develop a workable armor if you’re going to get up every morning for a week to read hateful reviews of your latest film or play coming from people who don’t just hate the work but don’t want to see it produced again, anywhere, ever.

It can become very tempting to try to top yourself, outdo whatever taboo pushing standard you played with last time.

But the thing about dancing with the censorship beast is it can become a self-perpetuating, codependency tango very quickly. Once you’ve established a reputation for pushing boundaries you also inherit an expectation. And expectation is the great destroyer of everything. It can become very tempting to try to top yourself, outdo whatever taboo pushing standard you played with last time. I have generally tried to steer away from this but it can be hard to let go of when a lot of the response you’re getting to the new play is about how much everyone loved the old play. 

There have been people throughout my life who have accused me of “playing the gay card” - of “getting an easy ride because I’m gay” of “pushing the gay thing” like being gay is some magical advantage that I won at bingo or something. I once had an interviewer ask me, with a straight face, “When are you going to write something about straight people” and then not understand why I would take umbrage at the question even when I said, “Would you ask Spike Lee when he’s going to write something for white people? Would you ask Judith Thompson when she’s going to write something for men? He didn’t say, “Of course not, they’re straight” but I knew he wanted to. 

When movie producers were trying to get the rights to Human Remains I actually had an executive from a studio call me and say, “Brad, hey man we love your play. We think it would make an excellent movie. We just want to talk to you about one little change.” “What’s that”, I asked. “We’d like to make the main character straight.” Really. Imagine - “Hello. Is this Rosa Parks? Mrs Parks it’s Hollywood calling. We’d like the rights to your amazing story but we want to make one little change.“ Yeah right. 

The many celebrations of same sex love were reduced to a few carefully hidden items...

Gay people have been censored from history.  As the western world discovered more and more artifacts from the ancient world, they were horrified by the many depictions of same sex love they were finding- finding a lot- and actively strove to wipe any evidence of it from history. Pottery was broken, statuary was pulverized, paintings and texts were burned so history suddenly conformed to the Judeo/Christian man/woman only paradigm that has proven fairly troublesome ever since. The many celebrations of same sex love were reduced to a few carefully hidden items that some people - probably queer ones - had risked their jobs, perhaps even their lives, to preserve for future generations - so the truth wouldn’t be completely lost.

The gay men, and to a lesser extent lesbians who were interred in the German concentration camps during the second world were not freed after the liberation but were sent to hospitals and insane asylums because they were deemed “still sick”. They didn’t have children to keep their stories alive and very few people cared. To this day trying to get gays officially acknowledged as also being victims of the holocaust is like pulling teeth. There are people who are on record as actually believing any kind of tribute to the gay victims of the Nazi’s debases the memories of the other victims. 

In Tennessee, right now, there is a bill being considered that would ban the use of the word “gay” in school, in any context. In Ontario, after months of fighting and basically being embarrassed into it, the tax payer supported Ontario Catholic School Trustees finally allowed gay/straight alliances in their high schools - only they can’t use the word gay in the title.  How do you think that makes you gay kids feel? What they are can’t even be named. And, on a personal note, I can attest from growing up in a time when the word gay was rarely used in any situation, that doesn’t stop people from being queer.

...heterosexual artists don’t get censored for being heterosexual.

Okay, by this point I know many of you are thinking “But straight people get censored too.” And it’s true-  Henry Miller, Judy Blume, Pablo Picasso, Anne Frank, Louis Malle,  Eminem, D.H. Lawrence, Mark Twain, Ray Bradbury, James Joyce, Louisa May Alcott and Madonna are only a very few of the heterosexual artists who have been censored over the years. 

So yes heterosexual artists get censored - but here’s the difference, and it’s crucial - heterosexual artists don’t get censored for being heterosexual.

They might get censored for what they say, the things they depict, the political points they make but they are not censored for simply being what they are.

Of course if we disguise our queer concerns by placing them in a heterosexual context, deal with themes of alienation and being an outsider but insure that all of the characters are heterosexual and that the setting is one straight people are comfortable in, then we often find wide-spread success. There are thousands of years of history with gay artists transposing gay concerns onto a heterosexual template and going on to great acclaim and there’s nothing wrong with that, particularly in a historical context. Writers like Wilde and Coward never wrote about being homosexual but some would argue they wrote about nothing but being gay. They had their time and place. But we don’t have that luxury anymore and gay artist who hide who they are generally garner the contempt of the community. This kind of self-censorship is, to my mind, the greatest betrayal of all because it says “even I don’t believe in the validity of my existence”. That is very sad - and exactly what a great many of the people who censor us are hoping for. 

Worldwide, gay people are being persecuted just as avidly now as they have been throughout recorded history.

Some people say, “Gay doesn’t matter anymore. Times have changed.” But that’s actually still a reality they’re wishing for. Worldwide, gay people are being persecuted just as avidly now as they have been throughout recorded history. There are a number of religiously fundamentalist countries where they want to make it legal to hunt and kill gay people. Here in Canada the Conservative government has made no secret of their desire to repeal the right for equal marriage even as they have systematically, like the mayor of Toronto, cut off funding for LGBTQ concerns. People still argue that there’s “another side” to the equal rights for gays debate even though we no longer accept that there is a rational “other side” to racism, religiously sanctioned wife beating or owning slaves.

However, the recognition the gay community has won over the last forty years is nothing short of miraculous. For such a small portion of the populace, who were demonized for centuries, to have changed public perception so profoundly should indeed be celebrated. But this was also true of Germany prior to Hitler’s rise to power. Things can change very quickly. If there’s one thing gay people of my generation- the first generation to experience AIDS - have learned it’s not to take ANYTHING for granted because you know straight people will always be the majority and be able to censor you, or worse, any time they see fit.

PART THREE

None of us have the right to tell someone else what they can or cannot enjoy so long as it is within the confines of a fair and just law.

Sometimes I think the real reason I went into the theatre, on a subconscious level, was because it has such a rich history of rebellion.

Plays and playwrights have always been targets for censorship because the theatre is a powerful force for education and change as well as entertainment. And the great thing about good plays that live on is that they can be censored when they open and then censored again and again by different society’s as each one finds something new to be offended by. 

Not bad for a bawdy script about the war between the sexes that’s nearly twenty five hundred years old. 

Arostophane’s Lysistra - written in 441 BC - is a great example of such a play. It was originally banned by the Greek government when it was new, was later banned by the Nazi’s for being incendiary, an illustrated copy was seized by customs in America in the mid-fifties for “being obscene” and in the late eighties it was banned from high school reading lists in Florida for “promoting Women’s Lib” and pornography. Not bad for a bawdy script about the war between the sexes that’s nearly twenty five hundred years old. 

There are hundreds perhaps thousands of other playwrights whose names can be added to the list; including Simon Gantillon - Maya, Lillian Hellman - The Children’s Hour, Tennessee Williams - Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tony Kushner - Angels in America, Mark Blitstein - The Cradle Will Rock, Oscar Wilde - The Importance of Being Earnest, Frederico Garcia Lorca - Blood Wedding, Mae West - Sex, the creators of the rock musical Hair, Canadian pioneers like Michael Hollingsworth - Clear Light, and the collective creation by Theatre Passe Muraille - I Love You Baby Blue. All of them censored at some point by someone.

(Again with the homosexuality thing. You’ll notice there are no admonishments for heterosexual buggery, fellatio or bestiality.) 

England has a particularly long relationship with censorship of the theatre. For two hundred years The Office of the Lord Chamberlain had to approve every play that was staged in the entire country. This office is actually a part of the Royal Household and they had many rules, foremost among them that a producing theatre must never - “show Jesus, refer to royalty, blaspheme or mention homosexuality.” (Again with the homosexuality thing. You’ll notice there are no admonishments for heterosexual buggery, fellatio or bestiality.) 

This censor ran roughshod over playwrights and producers and a look at the documentation of ordered cuts and revisions shows some very arbitrary rulings. But by the 1950 and 60’s the office was under concentrated attack by playwrights like John Osborne, Sheila Delaney, Joe Orton and Edward Bond as well as many of the subsidized theatres who were demanding to do more dangerous work. In 1968 the English government stopped censoring plays. The Office of the Lord Chamberlain has gone back to organizing royal weddings and tea parties.

I can only imagine what the Lord Chamberlain might have made of The Ugly Man or Snake in Fridge. Depending on the historical period I may have been imprisoned. And sadly, if things worked then as they do now, it probably would have been a co-worker who put me there.

...most of the people who tried to shut me up initially were people in the business.

Because, and this is often lost in all the cries of -  “oh no the horrible man is trying to censor me” - most of the people who tried to shut me up initially were people in the business. My allies, my co-workers, sometimes the same people who’d decided to program the play. The trouble almost always started with someone - usually a concerned board member, spouse, friend or publicist - who had finally gotten around to reading the play, realized just how raw it was and then got cold feet. They didn’t just put up warnings, the wanted to shut the show down.

From there someone in the press usually picks up on the cancellation or the in-house controversy which then sparks a public response which leads to calls for censorship which leads to a public outcry from the liberal arts lovers which leads to a reversal of the cancellation which leads to the warnings which leads to piqued interest which leads to either crowds or disaster depending on how well everyone’s done their job and what kind of mood the public and reviewers are in. That’s the thing about censorship. Its origin is often initiated by someone close to you in some way.

I rarely had the heart to tell them, from my point of view, everything they were seeing or reading was just selective reportage. 

I won’t be disingenuous here. I wanted to write plays that pushed buttons, that evoked strong emotions, and demanded a visceral response. I wanted to write plays that mattered. It never occurred to me that they might seriously be censored because I had read many of the plays that were and, frankly, I didn’t consider myself an interesting enough writer to be banned. As far as I was concerned all I was doing was accurately portraying the world I saw around me in the most dramatic fashion possible. People were always raving about my imagination and I rarely had the heart to tell them, from my point of view, everything they were seeing or reading was just selective reportage. 

But that’s the thing isn’t it? And that’s what I learned over the years and even as I began to work on this presentation - no one ever censors lies. Lies, by their untrue nature, will almost always be found out in the long run. People might occasionally be punished for slander and libel but, for the most part, our society is fine with lying. In fact we prefer it. We don’t vote for the best politician. We vote for the best liar. The person who tells us what we want to hear in the most convincing fashion.

That Code created a world where married people slept in separate beds and kissed with their mouths closed...

Take for example the Hays Code that was instituted in Hollywood in the 1930’s and was basically the standard for prior and later film censorship until things changed in the late 1950’s. That Code created a world where married people slept in separate beds and kissed with their mouths closed, where graphic murder and sex crimes were only alluded to, where all mothers were good and all children well-behaved, where right always won and evil was always punished, where “sexual perversion” and, most especially, homosexuality didn’t exist except in the most stereotypical, non-sexual way. 

It’s inevitable because the banned work ends up being the standard for a new generation. The taboo becomes the norm.

One figured out by the age of ten that such things were blatantly not true but the pervasiveness and potency of the medium insured generations would deeply resent the fact life refused to be like the movies.

But when you stop and actually examine most of the plays, books, movies, songs and images that have been censored you almost inevitably end up feeling somewhat disappointed. Very “that’s what all the fuss was about?” It’s inevitable because the banned work ends up being the standard for a new generation. The taboo becomes the norm.

By the time “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” made it to America its reputation was so inflated the only thing a person could be when finally reading it was disappointed. “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” now looks almost quaint compared to the torture porn that’s known as a horror film today. “120 Days of Sodom” is actually just a list of sexual atrocities that becomes as interesting as a telephone book within five pages. “I Don’t Like Mondays” seems like a lullaby compared to sentiments now expressed in much popular music - especially hip-hop and rap. 

But once you get over the initial disappointment of not being horribly shocked or offended by the piece- and allow it to exist on its own terms - without expectation - you discover why we remember and still reference so many of these works - not because they were censored- but because they convey some basic and undeniable, sometimes unpalatable, truth about ourselves and about humanity in general. We recognize them because we recognize ourselves in them. That’s usually what got them in trouble in the first place.

Some will argue that without some sort of censorship society would descend into anarchy. And they'd be right...

So is censorship something that can actually be eliminated and should we even want to? Some will argue that without some sort of censorship society would descend into anarchy. And they’d be right - if taboos against things like murder, incest and cannibalism weren’t so deeply ingrained in our mentally healthy citizens. Violating those parameters would certainly wreak negative effects but they are rarely violated. Those under the age of majority and consent must be protected from unsuitable material and while our current laws don’t take into account the maturity of individuals they do, for the most part, seem to work. 

Governments claim they need to keep secrets from their citizens, especially in times of war. At the same time most of these governments are voted in on promises of “transparency and openness”. One also has to also take into account that many countries, including our own, are almost always involved in a war somewhere. In this case I think censoring military secrets that must be hidden from the enemy in order to be successful must be allowable - but there also has to be someone who takes periodic stock of these secrets; some outside party who can decide when the rights of the citizens are being impinged upon and take action.

We don’t tell people which invisible magical power called “god” they can or cannot worship...

Why do we need any other kind of censorship? We live in a democracy. We don’t tell people which invisible magical power called “god” they can or cannot worship - where do we get off telling someone which film or play they can or cannot watch, which books they can’t read, which paintings they can’t look at, which porn sites they can’t visit. Any act done consensually between adults in possession of their faculties should be no one’s business but those involved in the act. People don’t accidentally go to the theatre or an art gallery or a film. You don’t accidentally buy a CD or download a song. We all have the right not to be confronted by gross public spectacle unless that’s the point and we have a choice not to attend. But none of us have the right to tell someone else what they can or cannot enjoy so long as it is within the confines of a fair and just law. If you don’t like something don’t watch it, don’t read it, don’t listen to it. The world’s not going to end if someone else does something you don’t personally approve of.

When slavery was ended, when women were given the vote, when gays were allowed to marry and serve in the military there was no cataclysm. Economies didn’t collapse. Countries weren’t ruined- although there were a great many people who said those things were exactly what would happen if change was allowed. But they didn’t. In fact, things got better.

Any person, or group of people, in power wants to retain that power.

Having said all of this, do I think censorship will ever be completely eradicated? No I don’t. Any person, or group of people, in power wants to retain that power. The longer they have it the more determined they become to hang onto it. Human nature seems to make it inevitable. And one of the best ways for someone to hang onto power is to insure the voice of their opposition is not heard. And when the opposition gets tired of being silenced and insists on speaking out they become stronger. And they fight for equality. And they fight for power. And once they have power - well eventually they’ll try to censor their opposition.

And maybe it’s that struggle that keeps us viable as a species, keeps us changing and evolving. Conflict between characters is essential to good theatre. It’s what keeps things moving forward. It’s what keeps things alive. I think the same is true for life. 

I made no conscious choice to tone down or somehow make these scripts more acceptable.

I started writing plays again a couple of years ago. So far there are two and, despite still having some peppery language and sexual situations, no one has put warnings on them. The first one got great reviews and has a number of hit productions under its belt, the second one is still running in England and seems to be doing quite well too. I made no conscious choice to tone down or somehow make these scripts more acceptable. They simply came out as what they were - and what they were was - very nearly family friendly.

I’m over fifty now. I still feel the same drive and anger I’ve always felt but it isn’t as intense as it was in my twenties and thirties. I still want to provoke people but I also want them to listen to what my characters are saying. Am I mellowing as I age or am I just refusing to go back over territory I’ve already claimed? Am I censoring myself because of some expectation I perceive about how writers my age are supposed to conduct themselves? I don’t really know.

But I do know this. That nineteen year old boy is still inside of me. He’s not completely lost. And every once in a while he whispers to me, “Banned by the Catholic Church” and I smile and say to him, “We still might do it.”

Brad Fraser's True Love Lies is being performed in two Canadian theatres this fall Alberta Theatre Projects in Calgary (presented with warnings) and at The Cultch in Vancouver (presented without warnings)

Read a biography of Brad Fraser at canadiantheatre.com