if no one is offended, nothing is happening

Theatre is supposed to feel alive. And anything truly alive carries a degree of risk.

Not risk in the cheap sense — shock for its own sake, empty provocation or the kind of controversy that evaporates the moment the curtain falls. But real artistic risk: the possibility of failure, of discomfort, of discovery. The sense that what’s happening onstage is not entirely controlled, not entirely predictable and not entirely safe.

Too much contemporary theatre has drifted in the opposite direction. It has become careful.

You can see it in seasons that feel pre-approved before they’re announced. In revivals that behave like museum exhibits — immaculate, respectful and inert. In new work that arrives already polished to the point of anonymity, as though its primary goal were to avoid objection rather than invite engagement. In productions where every choice feels correct, and nothing feels necessary.

The result is often impressive. It is also often forgettable.

Safe choices tend to produce competent theatre. They rarely produce vital theatre.

This isn’t an argument for recklessness. Care matters. Thoughtfulness matters. Responsibility matters. But somewhere along the way, the field has begun to confuse safety with care, and caution with wisdom. They are not the same thing.

A theatre culture built around minimizing risk inevitably begins to minimize everything else too — ambition, surprise, specificity, even joy. When the goal is to ensure that no one is alienated, the work often ends up ensuring that no one is fully engaged.

What makes theatre matter has never been its ability to behave itself. It matters when it unsettles. When it provokes. When it asks something difficult of both the artists and the audience. When it risks being misunderstood in order to say something that hasn’t already been agreed upon.

The safest choice is often the deadest one: the interpretation everyone understands before the lights go down, the play selected because it fits the brand, the design that signals quality without expressing a point of view. These choices protect institutions. They do not sustain the art form.

Risk does.

Risk looks like a director with a strong, arguable interpretation instead of a neutral one. It looks like programming that includes work that might divide audiences rather than simply satisfy them. It looks like performances that lean into uncertainty rather than smoothing it away. It looks like designers making bold, specific choices instead of tasteful ones.

Not every risk will succeed. Some productions will fail — publicly, visibly and sometimes spectacularly.

That’s not a problem. That’s a sign of life.

Failure, in this context, is not evidence of incompetence. It is evidence that someone attempted something real. An art form that organizes itself around avoiding failure will, over time, avoid vitality as well.

Theatre does not need to be safe to be meaningful. It needs to be honest. It needs to be engaged. It needs to be willing to surprise even the people making it.

There is a difference between protecting people and protecting ideas from being challenged.

The former is necessary. The latter is deadly.

If theatre is going to remain a living art form — something immediate, unpredictable and worth leaving the house for — it has to recover its appetite for risk. It has to allow for bold choices, even when they are imperfect. Especially when they are imperfect.

Because the alternative is not stability.

The alternative is stagnation.

And theatre has never survived by standing still.