Oikophobia Theatre Needing to Demise

Worthless and scared friends who promote death over life in theatre ... thoughtless arrogance and nothingness

You might have friends who are opposed to everything you know and yet you stand by them and all that your friends champion!

Now in the UK, Europe and Australia, there are ideas, ideologies and impulses being integrated into cultural platforms and legal entities while being diametrically opposed to all that has been gained in the west over centuries; much of which was the result of blood shedding and torture inflicted on the proponents of change. There are arts activists and creators who ignore and otherwise champion the dictates of misogynist advocates, culturally smug problemists and outright activists of absurd belief systems now being seriously considered within Australian society ... But what is more concerning is the evident oikophobia so obvious in art, education and elitist areas of Australian society!

This fear of who and what we are, or what we have been assumed into, is crippling conceptual development and artistic insight. The distractions of placebo ideologies and the assuage of comforting cultural straitjackets seemingly to protect individual psyches from the distress of seeing and of feeling the dangerous and threatening realities around them kills the very possibility of artistic creation. In theatre, its most obvious manifestation is the mandatory "Trigger Warning". The trigger warning before any attempt to engage with the world and its deceptions applies to both audiences and particularly to the would-be artist and student of art. The "Trigger Warning" is the weapon of the dictator. The "Trigger Warning" is the barrier to seeing through the charlatan constructions of reality and the cultural dogmas that contain and constrain free thought and the art of perception. And all done to somehow protect the individual from some imagined and / or real anxiety! The "Trigger Warning" is the shield to affirm particular ways of seeing and experiencing. It is a weapon of propaganda to nullify opposition to particular world-views and agendas; all in the name of protecting sensibilities and personal mental health.

Oikophobia and Theatre Creation

While theatre has always had strains of oppositional threads to dominant cultural values in the West since at least the mid nineteenth century, today it needs to factor in the tendency of significant elements in society that express an oikophobia on a social and cultural scale not seen in previous generations. This recognition was the starting point for my play "And Beyond the Violence" that had its genesis ten years ago and followed up with a number of rewrites and trial readings since. And it is still in development!

A romantic view of culture seems to hold that culture, in and of itself, has divine qualities; god-given qualities that can only be questioned by those from within such cultures. We see this expressed in cultural creations in art and society. A Modernist view tended to suggest that when all cultures submitted to the Western traditions, ie. women's rights, free speech, dialectical responses in rational discourse that the world would become more rational and civilised. Two world wars put an end to such belief ... The fact that the west rejected its own calling created its own crisis ...

Post Modernism then took an opposite view: all cultures are primarily equal, at least in intent; though with Western cultures having to acknowledge their basic inferiority to all others. Accidents of technological advancement have placed Western Cultures in an advantaged position over others; or so it seems! However, each culture has its own logic and value with each having aspects that another culture cannot possibly understand. So logically, no one from one culture can critically analyse another ... with one caveat: cultures assumed to have been consumed or dominated by a colonial culture may in fact criticise and openingly attack such a dominant culture; UNLESS SUCH CULTURES EMINATED FROM THE OTTOMAN COLONIAL EMPIRE, an Islamic colonial empire that stretched from Europe through Asia for nearly 600 years!

But this is a tangent. Theatre has largely expressed a critical eye over much of our cultural experience. And rightly so! It has almost always taken the position of the oppressed against the oppressor. I'm trying to think of examples where this was not the case. I stand to be corrected on this point! However, in relation to theatrical and performance models from traditional and totalitarian societies we see a contrast to affirmations of the cultural identity and dominance by the ruling elites. Theatre like the licensed fool of Medieval times is the legitimate voice of caution and dissent in the face of the establishment and aristocracy! It is the escape valve for ruling classes needing to be off-the-hook for their travesties! It is also the voice for the hidden and silenced outcasts from society!

But in 2025, the ruling elite is changed. Social media and academic decay into semantic games of pseudo-logic has hit a Babylonian height of extreme extrapolation from reality into fantasy backed by seemingly logical research! The ideological instructs the semantic: so everything from Magna Carta to the present is unknown territory for modern playwrights, artists and dramaturgs ...

And who has ever heard of these seminal moments ..???

Theatre practitioners need to stand above the petty and the seemingly clear ... Oikophobic artistry is fine when one has little benchmark for comparison. Yet there is so much within the parameters of our cultural parameters that is crying out for our scalpel. Think about it! Yes, we need to do it! But what other cultural arts groups spend so much energy and critical analysis on critiquing their own cultures? Oikophobia tends to be an element of Australian cultural proliferation ... and to much extent, highly praise-worthy! But is it hate THE word or should it be love ...

Have a listen to FECAL RAIN FAECAL REIGN:

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/artsoundtheatre/episodes/2025-06-11T04_12_11-07_00

Cheers

Joe Woodward