Trigger Warning is a ninety-minute play about a family that finds themselves plunged under a magnifying glass to be judged by the world and themselves after a mass shooting at a school. They are forced to confront some uncomfortable truths and are trying to forge a way forward in the face of a massive storm of outrage and self-recrimination. Will they emerge stronger or crumble under the weight of condemnation?
In the interest of full disclosure, I was motivated to see this play because my friend is a great actor, and I try to see anything that she is in or recommends. It never occurs to me to see live productions. I’m happy once I do, but I don’t search out for it with the same eagerness that I do movies. So the subject matter was not a turn off for me, but it is my understanding that the appeal of an evening out diminishes precipitously when the subject matter is a mass shooting. Each individual brings his or her own political views and personal traumas to any viewing.
I just see mass shooting as our modern culture’s version of blood, specifically child, sacrifice. If people with children prefer a concept and an inanimate object over their children, it isn’t really a surprise after slavery. It exists somewhere in the same dark underbelly of rampant rape and sexual abuse. Once you can’t rape your property, you will rape your neighbor, your friend, your family because that is what you were doing when you were raping a trafficked person anyway. Human beings like a permissible way to inflict violence on others, but once you eliminate one outlet, it emerges in others. People who don’t have to experience terror will create it. I think that we’re at the insane point that it may make sense to take the concept to the mad extreme-give everyone guns: people in jails, fetus, people in mental wards, etc. I’m being facetious of course, but the idea that guns are treated with more respect that other constitutional rights, including and especially freedom of speech and assembly, i.e. the ability to protest. I stayed for a post-show discussion after the showing and was shocked at how many people still could be shocked at violence and its potential to intrude “safe” spaces. Safe is a synonym for certain socioeconomic factors. This is America.
Trigger Warning did a really great job of showing what a family thinks is permissible and what conduct will get you exiled. The level of acceptable conduct for men, including occasionally murder depending on the identity of the victim, is much broader than for women. I truly believe that there is a demon of misogyny just like there is a demon of homophobia because it crosses all cultures, religions, and borders. Women can do something legal and human, but if it violates invisible mores, the reaction will be immediate and harsh, including from other women. The invisible power structure is instinctually enforced even if it isn’t understood.
Trigger Warning gives a fine display of the 52%. A big question after Presidon’t’s election is how do these women mother daughters who get sexually harassed, and even though sexual harassment isn’t the catalyst in this play, we get to see what it is like to be the daughter of a family like that. I also think that even though the play isn’t explicitly politically—none of the characters say what political party he or she belongs to, you see the deference to one person’s views over the majority, a deference that has far-reaching consequences. I also enjoyed that the only women accorded respect by the head of the family were women who were in professional male drag as lawyers or cops though the cop had to provide a helpful reminder of her authority in a language that he understands.
When it comes to meditations on death and grief, I prefer French films over American movies because Americans always tend to veer from humor to hysteria without exploring the full spectrum in between. To be fair, mass shooting is more of an American phenomenon so I can’t expect a French result. Still the majority of Trigger Warning begins at an emotional ten with occasional ebbs. While it makes sense when the theatergoer finds out the family’s backstory, it also feels like an aspect that can be worked on. What I really appreciated from the post show discussion is how the play is a living, breathing organism that grows in response to being brought to life on stage. There is a line in the play about trying not to rile up someone, and victims of abuse often show deference by being quiet or still. One character is a blowhard because that behavior probably works to make others cower and be subservient, but we never see that happen just everyone trying to shout him down.
If you do see Trigger Warning, I would highly recommend that you sit in the center risers instead of the sides because the set and projection design is like another character, a Greek chorus, objectively commenting on the family’s health. The central role of media acts like another literal frame of the flat screen television of a less flattering family photo.
Even though it is unintentional and more of a joyful response to wanting an actor to be in the show more than originally intended, the accidental role of race in Trigger Warning is quite intriguing. Another production could end up treating the various satellite characters of the minister, the cop and the grieving parent by using different actors and those actors don’t inherently have to be black or women, but by doing so, the play enforces an unspoken expectation that we have of a mass shooter as a white man even though it is a human problem, but it is discussed differently depending on the race of the shooter. A big problem for the family is finally experiencing what it is like to be seen as inherently problematic though it is based on character and objective reality not a stereotype. The different ways that they get exiled from the American dream and society turns the tables that most people experience based on perception, not reality. They haven’t even really hit rock bottom, but they can’t bear it.
Trigger Warning made its worldwide premiere on Friday, April 12th, 2019 at the Boston Center for the Arts and is the final show by the Zeitgeist Stage Company. It will be running through May 4th, and for Wednesday showings, you pay what you can. If you’re interested in the subject matter and don’t find it too lurid or depressing, I would definitely see it, but if the subject matter is a deal breaker, then so be it.