Obscene gestures: can a theatre show ever go too far?
Offence is in the eye of the beholder, but Irish theatre has a robust reputation for pushing boundaries, and many theatres and companies have suffered for their artistic freedom
Ruairí Donovan and Asaf Aharonson’s Ghosts deals with onstage obscenity
Obscenity is a volatile currency; something that has the power to shock or offend one day can be considered practically quaint another. For that reason obscenity has always been hard to define. Blasphemy? Swear words? Birth control? Infidelity? Nudity? Sexuality? As the US Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart famously said, in 1964, while trying to avoid a definition of pornography: “I know it when I see it.”
