“On behalf of the generation of traumatised Americans” Part Two

Some backstory to Part One.

In 2007, I began teaching and directing Shakespeare to American students on a programme in the UK, they were in their second and third years of university, not yet old enough to drink in their own country, but old enough to travel to the UK to study drama. They came from universities across the US, from UCLA in Los Angeles to Sarah Lawrence College in New York and Northwestern University in Chicago, arriving with a thirst and desire for knowledge and a willingness to jump into Shakespeare’s plays with physical freedom, intellectual curiosity and huge humour and talent. I am so full of gratitude for those early years where I cut my directing teeth with these students, adapting and directing Shakespeare’s plays for performance as well as creating an original set of techniques, which became my book Cracking Shakespeare.

These techniques, having immersed the students in every line of the play until the words were spoken freshly as if written that morning, always included a final outdoor run-through in a public park. This alfresco rehearsal allowed the students to fully explore their physicality, going anywhere they wanted, as long as they kept the story going. In 2008, I witnessed the student playing Edgar in King Lear, literally run for his life, outwitting his peers and finding the best “happy hollow’ in which to truly to hide himself. In 2011, the students playing the lovers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream chased each other until, flushed and euphoric, they could barely find one breath between them to speak their poetry of rapture. In 2007, the student playing Caliban in The Tempest, unprompted by me, stripped practically naked and, crawling on the ground, did the whole play smothered in mud and leaves. (This particular run-through was performed in the pouring December rain much to the cohort’s delight.) Perhaps most memorable was the student playing Belarius, the banished warrior of Cymbeline in 2012, surprising us all as he appeared out of the bushes, half naked and covered in scratches, berries and leaves, brandishing freshly found branches of thorns.

The resulting physicality between the student actors would make the hair of today’s Intimacy Directors stand on end, like quills upon the fretful porpentine. I learnt from these students how best to release the ecstatic world of Shakespeare into their bodies and souls. At least I thought I had learnt that. In 2016, a cohort of students from exactly the same universities arrived, but where there had previously been inquisitiveness there was insecurity and fear, many of the students were taking medication for anxiety and a small group had a fierce propensity for complaint. At the time, I was inclined to think I had done something wrong, that their lack of delight in the embodied physical rehearsal process was somehow my responsibility. There was to be no running in the park.

In 2018, Johnathan Haight’s book, The Coddling of the American Mind, put my experience of the changing quality of these students into some kind of perspective. In the book, he explains how the “culture of safetyism” together with three terrible ideas - what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people – have combined to remove the desire and ability to experience companionship, as well as the pleasure of striving toward physical, emotional and intellectual goals. These are necessary components for a healthy life and are essential for rehearsing and performing a Shakespeare play. When I began teaching the students in 2007, they seemed to me to be entering their education as willing participants who expected to receive knowledge and expertise from their teachers and professors that may well change the way they see the world. Haight’s book makes the point that the exponential rise in university fees has led to students becoming the ‘consumers of a product’; nowadays they are spending so much money on their education, they want to control what they are spending their money on. In 2016, I witnessed for myself a complete change in attitude in the majority of students (not all, but certainly a majority). A number were taking medication for their anxieties whilst others steadfastly refused to make physical contact with their peers during rehearsals. Whereas ten years earlier, the students wanted to explore the sexuality, the violence and the range of emotions that run through Shakespeare’s plays, the cohort of 2016 saw these same opportunities as a threat to their well being and safety.

I want to say very clearly that the current bravery of students in encampments at university campuses across the US, UK and the world since 2023, protesting against Israels’ genocide in Gaza, demonstrates that there exists an overwhelming strength of mind and power of resistance within this so called “Anxious Generation.” We are witnessing a widening chasm between young people who consider themselves to be traumatised and those who are concerned with the trauma of others. I remain humble in the face of the action of the protesting students and pray for the end to the suffering in Gaza.

To the point.

In May 2025, I directed a version of my production of Pericles which I adapt for autistic audiences using my Hunter Heartbeat Games. For these specialised performances, up to 15 autistic participants sit with the Flute Theatre actors on the stage, and experience Shakespeare’s story through interactive sensory games, which everyone plays together. Each performance is adapted to the specific needs of each autistic participant, however complex their needs may be. This year, our production in Denver Colorado was in collaboration with Phamaly Theatre, “a creative home for theatre artists with disabilities,” who had invited us to create a version of the show where the actors themselves had disabilities and were given the chance to empower our profoundly autistic audiences through the unique experience of the show.

The Phamaly actors had a range of disabilities from a young actor who has been wheelchair bound since birth to another in her mid 40’s who has survived a life threatening stroke. We also had an actor with crippling epilepsy as well as an actor with partial blindness. As a company, these disabled actors shared a blissful ability to harmonise and create magical states of being through music, therefore I utilized these skills to their full potential, adapting some of the more physical sequences in the show to be experienced through the ever changing vibrations of music.

Our audience of autistic people primarily experience the shows as an auditory encounter, and I experimented with how we could catch their attention using sound and barely any movement at all. As ever, these shows are a living theatre practice, each experience of creation and performance adds to our knowledge of how to make theatre for profoundly marginalised people. The resulting show in Denver this year gave this company of disabled actors the opportunity to empower profoundly autistic people. One such participant was autistic, blind and wheel chair bound; he returned for a second performance having enjoyed the first one so much. On the last day, one of the actors said “this work is more than meeting someone where they are at, it is meeting their soul.”

While we were in the US, autism, special needs, and disability dominated the news. (The funding for our Pericles had been retracted by the DEI cuts of the Trump administration but luckily we had been able to continue.) During our time there, we ran Flute Theatre Courses across Denver as well as in Ohio and San Francisco. Crucially, 1 in 31 people in the US currently have an autism diagnosis. At the beginning of every course, I ask everyone in the circle to say one thing they know about Shakespeare and one thing they know about autism. This works as a good ice breaker and by the end of the course I ask the question again, hoping that the attendees now know a little more. At least three or four people in every group in the US (the groups never bigger than 30 people) would introduce themselves as autistic or neurodiverse or ‘on the spectrum’. They would cite their anxiety as the number one symptom of their condition. These autistic people had jobs, relationships, educational qualifications, children of their own, driving licenses, and exercised a myraid of choices in their every day lives.

I do not for one minute assume to understand or belittle the personal suffering that denotes their diagnosis, but I do know, by the fact of their taking the course, that they don’t need 24/7 care. The audiences for our shows who share the same labels of autistic or neurodiverse or ‘on the spectrum’ do need 24/7 care and would, for the most part, be unable to sit in a circle sharing their name and their knowledge of autism and Shakespeare. So this creates a dilemma with both groups being labelled autistic, the only real connection between the two ends of the spectrum being anxiety. For profoundly autistic people anxiety can manifest in a myriad of ways from self harm and the harming of others to bed wetting to Bowel Obsession Syndrome to any number of experiences that families understandably want to be kept private. I know of a mother who had to lock herself in her bedroom for months on end, for fear of the harm her beloved non verbal autistic son would do her. She feels that the world has no idea what autism actually is. She would love to tell the world the story of her family (she has weathered the storms of autism and a few years on, her son is currently calmer) but the world is currently overwhelmed by autism stories, primarily coming from those who can speak for themselves and thereby creating the dilemma: a hierarchy within disability that cripples those who have no voice.

The common symptom that links everyone with an autism diagnosis is anxiety. Johnathan Haight describes the four symptoms of anxiety caused by “the great rewiring of childhood” as social deprivation, sleep deprivation, addiction and fractioning of attention. These can seen as the externals of autism and thereby lead to an autism diagnosis. But these symptoms have been created environmentally, as embodied play is replaced by screenbased play and eye contact with other humans is replaced by staring into a screen for hours every day. Could the increasing spike in autism diagnoses actually be a by-product of the states of anxiety caused by over reliance on screens for social integration? And once a label is attached to a person, does it not become a self fulfilling prophecy? During our time in the US, we met several people with an autism diagnosis who would begin their conversation with “Because of my diagnosis” and continue with statements such as… “Sometimes I don’t sleep well”, “I sometimes get too hot”, “Sometimes I get tired easily” and “I often get overwhelmed and need to cry”. All of these are human experiences worthy of note but are they worthy of an autism diagnosis?

Haights’ Anxious Generation undoubtedly need help, but are they autistic? The autism I know (and have known for about twenty five years) can render the individual, and crucially their entire family, helpless as they scratch at the face of their mother, unable to express their needs, thereby drawing blood from their mum and and tears from everyone present. As the mother of a longtime autistic participant of Flute Theatre has said to us ‘I would give my life, if he could just tell us what’s wrong”. Whilst those who can express their anxieties so eloquently continue to be diagnosed with autism, the autistic people who have no voice and require 24/7 care and whose families struggle to maintain any kind of equilibrium will continue to be hidden away from society, overlooked and misunderstood.

With diagnoses at 1 in 31 in the US, is it time to stop calling autism a spectrum, now that the spectrum would appear to encompass almost everybody, and find new ways of naming these diagnoses, thereby allowing everyone to have their voice.