Martin McDonagh may use his will to block Roald Dahl-style edits to his work and says some theatres have refused to put on his plays over language issues
Martin McDonagh has revealed he may use his will to ensure there are no Roald Dahl-style posthumous edits to his work.
The acclaimed playwright, 53, told how some theatre companies have refused to put on productions of his plays because he refused language changes to make the performances more ‘palatable’.
The filmmaker, who wrote and directed The Banshees of Inisherin, described the practice of writers being asked to change what they have written for sensitivity-related reasons ‘problematic’.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Martin said: ‘That’s why I’ve got to make sure in my will, the wording of that is very, very specific too.
‘A theatre has got every right not to put a play on. The major problem is that they ask you or another writer to change it to make it more palatable to them or what they think their audience is.’
Work: Martin McDonagh has revealed he may use his will to ensure there are no Roald Dahl-style posthumous edits to his work (picutred in February 2023)
Changes: The playwright’s words come after it emerged that Roald Dahl’s beloved children’s books are being rewritten by sensitivity gurus to remove language they deem offensive
He added: ‘It is much more problematic I think now than it has been for many years.
‘I think what one of your characters says shouldn’t be mistaken for what the author of the line says, and I think that’s something that’s being stupidly blurred by different groups with an axe to grind.’
Speaking about the efforts to change his own works, Martin said: ‘Only in the past few years have I had theatre companies refuse to do my plays, because they don’t like some of the wording in them.’
Martin’s 2003 play The Pillowman, about a writer imprisoned by a totalitarian state, will have a West End run in June with Steve Pemberton and Lily Allen appearing.
PEN International, a worldwide association of writers, has launched a partnership with the upcoming production.
Announcing the partnership, they said: ‘We are proud to be working with this production of The Pillowman, and participate in this ambitious project that supports many of the values we promote such as the need for tolerance, critical thinking and informed debate.’
The playwright’s words come after it emerged that Roald Dahl’s beloved children’s books are being rewritten by sensitivity gurus to remove language they deem offensive.
Publisher Puffin hired sensitivity readers to rewrite chunks of the author’s text to make sure the books ‘can continue to be enjoyed by all today’, resulting in extensive changes across Dahl’s work.
Language: Martin told how some theatre companies have refused to put on productions of his plays because he refused language changes to make the performances more ‘palatable’ (pictured with Colin Farrell)
Considerable edits have been made to descriptions of the characters’ physical appearance – the new editions no longer use the word ‘fat’ which has been cut from every book, The Telegraph reported.
Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory can now only be described as ‘enormous’.
Hundreds of changes were made to the original text, extinguishing Dahl’s colourful and memorable descriptions, some over fifty years old, to make his characters less grotesque.
Mrs Twit’s ‘fearful ugliness’ has been chopped to ‘ugliness’ and Mrs Hoppy in Esio Trot is not an ‘attractive middle-aged lady’ but a ‘kind middle-aged lady’.
Gender is also eliminated with books no longer referring to ‘female’ characters.
Miss Trunchbull in Matilda, once a ‘most formidable female’, is now a ‘most formidable woman’, while her ‘great horsey face’ is now called ‘her face’.
Oompa-Loompas who were once ‘small men’ are now ‘small people’ and Fantastic Mr Fox’s three sons have become daughters.
Edits: Extensive changes have been made to the works of Roald Dahl, including the Oompa Loompas in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory being made gender-neutral
Passages not written by the late author, who died in 1990, have also been added by the publisher to complete their new editions.
In The Witches, a paragraph describing them as bald under their wigs is followed shortly by a new line: ‘There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.’
A witch posing as a ‘cashier in a supermarket’ now works as a ‘top scientist’ and Matilda reads Jane Austen instead of Rudyard Kipling.
Mental health was another focal point for sensitivity readers with the words ‘crazy’ and ‘mad’, which Dahl used in a comic fashion, removed from his books.
The Big Friendly Giant in The BFG no longer wears a black cloak and characters cannot turn ‘white with fear’, as the words ‘black’ and ‘white’ no longer exist in the new editions.
Elsewhere, the Cloud-Men in James and the Giant Peach are now known as ‘Cloud-People’.
Changes were made by Puffin and the Roald Dahl Story Company – bought by Netflix in 2021 for a reported £500 million.
But the review began in 2020 when the company was still run by the Dahl family who, the same year, apologised for the author’s anti-semitic statements.
Dahl, a fighter pilot during the Second World War, is one of the best-selling children’s authors in history with more than 250 million books sold.
Alterations: The Big Friendly Giant in The BFG no longer wears a black cloak as the words ‘black’ and ‘white’ no longer exist in the new editions
Language: In the new version of The Twits, Mrs Twit’s ‘fearful ugliness’ has been chopped to ‘ugliness’
Edit: Mrs Hoppy in Esio Trot is no longer an ‘attractive middle-aged lady’ but a ‘kind middle-aged lady’
Changes: Miss Trunchbull in Matilda, once a ‘most formidable female’, is now a ‘most formidable woman’
According to The Telegraph, Matthew Dennison, Dahl’s biographer said the author carefully chose his vocabulary, he said: ‘I’m almost certain that he would have recognised that alterations to his novels prompted by the political climate were driven by adults rather than children.’
Problems with the content of Dahl’s children’s book were heightened in 2020 when a Hollywood version of The Witches received backlash after the Grand Witch, played by Anne Hathaway, had a finger missing from each hand.
Paralympians and charities said it was offensive to the limb-difference community and Warner Bros was forced to issue an apology.
In the latest edition of The Witches, 59 changes have been made to avoid offence, such as the phrases ‘You must be mad, woman!’ and ‘great flock of ladies’ being changed to ‘You must be out of your mind!’ and ‘great group of ladies’.
Elsewhere, the passage which reads: ‘I do not wish to speak badly about women. Most women are lovely. But the fact remains that all witches are women. There is no such thing as a male witch’ has been changed to ‘A witch is always a woman. There is no such thing as a male witch.’
In Esio Trot, a joke about the book’s backwards title has been cut: ‘Tortoises are very backward creatures. Therefore they can only understand words that are written backwards’ has been changed to: ‘They can only understand words that are written backwards’.
Meanwhile the book’s new edition no longer says that tortoises come ‘mostly from North Africa’ but from ‘many different countries’.
Not even Quentin Blake’s famous illustrations of the books have escaped edits from earlier editions, such Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s Mike Teavee’s toy pistols being removed by 2022.
Puffin and the Roald Dahl Story Company made the latest changes in conjunction with Inclusive Minds, which its spokesperson describes as ‘a collective for people who are passionate about inclusion and accessibility in children’s literature’.
Beloved: Dahl is one of the most successful children’s authors ever, with 250 million copies of his books sold
A spokesperson for the Roald Dahl Story Company said: ‘We want to ensure that Roald Dahl’s wonderful stories and characters continue to be enjoyed by all children today.
‘When publishing new print runs of books written years ago, it’s not unusual to review the language used alongside updating other details including a book’s cover and page layout. Our guiding principle throughout has been to maintain the storylines, characters, and the irreverence and sharp-edged spirit of the original text. Any changes made have been small and carefully considered.
‘As part of our process to review the language used we worked in partnership with Inclusive Minds, a collective for people who are passionate about inclusion and accessibility in children’s literature. The current review began in 2020, before Dahl was acquired by Netflix. It was led by Puffin and Roald Dahl Story Company together.’
Organisations such as Inclusive Minds have sprung up to help publishers navigate these newly choppy waters.
Alexandra Strick, a co-founder of Inclusive Minds, says they ‘aim to ensure authentic representation, by working closely with the book world and with those who have lived experience of any facet of diversity’.
Authors and publishers warn ‘sensitivity readers’ are destroying books
Writers have warned against the dangers of ‘sensitivity readers’ who edit or remove language in books they deem to be offensive.
Such readers review manuscripts before publication to raise concerns about language they consider unacceptable.
Authors and publishers have said the practice risks destroying the art of writing through overzealous censorship, The Times reported.
Writing Diversely is an agency which provides sensitivity readers, where one such reader identifies as a ‘disabled nonbinary Jewish queer person with ADHD’.
Another sensitivity reader describes themselves as a ‘bisexual genderfluid lightskinned brown Mexican, self-diagnosed autistic as well as with EDS [ehlers danlos syndrome], depression and anxiety.
One case of so-called sensitivity reading involved the award-winning author Kate Clanchy being told she could not call the Taliban ‘terrorists’ because they now control the Afghan government.
Author Anthony Horowitz was made the remove the word ‘scalpel’ from a book for fear it could offend Native Americans as it closely resembled the word ‘scalp’.
This was despite the fact the word originates from the Latin ‘scalpellum’ which means a surgical knife.
A fiction writer described how a publisher requested his book be sent to sensitivity readers because a character was disabled, even though the author has the same disability.
Kate Clanchy was asked to send her Orwell Prize-winning book ‘Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me’ to sensitivity readers after some social media users claimed descriptions in it were racist.
When the book was returned with hundreds of suggested changes, she left her publisher, Picador.
The author then joined independent publisher Swift Press which re-printed her original book.
Clanchy said: ‘The trouble is authors are now self-censoring their work even before it is shown to these people.
‘We already have fact-checkers, so I don’t see why we need sensitivity readers. They are thought-checkers.’
Mark Richards, co-founder of Swift Press, said: ‘I wish these books would be taken on by mainstream publishers, but the industry has lost its backbone over the last five years.
‘Publishers do not want to be caught in Twitter storms so they hire sensitivity readers as insurance.’
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