Daily Inspiration Quote by Fiona Shaw

Fiona Shaw isn’t just dunking on mediocre plays; she’s indicting the polite ecosystem that keeps them alive. The opening “I loathe” is deliberately overclocked, the kind of blunt emotional verb actors are rarely allowed in public without being labeled “difficult.” It’s a warning flare: she’s talking about taste, yes, but also about standards as an ethical issue.

Her triad - “repetitious, unexciting and, dangerously” - does sly work. Repetition and dullness are ordinary complaints; “dangerously” upgrades them from personal annoyance to cultural hazard. The subtext is that bad theater doesn’t merely waste an evening. It trains audiences to expect less, teaches institutions to play it safe, and turns the stage into a museum of approved gestures. That’s what “sometimes praised for those things” lands on: the quiet corruption of acclaim. If a production is rewarded for being familiar and inert, the art form’s risk-taking muscle atrophies.

Coming from Shaw, the critique carries extra voltage. She’s a performer shaped by high-wire theater (classical texts, avant-garde directors, major houses) where repetition isn’t comfort food; it’s death. She’s also taking aim at a certain prestige culture: the standing ovation for “respectable” work, the review that confuses decorum with depth, the funding logic that treats experimentation as an optional garnish. The real target isn’t bad theater. It’s the consensus that keeps calling it good.