Traverse Theatre - Controversies

Controversies

• At the second Traverse performance, on 3 January 1963, lead actress Colette O'Neil was accidentally stabbed on stage. The knife, which was real, had caught in the folds of her costume and had gone into her side. The actress went on with the rest of the performance and was seen to at the end by a doctor who had been in the audience and later taken to hospital. John Martin (co-founder of the Traverse and an early chairman of the board) says that the real knife was used because the space was so small and the audience sat so close to the stage a fake knife would have been detected. Richard Demarco says it was because they had no money and could not afford a paper one.

• Throughout 1965 the Traverse Theatre Club was threatened with police raids due to open homosexual activity in a time when it was illegal.

• At the 1967 Edinburgh Festival, twenty-two Traverse Theatre shows were performed; including Rochelle Owens' Futz! which the Daily Express described as "Filth on the Fringe", and Alfred Jarry's Ubu in Chains which featured Ma and Pa Ubu as 6-foot tall sexual organs.

• At a meeting in 1971 Artistic Director Michael Rudman persuaded the Edinburgh Corporation to increase the Traverse grant but refused to give any assurances on the 'decency' of future productions.