Tag: Caryl Churchill

Caryl Churchill Pulls Donmar Play Over Barclays’ Role in Arming Israel

  • Caryl Churchill walks away from Donmar Warehouse over its sponsorship with Barclays
  • Stephen Dillane, Samuel West, Bilal Hasna among artists backing Churchill’s decision, urging Donmar to drop the bank
  • Move follows growing pressure on UK arts institutions, including Sadler’s Wells and the Almeida, over ties to complicit funders

Caryl Churchill, one of Britain’s greatest living playwrights, has withdrawn a play from the Donmar Warehouse upon learning that the theatre receives support from Barclays, which invests over £2 billion and provides £6.1 billion in loans and underwriting to nine arms companies supplying weapons to Israel.

Speaking about her decision, Caryl Churchill said:

“Theatres used to say they couldn’t manage without tobacco sponsorship, but they do. Now it’s time they stopped helping advertise banks that support what Israel is doing to Palestinians”

Her action has been met with widespread support. Over 300 theatre workers have signed an open letter, published in full below, backing Churchill and urging the Donmar Warehouse to cut ties with the bank.

Actors Alex Lawther, Asif Khan, Maggie Steed, Harriet Walter and Juliet Stevenson say they share Donmar Warehouse’s mission to foster “a more empathetic society”, and this is precisely why “they can no longer overlook Donmar’s relationship with Barclays, which enables Israel’s genocide, military occupation and apartheid against Palestinians”.

Barclays currently invests over £2 billion and provides £6.1 billion in loans and underwriting to nine arms companies whose technology and weapons are used in Israel’s brutal assaults on Palestinians. 

Barclays is also the only UK-headquartered bank that acts as a ‘primary dealer’ of Israel government bonds, directly helping the state raise funds to finance the mounting cost of its military assaults.

The bank’s role in other human rights and environmental harms has also come under fire. Last year, Barclays was named the largest financier of the fossil fuel industry in Europe for the eighth consecutive year.

Directors Richard Eyre, Ian Rickson, Maxwell Stafford-Clark, writer Simon Stephens and theatre-maker Tim Crouch are among those who say that “Donmar Warehouse’s relationship with Barclays directly contradicts its commitment to “keep environmental responsibility at the heart of our work”’.

Churchill’s withdrawal comes amid growing calls across the UK cultural sector for institutions to cut  their ties to organisations complicit in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. 

  • In May 2025, 435 theatre and arts professionals demanded that the Almeida Theatre end its relationship with Bloomberg Philanthropies. 
  • Since November 2023, Sadler’s Wells has faced growing pressure over its sponsorship from Barclays, whose Chairman Nigel Higgins also chairs Sadler’s Wells Board.
  • In September 2024, over 1,000 artists and Islington residents, including Maxine Peake, Juliet Stevenson, and Jeremy Corbyn MP, signed an open letter demanding Sadler’s Wells sever its ties with the bank.
  • Later that month, dancer Eve Stainton withdrew from the Sadler’s Wells East launch programme, citing “moral objections” to its Barclays sponsorship.

Culture Workers Against Genocide, who co-organised the open letter, said:

“There is an ethical dissonance amongst arts leaders on six-figure salaries partnering with corporations whose actions contradict the values their institutions claim to uphold. Caryl Churchill’s principled stand reflects the growing refusal among artists to stay silent while the arts are used to launder the reputations of corporations complicit in genocide.”

Read the letter in full:

Dear Tim Sheader and Henny Finch,

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Leading lights demand Almeida Theatre cut ties with Bloomberg over war crimes

Jack Reynor, Billy Howle, Zoe Telford and Caryl Churchill are among leading lights of theatre and screen demanding Islington’s Almeida Theatre end its partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies over its “links to human rights violations and war crimes” and in particular, its “direct and ongoing support for illegal settlements” in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.

In the letter published below, 435 theatre and arts professionals, forty of whom have current or historic links to the theatre – including former associate director Ben Harrison, actors Tamara Lawrance, MyAnna Buring and Hayley Carmichael, composer Jocelyn Pook and writer David Farr – say the issue was raised privately with the theatre months ago, but that the theatre failed to act on the information it was given.

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Leading artists condemn campaign against ‘Let it be a Tale’ theatre production

Leading artists, including writer Michael Rosen, actors Billy Howle and Khalid Abdalla, playwrights Caryl Churchill and Tanika Gupta and composer Orlando Gough, have spoken out against attempts to damage the reputation and stifle the work of Brighton’s ThirdSpace theatre company. 

ThirdSpace works with young people. Its latest show, Let it be a Tale, is scheduled for performance in venues across the city before Christmas. 

‘We all carry our stories with us and pass them down,’ reads the company’s description of the show. ‘When someone dies, we keep their memory alive through stories. When cultures are under threat, we keep them alive through stories.’

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Leading writers respond to Nick Cave

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Israel’s officials wasted no time in reciprocating Nick Cave’s declaration of love for Israel, made at his recent press conference there. Today, leading writers have responded to the musician and author’s claims about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.  These statements, published below, follow responses from artists including Brian Eno and Roger Waters. 

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Artists slam Israel’s planned occupation of London’s Roundhouse

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Roger Waters, Ken Loach, Caryl Churchill and Thurston Moore are among many leading artists calling for London’s celebrated Roundhouse to cancel its involvement with a festival designed to promote Israel as a progressive and liberal destination with a ‘glittering’ capital city.

TLV in LDN is supposedly a celebration of culture, but its director Marc Worth has revealed in an interview that the festival is the dream child of Israel’s diplomatic mission in the UK, and was conceived in response to the growing movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS). BDS seeks to highlight Israel’s systemic violation of Palestinian human, civil and political rights. Continue reading →

Artists appeal to the Chemical Brothers: Please don’t play Tel Aviv

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  • UPDATES:
  • Haaretz: ‘Former Pink Floyd bassist signs an open letter telling the electronic duo to not be fooled by Tel Aviv’s cool vibe while a different petition accuses artists who perform in Israel of whitewashing apartheid.’ (November 5, 2016)
    Report in the Guardian: ‘Former Pink Floyd man joins campaign alongside Caryl Churchill and Maxine Peake seeking a cultural boycott to promote better treatment of Palestinians’ (November 2, 2016)
  • Report in Pitchfork:  ‘Roger Waters, Thousands More Petition the Chemical Brothers to Cancel Tel Aviv Show’; and here in NME magazine and MixMag (November 1, 2016)
  • In an interview with Israeli media Chemical Brothers deny they are asked to boycott Israel despite over 7,000 people asking them to do just that. They are quoted as saying ‘pressure was not applied to us. We will go to any place where young people want to see us playing. We are not really involved in all the rest’. Needless to say, if the controversial concert goes ahead, fans in the occupied Palestinian territories will not be able to reach it due to ‘all the rest’. (October 29, 2016).
  • More than 7,000 people sign a petition asking Chemical Brothers Ed and Tom not to play Tel Aviv! (October 28, 2016)

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NEWS RELEASE – Actors, writers and directors denounce demonisation of Palestinian theatre

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Let audiences be the judge of Palestinian theatre on UK tour
(NB this original text differs slightly from the version published by the Daily Mail on May 8)

As theatre practitioners in Britain, we are alarmed that the Daily Mail is attacking the Arts Council and the British Council for supporting a UK tour by a Palestinian theatre company.

Your piece, with its inflammatory title UK taxpayers fund ‘pro-terrorist’ play, cites “concerns” from the Board of Deputies of British Jews, an organisation with a shocking record of acting to suppress both cultural and academic events which explore the bitter reality of Palestinian existence. Only last month the University of Southampton succumbed to demonisation and threats and banned an academic conference on the legal status of Israel.

Neither the Daily Mail nor the Board of Deputies has seen Freedom Theatre’s play The Siege, yet both somehow feel qualified to suggest that it is “promoting terrorism”. Not for the first time, Palestinian voices are in danger of being drowned out by a vociferous pro-Israel lobby that smears all Palestinians as terrorists and antisemites. This lobby wants us to believe that theatre-goers in the UK cannot be trusted to hear these voices and make their own judgements.

The Palestinian West Bank, where the Freedom Theatre is based, has been under illegal Israeli military occupation since 1967. We endorse the words of British playwright Howard Brenton, an honorary director of the Freedom Theatre, who writes of the forthcoming tour:

“This is real political theatre, performed out of the both terrible and inspiring experience of a struggle for freedom and justice. [The Freedom Theatre] are living proof that telling stories and entertaining audiences are powerful acts of resistance to oppression. Do go and see them, they have news for us.”

Caryl Churchill
Dominic Cooke
April De Angelis
David Edgar
Lucy Kirkwood
David Lan
Miriam Margolyes
Paul Mayersberg
Maxine Peake
Mark Rylance
Jennie Stoller
Mark Thomas
Samuel West Continue reading →

‘All Charlie Hebdo? Except when freedom of expression means freedom to criticise Israel.’

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Sajid Javid’s comments on Israeli sponsorship ‘breached the principle of an arms-length relationship between the government and the arts’, writes Caryl Churchill – UK playwright, and Artists’ Pledge signatory.

Two letters defending academic and artistic freedom from bullying and censorship by the Israel lobby were published in the Guardian, Monday 6 April 2015

• In late March we had culture secretary Sajid Javid’s astonishing statement in a speech to the Board of Deputies of British Jews (reported in Jewish News) that any arts organisations refusing Israeli sponsorship will risk losing funding, breaching the long-established principle of an arms-length relationship between government and the arts. The Arts Council is supposed to be a buffer between them precisely to avoid political censorship and bullying. Now we have news (1 April) of the cancellation of the University of Southampton’s conference on international law and the state of Israel after protests from the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Zionist Federation UK. All Charlie Hebdo? Except when freedom of expression means freedom to criticise Israel.
Caryl Churchill
London

• We note with regret that the University of Southampton has shamefully capitulated to pressure from the pro-Israel lobby and cancelled an international academic conference. The university claims to have acted on police advice that they cannot guarantee security against threatened demonstrations. Where was the threat to public order? How could a conference, predominantly of lawyers discussing complex legal issues concerning the legal status of Israel and its boundaries, be a threat? Or are we to conclude that pro-Israeli demonstrators are such violent opponents of academic freedom that the police cannot contain them?
Prof Hilary Rose, Prof Steven Rose
London

Theatre director Jonathan Chadwick: BDS crucially important element in resistance

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Jonathan Chadwick – artistic director of Az Theatre, and a Pledge signatory – has written a blog post about his recent trip to the West Bank, which we think is worth sharing:

I went to Palestine on Saturday 7th February and came back on Sunday 15th February. I failed to get into Gaza to pursue the work on War and Peace.

Caryl Churchill and I worked on her recent play, Love and Information, at Ashtar Theatre. The British Council accommodated us. The Royal Court Theatre provided finance for the translation. We paid for the travel and did the work for free. It was our contribution, like planting a play in Palestine! Continue reading →