Caryl Churchill pulls out of Donmar Warehouse project over Barclays’ Israel links

Caryl Churchill has pulled a show from the Donmar Warehouse over the small theatre’s sponsorship by Barclays and the bank’s links to Israel.

The playwright, who penned the controversial 10-minute play Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza, has withdrawn the planned production, accusing the venue of helping to whitewash the bank’s reputation on Israel.

In a statement, Churchill claimed: “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.”

The revered playwright accused the Donmar Warehouse of helping to bolster the bank's reputation. (Getty Images)Getty Images

More than 300 actors, directors and other creatives from the industry including Harriet Walter, Juliet Stevenson and Richard Eyre have signed an open letter in support of Churchill’s decision.

“Barclays states that its sponsorships of venues like Donmar Warehouse help ‘build our brand and reputation’. It uses venues like Donmar Warehouse as cover to shield itself from accountability over its complicity in Israel’s war crimes and role in financing climate destruction,” the letter said.

“Arts institutions have an ethical duty not to contribute to oppression and injustice. By continuing to accept sponsorship from Barclays, Donmar Warehouse is helping to launder the bank’s reputation as it profits from Israel’s genocide in Palestine.”

Other prominent signatories included directors Ian Rickson and Maxwell Stafford-Clark, writer Simon Stephens and theatre-maker Tim Crouch.

Churchill is best known for plays such as Cloud 9 (1979), Top Girls (1982) and Far Away (2000) – which was performed at Donmar Warehouse in 2020.

Her new project with the venue had not yet been announced.

Barclays has previously said that accusing the bank of investing in nine defence companies supplying Israel is to “mistake what we do”.

“We trade in shares of listed companies in response to client instruction or demand and that may result in us holding shares,” the bank said in a statement on its website.

“Whilst we provide financial services to these companies, we are not making investments for Barclays and Barclays is not a ‘shareholder’ or ‘investor’ in that sense in relation to these companies.”

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.”

The news will be a fresh blow to Donmar Warehouse, the not-for-profit theatre in Covent Garden, which receives no Arts Council England funding after losing its £500,000 annual grant in 2022.

Barclays is a prominent corporate sponsor for cultural venues, with the bank having announced new deals with The O2 in London and Co-op Live in Manchester just last month.

The Barclays Bank chairman, Nigel Higgins, also chairs Sadler’s Wells – Britain’s leading dance organisations. In September 2024, Culture Workers Against Genocide published an open letter signed by 1,000 supporters aimed at pressuring Sadler’s Wells to cut ties with the bank.

When it debuted at the Royal Court Theatre in 2009, Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza caused controversy.

The play, a response to Israel’s military actions in Gaza, was accused of drawing on several “antisemitic stereotypes” by the former co-vice-chair of the Zionist Federation, Jonathan Hoffman. A spokesperson from the Royal Court Theatre “categorically” rejected the claim that the production was antisemitic.

The JC contacted Barclays and Donmar Warehouse for comment.