An anecdote....

I was at the Royal Court, an International Department playwrights' do. One of the invited was a young woman who was there because she had been banned in her own country, China. I ended up with her at the bar, and for want of anything else to say, I rather lazily asked what it entailed, to be banned in China. How did we, over here in England, even know she was a playwright if she had been banned?

She answered that the way the Chinese had of banning you was quite sneaky, it wasnt to ban you outright but that if you were banned or, disapproved of by the state, then it wasn't neccessarily that you were forbidden to have plays on, but everyone knew that if they did your plays or spoke about you, they wouldn't be promoted or they might even lose their jobs.

Sounds familiar, I thought to myself.

My last play, I delivered it, it was an un-paid for  commission. It was a somewhat political play, but possibly one of my best written,  about two families, one middle class, one working class. I was, rather openly for me, on the side of the working class one. It was, I indicated, a class war.  After a long silence, I phoned to ask my friend who had commissioned it, if he was going to do the play;

"I can't do that play  he said, I'd lose my job!"

One might say, my play was 'banned' by the so-called left for supporting the working classes.

postscript; he lost his job anyway, for making improper remarks to ladies. He was put on trial by the board, publicly shamed and convicted like a real criminal, I have read the transcript. He had to make a bogus confession and make a statement about how he was going to mend his ways- then they fired him.