All of us who have wrongly been advised to offer trigger warnings for material that doesn't require it will feel the personal sting of the objections these students raise to the jokes they've hired a comedian to tell at their school. Since when are theater audiences supposed to be comfortable?

Extremely interesting piece that should be staged if only to have audiences take pause to look at how their reactions can be just as triggering as the material of the standup comic in question. One of the functions of humor is to poke holes and expose the absurdity of our lives. But some poking can irritate as well as illuminate. At what point can personal offense be wielded as a weapon against those they oppose? Marc Paykuss imagines a very real answer here, and it isn't pretty.

Marc Paykuss' play Trigger Warning reminds us that there is only a hairline between humor and offense. And sometimes we have to truly listen to one another to understand both.