Oh no. You’ve just stumbled into the wrong room at the theatre and now instead of watching the latest big-budget adaptation of Macbeth, you’re watching a small, student-written piece about a dying cat and it’s all a metaphor for late-stage capitalism. And it’s from the cat’s perspective.

Maybe it’s poorly written. Maybe the script is slow-paced, the dialogue stilted, the characterisation of the cat poorly thought-out. The monologues are a bit long-winded, and trite assertions are made about The State of Things Today. Wake Up World. This is an Urgent Piece of Theatre.

Maybe it just isn’t your thing. You really don’t enjoy extended monologues in which the lead (playing the cat) rubs his back against the legs of the front row. You didn’t like the attempts at audience interaction or the avant-garde dance to triangle music. It’s not your cup of tea – I understand.

But if your complaint is that it is pretentious, if that’s the reason, of all reasons, that you choose to write it off, then you and I will be having words.

“Does the universe care about King Lear? No. King Lear knows that”

Something is pretentious if it makes an effort to be bigger, cleverer, or more important than it actually is. Problem: this describes all art, and probably all people. Does the universe care about King Lear? No. King Lear knows that. Are you super important, in the grand scheme of things? I mean, maybe not. You probably think you are, though.

But let’s not get too expansive. We’re talking theatre. Plays can be produced at a relatively low cost, with a handful of friends and a semi-willing audience, so the theatrical world has always been the perfect petri dish for the kind of art that is ambitious, experimental, and pretty bad.

For students involved in the theatre scene, ‘pretentious’ is a buzzword. ‘I promise – it’s not pretentious!’ says a young actor, of his one-man spoken-word poem, soundtracked by jazz.

“Even 'bad' art is essential in a world with a thriving artistic community”

Maybe the word ‘pretentious’, in this context, refers to art that has not enough good qualities to counterbalance its superior attitude.

I would argue, though, that even 'bad' art is essential in a world with a thriving artistic community. Pretentious plays can be the baby teeth that sprout before better things grow in. Plenty of young writers produce pieces that don’t quite live up to their sky-high ambitions.

Besides, bad art in general will always be of interest to future generations. Occasionally an English literature lecturer will say something along the lines of “Now, this poem is very bad, but it’s interesting because. . .” Pretentious think-piece plays about climate change will be fascinating a hundred years down the line, provided that anyone is around. 

And even if pretentious plays aren’t stepping-stones to greater success for student dramatists, or historical sources for the future – even if the writer of the cat play burns the script and runs away to be a hedge fund manager, I would still applaud when the curtain falls. The play has what so many more successful endeavours lack: heady, life-affirming ambition. It attempts to do something great and fails. There is something very noble about that.