Tuesday, 3rd February 2009
Producers of banned play invoke freedom of expression
The ban on the play Stitching goes against freedom of expression, the producers have argued in a judicial protest they filed against the Board of Classification yesterday.
They also accuse the board's chairman, Therese Friggieri of acting illegally and said she should not have involved herself in the second examination of the play after they had appealed the first decision as this is against the board's own regulations.
The producers also argue that since the script itself had not been banned, and could be bought freely by anyone in Malta, it did not make sense to ban its theatrical staging.
"If the written script is not illegal, how can its dramatic representation be objectionable and prohibited?" they said in the protest.
They added that the play had been staged in a number of English-speaking countries around Europe without any problem.
"On a point of principle, it is unacceptable in a European and democratic society... for this play to be prohibited, because in its full context it is not libellous, obscene, defamatory, and does not incite racial hatred or violence. It is just a shocking play aimed at an adult audience," it continued.
The producers pointed out that part of society's freedom of expression includes the right to "offend, shock or disturb any state or any sector of the population," adding that "such are the demands of pluralism, tolerance and broad mindedness without which there is no democratic society".
And if 18-year-olds are free to marry, take loans, raise children, have sex, drink, smoke and vote, they should also have the right to choose what kind of cultural experience to appreciate.
So far, both the producers and the Board of Classification have refused to give out too many plot details. But a 2002 report in The Guardian, the day after Stitching was performed for the first time at the Edinburgh Festival, said people walked out on grounds of taste.
The company producing the play, Unifaun, has in the past years developed a reputation for staging shocking plays, which have included controversial religious themes and scenes of nudity, sodomy, and rape.
The producer Adrian Buckle is planning to defy the ban and has insisted that staging the play was a question of "when, and not if".
The Board of Classification has seen its fair share of controversy in its battle to classify plays suitably, although in recent history it has never banned any plays from being staged.
However, in 1997, the Manoel Theatre decided to ban the satirical play The Bible to avoid offending any religious sentiments. Controversy had also broken out in 1996 on the play Duchess of Amalfi, where a scene in which an actress kicked a crucifix was asked to be removed by the Culture Ministry.
In the light of these controversies, when Ms Friggieri had just been appointed as the new chairman in 1998 she had quashed the idea of complete censorship.
"We are not appointed to cut things... our job is to classify. I do not have the mentality of banning outrightly," she had told The Times.
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Comments
Seems to me, that more than anything you're really scared and feeling threatened by what's happening around you - your comfort zone must have been shaken quite a bit - noticing that MALTESE around you might be different to what YOU are demanding them to be ? but who am i to judge ?
I would be careful with your claims about what should justify a judicial protest.
Angelique Chrisafis, arts correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Monday 5 August 2002 17.55 BST
Sex play prompts walkouts
Barely one day into the Edinburgh festival, audiences known for their cast-iron stomachs have staged their first walkouts on grounds of taste.
People left Stitching, a new play by the Scottish writer Anthony Neilson that describes a man masturbating over pictures of women being herded into a gas chamber in Auschwitz. A character fantasises about re-enacting the Moors murders, filming her partner sexually abusing the victims' mothers and putting the footage on the web. She mutilates and stitches up her vagina to the strains of "We will stitch it" from the soundtrack to the children's TV programme Bagpuss.
The first audience members walked out in a scene where the two characters assaulted each other with a plastic phallus. Relatives of victims of the Moors murderers condemned the production, and religious groups are to canvass outside.....
Is this the class of plays that the Maltese who consider themselves the elite want to watch?
I would like to comment on one thing of censorship and why it is evil (maybe not in this case)
Censorship has been used by totalitarian regimes so that if everyting is going wrong, people think is going right. Most famous for this is Stalin. Others are Hitler, Mao Zedong and Chaucescu.
IIf one considers for example rock songs, the most cencored ones are not those that talk about sex, drugs, satan etc, but those who oppose the 'status quo' and hit painfully to someone for the reason that they are saying the truth
If the play offend our catholic sentiments or it is obscene just BAN the SCRIPT and
kick out of MALTA ADRIAN BUCKLE and ban UNIFAUN from operating in MALTA .
No judical protest should be allowed to take place in MALTA
Adrian Buckle is to be applauded as he's wasting time and risking money to produce daring works that earn little but provoke discussion, instead of the usual happy go lucky sop…
That is exactly the point. I demand the right to see it and walk out if I decide it is not to my taste. If you are happy to go by what other people decide, suit yourself...but let others make up their own minds.
If the excessively tolerant Edinburgh fringe festival crowd walked out on this play in the Edinburgh, it says something!