"I just want to know what's ruled out?" asks Stu, very significantly, at the very start of Anthony Neilson's locally-banned play Stitching. Underlying it all is the deep human challenge: limits!

To be human is to be hemmed in by limitations. Yet, to be human is also to challenge and overcome limitations. The former is associated with oppression and enslavement while the latter is associated with progress and freedom.

Modern progress has accustomed us to a life where limits are constantly being pushed further and further away. Distance has shrunk. Time has been shortened. Communication has become instant. Science has overcome nature. The sky is the limit... as the expression goes!

This reminds me of a mythical society which once thought that it had the proud ability to reach out for the sky. They started building a tower... as high as the sky! We have all heard the end of the story. Which raises a deeper question still: What are the real limits that need to be overcome for humanity to achieve real freedom?

Failing to answer this question carries the penalty of despair and self-destruction. Suffice it to see the catastrophes resulting from our excesses and disregard for limits and boundaries: the economic recession caused by our spendthrift culture; global warming resulting from unbridled "development"; increasing teenage pregnancies resulting from sexual permissiveness; increasing poverty caused by the concentration of wealth in the hands of a privileged few... The list is as varied as it is endless.

What can be ruled out in such a world? What should be ruled out?

We might see light at the end of the tunnel if we renounce to our blind scramble for false freedoms. By the painful but healthy harnessing of our limitations we can get nearer to the real, long-lasting and true freedom we all dream of.

The characters in Stitching seem to be locked up in the same predicament as our society. Amidst the painful and unnecessary crudeness of the script one can see how people crave for love but end up only indulging in erotic self-stimulation. They dream of self-giving but seem to be condemned to selling their bodies in mutual exploitation. They cry for attention but can only resort to shocking each other and any potential audience. They want to escape from their own suffering but manage only to exploit, in a horrendous and disgusting way, the suffering of innocent genocide victims. They dream of bearing a child but manage only to see it as a threat and a menace to their "spontaneity". They sense the divine joy of giving life but succeed only to stitch themselves up in their own despair.

It is regrettable that in this play crucial issues have been subordinated to a deliberate strategy of shock treatment for its own sake. One cannot help asking whether people are likely to leave the theatre cleansed or spiritually diminished.

Was it right for this play to be banned? The issues are, perhaps, much deeper: What can lead us to real freedom? Who knows, perhaps, freely embracing the limitations that make us human is the path to real freedom.

The choice is ours. Should we publicly embrace high ethical standards that respect each person's human dignity or should we give free reign to our short-sighted, unfiltered impulses that can only lead to more painful limitations and enslavements?

It will be a sad day indeed when our country will have made the second choice. Once our basic and unbridled "inhuman" instincts take over and become the "norm", there will be little, if any, freedom left at all to speak about. Choosing "no limits" would prove to have been the worst limiting of our choices. Then, we will be forced to agree with Abby who, at the end of Stitching very ominously concludes: "Look, it got dark".

Censorship may be an instrument of repression. It can also be a statement of society in favour of real freedom. The choice is ours to make!