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.
cperegin@timesofmalta.com