Prague Theater Studio Hrdinů will not host its production Moonstone at the Slovak National Theatre. As the local Denník N found out, she was supposed to perform in Bratislava on October 21 as part of a LGBT-themed festival called Drama Queer. However, the new theater director Zuzana Ťapáková announced that she would not sign the contract.
“I will not sign a contract two or three weeks before any hosting or participation in festivals. This is unacceptable for theaters where things are planned half a year, a year or two in advance,” Ťapáková told the newspaper.
She took up the position after the previous director, Matej Drlička, was dismissed in the summer by Slovak Culture Minister Martina Šimkovičová from the Slovak National Party. She defends traditional culture, opposes LGBT issues and previously announced an effort to stop supporting them by state institutions.
The director of the festival, Róbert Pakan, calls the cancellation of the hosting an international scandal, considering that the author of the play is the Icelandic playwright Sjón, known for his collaboration with the singer Björk. “I personally consider it censorship, it looks like discrimination and it’s also an international scandal,” Markíza told television.
According to him, it took time for both scenes to find a suitable date, which is why the contract was not signed earlier. Pakan has to cancel hosting, because he won’t be able to find another technically suitable space this quickly. “Nothing like this has ever happened to us. Homosexuality is definitely an obstacle, which seems crazy to me. Our production is decent, sexuality is not pushed, rather it is magical realism, a story about loneliness and isolation,” Jan Horák, director of Studio Hrdinů, told Denik N.
In response, the Slovak platform Otvorená Kultúra accused the Slovak minister of “normalizing and cleaning public space from LGBTIQ+ people and topics”. But the decision has already caused a reaction in the Czech Republic as well. Studio Hrdinů announced that it is preparing a discussion on the situation on October 28. Brno’s HaDivadlo wrote on social networks that “the selection of culture into objectionable and non-objectionable belongs to the mental equipment of totalitarian and undemocratic regimes”.
Director Kamila Polívková and the Czech-Icelandic team staged the production Moonstone based on the novella of the same name by the writer Sjón the year before. Jan Cina plays a sixteen-year-old orphan who loves movies and the same sex. Both are socially problematic in Iceland in the early 20th century, the latter downright outrageous. “Moonstone clearly shows the direction in which independent, and therefore all Czech theater should go,” wrote critic Marcela Magdová. The production was nominated for the Divadelní noviny Award in the alternative theater category, and Jan Cina was also nominated for an award for acting in a leading role.
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