2024-08-20 08:48:26
Slovak Deputy Environment Minister Štefan Kuffa interrupted a theater performance of the Košice National Theater in one of the villages in eastern Slovakia on Sunday. It was announced by actress Ľuba Blaškovičová, who plays in the performance, and also by journalist Lukáš Marhefka, who was at the event as a spectator. In response, Kuffa claimed that a perverted film was being shown there and that he and a colleague were assaulted.
The Minister of Culture, Martina Šimkovičová, defended Kuffy and pointed to the suspicion that the moral education of the youth was at risk during the performance.
The theater played a production of Irish author Elaine Murphy’s My Baby, which is presented in the Czech Republic under the title Three Girls as a Flower. The play about three generations of women and one year of their lives is, according to the theatre, the best Irish play of 2008 and 2009.
“The censor, Secretary of State Kuffa intervened – directly entered – the performance, stopped it and expelled the audience… the performance was interrupted… a dispute between him and the audience…,” wrote Blaškovičová.
“He started to determine for whom the performance is suitable, for whom it is not suitable, who should remain seated there and who should not sit there. He arbitrarily interrupted the performance of the actress,” said Marhefka about the incident in the village of Malá Franková. He added that Kuffa did not want to leave the premises until the mayor brought him out.
“We had a nice evening, there was a folklore event, a holy mass. At the end, a perverted film was played, there were small children on the stage. I warned them not to play it, that it was inappropriate. I called on the parents to send the children away. They were we are attacked with sticks,” Kuffa claimed. According to him, the attackers were actors or stagehands from the theater.
The theater objected to interference in artistic creation. “The Košice National Theater considers the situation that arose during the performance in Malá Franková to be unfortunate, fully supports its employees and opposes any interference with the freedom of artistic creation and its accessibility,” the theater said on Monday.
According to the theater, the organizers of the festival where the actors played apologized for not informing in advance about the suitability of the show for adults only. The National Theater added that the situation did not authorize anyone to interfere with the performance and expel the audience from it. The theater believes that if Kuffa had doubts, he should have informed the organizers.
In response, Šimkovičová stated that it is not permissible for a performance suitable for visitors from the age of 18 to be freely available to children and adolescents. “Children and young people should be protected from inappropriate content and from the constant pressure of liberal-progressive propaganda, which constantly pushes topics with sexual undertones into their awareness,” Šimkovičová wrote on the social network. According to her, the performance is not suitable for children and young people, due to sexual scenes, vulgarities and monologues with sexual undertones at the level of the third price group.
In response, opposition parties called for Kuffa to resign or be removed from the leadership of the Ministry of Environment. For example, the strongest opposition movement Progressive Slovakia called him an inquisitor.
Kuffa holds strongly conservative views. In the past, as a member of the Slovak Chamber of Deputies, he spoke out against abortions and unsuccessfully promoted a proposal to include artificial insemination as a criminal offense. Together with his son Filip, who is also a deputy at the Ministry of the Environment, and another son Gregor, he faces charges on suspicion of threatening an employee of an agricultural company in connection with the 2021 incident.
In last year’s early parliamentary elections, Štefan Kuffa was elected as an MP on the candidate list of the nationalist Slovak National Party (SNS). After entering the government, she proposed to the Minister of Culture Martina Šimkovičová, who is now facing criticism from artists and the opposition for dismissing the directors of the Slovak National Theater and the Slovak National Gallery. Like SNS, Šimkovičová opposes liberals and topics related to sexual minorities.
In the past, Štefan Kuffa was elected as an MP on the candidate list of the now opposition movement Slovakia (formerly OLaNO) of ex-prime minister Igor Matovič and later on the candidate list of the far-right party Kotlebovci-Lidová strana Naše Slovensko (LSNS). In 2016, the chairman of the LSNS and the then governor of the Banskobystrica Region, Marian Kotleba, ordered the early termination of a theater performance from the workshop of a smaller group, which he did not like, allegedly due to indecent expressions.