To mark the release of the spring 2016 issue of Index on Censorship magazine Index has compiled a reading list of articles from the magazine archives covering the censorship of theatre. The latest issue, Staging Shakespearean Dissent, takes a look at how Shakespeare’s plays have allowed directors to tackle issues that would have otherwise been censored in countries around the world.
Performances of South African play Egoli, by writer Matsemela Manaka, went ahead at a Johannesburg theatre without being censored, yet the printed version – an extract of which is featured in this article – was banned. Egoli, which means “city of gold”, focuses on the plight of migrant mine workers in South Africa. Its two characters, John Moalusi Ledwaba and Hamilton Mahonga Silwane, were in prison at the same time: one for a political crime, the other for rape and murder. Now they work in the gold mines, while their families attempt to farm in the “homelands”.
Lucien Bourjeily’s 2013 play Will It Pass or Not? was banned by Lebanon’s censorship bureau, yet his 2015 play For Your Eyes Only, Sir was approved after some minor changes, despite the play including scenes from its banned prequel. Aimée Hamilton talks to Bourjeily about why his new play escaped the censors when his previous one didn’t, and what inspired it; and For Your Eyes Only, Sir is translated into English for the first time for Index on Censorship magazine.
Despite government assurances that it was lifting restrictions on Brazilian stage productions in April 1979, theatres were among the most censored over the next decade. Every play had to be submitted to the censor in Brasilia before it was staged, and a complete rehearsal had to take place in the presence of a censor of the town in which the play was being performed. In December 1978 one of Brazil’s best know playwrights Plínio Marcos, notorious for having 18 of his works suppressed without performance, wrote the play Oh! How I Miss the Termite to be read only, believing he could not get the play performed publicly.
In an interview with Czech exile Karel Hvizdala, for inclusion in a book of interviews he was working on, Czechoslovakian playwright Vaclav Havel, who was unable work in his profession in his own country – where nothing he had written had been published or performed since 1969 – speaks about his latest plays Largo Desolato and Temptation.
Karel Kyncl tells the story theatre and film actress Vlasta Chramostová, her Living Room Theatre, and how Shakespeare was used as a form of resistance. In the 1960s and 70s Czechoslovakian actors put on performances of Macbeth in houses, which they called Living Room Theatre. However, Shakespeare was seen as an enemy of socialism by Czechoslovakia police, who began to harass the actors. The actors continued to perform despite pressure from the police but eventually some of these actors were driven into exile.
Janet Steel discusses the censorship Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti faced when the British-Pakistani playwright attempted to put on her production Behzti at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. The local Sikh community called for the play to be banned, stating it incited racial hatred, which led to Bhatti receiving threats because of her work.
Nan Levinson discusses censorship of Romeo and Juliet in textbooks in American schools. Artist Janet Zweig read an article written by a student about the discrepancies between the play in his school textbook and the version he saw on stage. Over 300 lines had been cut from the play, the majority of which contained sexual references. Zweig spoke to publishers and found the publishers that didn’t cut lines from the textbook didn’t sell as many as those who did. She went on to make a book from the 336 lines that were cut from the textbooks, part of which is featured in this article.
Dame Janet Suzman’s 1987 production of Othello in South Africa caused a huge amount controversy due the production showing a relationship between a black man and a white woman during the apartheid. Many people left the production in protest and sent threatening letters, however the play escaped being banned or censored because it was Shakespeare. In this article Suzman discusses why she chose to put on such a controversial production and how through Shakespeare they escaped the censors.
The long awaited revival of a 400-year-old classical opera, in rehearsal at Shanghai’s Kunju Theatre, was called off by the Shanghai Bureau of Culture. It accused the director of introducing “archaic, superstitious and pornographic” elements into his production and vetoed its export first to New York and subsequently to France, Australia and Hong Kong. Mu Dan Ting, (Peony Pavilion), had not been performed in its entire act since it was written by Tang Xianzu in 1598 during the Ming Dynasty, as it was written out of classical repertoire under the communists. However director Yang Lian believes this time round its banning has more to do with political manoeuvering than the nature of the opera itself.
“Censorship in the theatre has always been more petty and strict than censorship in general – that of literature, for instance. Sadly, it has often been the finest examples of Russian drama that have not reached the stage until several years – sometimes decades – after they were written.” Anna Tamarchenko discusses the censorship of Russian theatre throughout the years.
To mark the launch of the Music In Exile Fund, Index on Censorship has compiled a reading list of articles that have appeared in the magazine since 1982 and deal with censorship and music. We are offering these articles — which are normally held behind a paywall — for free.
Index on Censorship launched the Music In Exile Fund in partnership with the producers of They Will Have To Kill Us First: Malian Music In Exile – a documentary that follows musicians in Mali after the 2012 jihadist takeover during which music was outlawed. One band’s story featuring heavily in the film is Songhoy Blues, who are just one of many to feature in the Music In Exile Fund playlist.
The fund will contribute towards Index on Censorship’s Freedom of Expression Awards Fellowship, a year-long programme to support those facing censorship.
Marie Korpe and Ole Reitov have been tracking the music censors and the censored for more than a decade. They reflect on the tactics of modern censorship
When we founded Freemuse ten years ago, our aim was to defend freedom of expression for musicians and composers. Since then, we have documented music censorship in more than 100 countries. At first, we were not aware of the size of the problem, but the longer we have worked in the field, the larger the challenges become. Maybe we are still only seeing the tip of the iceberg. While more journalists have got music censorship on their radar and a number of musicians have benefited from our support, it is still rare to find records of music censorship and violations of musicians’ rights to freedom of expression in reports from Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and other global free expression watchdogs.
Some homophobic lyrics in rap and reggae incite hatred and violence,
agree campaigners Peter Tatchell and Topher Campbell. But is censorship the answer? First, Peter Tatchell explains why education will help. Then Topher Campbell tells Alice Kirkland where he would draw the line
Along with misogyny, homophobic lyrics have long blighted some rap and reggae music. Eminem and Buju Banton, among others, have found themselves in the firing line for their incendiary anti-gay hate music, ranging from rap songs containing insults like “faggot” to tracks that overtly glorify and encourage the murder of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
Homophobic hate speech is wrong, regardless of whether it is expressed by a bully in the street or by a singer.
Valrie Ceccherini writing in 1995 as part of a series focusing on the voices of those silenced by poverty, prejudice and exclusion
“My life has changed totally since the war,” says 20-year-old Ermin. He speaks of “the constant presence of death” with resignation. “I live shoulder to shoulder with death. Every time I go out, a missile could kill or wound me. Lots of my friends are dead. I think of them every day and 1 know 1 could join them at any moment. I’ve learned to live with this fear for three years now; there was no choice. I know it’s changed me. I’m harder, braver – or maybe I’ve just gone mad. Everybody here’s changed: everybody’s gone mad. You can’t help it after three years shut up in this hell.”
Emir is a slight youth of 17. “I used to spend most of my time away
from home, out with my friends. Now I scarcely ever leave home. It’s too dangerous.”
In the summer of 1977 I was 15 years old and wore an old tropical linen jacket I’d bought in a charity shop for a quid. It wasn’t so much off-white as ruinous, and it matched the colour of my shoes – winkle-pickers I’d painted myself using some kind of weird leather paint. Naturally I had to lie on my skinny rump to force my El Greco feet through the eight-inch ankles of my drainpipe jeans. Given all this sartorial mayhem it goes without saying that I absolutely concurred with the Sex Pistol’s front man, Johnny Rotten, when he sang, “God save the queen / The fascist regime”. Admittedly the causal connective “it’s” was lost in all the filth and the fury of his delivery, but we knew what he meant.
Actually, I can barely remember the circumstantial pomp that went into the celebration of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, all I can recall is the Sex Pistols’ treasonable ditty, and the fact that it was banned from being played on the radio. At least I’m certain it was banned from the BBC’s Radio 1.
Mark Ludwig for Index on Censorship on how the Nazis used music as a propaganda tool in the service of its doctrine of racial purity and superiority. Composers and musicians who did not fit the formula found themselves In the camps
In the 1920s, Weimar Germany was home to a rich and diverse mix of artistic and political movements. Composers stretched the boundaries of, and in some cases charted new courses for, classical music. Zeitmusik (music of the time), the 12 tone system and jazz were part of a new and excitingly diverse web of musical movements. As Hitler and the Nazi Party assumed control of Germany, the arts and the political climate were affected. Under the Nazi dictatorship, the arts – particularly music – were used as tools for indoctrinating and controlling the German nation with an ideology of national superiority, suppression and racial hatred.
David Holden for Index on Censorship in 1993 on how anything — well almost — goes on the UK pop scene, but in the USA it’s a different story with Ice-T and the rappers sending shivers down parental spines
“Big boys bickering/fucking it up for everyone,” goes Paul McCartney’s 1992 song Big Boys Bickering. It’s an ecological song; the big boys bickering were the people at the Rio Earth Summit. About the song, McCartney has said: “When you talk about a hole in the ozone layer, you don’t talk about a flipping hole in the ozone layer, you talk about a fucking hole in the ozone layer. I know it might upset some of my fans, but I’m an artist, and I’m 50 years old and I think I can say what I like.”
Not on MTV America, Paul. According to the pop video channel, The Greatest Living Songwriter — faithful husband, caring parent, concerned citizen — is once again unsuitable for the youth of the USA.
Vratislav Brabenec and Ivan Jirous tell the story of The Plastic People, a rock band which was seen as a threat by the Czech authorities during the Cold War
“Why should music be censorable?” asks Yehudi Menuhin on another page. Elsewhere in this issue the reader will see that in some parts of the world even certain musical instruments can be declared taboo by this or that military dictatorship. In Czechoslovakia since the early seventies it has been chiefly rock music that arouses the ire of the authorities – and those who insist on playing it find themselves not just banned but imprisoned.
Ah, but of course, one might say: if you set out to be a protest singer in a society ruled by a one-party dictatorship, what do you expect? The trouble with that line of argument is that The Plastic People of the Universe and the other rock groups with similarly strange names were not protest singers at all.
Aided by the Internet, racist music has made inroads on European youth culture, says Heléne Löow
It was in the first half of the 1990s that White Noise music became the symbol of the growing racist subculture around Europe. Between 1990 and 1995, the music industry, then in a period of rapid expansion, gradually replaced the badly copied tapes, records that were hard to come by and roughly photocopied magazines with professionally produced CDs. The number of CDs on the market grew steadily; production became increasingly professional with Swedish White Noise record labels among the world’s most active producers.
By 1996, the first phase was over; for the next two years, production maintained its levels but there was no significant increase. By 1999, however, it was once more on the rise, along with white-power magazines, and other propaganda material.
One of Uruguay’s best-known singers talks to Daniel Viglietti about his life in exile
I was first invited to this conference to participate, together with the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, in an event in which song and literature would work together, bringing together a man like Galeano, who writes with a pen, with someone like me, who, if you would allow me, writes with a guitar. Later on, the organisers phoned me to ask if I would add some thoughts about exile. I agreed to that, since I have been living in that situation now for eight years and one month. Given the nature of this occasion, I have attended some meetings handicapped by the fact that I do not speak English. For this kind of contribution, I need my mother tongue, Spanish. Today I have the advantage of a translation so I am going to throw out some ideas about the exile in which hundreds of thousands of Uruguayans have been living for eight, nine or even 10 years.
Nick Caistor on the Report of the Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, which revealed for the first time the details of how Chilean musician Victor Jara died
Victor Jara was one of the best-known singers and theatre directors during Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity government in Chile. From 1970 to 1973, Jara sang for the people and put on shows in shanty towns and factories, determined that popular culture should be at the heart of the government’s efforts to take Chile along its ‘path to Socialism’.
Shortly after the military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet on 11 September 1973, Victor Jara was taken prisoner. With hundreds of other suspects, he was held in the Chile stadium in the capital, Santiago. He was last seen alive as he was being transferred from there to the National Stadium on 15 September 1973.
In the latest issue of Index on Censorship magazine Spies, secrets and lies: How yesterday’s and today’s censors compare, we look at nations around the world, from South Korea to Argentina, and discuss if the worst excesses of censorship have passed or whether new techniques and technology make it even more difficult for the public to attain information. Subscribe to the magazine.
Xiaolu Guo is a fiction writer, filmmaker and political activist. Robert McCrum is an associate editor of The Observer. Stephen Grey is an investigative journalist and author. Ismail Einashe is a journalist and researcher. (Photo: Sean Gallagher / Index on Censorship)
Are the challenges of censorship, subterfuge and propaganda greater or lesser than they were in previous decades? Who are modern technological advances really empowering? It was a full house last night at the Frontline Club for the launch of Spies, Secrets and Lies — Index on Censorship’s Autumn 2015 issue — and a lively debate on censorship then and now.
The panel — chaired by Index on Censorship magazine editor Rachael Jolley — included award-winning investigative journalist and author Stephen Grey; fiction writer, filmmaker and political activist Xiaolu Guo; associate editor of The Observer Robert McCrum; and freelance journalist, researcher and an associate editor at foreign affairs magazine Warscapes, Ismail Einashe.
In 2010, when Grey was trying to work out how he and Julian Assange could get the Iraq war logs into Britain without being blocked along the way, he invited Assange to a panel at City University London moderated by former Index on Censorship chair Jonathan Dimbleby. “We thought the British government would never stop anyone coming to a censorship debate in London,” says Grey. And it worked.
.@StephenGrey introducing our event. Talking about trying to get Julian Assange into country for an index event years ago #indexfrontline
“The river of information that came out of Wikileaks -- and subsequently Snowden, in a more restricted way -- is just one facet of this explosion of free knowledge and rapid messaging that defines our world today, to which our politics and security services have yet to adapt,” says Grey.
But how does this situation differ from the flow of information during the Cold War?
Most obviously, technological advances have changed the way we operate. Harking back to his early days at Index on Censorship in the 1970s, McCrum told of how his first trip to Czechoslovakia was with a carrier bag of bananas in which he smuggled editions of the magazine (Full story in the latest magazine, paywall). Today, the ease of moving documents has made tackling censorship less labourious.
Robert McCrum on how when the magazine was founded, there was a clear enemy in Cold War. there were clearer lines #indexfrontline
Index was founded to defend literary freedom during the Cold War. “Now we’re trying to defend freedom of speech and freedom of thought across the globe,” says McCrum.
Take China, where state surveillance is a daily occurrence. “Since the internet started in China 20 years ago, it created great freedom,” says Guo. “But it also promoted overwhelming state control and at the moment, there's at least 2 million internet police.” While no government has a monopoly on cyber surveillance, China’s efforts are certainly more advanced, she explains.
Discussing whether there is more or less censorship today, Einashe says that in Africa we can clearly see there is more. “Freedom House says that the democratic gains you had in the continent in the early 2000s have now reversed, so you have a situation where things are becoming less democratic and states are becoming less free.”
But our focus shouldn’t just be on far away places, he explains. Even in the West we see censorship on a daily basis, including here in the UK. In recent weeks, we've seen the banning of Homegrown, a play about the radicalisation of young people and the seductive power of Isis. We also saw the secular activist Maryam Namazie banned from speaking at Warwick University's student union, since resolved, for fear she would incite hatred against Muslims.
So has censorship really changed? Flicking through a copy of the latest Index magazine, it's very difficult to tell, says Grey.
On one hand, we have more openness and transparency than during the Cold War. “We also have an age of mass surveillance, where communication is there to be mined and monitored,” he says.
Professor Chris Frost, Tim Hetherington Fellowship winner Josie Timms and Judith Hetherington. (Photo: Sean Gallagher / Index on Censorship)
Tim Hetherington was a British photojournalist, most famous for his award-winning documentary Restrepo about the war in Afghanistan. He was killed in 2011 by shrapnel from artillery fired by Libyan forces while covering the Libyan civil war.
At least eight journalists were beaten and three detained as they covered a clash between refugees and the Hungarian police at the border with Serbia on 16 September.
Among those attacked were Swedish photographer Meli Petersson Ellafi, Jordan Davis, a journalist at Swiss RTS, and an entire film crew working for Radio Television of Serbia. They were covering events at the Horgoš-Röszke highway border crossing, which the Hungarian authorities had blocked the day before, leaving around 2,000 refugees stranded on the Serbian side.
On 16 September, at around 2:30 PM local time, refugees attempted to break through a gate into Hungary. While most were protesting peacefully, a small number threw stones and bottles across the fence at the Hungarian riot police. The police responded with tear gas, pepper spray and water cannons.
“At some point, the riot police retreated from the fence and the refugees managed to open the gate,” Timea Becková, who works for Slovakian newspaper Denník N, recalls. Confusion followed, with many refugees thinking the Hungarian authorities would let them in, so they walked towards the riot police on the Hungarian side. Several dozen journalists on the Serbian side followed the crowd.
At around 5:30 PM, TEK, the Hungarian anti-terror SWAT unit, equipped with sidearms, helmets and face masks, started pushing the refugees back towards Serbia.
“As I was moving backwards, I stopped for a moment to help an old man who fell and risked being trodden by riot police, which is when an officer hit me with a baton,” Becková said. She repeatedly told police in Hungarian that she is a journalist, but it made no difference.
“Suddenly the TEK guys, not the riot police, started running towards us — it was mayhem,” says Warren Richardson, an Australian photographer. Despite having two cameras, he was grabbed from behind by an officer.
“Clearly he was there to beat, not to ask questions,” Richardson told Index on Censorship, adding that he was standing on ‘no mans’ land’ between Serbia and Hungary. “From there they beat me into Hungary, then took me from the border to the police station illegally. They kidnapped me.”
“Law enforcement lost control of the situation,” Becková said. While she doesn’t hold a grudge against TEK, she says the events that followed were outrageous. She was forcefully brought back to the Hungarian side — with her hands tied tightly with a plastic wrap — where she was thrown to the ground.
She was later handed over to the regular police along with Richardson, who was kicked in the head and chest, and the Polish journalist, Jacek Tacik, who suffered a head wound. They were taken to a police station in Szeged along with a number of detained refugees.
There they were questioned on suspicion of having crossed the border illegally. In addition, Becková was accused of inciting rebellion and Tacik was told he had assaulted a policeman. However, this accusation did not emerge again during his interrogation, he told Index.
During questioning, Richardson refused to cooperate. “I stood up for myself. They were making up laws. They never took my name, personal address or fingerprints,” he said.
After interrogations that lasted up to 13 hours, the journalists were released and the charges were dropped.
In a statement, the Hungarian police denied beating the journalists. “The police — in accordance with the law — used necessary and proportional force against the members of an aggressive group that was using instruments that could cause serious harm to the police protecting the border of Hungary and the European Union. The media workers stayed at their own risk in an area where the police — after a proper warning — used coercive instruments.”
Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said it was a surprise to find journalists among the chaos. He said that in situations like this, the safety of journalists cannot be guaranteed, therefore they should stay away. A policeman is not in the position to judge who is a troublemaker and who represents the media, he added.
The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) has denounced the attack. “It is incomprehensible to see an EU country like Hungary constantly violating press freedom and human rights. The European Commission and international institutions must take action against these serious violations,” EFJ President Mogens Blicher Bjerregaard said.
“It is a prerequisite for EU member states to respect the EU Charter on fundamental rights which sets out standards on media freedom and freedom of expression.”
The incident was also condemned by the Committee to Protect Journalists. “We are appalled by the police violence against journalists covering this world story,” CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova said. “The Hungarian government must make a clear and unequivocal statement that it will not tolerate such behavior.”
Mapping Media Freedom
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