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The autumn issue of Index takes as its central theme the FIFA World Cup that will take place in Qatar in November and December 2022.
A country where human rights are constantly under threat, Qatar is under the spotlight and many are calling for a boycott of the tournament.
Index spoke to journalists, human rights activists and philosophers for the latest issue to understand their view on the tangled relationship between football and human rights. Is football really the beautiful game?
The Qatar conundrum, by Jemimah Steinfeld: The World Cup is throwing up questions.
Chasing after rights, by Ben Rogers: The activist on being followed by Chinese police.
Victim of its own success? By Simon Barnes: Blame the populists, not the game.
The stench of white elephants, by Jamil Chade: Brazil’s World Cup swung open Pandora’s Box.
The real game is politics, by Issa Sikiti da Silva: Is politics welcome on the pitch in Kenya?
Much ado about critics, by Lyn Gardner: A theatre objects to an offensive Legally Blonde review.
On reputation laundering, by Ruth Smeeth: Beware those who want to control their own narrative.
Belarus Free Theatre’s Dogs of Europe in rehearsal. Photo: Mikalai Kuprych
Index on Censorship has always supported the theatre of resistance, and our Winter 2021 magazine even had this issue as its main theme.
In Belarus, for example, organisations such as Belarus Free Theatre are crucial to fighting Lukashenka’s ruthless regime. Playwrights in Turkey have also faced government censorship throughout history and have to find their way around it.
In the UK, theatre censorship was officially abolished in 1968, putting an end to over 200 years of control by the Lord Chamberlain. Countries like Brazil are also making things harder for the arts and theatre sector through a kind of financial censorship linked to ideological values.
Now, we explore the universe of theatre and censorship, looking back at pieces published in our magazine.
In this piece published in 2018, actor and director Simon Callow revisited the struggle to officially abolish censorship in theatre in the UK, which happened in 1968, after lasting for almost 200 years.
He explains why vigilance is still needed nowadays and writes about other forms of censorship, such as self-censorship.
In August 1980, Anna Tamarchenko wrote a piece about the strict and recurrent censorship in Russian theatre.
She exemplifies her point of view citing Russian plays that only hit the stage years after being written, such as Boris Godunov, first staged in 1870, 45 years after it was published. Alexander Pushkin, its author, had already passed away 30 years earlier.
“Under the Soviet regime censorship has gained new opportunities to exert pressure on theatrical life,” Tamarchenko wrote.
In this piece published in 1985, theatre critic Agnieszka Wójcik (pseudonym) dives deeply into the censorship and repression against student theatre in Poland, especially following the introduction of Martial Law in December 1981, when student theatre began to be considered a threat to public order.
“The repressions following December 13 therefore somehow ‘objectively’ defined the status of student theatre as suspect, if not downright illegal. After the banning of NZS (the independent student union) which had taken most student groups under its wing during the Solidarity period, they lost the foundations of their material existence,” Wójcik wrote for Index.
Why the Taliban wanted my brave mother dead…
For the 2021 Winter issue of Index magazine, Associate Editor Mark Frary reported on the play The Boy with Two Hearts, written by Afghan author Hamed Amiri and inspired by his memories of his mother’s campaigns for women’s rights and why they had to leave Afghanistan behind.
“When Hamed Amiri was 10 years old he watched his mother Fariba give a speech in his hometown of Herat, Afghanistan, speaking out for women’s rights and education and against the ruling Taliban. A day later, a mullah gave the order for Fariba’s execution and the family began a gruelling 18-month journey through Europe,” Frary writes.
Testament to the power of theatre as rebellion
In December 2021, critic, columnist and cultural historian Kate Maltby wrote about Belarus Free Theatre’s journey towards performing at the Barbican in London in 2022.
She talked to Nikolai Khalezin, playwright and journalist, and Natalia Koliada, theatre producer. Both founded Belarus Free Theatre in March 2005 and told Index about the rollercoaster they’ve been through after going into exile in order to escape from Lukashenka’s dictatorship.
“Since 2011, Khalezin and Koliada have held political asylum in the UK, a necessity for survival in the face of repeated harassment and imprisonment at the hands of Lukashenka’s regime”, writes Maltby.
Where silence is the greatest fear
Published in December 2021, this piece written by Issa Sikiti da Silva, Index contributing editor based in West Africa, looks at the censorship suffered by Kenyan theatre and how it has dragged under a series of corrupt leaders.
He also investigates the legacy left by colonial Britain in Kenya and how it still impacts theatre in the country.
“There was hope that Jomo Kenyatta’s ascension to the presidency in 1964 would help heal the wounds inflicted by the British and pave the way to tolerance, social justice, freedom and prosperity,” Da Silva writes.
God waits in the wings…ominously
Brazil is also home to its share of theatre censorship and free speech issues. In December 2021, Index’s editorial assistant Guilherme Osinski and former associate editor Mark Seacombe reported on a presidential decree that art must be sacred. They explored how it has affected Brazilian theatres across the country.
Osinski and Seacombe interviewed two Brazilian theatre companies, which shared their thoughts on president Jair Bolsonaro’s approach to art in Brazil, comparing the current situation to when the country faced a bloody dictatorship from 1964 to 1985.
“While the overt and ruthless censorship of the military dictatorship that ended in 1985 is now history, theatre today has to comply with a nebulous concept known as “sacred art” or be starved of public funds”, writes Osinski.
In August 1985, Professor Stephen Gray wrote for Index and explained how theatre in South Africa was shaped and controlled by the law, before this censorship was eventually relaxed and became less strict.
“Theatre itself is debate, and in South Africa, where sensitive issues ignite like flash-paper, to each show its own controversy,” Gray writes.
Play politics: policing theatre in Indonesia
At the beginning of the 1990s, Indonesia’s government had promised more openness and freedom for theatre companies in the country. However, president Suharto closed the doors on Jakarta’s popular theatre and other plays began to be banned across Indonesia.
Andrea Webster reported on that issue for Index in July 1991, emphasising the ironies between Suharto’s speech for democracy and the bans and curbs on theatres.
“The ban occurred just over a month after President Suharto himself made an Independence Day speech on 17 August where he spoke of ‘openness’ and democracy, where ‘differences of opinion had their place in Indonesian society,’” Webster wrote on the occasion.
In June 2019, then editor in chief of Index on Censorship, Rachael Jolley, interviewed actor Neil Pearson about why governments fear books being published and how the fight against theatre censorship still goes on.
Among many things, they discussed self-censorship and the boundaries between a play which is acceptably controversial and unacceptably controversial.
“If you are genuinely against censorship, you have to be evenhanded against censorship. If your idea of freedom of speech is only allowing people to say what you already agree with, then Goebbels would have no problem with that definition of speech,” Pearson told Index.
‘Humpty Dumpty has maybe had the last word…’
One of the biggest names in British theatre recently wrote for Index on Censorship. Sir Tom Stoppard, playwright and screenwriter and whose work covers themes such as human rights, censorship and political freedom, wrote in December 2021 on how the battleship over freedom still lies between the individual and the state.
The summer issue of Index magazine concentrated its efforts on the developing situation between Russia and Ukraine and consequential effects around Europe and the world.
We decided to give voice to journalists, artists and dissidents who chose to respond to this ruthless war. At the same time, we didn’t forget other attacks on freedoms that haven’t been covered around the globe as much as they should.[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”Up front”][vc_column_text]Joining Ukraine’s battle for freedom, by Jemimah Steinfeld: We must stand with the bold and brave against Putin.
The Index: A global tour of free expression, departing from the poll booth and arriving at the journalists reporting under Taliban rule.[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”Features”][vc_column_text]Fifty years of pride and prejudice, by Peter Tatchell: Following the rise and
corporate fall of London’s march for LGBT rights, will grassroots voices rise again?
India’s meaty issue, by Aishwarya Jagani: When a burger comes with a side of oppression.
Cartoon, by Ben Jennings: Art imitates life, caveman style.
My three years of hell in an Uyghur ‘re-education’ camp, by Gulbahar Hatiwaj and Rahima Mahmut: As the world stays silent, hear the truth from inside China’s brutal concentration camps.
One step ahead of the game, by Chen Dan: Media criticism of the Chinese government is all part of the power play.
Welcome to the kingdom of impunity, by Michael Deibert: The landscape is dangerous for journalists in Haiti. Murders and kidnappings are a daily risk.
Politically corrected? By Issa Sikiti da Silva: The banned words the Kenyan
government doesn’t want to hear in this election year.[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”Special report: The battle for Ukraine”][vc_column_text]Losing battle for truth in Russian lecture halls, by Ilya Matveev: The war has put a new strain on academic freedom. A Russian lecturer laments his lost classroom.
Don’t be afraid to say two plus two is four, by Mark Frary and Alla Gutnikova: As a convicted student journalist speaks out for freedom, do Russian dissidents once again face the gulag?
Emotional baggage, by Slavenka Drakulic: How it feels to pack up a life in Ukraine and become a refugee.
Back to the future, by Martin Bright: The world has been turned
upside down for Ukrainian reporters, and this is their new landscape.
On not being shot, by John Sweeney: Amidst the Kremlin-wrought
wreckage, do we need a new era of journalism?
Russia’s trojan horse moves closer to Europe, by Viktória Serdult: In Hungary, Putin’s right-hand man and Europe’s right-wing firebrand wins again.
Turkey’s newfound russophilia, by Kaya Genç: Putinism is seeping into Turkey, and it spells trouble for future freedoms.
Divided by age and a tv screen, by Hanna Komar: How do you make sure your
family see the truth when they’re blinded by Kremlin propaganda? A Belarus activist speaks out.
Culture in the cross hairs, by Andrey Kurkov: Decades after Soviet rule, Ukrainian culture is once again under threat, as are the lives behind the creative expression.
Bordering on media control, by Kseniya Tarasevich: False information about
Ukraine finds fertile breeding ground in Poland.
Treat tragedies of the Ukraine war with dignity, by Olesya Khromeychuk: The grieving hearts left behind when death becomes news fodder.
Worth a gamble, by Jemimah Steinfeld: When telling the truth is a crime, turn to a criminal spam operation.[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”Comment”][vc_column_text]
Cancel Putin, not culture, by Maria Sorenson: Banning Russian artists assumes
that they are all collaborators of the Russian state and goes against artistic freedoms.
Beware the ‘civilisation’ battle, by Emily Couch: Why Europe must reject
anti-Asian racism to fully stand with Ukraine.
The silent minority, by Ruth Smeeth: A tribute to those whose work never saw the light of day.[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”Culture”][vc_column_text]‘The light is no longer the light it used to be’, by Lyuba Yakimchuk: The poet on children being indoctrinated and the elderly disorientated in Russia-occupied Ukraine.
A cassandra worth heeding, by Dominic Cavendish: Murdered Russian journalist
Anna Politkovskaya, whose dispatches from Chechnya should be put in the spotlight.
Poetic injustice, by Stephen Komarnyckyj: History is repeating itself
on the pages penned by Ukrainian writers.
Banking on Russia’s poetic spirit, by Maria Bloshteyn and Yulia Fridman: A “piggy bank” of Russian poetry is fighting on the right side of Putin’s war.
Metaphors and madness, by Eduardo Halfon: In Guatemala, truth is best expressed through fiction.
Metal shows its mettle, by Guilherme Osinski: A heavy metal band labelled
“satanic” by Iran is free from prison and taking back the microphone.
America’s coming crucible, by Jo-Ann Mort: Women in the USA might soon be in the dark about their own bodies.