Tuesday May 9, 2006
France's best-known theatre company, Comédie Française, stands accused of "cultural censorship" after banning playwright Peter Handke's work. A production of Handke's play Voyage to the Sonorous Land, or the Art of Asking was cancelled after it was learned that Handke attended Slobodan Milosevic's funeral in March.
Handke, whose writing credits include Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire, is known for his pro-Serbian views. According to European press reports, he said at the funeral that he was happy to be beside "a man who defended his people". In the German magazine Focus, he questioned the western media's emnity to Milosevic.
Jean-Pierre Jourdain, secretary general at the Comédie Française, calls the comments scandalous. "Imagine for a moment that an author said Bin Laden wasn't at all responsible for 9/11," he says. "There would be an outcry. What's the difference with Milosevic?"
The decison to axe the production has been heavily criticised. In an open letter to the theatre, Handke's editor Ulla Unseld-Berkewicz wrote, "Your decision goes against everything that constitutes a free society." Nobel prize-winning author Elfriede Jelinek and Claus Peymann, director of Germany's Berliner Ensemble theatre company, have also come out in support of Handke. In a statement, Peymann said: "It's shocking that a European country, which has for years been a proponent and defender of individual freedom, has imposed such cultural censorship and subordination on its national theatre."
The theatre, however, stands by its decision. "The director has total freedom to programme what he wants, according to his conscience," says Jourdain.
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