Those damn christians are at it again protesting about a play which features 'bad language' or something. Its a play all about Jerry Springer & all the nut jobs on the show.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3376278a1860,00.html
Article:
Jerry Springer battles censorship
13 August 2005
EDINBURGH: The writers of profanity-laden Jerry Springer - The Opera are angry.
The creators of the show that caused a record number of complaints when aired on British television say religious censorship is in danger of strangling the arts.
"I am angry that 60,000 people made a judgement without even bothering to see it," said composer Richard Thomas.
Comedian Stewart Lee, who wrote the script, is also fuming because a British provincial stage tour was postponed after a third of the venues pulled out due to fears about protests.
The musical is based on Jerry Springer's brash American talk show whose lurid topics include Honey I'm a Call Girl and Bring on the Bisexuals.
In the show which was garlanded with theatre awards, viewers could watch a diaper fetishist confess all to his true love, catch a tap dance routine by the Ku Klux Klan and see Jesus and the Devil launch into a swearing tirade against each other.
As Christian protesters set fire to their television licences outside the BBC, the publicly funded broadcaster defended its right to air the show on television earlier this year despite being inundated with complaints.
Lee, at the Edinburgh Fringe to do a show with Thomas about the trials and tribulations of staging the opera, said: "At the time the Christian right were feeling a bit left out as the Sikhs had managed to get a play banned.
"They wanted a political football to kick around."
The censorship row came less than a month after hundreds of angry Sikhs stormed a theatre in the central England city of Birmingham and forced it to scrap a play depicting sexual abuse in a Sikh temple.
BROADWAY CHANCES SLIM
British Christian pressure groups have less political clout than their counterparts in the American Christian right, but Lee and Thomas think the chances of the opera now making it to Broadway are slim.
"The Americans are more nervous than before," Thomas said, adding: "When the Right in America protest, it ends in a global conflict with thousands of civilian deaths.
"I am going to write a show about the Taliban called The Taliban Can Can."
But their bitterness is not confined to the religious right.
The British government is trying to pass through parliament legislation to stamp out religious hatred with a bill that gives all faiths equal protection. Muslims welcomed it as long overdue but critics saw it as a threat to civil liberties.
Comedians say it smacks of political correctness and will stop them making religious jokes.
"I think it is unenforceable," Lee said. "And if you say to comedians you can't do something, they go ahead and do it."
British Indian comedian Paul Chowdhry, also performing in Edinburgh, complained: "That means I would get locked up with hardened criminals just for making a joke."
Lee argued that such legislation could even end up discouraging funding for stage or film projects with religious themes.
At the Fringe, the world's largest arts festival, comedians have not shied away from talking about last month's London bomb attacks by four British Moslem suicide bombers that killed 52 people.
"A lot of the young Moslem comedians are discussing it," Lee said. "That is really great because they have an interesting perspective as a result of the fact that anywhere they go in London, people are now frightened of them."
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3376278a1860,00.html
Article:
Jerry Springer battles censorship
13 August 2005
EDINBURGH: The writers of profanity-laden Jerry Springer - The Opera are angry.
The creators of the show that caused a record number of complaints when aired on British television say religious censorship is in danger of strangling the arts.
"I am angry that 60,000 people made a judgement without even bothering to see it," said composer Richard Thomas.
Comedian Stewart Lee, who wrote the script, is also fuming because a British provincial stage tour was postponed after a third of the venues pulled out due to fears about protests.
The musical is based on Jerry Springer's brash American talk show whose lurid topics include Honey I'm a Call Girl and Bring on the Bisexuals.
In the show which was garlanded with theatre awards, viewers could watch a diaper fetishist confess all to his true love, catch a tap dance routine by the Ku Klux Klan and see Jesus and the Devil launch into a swearing tirade against each other.
As Christian protesters set fire to their television licences outside the BBC, the publicly funded broadcaster defended its right to air the show on television earlier this year despite being inundated with complaints.
Lee, at the Edinburgh Fringe to do a show with Thomas about the trials and tribulations of staging the opera, said: "At the time the Christian right were feeling a bit left out as the Sikhs had managed to get a play banned.
"They wanted a political football to kick around."
The censorship row came less than a month after hundreds of angry Sikhs stormed a theatre in the central England city of Birmingham and forced it to scrap a play depicting sexual abuse in a Sikh temple.
BROADWAY CHANCES SLIM
British Christian pressure groups have less political clout than their counterparts in the American Christian right, but Lee and Thomas think the chances of the opera now making it to Broadway are slim.
"The Americans are more nervous than before," Thomas said, adding: "When the Right in America protest, it ends in a global conflict with thousands of civilian deaths.
"I am going to write a show about the Taliban called The Taliban Can Can."
But their bitterness is not confined to the religious right.
The British government is trying to pass through parliament legislation to stamp out religious hatred with a bill that gives all faiths equal protection. Muslims welcomed it as long overdue but critics saw it as a threat to civil liberties.
Comedians say it smacks of political correctness and will stop them making religious jokes.
"I think it is unenforceable," Lee said. "And if you say to comedians you can't do something, they go ahead and do it."
British Indian comedian Paul Chowdhry, also performing in Edinburgh, complained: "That means I would get locked up with hardened criminals just for making a joke."
Lee argued that such legislation could even end up discouraging funding for stage or film projects with religious themes.
At the Fringe, the world's largest arts festival, comedians have not shied away from talking about last month's London bomb attacks by four British Moslem suicide bombers that killed 52 people.
"A lot of the young Moslem comedians are discussing it," Lee said. "That is really great because they have an interesting perspective as a result of the fact that anywhere they go in London, people are now frightened of them."
