It seems that the conservative revolution is going strong outside of Croatia as well.
The State Attorney’s Office in Poland launched an investigation on Wednesday against a play directed by Croatian theatre director Oliver Frljić. The Catholic Church and conservative organizations in Poland say that the play is “blasphemous”, reports Jutarnji List on February 23, 2017.
“We have opened an investigation on the basis of available parts of the play ‘Curse’, which has been playing since Saturday at the Teatr Powszechny Theatre in Warsaw”, said Attorney General Lukasz Lapyzynski.
In the play, one actress simulates oral sex with a life-size statue of Pope John Paul II dressed in a white robe. Later in the play, words “protector of paedophiles” are placed on the statue.
Croatian director Frljić created the play on the basis of a text written by Polish 19th century author Stanislaw Wyspianski, which deals with complex relationship between the Poles and the powerful Catholic Church.
The Polish State Attorney’s Office has opened another investigation into an alleged crime committed against the president of the ruling Law and Justice Party Jaroslaw Kaczynski, announced the prosecutor. In one of the final scenes of the play, an actress mentions the possibility of collecting money from the audience to hire a hit man who would execute the party president, and then says that director Oliver Frljić had told her to skip that scene since it represented a crime which is punishable by imprisonment.
Numerous individuals intend to submit individual complaints for public violation of religious sentiments, added the prosecutor. The play immediately provoked the wrath of the Catholic Church, which claims that it contain blasphemous elements.
The theatre issued a statement in which it stressed that “performance gives voice to different ideological positions and should be viewed as a comprehensive work of art, and not as a collection of separate unrelated scenes”.
Frljić is well-known in Croatia for his provocative plays. For a while, he was the director of the Croatian National Theatre in Rijeka and was in constant conflict with then conservative Culture Minister Zlatko Hasanbegović. He is often accused of insulting the Catholic Church and of being a “communist traitor”, which is a traditional accusation for people who express positions not in line with the conservative mainstream.
