Asking for Trouble? Censorship & Artistic Freedom

 Speakers: Stewart Lee, Neal Foster, Peter Sellars, Janet Steel
Chair: Conall Morrison 

 The eruption of a new religious revivalism, where the values of rationalism, tolerance and free speech are not as important as the right not to be offended, raises crucial questions about the principle of artistic freedom.
In the past year, protests by Sikh groups forced the cancellation of the play Behzti at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and death threats were sent to the play’s Sikh writer Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti. The 2005 tour of Jerry Springer The Opera was derailed by Christian Voice. The controller of BBC2, who had commissioned the broadcasting of the show, was forced to place security guards outside his home. 

 In this climate of religious protests and violent intimidation, how can artistic expression be defended against pressure groups? If our societies are becoming less tolerant, are the arts at risk? 

 A panel of artists and commentators talk about censorship and artistic freedom. 

 Speakers: 

 Stewart Lee moved to London to become a stand-up comedian in 1989. Since then he has played festivals in Montreal, Melbourne, Adelaide, Kilkenny and Auckland, as well as a daunting seventeen years at the Edinburgh Fringe. Stewart co-wrote and co-starred in the BBC radio and TV series Fist Of Fun and This Morning With Richard Not Judy with Richard Herring in the mid-90's, and had his first novel published in 2002. 

 Since then he has co-written and directed the National Theatre's Jerry Springer The Opera and is currently working on a new project there about folk song and the Napoleonic wars. Stewart writes regularly for the Sunday Times, The Wire and various other newspapers and magazines, and has just completed a documentary for Channel 5 about the religious right in Britain. 

 Neal Foster is the Actor/Manager of the Birmingham Stage Company (BSC) which he founded in 1992 after leaving the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. The company is a unique success story in British theatre, not least because it is run by an actor and relies for 97% of its income from the box office. 

 Since 1992 the BSC has staged over fifty productions and currently has four productions on tour throughout the UK and Ireland. Neal was made Fellow of the Birmingham Society for outstanding contribution to the quality of life in the city of Birmingham and shortlisted for a Creative Britons Award for his contribution to the country’s cultural and creative wealth. 

 Peter Sellars: Renowned theatre, opera and film director Peter Sellars is one of the most innovative and powerful forces in the performing arts and has directed more than one hundred productions across America and abroad. A visionary force, Sellars is known for innovative re-interpretations of classic works. Whether it is Mozart, Shakespeare, Aeschylus, Sophocles, or the 16th-century Chinese playwright Tang Xianzu, Sellars is able to strike a universal chord with audiences, engaging contemporary social and political issues. 

A graduate of Harvard College, Peter Sellars studied in Japan, China and India before becoming artistic director of the Boston Shakespeare Company. At age 26, he was selected to lead the American National Theatre at the Kennedy Centre in Washington, D.C. Since then he has worked at theatre and opera companies all over the world, and has guided numerous arts festivals including: the 1990 and 1993 Los Angeles Festivals; the 2002 Adelaide Festival in Australia; and the 2003 Venice Biennale International Festival of Theatre in Italy. He is a professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA, a visiting lecturer at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and a resident curator of the Telluride Film Festival. Among his numerous honours are the MacArthur Prize and the Erasmus Prize. 

 Sellars has established a reputation for bringing 20th-century operas to the stage, including works by Olivier Messaien, Paul Hindemith, György Ligeti, Kaija Saariaho, and for guiding the creation of new productions that have expanded the repertoire of modern opera. Sellars has been the driving force in the creation of many new works, with long-time collaborator John Adams, such as Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, El Niño, and most recently Doctor Atomic, about Robert Oppenheimer and the birth of the atomic age. Sellars created the Doctor Atomic libretto from a variety of historical sources including declassified government and military documents, personal letters, correspondence, and poetry. 

Projects in recent years have included a Chicano version of Stravinsky's The Story of a Soldier; Antonin Artaud 's radio play coupled with the poetry of the late June Jordan, For an End to the Judgment of God/Kissing God Goodbye, staged as a press conference on the war in Afghanistan; a new production of the Euripides play The Children of Herakles, focusing on contemporary immigration and refugee issues and experience; and with video artist Bill Viola and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen Wagner's Tristan and Isolde. 

 Sellars is currently the artistic director of the New Crowned Hope Festival (www.newcrownedhope.org), and has invited to Vienna contemporary international artists, from diverse cultural backgrounds, in the fields of music and opera, architecture, the visual arts and film to create new projects as part of the Vienna Mozart Year celebrating the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth. 
 
Janet Steel is Artistic Director of Kali Theatre Company. Janet began her career in theatre as an actress appearing in many theatre, television and radio productions. Theatre includes: Cinders, A Colder Climate (Royal Court), Blood Wedding (Half Moon), Romeo and Juliet (Sherman Theatre and Albany Empire), Oedipus Rex (Tara Arts). Television includes: An English Christmas, The Bride, Gems, The Refuge and Shalom Salaam. 

 Janet began her directing career as an assistant to Tessa Schneideman and the Loose Change Theatre Company. They produced UK premiers by renowned Spanish authors at BAC, which was where Janet directed her first full length piece, White Biting Dog by Judith Thompson. Directing credits include: April in Paris, Bretevski Street, A Hard Rain and Top Girls (the Royal Theatre, Northampton) and Exodus, as part of the Millennium Mysteries (Belgrade Coventry). 

 Since joining Kali Janet has directed Sock 'em with Honey, by Bapsi Sidhwa, Calcutta Kosher, by Shelley Silas, Chaos and Paper Thin by Azma Dar. 
In December 2004 Janet directed Behzti by Gurpreet Bhatti at the Birmingham Rep. She has an MA with Distinction in Theatre Practices. 

 Conall Morrison’s productions for the Abbey Theatre include The Bacchae of Baghdad, The Importance of Being Earnest, Hamlet (a co-production with the Lyric Theatre, Belfast), his own adaptation of Patrick Kavanagh’s Tarry Flynn, Boucicault’s The Colleen Bawn (both at Lyttleton theatre, National Theatre, London), The Freedom of the City, The Tempest, The House, A Whistle in the Dark, Ariel, In a Little World of Our Own, As the Beast Sleeps, Twenty Grand, Savoy and a triple bill comprising The Dandy Dolls, Purgatory and Riders to the Sea/Chun na Farraige Síos. 

 Other productions include Conquest of the South Pole, The Marlboro Man, Emma, Measure for Measure, Macbeth, Kvetch and his own adaptation of Antigone. For the Lyric Theatre, Belfast he directed Dancing at Lughnasa, Juno and the Paycock, Conservations on a Homecoming and Ghosts. He directed Martin Guerre for Cameron Mackintosh, touring England and America. His own plays include Rough Justice, Hard to Believe and Green, Orange and Pink. His production of the musical Ludwig II performed at the Festspielhaus Neuschwanstein, Germany. Conall is an Associate Artist of the Abbey Theatre. 

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