COLUMNISTS

Last weekend, the news arrived that the Zuev culture house in Moscow revised a previous agreement and won't allow a drama play called "Pro bab (About Broads)" to be performed on its stage. As a result, people who showed up for the play's opening night were faced with two options - either to go back home or to attend a news conference by Drugoi's head Sergei Petreikov during which he explained why the play was cancelled.

A situation when a small alternative theater doesn't have a permanent venue is not uncommon in Moscow where there are probably several hundred theaters. So, the smaller establishments often must rely on Soviet-era relics, "culture houses," as venues. And things work out as long as performances draw in the audiences.

However, sometimes the management of a culture house would remember the Soviet times when everything going on inside its walls was subject to strict censorship and so-called khudsovety (the literal translation is something like "creative councils," although what they exercised was primarily censorship, with little to do with creative stuff) would have to approve the content of any theatrical play or a concert before it could be made public.

According to Petreikov, the Zuev culture house was unhappy because the play, which is designed as a conversation between two forty-something males sitting in the kitchen, contained too much sex talk and demanded that the words "clitoris," "orgasm" and "sperm" be removed from the dialog.

Predictably enough, the theater, which positions itself as an alternative to traditional theater (even the name, Drugoi, which means ‘the Other' seems to lack originality), refused to submit to any kind of censorship from the venue provider, and the performance was cancelled.

Certainly, this kind of situation is disturbing, and for a number of reasons. First, the play - as the theater claims - doesn't contain any foul language or other stuff that could technically be considered illegal. If the characters really didn't say anything more offensive than "clitoris" or "sperm," the play must be quite innocuous even compared with popular comedy shows on Russian federal channels.

But what big TV stations, with multi-million ad revenues, can afford a small alternative theater certainly can't. So we're talking about double standards here rather than protection of society's morals.

Second, over the last year or so, the Russian authorities and parliament members have several times brought forward initiatives aimed at improving public morals - from restrictions on sales of erotic magazines to attempts to curb sex content on pay TV.

Even though most of those measures never worked, the "general line" is now clear to just about anyone. And, in the absence of clear-cut criteria of what is, say, pornography and what acceptable erotic content, the final decision is left to lower-level institution, such as the Zuev culture house.

And it would be really difficult to prove the fact of censorship here: the culture house is a private company and is free to refuse to provide its stage to a private theater unless it's totally happy with what the latter is going to perform.

But when it comes to art, there can be no objective criteria, and decisions about what is acceptable and what is offensive are inevitable based on people's subjective views and opinions - if not on the fear of not to follow "the party's general line."

Is there going to be more cases of "local censorship" like that? Probably, yes. But is that going to have a positive impact on society's morals? That's doubtful, as censorship and bans have never done any good.

As for the banned play, the theater says it is going to find a new venue - certainly, one of those which be less sensitive to sex talk, or will be lured by prospects of high attendance thanks to the publicity raised by the controversy with the Zuev culture house. And then audiences will be able to decide for themselves if the play has any artistic value, or all there is in it is just sex talk. 

By Vladimir Kozlov