Censored Bodies
IFEX (via) reports that, after thinking about it for three months, the Tunisian Ministry of Culture’s review board has announced the censorship of playwright Jalila Baccar’s new work, “Corps-otages” (”Captive Bodies”), directed by Fadhel Jaibi. The board is demanding that Jaibi bring the play in line with a list of 100 themes subject to censorship before it grants an opening permit.
Board members took issue with the play’s treatment of problems confronting Tunisian society as it enters its 50th year of independence (religious extremism, terrorism, intergenerational conflicts, abusive security policies), and have demanded that all dates, names of persons and places, as well as Coranic excerpts and references to Tunisian history be removed. Tunisians, it seems, will be denied the right to see a play which has only recently returned from a highly successful run at Paris’s Odéon theatre, in June 2006.
Theatre is the only cultural form subject to this sort of preliminary censorship in Tunisia. A public performance permit must be obtained from the national review board - a branch of the Ministry of Culture - for all productions. IFEX also notes that, as the board enjoys a virtual monopoly on theatrical distribution channels in the country, it may exercise a form of indirect censorship via these distribution channels, even when a permit has been granted.
Monday 16 Oct 2006 | Paul | Tunisia
