A FAR-RIGHT Slovak politician sparked outrage locally after he disrupted a performance of Dublin playwright Elaine Murphy's play Little Gem. The incident, which happened at a village in northern Slovakia, was interrupted because of its ‘perverted contents’, according to the politician.
Štefan Kuffa, Slovakia’s secretary of state for the environment, temporarily disrupted an outdoor performance of the play in the village of Malá Franková and loudly demanded that the play stop and parents leave with their children, reports RTÉ. A few children were playing nearby as the politician announced: "I'm waiting for all the children to leave.”
The stunned locals were astonished at being told by Mr Kuffa that “They ought to be ashamed of themselves”. Mr Kuffa, who labelled the play of being perverted. He later reported on the incident, via a video on social media, saying: "We had a beautiful evening, there was a cultural event and a holy mass. At the end of the evening, they played a perverted film where there were children on stage."
However, the locals did not take this criticism of the Dublin play lying down. As Mr Kuffa noted on his Instagram feed: ““I called on their parents to send them away, and they attacked us with sticks.”
Štefan Kuffa is a member of the ultra-nationalist Slovak National Party, and part of the Slovak coalition government.
Little Gem was originally performed at the Dublin Fringe Festival in 2008 and has received widespread critical acclaim. The play has been translated into numerous languages and performed internationally. It has been in continuous production since its debut in 2008 and has been widely acknowledged as significant piece of dramatic production.
The story focuses on three generations of Dublin women who recount personal histories of love and loss in an alienating contemporary world. It is billed as being suitable for those 18 and over.
The Slovak-language version of Ms Murphy’s play is performed by the country's Košice National Theatre, starring acclaimed Slovak actresses Dana Košická under the title of 'My Baby’.
The incident was first reported by Lukáš Marhefka, the editor of Zamagurské Noviny, an independent Slovak news outlet, who had been at the show.
"Mr Kuffa, after seeing only a few minutes of the performance, interrupted the performance and appealed to the audience for all the children to leave," Mr Marhefka told RTÉ News.
"He said that he would keep standing there until all the children left the performance to make sure they would 'not watch those perverts'," said Mr Marhefka.
The disruption ended after the mayor of the village escorted Mr Kuffa away and the performance resumed. The play was performed to completion at the request of the audience.
In a statement issued to RTÉ News, Slovakia's Košice National Theatre said that the festival organisers had not indicated the suitability of the content for different ages and had apologised to the theatre.
"However, the situation did not justify anyone to intervene in the performance and start expelling spectators from the cultural event," reads the statement.
"If the State Secretary of the Ministry of the Environment of the Slovak Republic, Štefan Kuffa, had doubts about the suitability of the performance for minors, he should have informed the organisers."
The statement also reads that it is up to parents "to decide whether a given performance is suitable for their children" and that Mr Kuffa "began to arbitrarily deal with the situation".
