West Australian Opera had been considering a 2015 staging of the popular opera about a Spanish gypsy named Carmen who works in a cigar factory. The ban lasts the duration of a 400,000 Australian dollar ($355,000) sponsorship deal with a state government health promotion agency, Healthway.
5 comments:
My initial reaction to this article was that censorship of the arts for any reason is bad and should never happen. I am pretty disappointed in this company for caving to this organization- self-censorship for money is morally and ethically questionable. In addition, it's certainly not a sponsor's role to control the kind of art an arts organization puts out. As a sponsor, it's their role to find an organization who's work they support and then support that work, not try to buy them into being a mouthpiece for their beliefs. With that being said, I can understand why the company made this decision. There isn't much information about the company, but it's certainly possible that they really needed the money. They're also putting on "Carmen" as soon as the contract expires, so while they are selling their souls as artists, at least it's only temporary. There is also a really good point in the article about the glamorization of tobacco in the media- it is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. I'm mainly concerned about the message this sends about arts organizations. We really don't want to send the message that we are willing to do anything, including censor ourselves and compromise our ethics, for money. If organizations think that donating money is the equivalent to buying the right to tell theatres and operas what to say, that could become a very slippery slope. Sponsorships are a great kindness, but it doesn't mean you own the company.
No one has the right to restrict art. Art is the expression of one's feelings. If we cut that down, we are completely destroying everything part of free will that the people have. I can understand that they money will be good for the organization, but there are better ways to get money than to cut the arts. I guess it doesn't really matter because there are so many other operas that they could perform while they wait for the ban to lift. They say that they are planning to do it afterwards anyway.
I think Healthway didn't think this through very well. And was it just on the one opera company? So all the other companies could do Carmen without any problem? By banning one opera company from doing one show for a few years, you aren't proving anything, besides that performing arts companies need more money. Maybe instead of prohibiting them from doing a show, why don't they sponsor a show they like instead? That'd be more effective.
When sponsorship starts to affect the way story, there becomes a problem. It's the job of the company to protect and look out for the story of the show they produce, whatever that story or their view of the story may be. To grant so much power to their sponsors means that they are placing money above their art, which is a heated debate in itself.
I don't think it's fair to the artists to put so much work into a production only to have it be shut down for ridiculous reasons.
Oh my god. What is the world coming to? If we restricted what was onstage because it "wasn't nice" then why do theatre? We're in the business to push our limits, whether that be in the design concept or in the writing. Are we going to restrict our art because we talk about something that's not safe? If we're doing that, then no one's doing Sweeney Todd ever again. Everyone should burn their Requiem for a Dream DVDs and throw out Lolita. Censoring the company that you're sponsoring sends out such a bad message, more possibly a worse one then the effects of seeing someone smoking onstage. We, as audience members, understand that Carmen is set in a different time. So what if those fictional characters are ruining their lungs. They're fictional!
This is dumb. You can't censor something just because it's improper or unpleasant to look at. Smoking, while it is not a healthy practice, has no reason to be censored in any art form, especially if it's written in into the stage directions or important to the character. As long as the actor consents to smoking on stage (in any form) it should be fine. If you were to censor anything, it should be other poor behaviors like murder and rape, not something that is stupid, but something a large number of people do. I'm not condoning smoking, I actually really hate it, but if they're going to censor something as minute as that, they should focus on bigger issues as well. They may as well cancel every show in existence.
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