“This is so perverted. The Slovak politician interrupted the show and the mayor had to escort him out

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Updated 35 minutes ago

On Sunday, Slovakia’s Deputy Environment Minister Stefan Kufa interrupted a theatre performance at the National Theatre in Košice, a village in eastern Slovakia. The announcement was made by actress Ľuba Blaškovičová, who was taking part in the performance, and journalist Lukáš Marhefka, who was present as an audience member. Kufa responded by saying that a perverted film was being shown there and that he and a colleague had been attacked.

Blaskovikova wrote: “The censor, Secretary of State Kufa intervened – entered directly – into the performance, stopped it and expelled the audience… The performance was interrupted… An argument arose between him and the audience…”.

“He started deciding who was suitable for the performance and who was not, who should sit there and who should not sit there. He interrupted the performance of the actresses arbitrarily,” Malkhevka said of the events in the village of Mara Frankova. He added that Kufa did not want to leave the premises until the mayor took him out.

“We had a wonderful evening, there was a folklore event, a holy mass. At the end, a perverted film was shown, with small children on the stage. I warned them not to show it, it was inappropriate. I called them and they asked the parents to send the children away because we were attacked with sticks,” Kufa claimed. According to him, the attackers were actors or stagehands of the theatre.

The theatre is against interference in artistic creation. “The National Theatre in Košice considers the situation that occurred during the performance of Malá Franková to be unfortunate and it fully supports its employees and opposes any interference in the freedom of artistic creation and its accessibility.” Point out Monday Theater.

According to the theater, the organizers of the festival where the actor performed apologized for not informing in advance whether the play was suitable for adults. The National Theater added that the situation did not authorize anyone to disrupt the performance and expel the audience. The theater believes that if Kufa had doubts, he should have informed the organizers.

The theatre performed My Baby, a play by Irish author Elaine Murphy, which was staged in the Czech Republic under the title Three Girls Like a Flower. The play, which tells the story of three generations of women and a year in their lives, was the best Irish play of 2008 and 2009, according to the theatre.

Opposition parties have called on Kufa to resign or be fired from his position as head of the environment ministry. For example, the most powerful opposition movement, Progressive Slovakia, called him a “judge.”

Kufa holds strong conservative views. In the past, as a member of the Slovak Chamber of Deputies, he spoke out against abortion and unsuccessfully pushed for a proposal to criminalize artificial insemination. He, along with his son Filip, also a deputy at the environment ministry, and another son, Gregor, face charges of threatening employees of an agricultural company in connection with the 2021 incident.

In the parliamentary elections at the beginning of last year, Stefan Kufa was elected as a member of parliament on the candidate list of the nationalist Slovak National Party (SNS). After joining the government, she proposed to Culture Minister Martina Šimkovičová, who faced criticism from artists and the opposition for dismissing the directors of the Slovak National Theater and the Slovak National Gallery. Like the SNS, Šimkovičová opposes liberalism and topics related to sexual minorities.

In the past, Stefan Kufa was elected to parliament on the candidate list of the Slovak opposition movement (formerly OLaNO) led by former Prime Minister Igor Matović, and later on the candidate list of the far-right party Kotlebovci-Lidová strana Naše Slovensko. (LSNS). In 2016, LSNS chairman Marianne Kotleba, then governor of the Banská Bystrica region, ordered the premature termination of theatrical performances of a smaller theater group, Studio, which he did not like, allegedly because of indecent performances.