Protesters force university in Paris to cancel play for which actors were due to wear masks

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A row over alleged racism and attacks on freedom of expression has erupted in France after students forced the Sorbonne to cancel a performance of a Greek tragedy featuring actors using black masks, claiming it was “Afrophobic, colonialist and racist”.

Protesters picketed the prestigious Paris university, stopping actors from entering the theatre and accusing them of using blackface for the play The Suppliants by Aeschylus.

A photograph on the Sorbonne’s website publicising the event showed one of the cast in dark makeup. Protesters said actors had blacked up in last year’s performances of the work, which features in the university’s annual ancient Greek theatre festival.

Sorbonne administrators and the theatre company director insisted none of the actors would use blackface for this year’s staging, but would be wearing masks in keeping with the tradition of ancient Greek theatre.

With tensions running high, both sides maintained polarised positions: the university insisting the protest was based on a misunderstanding, anti-racism campaigners insisting the university was engaging in “colonialist propaganda”.

Ghyslain Vedeux, the president of the Representative Council of France’s Black Associations (Cran), issued a statement under the title: “Blackface: colonial propaganda at the Sorbonne.”

“The vast majority of students of this establishment refuse to be associated with this Afrophobic, colonialist and racist propaganda,” he wrote. “Blackface is a practice stemming from colonial slavery, a crime against humanity, which consists of a white person making themselves up black.”

The play’s director, Philippe Brunet, responded by insisting the theatre was “a place of metamorphosis, not a refuge of identities”.

The student protest was swiftly condemned by the government and university heads.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Sorbonne. The play’s director said none of the actors had blacked-up faces. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian

In a joint statement Frédérique Vidal, the higher education and research minister, and Franck Riester, the culture minister, expressed their “stupefaction”. They said preventing the performance was “an unprecedented attack on freedom of expression and creation in a university, which is contrary to all academic values and republican principles”.

The Sorbonne said the play recounted the story of the Greek Argives and the Danaids – the 50 daughters of Danaus from Egypt – and was to be performed strictly according to ancient theatre practices “with actors wearing white masks and black masks as was done at the time”.

What's offensive about blackface? Imagine you're from another planet... Read more

“Stopping by force and insulting the cast of a piece of theatre is a very serious and totally unjustified attack on artistic freedom,” it wrote in a statement.

It added that accusing the production of “racism or racialism” showed “a complete lack of understanding”. “Liberty, diversity, creativity, the rigour and openness are founding values of the Sorbonne University, which is profoundly humanist and anti-racist,” it wrote.

The play was due to be performed on Monday by the Démodocos theatre company – named after a minstrel mentioned by Homer – which was formed at the Sorbonne in 1995 by a group of professors who organise an annual ancient theatre festival, Les Dionysies.

UNÉF, the national students’ union, said in a statement: “In a context of racism omnipresent at national level in our country, our university campuses remain unhappily permeable to the rest of society, perpetrating the racist schemas at their heart.

“UNÉF denounces the use of blackface in all its forms in society and particularly in our universities. The blackface is essentially a racist practice, from a colonial past.”

The missive demands the cancelling of the play, a public apology by the university, guarantees there will be no more similar plays, and the “organisation of training in the question of systemic oppression for administrative and teaching staff”.

Brunet insisted the actors wore masks on stage, not blackface, and that the row stemmed from a misunderstanding sparked by a photo taken from rehearsals of a white actor with her face covered with “coppery makeup”.

Brunet told Le Monde the protests were a “form of radicalisation that open a breach that is very dangerous for freedom of expression, and for art as a whole. I wanted these people to see the play and to judge afterwards, but the censors decided otherwise.”

Masks were widely used in ancient Greek theatre by actors who put them on to play more than one role and to represent women, who did not perform on stage. They often had exaggerated features in order to be seen by the audience at a distance.

Alain Tallon, a history professor at the Sorbonne’s faculty of letters, said the protest was “absurd” and that the university “firmly condemned the practice of blacking up to mock black people”.

Louis-Georges Tin, the honorary president of Cran, defended the protest. “There is no good or bad blackface in the same way there is no good or bad racism. However, there is a conscious blackface and an unconscious one. Racism isn’t just an ideology reserved for the far right, that would be too simple. And that’s why we fight,” he told Le Monde.

The Sorbonne said it was looking at ways to stage a new version of The Suppliants at the university at a future date.