Scrapped performance at Berlin theatre was said by its creator to be a protest against killing of dogs in Alaska and Spain

When radical director Peter Brook finished a play with a burning butterfly, he specified no one should know whether it was real or fake. No such ambiguity existed in a German artist's plan to strangle two puppies to death on stage at a Berlin theatre. The show has been scrapped after legal intervention.

Titled Death and Metamorphosis, the performance was to take place this week at a small theatre in Spandau. The artist – who has not been identified – planned to use cable ties to strangle the dogs, followed by a brief meditation accompanied by funeral procession music and a giant gong.

The performance, reportedly based on traditional Thai performance art, was intended, the artist said, as a protest against the killing of sled dogs in Alaska and hunting dogs in Spain after they are deemed unfit to work.

According to the Local, the Berlin administrative court intervened to stop the show: the harming of animals during live performance is illegal. The artist had argued Germany's constitution "unconditionally guarantees artistic freedom".

The legal report coincided with another controversial project, in which two students at Berlin's University of the Arts threatened to guillotine a sheep on camera depending on the results of a public vote.

According to the city's Tagesspiegel newspaper, Iman Rezai and Rouven Materne aimed to explore ideas of humanity and democracy with an online poll deciding what should happen. Matterne said: "The anonymity of the internet lures the perversity out of some people."

The poll registered 190,000 no votes to 120,000 yes votes in its first six days; despite complaints, the artists intend to reveal the results of the final vote at an exhibition this month.