Fierce protests against theater about Anders Behring Breivik

"Distasteful," Ellen Trane Nørby, political spokesperson for the Danish Liberal Party, told Berlingske Tidende about the theatre’s plans.

The production is supposed to take place at CaféTeatret, a theatre in Copenhagen, this summer, and has upset both the theatre community and friends and relatives of the victims from the July 22 terrorist attacks in Norway.

Flemming Møller Mortensen, a cultural policy spokesperson for the Social Democrats, points out that it is important that a culture also has room for its opponents, as when extremist groups want to deliver their views. At the same time, he understands why the play can be upsetting to the people affected in Norway.

The actor who will play Breivik, Olaf Højgaard, tells a Danish newspaper that he and the artistic director have several times been close to cancelling the project. It is heart-breaking to watch the attacks at Utøya, and the play is an attempt at making what happened a bit more comprehensible, he says.

The theatre chief at the Norwegian Theatre in Oslo, Erik Ulfsby, doesn’t share quite the same vision. "Breivik’s goal was to spread the content of his manifest, and he did this by killing all those people," Ulfsby tells Aftenposten. "He actually succeeded."

Danish law limits artistic freedom to a very small degree, so it is unlikely that the play will be cancelled.

(Aftenposten)

Julie Ryland