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Silent treatment a protest by members of the Polski theatre in September 2016. Photograph: Natalia Kabanow

Since 2014, Teatr Polski, one of Polands leading theatre companies, has toured worldwide with an adaptation of Thomas Bernhards Woodcutters, directed by the widely acclaimed Krystian Lupa. Last December in Paris, at the curtain call, audiences were treated to an additional performance: the actors returned to the stage with their mouths defiantly stuck shut with black tape.

The silent protest was the most recent of many against the companys management and its director, Cezary Morawski, who took over in September 2016, replacing the long-serving Krzysztof Mieszkowski. The escalating row casts a spotlight on the complex relationship between politics and culture under the jurisdiction of Polands ruling nationalist Law and Justice party. It also echoes a recent dispute at Berlins Volksbhne theatre, where critics have questioned incoming director Chris Dercons stage experience, and fear he will take the company in a more mainstream, commercialised direction. Teatro Polskis actors have said Morawskis artistic approach is old-fashioned, lacking in ambition and risk, and has already damaged the theatres credibility.

The dispute at the publicly funded institution, based in Wrocaw in western Poland, has seen staff dismissals, petitions against Morawski including one in France that was signed by more than 1,200 people, including Juliette Binoche, Isabelle Huppert and Peter Brook and the intervention of Polands culture minister, Piotr Gliski, whose department supplies a substantial part of the theatres funding. Regional Polish authorities began preliminary dismissal proceedings against Morawski in February, and the national government is expected to make a non-binding recommendation on his future by 15 March. If he is dismissed, Morawski has said he will appeal against the decision.

Leading actors have left the theatre, others have been fired by the director for their part in the protests, and even for making negative statements about his directorship, Lupa told the Guardian. If this fight will indeed be a success, that victory is not to be underestimated.

The roots of the conflict go back to 2015, shortly before the theatres premiere of Der Tod und das Mdchen (Death and the Maiden I-V: Princess Plays), based on a book by the Nobel prize-winning Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek. At the time, Gliski wrote to the Lower Silesian administration, which oversees the theatres management, to accuse the play of pornography in its full and literal meaning and calling for it to be cancelled. The play begins with a scene of simulated foreplay, which the theatre claimed was an exploration of the relationship between torturer and victim. The production was typical of what Lupa a former collaborator who has severed ties over Morawskis appointment describes as the institutions aura of independent art and independent discourse something that is increasingly at odds with the pro-Catholic, ultra-conservatism of Polands government. Croatian playwright Oliver Frljis production of Kltwa (The Curse), which premiered at Warsaws Teatr Powszecheny last month and tackles subjects including sexual abuse in the Catholic church, has attracted nationalist protesters, political condemnation and criticism from state media.

Morawski, a former television actor, replaced Mieszkowski after a selection process that detractors claim was non-transparent and politically motivated. Morawskis opponents say he lacks experience in running a similar venue. He wont risk anything. He will do everything the government will say, said Micha Opaliski, one of the protesting actors, against whom the theatre has started dismissal proceedings. Morawski blames Mieszkowski, who has been a member of parliament in the liberal Modern party since 2015, for the theatres politicisation.

Morawskis relationship with staff who were already upset by his appointment quickly deteriorated, exacerbated by his artistic priorities. I wanted to make the number and quality of the pieces in the theatre broader. We want to go back to the classics, Morawski said in a telephone interview. We want to attract new people and new, broader audiences. Of course we want to have a modern interpretation, and this can translate into some experimentation. He emphasised that when it comes to topics, there are no restrictions, and claimed he inherited significant debt from his predecessor.

Since starting in the job, Morawskis has cancelled seven productions in the companys repertoire, blaming declining audience numbers, and actors moving to other theatres. He said Der Tod und das Mdchen is not currently being staged because of a lack of performers and the high cost of storing [scenery]. After failed negotiations, he has fired three actors, six administrative employees and the literary director, Piotr Rudzki. Other dismissal proceedings are ongoing. As a new director I have the right to shape my team in such a way as to cooperate with them, he said. Faced with such turmoil, a delayed run of Molires The Hypochondriac, originally billed as the first major production under Morawksis leadership, will premiere on 16 March.

As press interest across Europe has increased, pressure on Morawski has risen. A petition with almost 10,000 signatories was presented to regional government officials in late February. Local officials noted failings including Morawskis reduced repertoire, the departure of his staff and his delayed productions and began dismissal proceedings against him. But a spokesperson for the governments culture ministry highlighted in an email that Morawski has been in position for less than half a year and that removing a director in the course of the season will make a precedent for the functioning of the whole system of cultural institutions in Poland.

Those concerned about the theatres future now anxiously await the ministers recommendation. The conflict has polarised into two extremes a national Catholic culture and [those] who wish to defend the culture of independent art, said Lupa. My only hope is that the Polski Theatre gets back on track, after being derailed, and I can get back to work. If a standoff between regional and national politicians ensues, the theatres future though not its status as a political pawn will remain unclear.

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Culture wars in Poland: Teatr Polski actors revolt against new director - The Guardian

Decades ago Samuel Huntington penned a dismal, dystopian tome aboutthe future of conflict. He predicted a great cultural clash. How right he wasjust not in the way he thought.

Witness the rabid reaction to the revised travel ban issued this week by the Trump administration. It reflects not the battle between Islam and the West, but the West waging war with itself.

Huntington's thesis held that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. In his Futureworld, Western modernity and the Islamic polity would endlessly clash.

Certainly, we have problems along these lines today. Look no further than Europe's unsettling efforts to accommodate immigrants and refugees from the Middle East. It's a deeply complex situation, one that reflects European economic malaise, the collapsing European welfare state and failed multiculturalism as much as the Islamist terrorist threat that thrives in the dark, damp clammy spaces in between.

Yet, arguably, Europe is experiencing more a case of cultural frictionrather than an outright clashbetween civilizations. For every fault line between the greater Islamic World and the West, there is a bridge of economic, military, political, culture and civil society holding the world together.

The bigger cultural war in the West is between Trump and his critics. On the one side is a new administration fiercely committed to tearing down the institutional constructs of progressivism and globalism. On the other, are those seeking to destroy the last remnants of nationalism. It's a battle that is not confined to America. Brexit was the first big offensive in a parallel conflict in Europe.That's not say there the United States and the rest of the West don't have serious problems with balancing patriotic assimilation and cultural diversity. This is an enduring challenge for free and open societies, and one that we must get right. But that's different than saying the West is at war with the rest of the world.

As this battle of ideas has escalated, so too has the rhetoric. Increasingly, both sides seek to demonize the other camp.

Indeed, a key tactic of the resistance against Trump is to accuse his administration of fomenting Huntington's dreaded clash of civilizations. Labeling Trump's policies as fascist and racist only douses smoldering differences with gasoline.

That's not a new rhetorical attack vector. The same tactics were used against Bush, most famously in the kerfuffle over the Patriot Act. Rather than have an honest debate over appropriate measures to combat terrorism in the post-9/11 world, Bush's opponents went postal.

The American Civil Liberties Union raised millions by mischaracterizing the act as a threat to Americans.Their website still admonishes: While most Americans think it was created to catch terrorists, the Patriot Act actually turns regular citizens into suspects. But the ACLU should realize that that culture war is over. The Patriot Act has been around for more than a decade and a half now, through Republican and Democratic administrations. Yet the Constitution is just fine, and there no concentration camps full of American citizens.

But old habits are hard to break. Since labeling Bush an anti-Muslim fascist seemed to workat least as a money-maker if not as a winning policy argumentdoing the same to Trump looks to be a no-brainer to the Left.

Arguably, Trump's opponents couldn't have picked a better target than his executive order pausing some refugee and other traffic into the United States. After all, all seven countries subject to the orders travel restrictions were majority Muslim. The administration was just getting its feet on the ground. Further, the White House did a poor job rolling the measure out, and it was unprepared for a swift and sweeping counterattack.

But that was over a month ago. Now, the White House is back with a sequel, issuing its revised and updated order yesterday. And opponents are as angry as everand using the same talking points. For example, theyre still characterizing the executive order 2.0 as anti-Muslim.

Yet the travel restrictions never were designed to be anti-Muslim. Rather, they were clearly intended to address a legitimate, emerging security threat: the likelihood that, after ISIS is defeated on the battlefields, its surviving foreign fighters will flow into these countries and from there try to make their way to the West. Their goal: to pull off terrorist attacks in the midst of the enemy to prove that transnational Islamist terrorism is still in the fight.

The revised order is built to address that threat. Moreover, it has been constructed in a way to make clear that it is not anti-Muslim. First, all of the original orders references to religious minorities have been removed, undercutting the argument that somehow the order was intended to disadvantage Muslim travelers at the expense of others.

In addition, the revised order removes a predominantly Muslim countryIraqfrom the ban. The reason for its removal is telling. After the first order was issued, the Iraqi government agreed to implement additional security measures that made terrorist travel from the country less likely. Since enhance security is the true purpose of both orders, this adjustment make perfect sense

A Department of Homeland Security official said of the revised order that there were no current plans to add any more countries, Muslim or otherwise. But he also said that, after the implementation phase, they would assess what steps to take next. That's the right answer. The global Islamist terrorist threat is dynamic. The U.S. response should be dynamic, determined not just to keep up withbut to stay ahead ofthe threat.

Meanwhile, in the West, the culture wars will doubtless continue. All we can ask is for more maturity from both sides to keep legitimate security measures out of the crossfire.

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The Culture War Surrounding Trump's Travel Restrictions | The ... - Heritage.org

Look! Squirrel! Lawmakers tackle divisive social issues

Its become something of a tradition for the Mississippi Legislature which convenes Tuesday for its 2017 session to have at least one humdinger of a bill that gets the collective knickers of lawmakers and the commonwealth all in a twist and draws national attention of the What the heck? variety....

...Most such legislation is probably a bit of all of the above. And, it appears to be part of the legislative condition. One person's ridiculous or unneeded legislation is another's top priority.

Mississippis Legislature isnt alone in coming up with weird, divisive or socially or religiously charged proposals. We just seem to be better at it than most. And, given our history and the perception of us by others, we seem to get more national attention and criticism for it. "Saturday Night Live" once described Mississippis Legislature as 30 hissing possums in a barn in response to some bizarre pending legislation. PR like that is, again, priceless. Possum dolls still occasionally show up on the House or Senate floors....

...A couple of well-placed sources have told me that legislative, religious and other leaders have met and vowed to avoid such a barn burner this year, or as one put it, They said were not going to fight the culture wars this session.

Clarion Ledger 1/1/17

Posted January 2, 2017 - 11:06 am

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#msleg leaders seek to not fight the culture wars this session - Yall Politics

The park closed due to budget cuts in 2010, though it only had a $2,500 annual budget prior to that, and now sits mostly abandoned and entirely uncared for.

Officials held and questioned Muhammad Ali Jr. for nearly two hours, repeatedly asking him, Where did you get your name from? and Are you Muslim?'

The documents show that Pruitt, while Oklahoma attorney general, acted in close concert with oil and gas companies to challenge environmental regulations, even putting his letterhead to a complaint filed by one firm, Devon Energy.

Unfortunately, family planning is a political issue and science and data gets trumped by ideology.

I am not filled with confidence that Sessions or the department he oversees would view Newman and his cohorts as undesirable associates.

Facebooks contribution is worth more than $120,000, according to our sources. Half of that is cash, and the other half is in-kind support for CPACs operations.

At least two Army bases are suspending childcare programs, citing staff shortages related to the hiring freeze.

Falwell also wants to cut federal rules on investigating and reporting sexual assault under Title IX, the federal law that bars sexual discrimination in education.

You look at what Baylor was able to do during his tenure, it fits perfectly with where we see our sports programs going.

This report documents the very real human consequences of politicians like Trump, Orbn, Duterte, wielding a toxic agenda that hounds, scapegoats and dehumanizes entire groups of people.

There was a recent refugee-related attack in Sweden when Neo-Nazis from the Nordic Resistance Movement attacked a refugee centerin Gothenburg in January.

Wildersrecently described Moroccan immigrants as scum who make the streets of the Netherlands unsafe.

President Donald Trump told Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro that bomb threats at Jewish Community Centers may have been from the reverse to try to make others look bad.

The attack comes days after authorities say a Tampa mosque was intentionally set on fire, and nearly a week after 154 headstones at a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis were vandalized.

If youre 45 years old now, net illegal immigration stopped back when you were 35.

I heard things happening in that room happening to other people that made me ashamed to be human.

Frustrated by the failure of most Germans to participate in a boycott of Jewish businesses in April 1933, Adolf Hitlers government began publicizing Jewish crime statistics as a way of stoking anti-Semitism.

The most striking finding from our research is that for murder, robbery, burglary and larceny, as immigration increased, crime decreased, on average, in American metropolitan areas.

The only thing the elite Washington press corps likes more than a bipartisan commission on debt reduction is a stack of flag-draped coffins.

The utter lack of imagination here is staggering and somehow disappointing.

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Postcards from the class & culture wars (3.2.17) - Patheos (blog)

"Portlandia" star and co-creator Carrie Brownstein is still invested in exploring the absurdities of hipster culture -- especially now that she feels we're living in "the vernacular of the absurd."

At the ever-popular IFC Emmy and Peabody Award-winning sketch comedy series nears to a close of its seventh season, Brownstein admits that the show's trademark off-kilter, often outrageous sensibility that both affectionately and savagely critiques a certain urban, socially sensitive lifestyle and philosophy may have an extra significance in the current historical moment characterized by culture wars marking the deep divide between left- and right-leaning Americans.

But the absurdist humor, perfected by Brownstein and Fred Armisen, she promises Moviefone, is here to stay, because as she sees it, "it's kind of the only way to make sense of everything."

Moviefone: So I'm curious: seven seasons in, I feel like maybe behind the scenes you do it either exactly the same as it's always been, or you threw yourself some curve balls. Which was it this time around?

Carrie Brownstein: I think there's a bit of both, because I think we value a certain insularity in the process of the show. We know that it functions with a certain kind of specificity, with a certain kind of clumsiness, with a certain marginal outsider feel that we try to maintain.

So yeah, we're very nurturing about that, and kind of keeping that process the same in terms of writing and really trying to not take it for granted, because we do so many other things throughout the year. But then I think it's important to have a sense of growth and dynamics, and bring a new perspective. You don't want stasis.

So it is kind of this balancing act of sort of keeping something that just feels solid, something from which to deviate, that is essentially your point of view or your sensibility, but then making sure that from that, that the choreography can change.

At this point, what's the ratio of concepts that are like, "That's a version of something that really happened," and "That's just an idea that we ran with because it made us laugh just talking about the notion?"

Often it starts with something that we've culled from real-life observations. But I think there is a real value that we place on imagination in the writers' room, and being able to get to a place of absurdity or surrealism. So that kind of illogical, sometimes irrational thought, I think we really try to let that flourish in the room.

I think there's a checks and balances system. Some of our writers are much more logic-, story-, narrative-based, and then you have Fred, who is a real champion of the tangent, and champion of the oddities. So I think it works. We try to do both.

Is there anything in the current season where the actual story that inspired it is maybe even funnier than the sketch version?

I don't know if it's funnier than the sketch version, per se. You could talk about our men's rights movement, and think that, I don't know if the real life is funnier, I think it's somewhat more tragic. That to me seems just almost stifling, and the reality of it is stifling and more dangerous, and kind of more far-reaching than I think anything that we were even grappling with.

And a totally opposite thing, Laurie Metcalf, who's such a brilliant, funny actor who did two sketches on our show, which is amazing -- that bathroom soundproofing thing, which is a weirdly relatable office culture situation, that was based on the office that we wrote in. Only Fred would get a writers' room with a bathroom in the middle of the room. So I think that in some ways was funnier.

I think if you could see inside of our brains, I bet we were thinking about the bathroom like three hours out of the day, just out of discomfort. Anyway, I don't even really love bathroom humor, but that really was ridiculous.

Over the course of the season, when you were working on writing this, we've seen all these crazy socio-political divisions that have come up. Certainly, people want to put "hipsters" and "liberals" and whatever they feel about that culture into a certain box. Did that affect the way you were writing in this particular season? Is it going to affect the way you're writing?

It's definitely something that Jonathan Krisel, our writer/director, brought up earlier. I do think that we've always thought of the show as having an earnestness, and not being mean-spirited, because we see ourselves within these characters. To me, it's an exploration of identity, exploration of place, and the ways people discord.

We do feel, I think, protective in some ways of just who we are and sort of seeing this weird, highly partisan kind of culture war right now, and you I think are more aware of vulnerable populations, and what people are fighting for, who feels disenfranchised. So I think there's that as kind of a thinking, feeling person, but in terms of comedy, I was just re-reading Sontag's "On Camp" and thinking about dethroning the serious, and just getting to a place where you can be serious about the frivolous, and frivolous about the serious, and it's OK to get in there.

And to be honest, I feel like we are in the vernacular of the absurd right now. So, to me, I don't necessarily want to let up on being pithy or let up on pointedness for the sake of sincerity, because we've always incorporated heart in the show. But perhaps the characters, through them we can elaborate on some of our own fears and anxieties right now. But I don't want to forego humor or absurdism now, because in some ways, it's kind of the only way to make sense of everything.

I imagine with that affectionate satirizing that you do of the "Portlandia" culture, you don't want the affection that you have to enable somebody else's anger towards it.

No, not at all. It's really hard to sort of keep that in consideration. I think in some ways, we just have to keep approaching it from a creative standpoint. Our mission is to make a good show. I don't necessarily think that we can completely upend what we do. I'm excited, I guess, for the journey.

With the guest stars you've got this season, how many were recruited by you guys, and how many came to you and said, "Can I please come play?"

It's always a mix of both, and unfortunately, it just comes down to logistics. I run into people all the time that say they would love to be on the show, and that we would be honored to have them, and then everyone's busy, everyone's on three shows. That's not even hyperbolic.

Yeah, but we've always been lucky in terms of guest stars and collaboration, and people wanting a milieu in which to improvise and play. We continue to just be fortunate in terms of who we get. Someone like Claire Danes or Laurie Metcalf. Or we have like Damian Lillard from The Blazers, or the band Run the Jewels. It's all over the place, but they all sort of make sense in our world.

Is your collaboration with Fred, is it a safe constant, or does it evolve? Have you found an evolution in the way you guys work together?

I think any partnership has to evolve. Change has to be part of the equation. I don't know. Stagnation just feels pernicious in terms of oneself, or any kind of relationship. But again, I think you're always trying to sort of solidify the foundation.

So you kind of have to go back and make sure that's solid, and then from there, I think it's a real trust fall to get to experiment and grow with someone. So we definitely try to evolve, but only because we kind of keep going back and making sure that we're good. OK, there's solid ground there. It's an interesting balancing act.

Is there something that you know you can do to make him laugh hard, and vice versa?

Yes, any time I raise my voice or scream, he finds that very funny. I don't know -- I feel like Fred can make me laugh almost all the time. But he has some fallback bits that he does, that I think he knows I laugh at because I'm half annoyed that they still get me to laugh, yeah.

What's been taking up your time away from this show? Has there been something front and center on your plate?

I wrote a memoir the other year, and now I'm writing a series of essays. And I've been directing more. I just finished one TV show, and I'm about to direct "Casual" at the end of this month. So I've really been enjoying that process as an extension of what my sort of writer/producer sort of skill set or interest. Directing to me is really wonderful and challenging.

Have you ever gotten any hint that you might come back to "Transparent"?

I don't think so. Who knows? I feel like the Pfeffermans, they really bring people through their meat grinder and spit you out the other side. Who knows? But I would love to. But I also feel like Jill [Soloway] and all the writers are all so good at being true to the narrative of that show, and the growth of the characters. Sometimes I think when they say goodbye to people, that's a permanent door-close.

Have you had much room for music?

Yeah. Sleater-Kinney put out a record I guess in 2015. We did a handful of shows in 2016, but mostly now I'll just start writing. So I always try to keep that as part of my life.

Is that a simple pleasure in your creative life?

Oh, it's definitely not simple! Playing live maybe has a sort of ease to it, even though the stakes always feel high. But writing is just as challenging as anything I do.

"Portlandia" airs Thursdays on IFC.

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Even During the Current Culture Wars, Carrie Brownstein Says 'Portlandia' Will Put Absurdity First - Moviefone