Live Piercing, Real Blood During Theatre Performance Leaves 18 With Severe Nausea

Audience member in Germany's Stuttgart had to be treated for severe nausea during a theatre performance.

A theatre performance in Germany left 18 people with severe nausea who had to be treated in the auditorium. (Representational Image)

Source : Unsplash

Eighteen theatregoers in Germany required medical treatment for severe nausea over the weekend after watching a performance that included live piercing, unsimulated sexual intercourse and copious amounts of fake and real blood. 

A doctor has been called in for treatment in three instances, said the opera’s spokesperson, Sebastian Ebling, reported the Guardian. “On Saturday we had eight and on Sunday we had 10 people who had to be looked after by our visitor service,” he added. 

The audience members had come to watch two performances of Sancta, a work by the Austrian choreographer Florentina Holzinger. She is known for freewheeling performances that blur the line between dance theatre and vaudeville.

Holzinger's all-female cast typically performs partially or fully naked, and previous shows have included live sword-swallowing, tattooing, masturbation, and action painting with blood and fresh excrements. 

“Good technique in dance to me is not just someone who can do a perfect tendu, but also someone who can urinate on cue,” says the 38-year-old choreographer. 

Sancta is Holzinger's first foray into opera, which premiered at the  Mecklenburg State Theatre in Schwerin in May. The act is based on Paul Hindemith’s 1920s expressionist opera Sancta Susanna, which has its own history of controversy.

Hindenmith's original opera narrates the story of a young nun, who was aroused by a tale told by one of the nunnery's old women, steps on the altar naked and rips the loincloth from Christ's torso. However, an encounter with a large spider leads the nun to repent her action and beg other nuns to wall her up alive. 

The opera was originally meant to premiere at Stuttgart's state opera in 1921 but was not put on stage until 1922 after protests against its allegedly sacrilegious content.

The version that audience members at Stuttgart saw this year supplanted the original musical performance with naked nuns rollerskating on a movable half-pipe at the centre of the stage. A wall of crucified naked bodies and a lesbian priest saying mass were some other elements in the opera. 

Bishops had criticised it as a “disrespectful caricature of the holy mass” after Holzinger brought Sancta to her native Vienna. 

The Austrian artist had previously suggested that her opera was less designed to mock the church than explore parallels between the conservative institution on the one hand, and kink communities and BDSM subcultures on the other.

However, reports of medical treatment during the Stuttgart show have not appeared to do any commercial harm. All five remaining shows at the Stuttgart State Opera, as well as two performances at Berlin’s Volksbühne in November, have since sold out.