SLĀV director Robert Lepage calls show's cancellation a 'blow to artistic freedom'
After criticism led to its cancellation, SLĀV's famed director Robert Lepage says the scrapping of the Montreal International Jazz Festival show is a "direct blow to artistic freedom."
The show, performed by lead singer Betty Bonifassi, is described as "a theatrical odyssey based on slave songs," but critics are calling it cultural appropriation.
In a statement released Friday on the Facebook page for Ex Machina, Lepage's production company, the director said that if it were up to him, the show would still be running.
He says that he will let the critics and defenders of the show define cultural appropriation, "for it is an extremely complicated problem and I don't pretend to know how to solve it."
"To me, what is most appalling is the intolerant discourse heard both on the street and in some media," Lepage writes.
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