German Theatre Shuts Down a Play About Church Abuse

State Theatre in Osnabrück

by Chris Peterson

So here’s what happened. In Osnabrück, Germany, a director named Lorenz Nolting was putting together a new adaptation of Seneca’s Oedipus. This wasn’t just another classic dusted off for the season. It was personal. Nolting had teamed up with a survivor of clerical abuse, shaping the piece around how Catholic rituals, including prayers, blessings, and ceremonies, can be turned into weapons when they’re placed in the wrong hands.

The survivor had signed on knowing their story would be told honestly. The production was stripped of the usual shock tactics you sometimes see in German theatre. There was no gore, no upside-down crosses. Just the rituals themselves, presented as they were experienced, familiar, sacred, and devastating when misused.

Then the theatre’s artistic director, Ulrich Mokrusch, stepped in. He read the script, never attended a single rehearsal, and decided the Catholic content had to go. His reason was that he worried it would offend Christians in the audience. The team refused to cut it. The production was cancelled. Contracts were terminated. Lawyers got involved. And the survivor? Back in therapy.

Here’s the thing. Theatre is not meant to be a padded room where no one gets their feelings hurt. It is supposed to challenge us. It is supposed to make us look at what we would rather avoid. This production was doing exactly that, holding up a mirror to a reality that is still playing out behind closed doors.

And Mokrusch’s move was not a victory for faith. It was a victory for the illusion of faith, because faith worth defending should be strong enough to face the truth about what has been done in its name.

I keep coming back to this. The censorship did not come from the Church. It came from a theatre leader deciding on behalf of believers that they could not handle it. That is not protection. That is condescension, and it is dangerous. It tells survivors that their stories are only welcome if they have been made palatable for the people who most need to hear them.

If you care about theatre, you know that some of the most important moments happen when the audience squirms. The ancient Greeks knew this. Shakespeare knew it. Great playwrights and directors have always trusted that audiences could handle being unsettled, because discomfort is often where empathy begins.

Instead of letting that happen here, the story was shut down mid-sentence. Now the work exists only as a script and some bruised memories. But it will find another stage. Nolting says he plans to bring it elsewhere, and I hope he does. Because silencing art does not make the truth disappear. It only delays the moment we are finally forced to face it.

I will say it plainly. The prayers were not the problem. The rituals were not the problem. The abuse was. And if the theatre cannot be a place where we hold that tension together, the beauty of faith alongside the horror of betrayal, then we are in trouble. Because if art will not do it, who will?