BERLIN (AP) \u2014 A performance inside a Catholic cathedral in Germany earlier this month that featured raw, plucked chickens wrapped in diapers onstage \u2014 and the country\u2019s president and the local archbishop in the audience \u2014 has prompted the church and municipal leaders to apologize that the show \u201churt religious feelings.\u201d<\/p>\n
The show, \u201cWestphalia Side Story,\u201d was part of a May 15 celebration to mark the 1,250th anniversary of Westphalia, a region in northwestern Germany.<\/p>\n
Video footage shows one woman and two shirtless men singing \u201cFleisch ist Fleisch\u201d (\u201cMeat is meat\u201d) \u2014 apparently spoofing Austrian band Opus\u2019 1984 pop song \u201cLive is Life\u201d \u2014 with scythes and dancing with the dead chickens on a stage in front of Paderborn Cathedral\u2019s altar.<\/p>\n
Performance company bodytalk said in a statement Friday that the show featured work-in-progress excerpts from \u201cWestphalia Side Story\u201d \u2014 which references the American musical \u201cWest Side Story.\u201d <\/p>\n
The finished show, which will premiere in September, is supposed to be part of the 1,250th anniversary\u2019s cultural programming. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was not meant to be a spoof at all,\u201d bodytalk cofounder Rolf Baumgart said in an email to The Associated Press. \u201cAs Westphalia is a rural dominated region with a turbulent history our research was focused on that.\u201d <\/p>\n
The spectacle also prompted an online petition \u2014 signed by more than 22,000 people by Friday afternoon \u2014 that asks Paderborn Archbishop Udo Bentz for a personal apology, as well as penance. The signers also want him to reconsecrate the cathedral after it was \u201cdesecrated by this performance.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement posted online to the cathedral\u2019s website more than a week after the performance, the Regional Association of Westphalia-Lippe and the church\u2019s leadership said that the content of the performance wasn\u2019t known to the organizers or the venue. <\/p>\n
The cathedral, the statement said, is often host to cultural events and has begun an internal review. They also promised to more carefully vet proposed events in the future.<\/p>\n
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier\u2019s office didn\u2019t immediately return a request for comment on Friday.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Philipp Jenne contributed to this report from Vienna.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERLIN (AP) \u2014 A performance inside a Catholic cathedral in Germany earlier this month that featured raw, plucked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[77,2000,299,30557,4179,1824,3943,269,62865,14903,8547,62867,62866,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-146146","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-frank-walter-steinmeier","12":"tag-general-news","13":"tag-germany","14":"tag-movies","15":"tag-music","16":"tag-music-videos","17":"tag-oddities","18":"tag-religion","19":"tag-rolf-baumgart","20":"tag-udo-bentz","21":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114601112596139854","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}