A stage show in Stuttgart, Germany featuring roller skating nuns engaging in live sex scenes, real blood, and actual injuries on stage, sent 18 audience members to seek medical attention during the show’s premiere week, according to reports.
The show is based on Sancta Susanna, which was created in 1921 by composer Paul Hindemith. The opera has never been staged, as back in 1921, the show was canceled after news leaked out reporting how anti-Catholic and blasphemous it was during rehearsals.
But today, extreme performance artist Florentina Holzinger ramped up the outrage many times over by putting the often fully nude actors on roller skates, included live sex scenes, sadomasochism, human blood, and even added the live and real removal of a portion of a performer’s skin, cooking it on stage, and having another actor eat it.
The show follows a Catholic nun who decides to explore her sexuality. At one point, the nun strips off her habit and has sexual intercourse with Jesus. In another scene, a nun is spanked on her bare rearend. And in another, naked performers are raised up on hooks in a mocking of the crucifixion while fake blood rains down upon them.
The performance was too much for several first-time audience members to take and at least 18 required some sort of medical assistance, according to the Daily Mail.
The stricken audience members reportedly suffered nausea, shock, and minor injuries from reactions to what was going on before them onstage. Doctors had to be called in at least three cases, the media reported.
Audience members were shocked by scenes including a female actor with dwarfism dressed as a nun being spun by a robotic arm while another dressed as Jesus sang songs by U.S. rapper Eminem.
In another, a nude female sword swallower shoved a sword with its top shaped like a Catholic cross down her throat. Other scenes featured live lesbian sex acts, as other actors hang naked out of bells on stage.
Sacred Catholic practices are also lampooned during the show.
“To illustrate the Eucharist, the body of Christ, a piece of skin is cut from a performer’s side, which is then grilled medium rare, according to German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung,” the Daily Mail reported.
The stage show does have an 18-and-up age limit and warns potential audience members that “not fake, but real” sex acts, blood, and injuries are seen onstage.
Some critics have ravaged the show, with Catholics calling it blasphemy.
Archbishop of Salzburg Franz Lackner, for one, slammed the show as going beyond artistic expression an into “seriously offending believers” of Christianity.
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