Florentina Holzinger’s bloody Sancta was criticised by Austrian bishops and is now a sellout in Germany
Eighteen theatregoers at Stuttgart’s state opera 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.
Visitors to the adults-only show were alerted in advance to a long list of warnings for potential triggers including incense, loud noises, explicit sexual acts and sexual violence.
FWIW, I'm a sideshow performer and have been in shows that were exactly like this (though I don't do full nudity or piercing). There's always a content warning at the top of the show. Though I'm surprised (but not) they allowed live sex. Even where I live, which has pretty lenient blue laws, live sex is a hard no.
Also, this sounds amazing
The version that unsettled audience members in Stuttgart 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.
If you've never seen copious amounts of blood before, you might not know you're a goddamn pussy. I didn't know blood would make me queasy until I was trying to clean glass and blood from the floor before my dogs ran in to see the commotion as the skin on the backs of 2 fingers was flapping and undoing all my blood cleanup. It damaged something in my nail base, too, because I have a scar that ends at a permanent ridge in my nail extrusion.