The RA Ministry of Culture deserves to celebrate a victory because due its rapidness and professionalism it was able to prevent the humiliation of Armenia, attempted to be realized through a theatrical performance.
The target of the Ministry was British actor and dancer Nigel Charnock, who in his “Frank” improvisational performance brought tragedy to our flag and humiliated our patriotic spirit. “Using the Armenian flag as a carpet and dancing on it is unacceptable,” reads the announcement spread by the Ministry.
Yesterday the British Council was trying to fix the situation by saying that the actor didn’t mean to hurt the Armenians on purpose and that they didn’t know anything about the contents of the performance as Nigel Charnock has not rehearsed in Armenia. The people, who know the actor insisted that the actor has never acted that way to any national symbol of a country and hasn’t that obviously speaking about sex. Charnock has tuck the microphone and the flags of Armenia and Great Britain into his pants and has done sexual dance imitation. Later he walked all naked on the stage and spread candies on the audience.
The second performance prevented the complaint of the Ministry, the tickets of which had already been sold. The issue of performing the second performance has been solved an hour prior to the performance. The representatives of the British Council and Charnock himself came to the theater after Stanislavski to give clarifications and express apologies. He also pledged that the disputable parts of the performance are cut from the second performance. “I didn’t know that the scene of the flag could be legally forbidden in Armenia and considered as an offence. By putting the flags of the two countries next to each other I wanted to emphasize the tight links between those states. I know that in England it’s not allowed to burn the national flag. I didn’t do it here either. I just use the flags in my performance,” said Charnock, who had bought the Armenian flag in one of the stores of the Republic Square. The apologies of the British Council and the actor have been accepted by the Ministry and the director of Stanislavski Theater, Alexander Grigoryan. However, the actor himself refused to play the performance the second time. It turned out that the performance has been edited even in the morning. Besides that several other things on the stage were replaced. Thus it became impossible to play the second performance because of not only technical but also moral issues. The director and the personnel of the theater were glad that they finally got rid of this “hooliganism”, which is talented, but can be played as a pornographic performance not on the State Theater of Armenia.
According to the RA Law on National Flag the flag may be risen, put down or used only in places, circumstances and altitude defined by the law. The measures of application of the flag is determined by the government. And the English actor has used the flag in his performance without being introduced to the law. Thus he has violated different provisions of the law. One of the main requirements of the law is to ensure that “the flag is clean and the bottom part of the flag must be at least 2.5 meters higher the ground.” No one knows how dirty the flag was being placed on the stage floor. Although the English actor promised to correct his mistakes and not play a performance which would provoke Armenians, he later refused to play the performance at all. And the spectators, who had bought tickets for this performance found out that it’s not going to be played only a few minutes before the start. It’s interesting that the Ministry is being selfish and cares only about the state interest and not about the interests of the large audience, who bought tickets to be there.