To add to the list of animals killed during art performance, South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals announced in August that charges will be filed in the on-stage killing of a chicken during the performance of a play.
The cast of the play iMumbo Jumbo which appeared at the Baxter Theater in Cape Town had apparently been using a live chicken for its three-week run. For the final night, the actors purchased a second chicken to kill onstage (apparently the killing had only been simulated in previous performances). The animal was killed by an individual that South African newspaper The Star characterized as “a traditional healer who said the animal was slaughtered as part of ancestral worship.”
According to the Cape of Good Hope SPCA, however, the claim that the chicken’s slaughter was part of some traditional ceremony is “spurious and misleading.”
Source:
Requiem for a dead chicken. Lynn Altenroxel, The Star (South Africa), August 15, 2003.