Actor arrests thirdincident involvingCoC13 participants

THE arrest of four actors who appeared in the Londonderry premiere of Haris Pasovic’s ‘The Conquest of Happiness’ is the third occasion this year participants or would-be participants in UK City of Culture 2013 events have butted heads with the authorities.
By Kevin Mullan
Published 25th Sep 2013, 17:07 BST
Dermott Hickson who plays Jackie Duddy, the first person killed on Bloody Sunday who will be performing in, "The Conquest of Happiness", on Friday night, 20th of September at Ebrington Square. The cast including Mona Muratovic who plays Violetta and Cornelius Macarthy as Bertrand Russell. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 16.09.13Dermott Hickson who plays Jackie Duddy, the first person killed on Bloody Sunday who will be performing in, "The Conquest of Happiness", on Friday night, 20th of September at Ebrington Square. The cast including Mona Muratovic who plays Violetta and Cornelius Macarthy as Bertrand Russell. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 16.09.13
Dermott Hickson who plays Jackie Duddy, the first person killed on Bloody Sunday who will be performing in, "The Conquest of Happiness", on Friday night, 20th of September at Ebrington Square. The cast including Mona Muratovic who plays Violetta and Cornelius Macarthy as Bertrand Russell. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 16.09.13

The four were detained after live bullets were found sewn into a stage prop used in the Ebrington performance at the weekend.

The group didn’t know the bullets were there. They were released without charge.

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A spokeswoman for Belfast’s Prime Cut Productions and Sarajevo’s East West Centre said: “The jacket was bought on a shopping website and so presumably that is where the bullets came from, but the actors had no idea the bullets were there.”

It’s not the first time artists have run into difficulties.

In June the Sentinel reported how Lebanese rockers The Wanton Bishops were stopped from attending an international music event in Londonderry.

They joked that the Border Agency thought they wanted to open a kebab shop in the city.

A few weeks before that an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin - journalist Oksana Chelysheva - was detained for six hours at Stansted before being sent back to Finland.

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She had been scheduled to address the Poisonous Legacies conference, organised by the Bloody Sunday Trust and the Pat Finucane Centre, to examine the impact of conflict and colonialism in various parts of the world, including the Middle East, Colombia, Argentina, Chechnya, Spain, Italy and Ireland.

Related topics:Belfast