Funding for a play featuring the rape of a Catholic woman by a Protestant man has been refused by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI).
The drama, Forced Upon Us, highlights the history of the RUC from a republican perspective and is to be staged at this year's west Belfast festival, Feile an Phobail.
It is a joint production between Dubbeljoint, a professional acting company that was allocated £62,500 from ACNI for 19992000, and Just Us, a west Belfast community drama group.
In a statement the Arts Council said it had informed Dubbeljoint and Just Us that their script fell below the artistic standard the council expected and no council funding could be given.
Funding for the production was conditional upon receipt of a completed script which the council could assess artistically. Two unfinished scripts that were received fell well below the threshold of artistic acceptability, in the opinion of the Arts Council and its external assessors.
The external assessors' reports described the work as a "clumsy propagandist play [which] could only serve to deepen existing prejudices" and as being "shockingly distasteful and exploitative". The external assessors are experienced figures from the arts world.
In a statement, Ms Pam Brighton, artistic director of Dubbel joint and a member of the festival committee, said the decision not to fund the work was a politically-motivated attack on one of Ireland's leading, established theatre companies.
The company had produced a string of high-quality, accessible dramas such as A Night in November, Women on the Verge of HRT and Binlids, she said.
She criticised the use of "faceless assessors", said the decision was political and accused the council of practising censorship.
Mr Shane Connaughton, a novelist and member of Dubbeljoint's board, said in a statement that the decision not to fund should be condemned by all who believed in artistic freedom. He labelled the use of external assessors as "Stalinist criteria hitherto unpractised by the council".
The play is billed in the festival programme as "a powerful, painful yet witty expression of the call for the RUC to go".
The script, a copy of which has been seen by The Irish Times, is a strongly republican view of the history of the RUC and sectarian violence during the past century.
After the initial rape scene the play then turns to 1912 and begins to examine the history of the RIC/RUC and sectarian violence. In one scene a Catholic shipyard worker is lynched by two Protestants.
The North's First Minister, Mr David Trimble, is described in the script as "that ginger wee shithawk". It is unclear whether or not the line was to be spoken during the production.