How did the idea for this evening come about?
Milo Rau: I have come to the Festival d‘Avignon many times to present my work. Court cases, trials, and processing them in theatre are an essential part of my artistic identity. So I naturally followed the trial closely.
The trial itself lasted for over three months, and no one was allowed to make audio recordings in the courtroom in Avignon. How did you approach this enormous amount of material?
Servane Dècle: We are working with journalists’ notes from nearly 600 hours of hearings. They were an extremely precious source for us. Then we started having personal conversations with journalists, but also with a group of researchers at the Centre Norbert Elias, with one of the trial’s public prosecutors, with Mrs. Pelicot’s lawyers, Antoine Camus and Stéphane Babonneau, as well as with feminist associations and women from Avignon who attended the trial. It was crucial for us to surround ourselves with that collective in order to be able to grasp the subject in all its complexity. As many as four books had already been published a mere three months after the verdict! There is obviously an urge to talk about it. We want to keep alive the story told by this trial, in the theatre. The first thing that stands out are the extraordinary aspects of this case, but we are also interested in its quieter, more inconspicuous and, maybe, more structural facets. We might not be able to fully reconstruct the Pelicot trial in its entirety, but we can give voice to some of it and explore the questions it poses. Dramaturgically, we are taking a concise and analytical approach to uncover the deeper causes of these acts.
Would you describe this as an attempt to reconstruct the case in its entirety, which in itself would already be a political act of remembrance?
M. R.: In a way, we are taking the case out of the collective memory and reassembling it in Vienna, then in Avignon. We decided to stage the reading in a sacred space—the cloître des Carmes—as an allegory to the Stations of the Cross. We deliberately chose a simple format for this evening because in my experience that is the most convincing way to tell this story.
What does the figure of Gisèle Pelicot mean for you, Servane?
S. D.: By bringing the trial into the public eye, Gisèle Pelicot achieved an unbelievable shift: ‘making shame change sides’, by forcing the accused to answer for their actions publicly. In many trials since then, victims have mentioned how much her courage inspired them. The goal of this evening is to pay homage to her decision, while remaining aware of the danger inherent to putting someone on a pedestal. Many feminists have pointed it out: What does a constant emphasis on her exemplary courage mean for those who find themselves in similar situations but are unable to speak out publicly? Gisèle Pelicot’s lifestyle was frequently described as ‘above reproach’. Does that mean other victims aren’t ‘above reproach’? That there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ victims and that the crimes committed against the latter are less cruel? I want to question our disturbing need for ‘innocence’ when it comes to feeling empathy.
Our judicial system is built on patriarchal power structures. In practice, this means that gender affects not only verdicts but also the credibility of witnesses and public perception. How do you incorporate this into your work?
S. D.: Countless sexual and sexist stereotypes were reproduced in the courtroom and in media coverage. Even in the face of video footage, many of the accused denied having raped Gisèle Pelicot. I think it is crucial to acknowledge the sheer banality of these crimes and to shed light on the culture that enabled them.
M. R.: From a sociological or philosophical perspective, this case is an unintentional empirical study on the omnipresence of the patriarchy and rape culture that infiltrates all of our lives, despite decades of awareness campaigns, increasingly strict laws, and the success of the #MeToo movement in amplifying the voices of victims. It’s as if we are saying: ‘We have now shed light on this part, but there is another one that remains completely hidden’. And that part remains unchanged.
S. D.: Yes, the Pelicot trial is not just a marginal footnote to be swept under the rug of History. In one of her articles in Le Monde, the journalist Hélène Devynck quoted Virginia Woolf likening patriarchy in the home to fascism in the world. Obviously, the patriarchy does not remain confined to the home, but it is a fundamental part of our domestic structure. Today, masculinism and neo-fascism are obviously growing hand in hand. It gives me direction in my work: as long as the patriarchy continues to destroy lives, as long as men seek power through domination, fascism will grow. As an artist and activist, I think that the contemplation on the Pelicot trial points to a core issue of our time.
From a feminist perspective, the question arises whether speaking about rape invites sensationalism or voyeurism, and to what extent it can unintentionally be retraumatising. How do you handle the sometimes very explicit and detailed descriptions of the rapes in this work?
S. D.: During the trial, it became apparent that most of the accused were unable to view a woman as a subject, not an object. They made no distinction between sex, sexual violence and rape. Even if the judicial context cannot grant us access to the deeper thoughts of these men, their statements betray attitudes held by many in our society, attitudes we need to be able to question openly. Gisèle Pelicot is not just a victim but also a survivor of patriarchal violence. And she’s the one who asked us to look at this trial and at the world that surrounds it.
Interview conducted by Natalie Assmann on 16 March 2025