„Seven hours of real horror“: Milo Rau brings THE PELICOT TRIAL to the Festival d’Avignon
The first presentation of THE PELICOT TRIAL at the Vienna Festival on June 18 hit like a bomb. Now, on July 18, LE PROCÈS PELICOT by Servane Dècle and Milo Rau – condensed into four intensive hours, starring 50 actors and activists – will take place at the Festival d’Avignon, only a few kilometres away from the small town of Mazan, where the crimes that shocked the world took place.
The Vienna Festival – Europe’s biggest crossover-festival, curated by Milo Rau – came to an end two weeks ago. From Elfriede Jelinek to Laurie Anderson and from Carolina Bianchi to Lia Rodrigues, everyone came to Vienna for this year’s edition, the REPUBLIC OF LOVE, proclaimed in front of 48,000 people in the city center on May 16.
112,000 spectators attended the more than 100 shows during the five-week festival, around a million watched online. The Swiss national tv channel RTS summed it up: “The Vienna Festival is the Holy Grail of contemporary theater and the place for all polemics.”
Milo Rau himself staged four theatre productions during the festival: the mythical BURGTHEATERby Nobel Prize Winner Elfriede Jelinek, banned for 40 years – the “cruel and insanely entertaining” (Profil) production was, with more than 200 media reports, the most talked-about show of the theater season in the German-speaking world.
Just a few days later, together with Schaubühne Berlin, the Venice Biennale and with Ursina Lardi in the main role (Silver Lion Winner 2025), Rau premiered his semi-autobiographical performance THE SEER: „Shocking and disturbing“ (FAZ). After shows in Austria, Italy and Romania, the German premiere will take place on September 19 in Berlin.
The CONGRESSES OF VIENNA on the cases of the band Rammstein, cancel culture and #MeToo sparked weeks of debate. But THE PELICOT TRIAL – staged for the first time in Vienna on 18 June – certainly had the greatest impact. Critics were fascinated by the seven-hour oratorio about an ordinary woman who became an icon of resistance against sexual violence.
El País witnessed “a political act of memory”, France Info saw “the Austrian public in shock,” and Die Welt called the collaboration between dramaturge Servane Dècle and Rau “the most disturbing thing theater can show”: “Is it now up to art rather than religion to keep the hope of the Last Judgment alive?”
On 18 July, the reading – condensed into four intensive hours – will take place at the Festival d’Avignon, in collaboration with the Pelicot family’s lawyers, psychological experts, legal commentators, witnesses, and feminist organisations: “Milo Rau revisits the systemic failures exposed by Pelicot’s historic trial and the social shift she sparked.” (Le Monde)
And yet another play by Milo Rau will premiere already tomorrow, 8 July, at the Festival d’Avignon: THE LETTER (LA LETTRE), which features Olga Mouak and Arne De Tremerie – alongside the voices of Isabelle Huppert and Anne Alvaro, and an artificial intelligence!
„Lighthearted and full of humour, seeking to create theatre by creating a community, LA LETTRE is a manifesto on what popular theatre can be today,“ as the festival announces. Don’t miss this combination of Chekhov’s The Seagull and the French national myth of Joan of Arc!