Five Easy Pieces

In Milo Rau’s Five Easy Pieces children are initiated in the emotional and political absurdities and bottomless pits of the adult world. What does it mean to involve children in adult theatre? What does that tell us about power and subjection, theatre and performance, and mimicry and humanity?

"For children, Dutroux is a grizzly fairy tale

Twenty years on from the Dutroux affair, the Swiss director Milo Rau is bringing one of the blackest chapters in Belgian history to the stage. Despite his controversial decision to use children in the performance, it is not designed to provoke.

‘I would like to change a few things, but that’s impossible, because it all actually happened.’ Rachel (8) reads the line from her script with a casualness that is both genuine and acquired.

It is disconcerting to see her sitting there, picking at her hair, in a minutely recreated living room setting that hardly leads you to suspect that it harbours the spirit of one of Belgium’s most hated child murderers.

You are looking at a child who is playing the role of a child in a theatre performance about Dutroux, but who is still a child herself. Does this small, blonde girl fully understand how sobering her words are, regardless of how many times the director and child psychologist may have explained things to her? Can a child ever preach about the bankruptcy of innocence? Five Easy Pieces is theatre for adults, not children.

We’ve known for some time now that the Swiss documentary theatre-maker Milo Rau – let’s just call him the most exciting European artist of the moment – is unafraid of taboos. The Rwandan genocide, the trial of the Ceausescus and the Yugoslavian civil war are just a few of the subjects to have undergone his razor-sharp analysis with his company International Institute of Political Murder. And now comes a piece about Dutroux, in which, at the request of the Campo Arts Centre, he is working with children for the first time." (Charlotte De Somviele, De Standaard)

Read full article: http://planning.campo.nu/files/fiveeasypieces_article_for-children_dutroux-is-a-grizzly-fairytale_destandaard.pdf