Overview

• On July 18, the Festival d’Avignon presented a one-off, four-hour performance of Le Procès Pelicot at the Cloître des Carmes, selling out 400 free tickets in under an hour and streaming live to Utopia Cinema and Facebook Live.
• Swiss theater-maker Milo Rau and dramaturge Servane Dècle directed the staging, casting Ariane Ascaride in the role of Gisèle Pelicot.
• The performance reconstructs courtroom testimonies from the landmark trial in which fifty-one men were convicted between September and December 2024 for drug-facilitated rapes orchestrated by her husband.
• Adapting an earlier eight-hour Vienna production, the Avignon version condenses live readings of legal documents and witness statements to probe consent failures and entrenched patriarchal dynamics.
• Audiences responded with a mix of stunned silence and sustained ovations, underscoring the production’s power to transform private trauma into a shared cultural experience.