6 Months After the Pelicot Trial, a Staging Brings Insight and Despair

It was a case that shook France. Last December, the husband of Gisèle Pelicot was convicted of drugging and assaulting her for over a decade, and for inviting dozens of men to rape her while she was unconscious.

Now, just six months later, the trial has already inspired a work of theater — in Vienna, as part of the city’s prestigious Festwochen festival. On Wednesday, the Swiss director Milo Rau, who has led the event since 2023, and the French dramaturg Servane Dècle presented “The Pelicot Trial,” a seven-hour reading of excerpts from the French legal proceedings and of interviews and commentary related to the case.

It was a long night at the Church of St. Elisabeth, a red brick Roman Catholic church in a southern district of Vienna. The sun was setting when the audience went in at 9 p.m., filling the pews to capacity. When the final words were spoken, at around 4:15 a.m., sunrise was near, and only around 30 people remained.

In a joint interview before the performance, Rau and Dècle said the wide range of material involved, with sections delving into history, philosophy and biology, was intended to dispel any notion that Pelicot’s story was an isolated event. “It’s an example of patriarchal violence,” Rau said. “The more we dive into it, the more we see that it’s the tip of the iceberg.”

Rau has a long history of bringing trials to the stage. In “The Last Days of the Ceausescus,” Rau reenacted the 1989 legal proceedings against the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife. In “The Congo Tribunal” and “The Moscow Trials,” he created mock criminal courts to analyze real political events.