Five Easy Pieces, staged at Manchesterīs Sick! festival, explores the case of the Belgian paedophile and murderer. Director Milo Rau explains why he chose to let children tell the storyWhen Milo Rau was approached by a Belgian arts centre to make a show with a young cast of actors, he asked himself what it was that most concerned that countryīs children. `I added one and one together and came up with Marc Dutroux,` says the director. Dutroux is the imprisoned Belgian paedophile and murderer who in the mid-1990s kidnapped and raped six girls, killing four of his victims. The show, Five Easy Pieces, features one adult and seven children under the age of 12 who take on the roles of the murderer, his victims and an investigating policeman.`Maybe if I hadnīt trained as a sociologist before I started making theatre I wouldnīt have had the idea,` says Rau, whose company goes by the name of the International Institute of Political Murder. `But when I make a piece of theatre I use the same methodology that a sociologist would use. If Iīm doing a play about Putinīs Russia or Congo, I go there, talk to the people and sometimes even invite them on stage. For me the Dutroux case marked a moment of cultural change. I was interested in looking at what we find out about ourselves when we let children tell this story back to us.`Children do need protecting. We had a lot of material, some of it very dark, and we didn`t share that with them Continue reading...
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