𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

The Pelicot Rape Trial created by Swiss director and playwright Milo Rau started as a stand-alone piece as part of the Festival d’Avignon, an arts festival in the town where the crimes took place.

The performance then travelled across cities in Europe, with only one show per location.

Milo Rau said: “It’s about disentangling the story from the couple Gisèle and Dominique Pelicot – turning it into a story that belongs to all of us and at the same time to none of us.”

In London, the piece is being put on at London County Hall, by the Young Vic Theatre, on 30 November.

The theatre’s website said the performance is a “profoundly affecting piece of documentary theatre, comprised of testimonies and written accounts from the trial, (which) pays tribute to the ordinary woman who opened the way to change”.

It added: “The Pelicot trial is undoubtedly the most publicised, discussed, and symbolic of our time.

“As a sociological study it shows that in a typical Western European city – the small town of Mazan in the south of France – perfectly ordinary men from all social classes and age groups are capable of perhaps the most extreme crime: the repeated rape of an unconscious woman.”

Fifty men were found guilty of rape or sexual offences after a three-and-a-half-month trial.

Young Vic Theatre’s artistic director and chief executive, Nadia Fall said: “Milo Rau’s extraordinary testimonial piece The Pelicot Trial breaks out beyond our theatre walls to County Hall; a piece of confronting event-theatre which bears witness to the harrowing story of Gisèle Pelicot.”

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