Milo Rau's Five Easy Pieces: Belgian Trauma on Stage

Milo Rau's 'Five Easy Pieces', nominated for the Ubu Awards as best foreign work in Italy, premiered at Triennale Milano and later at Sardegna Teatro in Cagliari. The play confronts the criminal history of Marc Dutroux, the 'Monster of Marcinelle', whose 1990s child abductions and murders shook Belgium. Rau links this to Belgium's colonial past in Congo, as Dutroux spent his early years in Africa. The performance features children aged 8 to 12 who reenact the crimes under the direction of an adult actor playing the director, creating a cognitive dissonance between victim and perpetrator. The work uses a metatheatrical structure with video projections, interviews, and casting scenes to explore manipulation and power in directing. Dutroux himself never appears; the focus is on the testimonies of the father, victims' parents, and police. The play critiques institutional failure, including police negligence and the king's silence. Hendrik Van Doorn, a cast member, explained that Campo (Ghent) commissioned the piece, and Rau asked his collaborators when they felt truly Belgian—the answer was during the White March, a silent protest for Dutroux's victims. The title references Stravinsky's educational piano piece. The play consists of five tableaux, each centered on a different character. Rau's approach is clinical, avoiding easy emotion, and forces the audience into a voyeuristic relationship with childhood and national trauma.