The Pelicot trial: he drugged her. They raped her.

The Vienna Festival describes the work as a scenic oratorio, restaged in local languages with changing casts of actors and public figures. Its first performance was in Vienna on 18 June 2025; the Avignon presentation followed on 18 July. The festival’s programme describes readings of examinations, pleas and commentary, developed with lawyers, experts, witnesses and feminist organisations. This is an assembled account with several kinds of speaker.

At Betty Nansen Teatret on 28 August 2026, the announced Copenhagen version involved more than thirty Danish actors and public figures, with translation by Madame Nielsen. The theatre listed four hours and thirty minutes, without an interval, while allowing people to leave and return. It also stated that the production had Gisèle Pelicot’s permission. That is a documented statement by the presenting theatre; the underlying agreement and its scope are not available in this source packet.

In the creators’ published interview, Dècle identifies journalists’ notes from nearly six hundred hours of hearings as a pivotal source, supplemented by conversations with reporters, researchers, a prosecutor, Pelicot’s lawyers and feminists. She acknowledges the limits of reconstruction. The production’s published description also lists interviews, expert opinions and commentary among its materials. Calling all of this a court transcript would give unlike records the same authority.

The chain matters: a statement is heard, recorded in a reporter’s notes, selected for a script, sometimes translated, and spoken by another person. Each passage can preserve meaning; each also introduces a decision. A defendant’s explanation remains that defendant’s explanation. A scholar’s interpretation remains an interpretation. An actor’s conviction, rhythm or pause cannot turn either into a judicial finding.

NYU Skirball’s presentation describes the work as readings of examinations, pleas and commentaries, performed at Judson Memorial Church in March 2026. The location and the assembled speakers are theatrical choices. A church, a theatre and a courtroom offer different expectations about judgment, attention and belief. Moving the words changes the conditions in which they are heard, even where their wording is preserved.

The Copenhagen cast likewise brought publicly recognizable people to the act of reading. Their presence can direct attention toward material an audience might otherwise avoid. Recognition can also lend borrowed credibility to a statement. The question for this audit is where that credibility belongs: to the documented source, the performer, or the arrangement that places one beside another. These are risks of the form, not claims about what every spectator experienced.

The Avignon programme frames the work as an examination of patriarchy. Dècle’s interview draws a useful boundary: a court determines individuals’ responsibility and cannot sentence an entire society. The broader structural account belongs to the artists’ argument. It has to be assessed through the connections it establishes, rather than borrowed from the existence of guilty verdicts.

The same interview questions the demand for an exemplary victim. That challenge matters to the tribute: admiration for Pelicot’s public decision must not become a condition imposed on someone who chooses privacy. The work’s stated purpose and permission support an account of its intentions. They do not establish every effect of its staging. This article audits published descriptions and the creators’ account; it does not claim attendance or a line-by-line comparison of the performed script with the trial record.