Gisele Pelicot rape trial is now a play, showing at the French city where she spoke the truth and shocked the world

In the biggest rape trial in France, Gisèle Pelicot spoke about how her former husband drugged her and invited dozens of men to rape her for nearly a decade. The trial has been turned into a gut-wrenching stage play, which will be staged on Friday (July 18) in Avignon, the very French city where Pelicot spoke the truth about French patriarchy and rape culture.

The play on Gisèle Pelicot rape trial

The play titled The Pelicot Trial: Tribute to Gisèle Pelicot, is directed by Swiss theatre maverick Milo Rau and had its debut in Vienna in June. It takes a deep dive into the chilling abuse suffered by Pelicot at the hands of 51 men who were convicted last year for drugging and raping her over nearly a decade.

“To have done nothing would have been like not speaking of Gaza or Ukraine... a silence that’s complicit,” Rau, who has already turned some other real-life court trials into theatre, was quoted as saying in The Guardian newspaper.

Gisèle Pelicot, the woman who refused to stay silent

Pelicot, a global feminist symbol of courage who was recently awarded the Légion d’Honneur, the highest civilian honour of France, waived her right to anonymity in order to speak about her brutal experience. She revealed how, since 2011, her husband Dominique Pelicot spiked her food and drinks, and invited strangers he found via online forums to rape her in their Mazan home when she was unconscious.

“I want all of society to be a witness... Shame must change sides," she told the court during the 2024 trial.

Gisèle Pelicot trial will unfold in the three-hour-long play

The play, set inside a 14th-century Carmelite cloister, lasts three hours and uses real transcripts from the trial as well as police files, social commentary and psychiatric reports. More than 50 performers will take part.

“The courtroom was already theatre. So now we turn the theatre into a courtroom,” said director Rau about the play, which will also be livestreamed in cinemas and online to meet surging public interest.

The rape of Gisèle Pelicot: Monstrous acts by common men

The play will explore how ordinary men with regular jobs - the culprits included a nurse, a soldier, a journalist, and even a prison warden - participated in monstrous acts. The men, aged 26 to 74, were convicted last December.

“We see what culture they’re coming from – patriarchy, fraternity, rape culture,” Rau told The Guardian.

Gisele Pelicot trial drama will play in other cities

Besides the Avignon Festival, The Pelicot Trial will be performed at stages in Lisbon, Belgrade and Warsaw. It will be a powerful reckoning not just for France but for the entire world on the culture that enabled the rape of Pelicot for years.
“Through the Pelicot trial, it’s ourselves and our society on trial,” Rau said.