What does it mean to witness another’s suffering? Scrolling through Instagram stories, I wade through a relentless stream of images: mothers’ faces contorted with grief, hollowed-out apartment complexes wrecked by bombings, bodies mangled to the point of abstraction cruelly intermixed with bagel snapshots, sunsets over American skylines, and screenshots of funny Tweets about Madonna’s Confessions II. I often find myself quickly skipping past images of human pain, but even so, they remain ever-present, contributing to a certain underlying hum of dread. But encountering another’s pain is very different from witnessing it.
From 2011 until 2020, in the suburbs of Paris, Gisèle Pelicot was repeatedly drugged by her husband who invited dozens of men over the course of the nine years to rape his wife while she lay incapacitated and unconscious. The French public and news media took a keen interest in the case, and over the course of the trial’s 16 weeks, coverage expanded beyond France in what was referred to as a “global” or “feminist reckoning.” The trial prompted discussion about the misogyny embedded deeply within our culture, as well as the role of digital technology in perpetuating violence. (Many of the rapists were frequent porn watchers, and the assaults were arranged on a location-based French chat site called Coco, which, alarmingly, relaunched in April of this year). Countless articles, books, and television documentaries have covered the crime. There were rumors that Meryl Streep would play Gisèle in an upcoming HBO series. It seemed that Gisèle Pelicot was everywhere, and her suffering was too.
On the evening of Passion Sunday, a group gathered at Judson Church for The Pelicot Trial, a performance by Servane Dècle and Milo Rau. The play takes the Gisèle Pelicot trial as its source material. Over the course of nearly five hours, we listen to testimony from the trials read here in succession by a wide range of New York actors, writers, and activists. No recording was allowed in the courtroom during the trial, so the texts that the actors speak are reconstructed from emails, public interviews, and notes from journalists who witnessed the trial in person. These texts, laid out as forty roughly sequential “fragments,” detail the crimes– the ways that she was drugged and abused– against Gisèle Pelicot in brutal detail. Laila Robins’ masterful performance of Pelicot’s initial testimony was especially difficult to witness. Her portrayal was incredibly brave while she remained on the verge of tears. Hearing the testimonies of the men that raped Gisèle was even more difficult: in fragment after fragment, they refused to admit their own culpability, insisting that Gisèle Pelicot, an unconscious woman, was somehow consenting to the abuse. After scenes and scenes that detail her suffering, I took a break at the three-hour mark, hiding in a bathroom stall for five minutes. It really felt like too much. During this self-made intermission, I considered making a break for the crisp night air and circling nervously around the Washington Square Park fountain until I felt ready to go home. But I’d committed to write this piece, and more importantly, I’d committed to witness Gisèle’s testimony that evening.
That Passion Sunday morning, before the performance, I went to church at 11am as I usually do. This year, I served as the crucifer: the person who carries the cross during the liturgy. During this service, there is no sermon, a break from the rituals of most Sunday services. Instead, we listen at length to the story of Christ.
He enters into Jerusalem on a donkey, greeted by a parade of people waving palms. He is betrayed by one of his disciples. He is tortured by state authorities. He is murdered in a spectacular miscarriage of justice. Even while dying on the cross, he is taunted and humiliated — Roman soldiers extend a stick with a sponge drenched in vinegar for Jesus to drink. In this Sunday liturgy, there is no preacher to guide us through the text, no pastor or deacon to tell us how to interpret these words in their historical context, no one to tell you how to feel. Instead, the only context is scripture — sung at my church by three men from the choir each year. Hearing about Jesus’ suffering, to put it bluntly, feels bad!
Listening to the Pelicot testimonies, I was struck by the parallels between the liturgy I had been part of that morning and that evening’s performance. There are the obvious formal echoes. Both of them take place in churches. The performance’s forty “fragments” echo the forty days of Lent — the season of penitence and reflection leading up to Easter. Beyond that, that evening’s performance required from me a type of active participation I’ve normally ever deployed in Church, that I’ve gained from an active participation in liturgy.
In church, you must choose to pay attention in a way that you don’t often have to during performances: arts events where directors, playwrights, actors, designers, and so many other theater makers have invested so much time, talent, and money in capturing and holding your attention. Megamusicals of the 1970s and 1980s act as an example, perhaps par excellence, of this. It would be hard to miss Miss Saigon’s helicopter flying in to airlift people away. Or Christ’s passion when Jesus Christ Superstar himself is screlting his lungs out up on stage. Present-day revivals work even harder relying on new immersive elements. The frankly delightful Cats: The Jellicle Ball transposes the musical to the New York City ballroom scene, with crisp dancers moving across the stage and throughout the theater at a breathless pace that befits the social video generation. A performer in Diane Paulus’ Phantom of the Opera revival Masquerade recently posted a TikTok proclaiming that the show’s immersive design was perfect for audiences with short attention spans — with so much going on, one can’t help but pay attention to the show. As much as I would love to rag on expensive musicals for competing for the ever-shorter attention spans of audiences, nearly all performances are designed to be able to.. Even in a 30-seat venue in a downtown storefront watching a quiet, intimate play, when you’re close up to a skilled and well-rehearsed actor, they’ll certainly ensure you don’t tune out. Theater and performance are ultimately invested in snagging audience’s attention.
But a liturgy leaves more time for your thoughts to wander, often by design: individual silent prayer and reflection are part of the experience. You really do have to lean in to stay with the liturgy. On a sleepy Sunday morning, it can sometimes be hard to feel fully engaged in the reading of a Bible passage. To listen carefully and witness is not always an easy choice to make or practice to cultivate, especially in the context of our hyperspeed digital present. And yet, here, at the presentation of Gisèle’s story, I was struck by how demanding the piece was on my attention — there was no set design or strategic lighting cues to direct my attention to one performer or another. There was just a table, where two women sat reading stage directions and the lawyer’s questions, and a podium for performers to read their fragments of testimonies. A video screen hung enlarging the performers’ faces. But in the absence of flashy design, those gathered in the room were left with little beyond the words. Words that conjure up graphic mental images of Gisèle’s suffering. Having seen countless Instagram posts in 2024 about the trial, scrolled through countless thinkpieces, and even read her memoir in short bursts on the subway in preparation to write this piece, I thought I understood Gisèle Pelicot and her story. To sit together with other people and witness it was a different experience, and a galvanizing one. When left with only words, we are left to reflect on something bigger than ourselves, where we are truly able to marvel at Gisèle Pelicot’s bravery.
It’s difficult to comprehend the scale of this violence in the quickness of social media — both the prolonged nature of the crime and the sheer number of men who perpetrated harm. It is also easy to sensationalize Gisèle’s suffering. In one fragment of the performance, a survivor of sexual violence who went to the court to witness the trial describes feeling titillated by watching the video evidence of the crimes. At the end of the evening, we heard the verdicts of the men who raped Gisèle Pelicot. They were found guilty and sentenced to years in prison. It is gratifying to see some form of justice served, but what else was this evening for than to embark on the work of creating a more just world?
On Easter Sunday, we are called to witness Christ’s resurrection. We are called to live as a transformed people in our world, to build God’s kingdom of justice on earth. I felt a similar sort of call listening to the Pelicot trial.
Photo by Greg Kessler.
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