Five Easy Pieces, concept, text and direction by Milo Rau, a Swiss theatre and film director, journalist, essayist and lecturer,  is a profound, funny and confrontational experience that blends realism and brutality, probing the limits of what children know, feel, and do and initiating them in the emotional and political absurdities of the adult world. Using performers aged under 13, and the biography of the country’s most notorious criminal, child killer Marc Dutroux, the performance sketches a brief history of Belgium and reflects on the (re)presentation of human feelings on stage.

In five simple exercises, short scenes and monologues, the young actors sneak into different roles – a police officer, Dutroux’s father, one of the victims, the parents of a dead girl – in re-enactments they’ve rehearsed with adult actors: a visit to the scene of the crime, a funeral, a moment in the life of Dutroux’s father. At times funny, at times deeply disturbing, these scenes unfold against a projected backdrop of moments from Belgium’s history, from Congo’s declaration of independence to the 1998 “White March” against corruption. Aesthetic and theatrical questions blend with moral issues: How can children understand the real significance of empathy, loss, old age, disappointment, or rebellion? What does it mean for adults to observe them in these scenes? And what does it say about our own fears, desires and taboos?

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