Skip to main content
  • Home
  • Program
    • Season 20/21
      • Shows
      • Off-stage activities
      • Other events
      • Keywords
    • Calendar
  • Audience
    • Kids, teenagers & families
    • Youth and students
    • Teachers
    • Public with disabilities
    • Media Professionals
  • Vidy Unlimited Pass
  • Vidy + Médiation
    • Vidygital
    • Vidy + Podcasts
    • Vidy + Off stage activities
    • Vidy + Shared projects
    • Vidy + School
    • Vidy + Formation
  • Productions and Tours
  • The theatre
    • Project and History
    • The team
    • Foundation committee, support and partners
    • Renovation works
    • Wooden Pavilion
    • The Baraka
    • Bookshop
    • The auditoriums and workshop
    • Jobs
    • Vidy in media
    • Archives
  • Partners
    • Patrons' Circle
    • Friends of the theatre
    • Corporate Club
    • Partners
    • Payot Bookshop - Great Debates
  • Practical information
    • Access and Schedules
    • Contact details
    • Prices
    • Membership
    • Gift card
    • Free shuttles Geneva
    • Bourse aux billets
    • FAQ
    • Terms and conditions
  • Coproductions
  • Covid protection plan
  • Parcours Commun
  • Mon compte
  • Recevoir la newsletter
Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne

Menu

  • fr
  • en

Buy your tickets

Buy

The 120 Days of Sodom

Milo Rau

The 120 Days of Sodom

Milo Rau is associate artist with the Schauspielhaus in Zurich and the Theater Hora. With this piece he revisits Sade and Pasolini in order to question contemporary society and art and the manner in which they tend to confound quest for pleasure and fear of decline, mania for normality and predilection for scandal.

How can you make the probably most controversial film in history into a stage production with a cast that includes actors with a disability? In a joint project with the Theater HORA, which has been addressing the disabilities of their actors in internationally acclaimed productions, and won the Swiss Theatre Award in 2016, the director Milo Rau and the Schauspielhaus Zurich have “The 120 Days of Sodom” follow Rau’s previous production “Five Easy Pieces”, which was staged in 10 different countries and subject to censorship in various places due to having children acting out the crimes of paedophile Marc Dutroux. This has sparked off an international debate about the limits of art and the power of the theatre.

Starting from Pasolini’s scandalous art film “Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom“, Milo Rau continues to investigate the question of what is depictable and bearable on the stage.  In the Alpine Republic of Saló – the last refuge of some fascist regime – young men and women are kidnapped and held prisoners in a castle by four representatives of a declining totalitarian regime. In a series of sadistically debauched rituals the young people are abused and humiliated, and finally tortured to death in an orgy of violence.

It was Pier Paolo Pasolini’s last film, he was murdered before its release. It’s based on a novel by the Marquis de Sade, who advanced explicit representations of sexual power and violence as a type of diagnosis of late 18th-century society. Pasolini’s adaptation has been read as criticism of a certain type of rule that has replaced the fascist system but nevertheless continued the mechanisms of repression of the former – which is of course the modern consumer society including the normalization of excess and the constant optimization of humans.

Milo Rau’s production is a rather free interpretation of Pasolini’s and de Sade’s works set in the present time, in a post-modern feudalist society teetering between hedonism and doom, normalization mania and petty bourgeois lust for scandals. The piece touches on fundamental questions in art and society: What’s the meaning of power? What is voyeurism? How is the dignity of life to be protected? What is normal, what is abnormal? Where does the pain end – and salvation begin?

From 1 to 2 April 2017
Durée:
120 min (env.)
Arsenic

German (with FR and ENG surtitles)
Theatre

Prohibited under 18

  

Dates and times

Saturday, April 1, 2017 - 5:30pm Sat 01.04 17h30
Buy | at Arsenic
Sunday, April 2, 2017 - 2:30pm Sun 02.04 14h30
Buy | at Arsenic

M Price Category

Programme Commun

PARCOURS VIDY
Enchaînez certains spectacles et bénéficiez du tarif S pour la 2e représentation.Offre valable pour un même spectateur, dans la même journée.

Tickets, timetables and detailed information
Milo Rau

Stage Director

Milo Rau

Les créations du Bernois Milo Rau, essayiste, réalisateur de cinéma et metteur en scène, sont nourries d’enquêtes sociohistoriques. Elles interrogent l’identité de l’Europe postmoderne en s’intéressant à ses mythes médiatiques rassurants et à ses responsabilités inavouées. Questionnant autant les faits historiques que leurs représentations, elles se situent à la frontière incertaine entre documentaire et fiction. Milo Rau est à la tête de l’International Institute of Political Murder (IIPM) qu’il a fondé en 2007, et dirige aujourd’hui le NTGent. À Vidy, il a présenté en 15/16 The Dark Ages et Compassion – l’histoire de la mitraillette et Empire en 16/17 puis, invité par Vidy et pour Programme Commun, Les 120 Journées de Sodome créé avec le Theater Hora et le Schauspielhaus de Zurich. Vidy accueillait en 2018, La Reprise: Histoire(s) du théâtre (1) et Orestes in Mossul en 2019.

From the same artist
The Dark Ages
Compassion. The history of the machine gun
Empire
La Reprise: Histoire(s) du théâtre (I)
Orestes in Mosul
Familie
Learn more
In the Framework of Programme Commun
+
Credits

Text and staging:
Milo Rau

Scenography and costumes:
Anton Lukas

Video:
Kevin Graber

Lighting:
Christoph Kunz

Dramaturgy:
Gwendolyne Melchinger

Research and collaboration on the dramaturgy:
Rolf Bossart
Mirjam Knapp

Staging assistant:
Manon Pfrunder

Artistic Director of Theater Hora:
Michael Elber

Surtires français et anglais:
Dòra Kapusta.

With:
Noha Badir
Remo Beuggert
Gianni Blumer
Matthias Brücker
Nikolai Gralak
Matthias Grandjean
Julia Häusermann
Sara Hess Robert
Hunger-Bühler
Dagna Litzenberger Vinet
Michael Neuenschwander
Matthias Neukirch
Tiziana Pagliaro
Nora Tosconi
Fabienne Villiger

Production:
Schauspielhaus Zürich – Theater Hora

Press and Pro
Consult and download various documents related to the show: press file, HD photos, press reviews and more.

Photos HD

Download ZIP
Tour dates
9.01.2017

Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne

Directeur Vincent Baudriller

Avenue Gustave Doret

CH-1007 Lausanne

Billetterie +41 21 619 45 45

Administration +41 21 619 45 44

info [at] vidy [dot] ch

Accès

Horaires

Contact

Mon compte

Copyright @2018 Vidy

All rights reserved