Play with Consequences?: Milo Rau’s Aesthetic of the Experience of Evil in Five Easy Pieces, The 120 Days of Sodom, and La reprise

Andreas Englhart examines the aesthetics of evil, particularly extreme evil, in the work of director Milo Rau, focusing on Five Easy Pieces. Englhart considers the ways in which postmodern aesthetics are beginning to turn once again toward the ethical and how this turn is both reflected and problematized in Rau’s “theater of the real.” The analysis includes aesthetic consideration, an examination of Rau’s rehearsal and creation techniques, and the ways in which audiences and critics have responded to these provocations in different performances.