Thursday, December 06, 2018
The Use Of Children In Milo Rau’s "Five Easy Pieces": Exploitation, Or Confrontational Theatre?
The Theatre Times: This summer, as I was about to embark on initiating my fifth divisive performance with children and teenagers, the question about the ethics of engaging them in theatre for adults reintroduced a well-known fever and dilemma. The use of youngsters is a silver bullet that most of us get hit by; the effect is similar to using music to glorify a dramatic moment which may otherwise be too weak to stand on its own: it cracks our hearts open, and our cold, conscious judgment is mesmerized by the strong effect of our instinctive emotional reaction.
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The Play “Five Easy Pieces” strikes me as a powerful piece of theatre that makes the audience confront the horrors of crimes against children. I agree with the author's cautious tone when talking about the way the show does this, but I wish to warn against his assumption that the children do not understand “adult emotions such as shame, grief, fear, loss and so forth.” These “adult” emotions are more accurately described as “human” emotions. Unfortunately so many children around the world have been confronted with a fear and loss so greater than most of us will feel in a lifetime. Any child that has lost a close parent, grandparent or even beloved family pet has felt that grief and that grief is a real emotion and is not simply “to complex,” just as the play is not “to complex” to the children participating. I could understand the assumption that theses specific children may not have felt these emotions to the extent of adults if the show was focused on toddlers but these children range from 8-13. A 13 year old can clearly understand all of these emotions and is not just a child you can spell a word over to hide the meaning.
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