De Duivels / Les Diables

Local authorities fear a demon, with obscene motives, is making the monastery unsafe at night. Soon they catch sight of the progressive and sexually promiscuous priest Urbain Grandier. This accusation marks the start of one of the most infamous witch trials in history. Loudun becomes the scene of a grand political theatre; both the nuns and Grandier become actors in a legal spectacle that addresses brand-new societal issues. Is the nuns’ possession truly a supernatural intervention by evil powers, or is it a collective denunciation of their centuries-long (sexual) oppression? And is Grandier guilty, or is he merely a scapegoat in a fast-evolving world?

Krapp wants to open up this historical case and use it as raw material for a new theatre production. Mats Vandroogenbroeck wrote a new theatre text based on historical materials, from novels and case files to accounts from spectators, exorcists, victims and accused. Nona Demey Gallagher takes on the direction, Timo Sterckx plays Urbain Grandier. 

Right at this time of major change – of scientific revolution, emerging enlightened thinking, growing atheism and feminist emancipation – forgotten devils re-emerge, stronger, more powerful and more conservative than ever before.