Hate radio

Daniel Nelson

Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines played a deadly role in the 1984 Rwandan genocide and its call to kill has become emblematic for hate speech.

If you find it hard to imagine what it was spewing out, Swiss theatremaker Milo Rau has conjured up a frightening, horrifying two-hour recreation, Hate Radio.

Frightening and horrifying because you cannot listen and watch the three Hutus and a white Italian-Belgian gleefully, brutally, sickeningly pouring out poisonous invective without wondering whether humankind will ever be able to overcome its basest instincts.

The actors are brilliant and so is the set at the Battersea Arts Centre, a small radio studio into which we peer, as though observing a disturbingly cruel animal experiment.

It’s an heart-thumping recreation of hate-fuelled people working themselves and each other into a collective hysteria while maintaining fluency and making sense - albeit a convoluted sense that has become detached from its moorings.

It is a theatrical triumph, but exhausting, because finally your mind rebels against  listening to such a torrent of hate - especially in the knowledge that “Never again” is an empty cry. 

So we need to be reminded that this is how it happened, and how it will happen again. As was pointed out in a post-performance discussion during the production’s brief run at Battersea, you can hear - today - similar hate speech and incitement in the D R Congo.

+ Hate Radio documentary film is screening on demand, 19-22 April. It is based on the research carried out to produce the play and includes clips from the live performance; interviews with journalists; interviews with the cast; and archive footage. Info: https://bac.org.uk/whats-on/hate-radio-documentary/

• Hate Radio is at Batterseas Arts Centre, Lavender Hill, SW11, until 22 April. Performance is in French and Kinyarwanda with English surtitles. Info: https://bac.org.uk/whats-on/hate-radio