© Daniel Seiffert

1994 was chiefly characterized by the brutal genocide in Rwanda, the aloofness of the international peacekeepers stationed in the region and the death of ten Belgian Blue Helmets. The popular Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines played an important role in this genocide. The radio channel should be classified as hate radio, called Tutsis cockroaches and incited the Hutus to murder all Tutsis and any moderate Hutus.
The German-Swiss duo Milo Rau and Jens Dietrich pored over the genocide material in depth, listened for hours to the recordings from the radio channel and the music they broadcast, and talked with witnesses. They gathered a few Rwandan and one white actor around them and accurately recreated the radio studio distilling their investigation into a compelling re-enactment play. Hate Radio is theatre that continues to quiver.
A daring art project that accurately unravels the role played by RTLM in the psychological preparation of the genocide headlined the Berlin paper TAZ after the première, while Cord Riechelman in the Frankfurter Allgemeine talks about a piece which is incomparable. ‘Hate Radio’ surpasses the pure documentary theatre, is deeply poignant and consistent in its message.