Can words kill? First performed in 2011 and since presented to critical praise in over 25 countries, Milo Rau’s Hate Radio makes its timely U.S. premiere. Rau recreates the Rwandan RTLM radio station and its chilling broadcasts that demonized a population and prepared the ground for a genocide that claimed nearly a million lives. Hate Radio confronts the human cost of propaganda and the frightening ease with which the violence spreads.
Hate Radio takes place entirely within a glass-enclosed radio booth, as audiences listen to broadcasts (composed of verbatim materials, and performed in French and Kinyarwanda with English supertitles) through headsets, mirroring the incendiary dissemination of the state’s propaganda campaigns.
