Maud
25 February 2023
Vault Festival
5.0 out of 5.0 stars
Another Vault Festival show that quite impressed me was Maud – A Modern-Day Lynching.
The show tackles the case of Ahmaud “Maud” Arbery, a 25 year old Black man who was murdered by three white men while he was out jogging in Satilla Shores, in Georgia.
The show is a verbatim play, re-creating the words spoken by the killers as they hunted Maud down, their interrogations by police, and later court appearances, as well as utilizing media snippets about the case, and about racism and violence against people of colour in general.
The case rose to infamy due to a video, shot by one of the assailants on his mobile phone, being posted on social media to raise awareness of the incident, finally leading to arrests over two months after Maud’s death.
This show is visceral in its intensity, harrowing in its content matter, and incredibly well presented, telling the all too familiar tale of racism leading to the death of an innocent young person of colour.