Benefit of the doubt - Het nieuwstedelijk

A young investigative journalist stumbles upon large-scale fraud, in which politics and business are involved. The deeper he digs, the more he himself gets entangled in a web of lies, truth, and doubt. When his own editor-in-chief recoils from publication, he decides to go solo and blog anonymously. Until a death threat falls into the mailbox. In the era of post-truth and alternative facts, doubt is a perverse system that continuously questions the truth. Lobby groups deliberately sow doubt to question the scientific consensus. Stijn Devillé sets up a new performance cycle in episodes with Voordeel van de Twijfel, where each episode is a self-contained theatrical thriller. Achtergrondinformatie Twijfel propels the scientist toward new, clearer insights. Whoever does not possess the full truth falls back on reasonable doubt to make a decision. That is the advantage of the doubt. But doubt can also be abused and perverted: we call that sowing doubt. Wetenschapshistorica Naomi Oreskes (Harvard) showed how tobacco lobby, asbestos or PFAS producers, and fossil industry deliberately sow doubt to, well, question the scientific consensus. Thus, this lobby sees a very different kind of advantage of the doubt. In the era of post-truth and alternative facts, doubt is a perverse system that continuously questions the truth. Scientists, authors, and journalists are thereby put in a bad light and sometimes even directly attacked. Hannah Arendt writes that constant lying is not aimed at making people believe these lies, but at ensuring that no one believes anything at all anymore. Whoever can no longer distinguish between truth and lie can no longer distinguish good from evil. After his acclaimed trilogy Hebzucht, Angst en Hoop, Stijn Devillé sets up a new multiple performance with Het Voordeel van de Twijfel, in successive episodes, which are produced over several seasons. Each episode is a self-contained theatrical thriller. For this, Devillé brings together a tough artistic team as usual and joins forces with a number of international partners, such as Het Nationale Theater in Den Haag, but also independent media and journalistic investigative agencies like Bellingcat (US), Apache (B), and Solomon (GR).