Talking 'Bout a Revolution: Milo Rau and the Free Republic of Vienna
On the Swiss director's attempts to shake up one of Europe's biggest cultural festivals.
Hello, this week I’ve been thinking a lot about festivals. My inbox is rapidly filling up with Edinburgh Fringe press releases and The Stage just published my piece about Milo Rau’s attempts to shake up the Wiener Festwochen and the radical potential of festivals more generally. Rau is a fascinating figure and I wanted to go a bit deeper on his plans for the festival.
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Two people in brightly coloured balaclavas are locked in an embrace. It’s an undoubtedly striking image, confrontational but also tender This is the banner image of the 2024 edition of the Wiener Festwochen, the festival of theatre, opera and visual art that takes place every year in Vienna, and pictures of balaclava-clad figures in various poses are dotted all over town, juxtaposed with the city’s creamy Hapsburg grandeur.
It's also an image intended to send a message, that this year’s festival will be a little different from previous iterations. For a five-week period across May and June you can still see some of the biggest names on the European scene in venues around the city and see some of the past year’s most talked about shows, including Carolina Bianchi’s The Bride and the Goodnight Cinderella.
This also happens to be Milo Rau’s first festival as artistic director and he has plans to change the institution from the inside. He has created the Free Republic of Vienna, the festival as a radical entity, as Rau explained at the press conference in which, yes, balaclavas were worn. It even has its own anthem. (Typical lyric: don’t give the fascists a chance). What does this mean in practice?
We’ll get there.
Anyone writing about the Swiss director usually uses some combination of the words ‘scandalous,’ ‘provocative’ or ‘confrontational’ to describe him. In 2007, he set up the International Institute of Political Murder, a production company with a focus on socio-political issues and conflicts. One of the projects created with the IIPM was an event called The Moscow Trials, inspired by the sham trial that saw activist band Pussy Riot sent to a penal colony following a guerrilla performance in front of a Moscow cathedral. Instead of performers, real Moscow citizens were given a forum to debate Putin’s stifling of freedom of expression. Rau would go on to repeat the trial format in different settings.
The Ghent Manifesto
From 2018 until last year, Rau was artistic director of NTGent, a city theatre in Belgium, where he cemented his reputation as one of European theatre’s biggest provocateurs. On taking on the role, he published the Ghent Manifesto, a series of ten rules that each production staged there would be required to follow at least partially, part of a vision for a ‘city theatre of the future.’
Literal adaptation was verboten, at least two different languages must be spoken on stage during any one production and at least two of the actors on stage must not be professional actors. The first commandment was “It’s not just about portraying the world anymore. It’s about changing it. The aim is not to depict the real, but to make the representation itself real.” Though it strikes me that the second one was just as fundamental to his practice': “Theatre is not a product, it is a production process. Research, castings, rehearsals and related debates must be publicly accessible.
The manifesto also stated that “at least one production per season must be rehearsed or performed in a conflict or war zone, without any cultural infrastructure.” This led to productions like Orestes in Mosul, a 2019 production that saw him staging the Oresteia in the Iraqi city of Mosul, which had been devastated by war and only recently liberated from Islamic State.
The production blended live performance with material shot in the shattered city, with NTGent actors – two of whom are of Iraqi origin – interacting with a chorus of Iraqi performers on screen, the merging of the live and pre-recorded often impressively seamless. In that aspect alone it was impressive. There was something powerful about seeing art being made against this backdrop, but also a palpable imbalance in terms of the stakes and relative power of those involved. (I’ve heard more than one person describe his approach as ‘colonial.’) This New York Times article gives a not uncritical insight into the process, which was also documented by Daniel Demoustier.
I interviewed Rau last year for The Stage about Antigone in the Amazon, a collaboration between NTGent and the Landless Workers’ Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra), a mass social movement of rural people fighting social inequality in Brazil, weaving art and activism together. They are more than just a campaigning group, but a way of life.
At the heart of the production was a re-enactment of the moment in 1996, when Brazilian police opened fire on a group of farmers who had occupied a stretch of the Trans Amazonian Highway. Nineteen people were killed, and two more people later died of their injuries. Last year, dozens of activists, including survivors of the massacre, recreated the scene, blocking the highway. Rau likened the re-enactment to “a passion play.”
The resulting production, like Orestes in Mosul, blended live performance with filmed footage from Brazil. The indigenous actor and activist Kay Sara was supposed to play Antigone in Europe, but she decided to return home ahead of the tour, so another actor - Federico Araujo – ended up doubling as both Polyneices and Antigone. He was good but it was hard not to be aware of this absence. I remember feeling, when watching it in Vienna last year, that essentially the filmed material, particularly the re-enactment, but also the other footage of the MTS members was more engaging than the actual attempts to stage Antigone. There were definite lulls during these bits. But even though as a piece of theatre it felt a bit disconnected, as an undertaking it was eye-opening. It has made me think about what activism could look like and what art could do. The methods of the MTS have clearly had an impact on Rau.
Not long before we spoke, it had been announced that he had been appointed new artistic director of the Wiener Festwochen. I asked him how he would deploy his radical vision within the frame of an international festival. “If you think of what a festival actually is,” he replied, “it’s an opportunity to “create a global space where you invite voices that didn’t exist before”. Can you still be a disrupter while at the helm of a comfortably funded institution, with all the external pressures that entails? What kind of change can realistically be achieved? (Here’s a really great Spike interview in which he discusses some of these questions, as well as leadership models, the purpose of international festivals and Austrian politics).
The festival was established in 1951 with the aim of turning post-war Vienna into a major cultural metropolis. It’s now a major part of Austria’s – and arguably Europe’s - cultural calendar and each year it opens with a big open-air concert outside Vienna’s imposing city hall, as it did this year.
A huge stage had been erected in front of city hall and the whole building was lit up, but instead of in the familiar white and red, in a splurge of green and purple. Next, we see a video of Rau sitting at the mayor’s desk along with the evening’s musical director Herwig Zamernik, lead singer of Fuzzman and the Singing Rebels. They start to give the opening address only to throw their papers in the air and charge down the stairs to the waiting stage where a choir had amassed – a sea of people in colourful balaclavas.
This memorable entrance was followed by an evening of music from Austrian group Bipolar Feminin and Pussy Riot, with a furious, roared Putin Pissed Himself. There were speeches, from Swiss playwright and novelist Kim d’l Horizon and the Ukrainian director Stas Zhyrkov, among others. There was a video address from Austrian playwright and novelist Elfriede Jelinek. I don’t speak German but the word ‘solidarity’ cropped up a lot along with the partisan chant “smrt fašizmu” and at least one very clear call for “ceasefire now.”
The Council of the Republic
Central to Rau’s vision for the Free Republic of Vienna is the Council of the Republic. This is made up of famous names including Jelinek, Nobel-winner Annie Ernaux and actor Sandra Hüller as well as 69 Viennese citizens. I was intrigued by the make-up of the council so asked about the selection process. This was the response from the festival:
“The council members were found via 23 partner institutions in the 23 districts of Vienna, as it was clear to us from the beginning that we would have to delegate the selection in order to appeal to more than just a very limited community (our core audience). The partners are very diverse and cover areas such as culture, sport, education, leisure, religion and jurisdiction. Institutions that represent a queer community or support people with disabilities, schools, sports clubs, outdoor swimming pools and many more. All institutions were able to send three people from their community to the Council of the Republic. This means that the Council is not a perfect 1:1 reflection of Viennese society - and yet it is an attempt to reach very different milieus via the partners and to invite people to participate. For example, we have a homeless woman on the Council, two people with a physical disability, several high school students and an apprentice, all of whom contribute their knowledge and experience to the Council.”
The council members are basically there to help rethink the festival for future years. To ask questions about pricing strategy, sustainability and sponsorship (a super-hot topic at the moment). They will also act as jury members at the Vienna Trials, a return to Rau’s forum format, debating such questions as whether Austria’s right wing FPO might be considered a threat to democracy under Austria’s own constitution.
During the festival, Vienna’s folklore museum has been repurposed as a kind of activist hub where people can gather for talks and workshops. It will also double as the festival office, with everyone interacting. I went to take a look but there was nothing going on because it was Sunday, though I had a quick look inside – the walls were papered with posters for Climate Camp and other similar activities - before having a (€4,40 – Vienna is not a cheap city) cappuccino in the museum’s pretty rose garden/cafe. An upstairs space at the Volksbühne has also been repurposed as the Club of the Republic, basically a space for gigs and partying (free entry), where I went to see Fuzzman do his stuff, with some unexpected and very vigorous backup from Rau on tambourine.
This has, perhaps inevitably, not been warmly received by everyone. Given the current political climate in Austria, it’s no surprise there’s been some furious pushback against Rau’s “left-wing agenda.” The controversy started even before the Free Republic concept was announced when a programmed performances by the Greek-Russian conductor Teodor Currentzis were cancelled because of concerns over his links to Russia. This slightly sniffy article captures some of the negative responses. Questions are, again inevitably, being raised about funding – how much does all of this cost? Rau, however, seems like he’s not only ready for that but relishes the challenges ahead. (“In Belgium, where I worked for a long time, it’s so much gentler and people are more tolerant. It’s not like that here, but I’ve always liked it. I actually think the stahlbad [steel bath] of toxicity is great,” he said in this interview.)
Did some of it feel like cartoon anarchism? A little bit, albeit with a sense of humour. Also, the programme, while containing work by some of the most interesting theatre artists around - Holzinger, Lukasz Twarkowski, and Rau himself - is also the kind of programme one could imagine at any of the big European festivals. The real provocations took place in the side programme and other events.
However, as artists face pressure everywhere to defang and depoliticise their work, to shut up, to play nice, having someone who’s unapologetic about what they stand for - and against - feels necessary and welcome.
And as I said in The Stage article, this is only year one of a five-year mandate. At the end of the festival, the Council will draw up a constitution, a declaration of intent for future editions. It’ll be fascinating to see what comes out of this process – and how it is implemented.
This week in European theatre
A round-up of festivals, premieres and other upcoming events over the next seven days.
ATT – Autor:innen-Theatertage, the festival of contemporary German drama at the Deutsches Theater Berlin, features work by Kim d’Horizon and Rimini Protokoll’s Stefan Kaegi and concludes with the Long Night, showcase of work by writers-in-residence. It runs from 4th-15th June.
LIFT – The London International Theatre Festival, which takes place every two years in spaces around the capital, kicks off on 5th June with Canadian actor and writer Cliff Cardinal’s The Land Acknowledgement, or As You Like It. You can read more about this year’s programme in my interview with artistic director Kris Nelson.
Holland Festival – The 77th edition of the Netherlands festival features a theatre programme including work by Tiago Rodrigues, Christiane Jatahy and Wunderbaum’s salute to the Alfa Romeo, as well as The Second Woman, the 240hour theatre experience featuring the actor Georgina Verbaan. The festival runs from 6th-29th June.
Thank you for reading! You can contact me about anything newsletter-related on natasha.tripney@gmail.com
This is a really great write-up of the festival and Rau's vision for it.... And a great overview of Rau's practice too. From the sound of it, it feels as though battle lines in the culture wars are deeply entrenched. Does the art/ theatre match the polemic? Does it matter? (Also curious to know what is happening in Ghent now that Rau has moved on - does the manifesto live on? Or was it wedded to the AD's drive and charisma?