A Talk with Milo Rau

Milo Rau(1977, Bern) is director, writer, filmmaker and the artistic director of Wiener Festwochen, the well-known arts festival in the Austrian capital. Critics call him the "most influential" (Die Zeit), "most awarded" (Le Soir), "most interesting" (De Standaard), "most controversial" (La Repubblica), "most scandalous" (New York Times) or "most ambitious" (The Guardian) artist of our time. Since 2002 he has published over 50 plays, films, books and actions. Rau has received many awards, including the 3sat Prize 2017 and, as the youngest artist after Frank Castorf and Pina Bausch, the renowned ITI Prize of the World Theatre Day in 2016. In 2017, Milo Rau was voted "Acting Director of the Year" in a survey conducted by Deutsche Bühne. In 2018 he received the European Theatre Prize for his life's work. From 2018 to 2023, Milo Rau was artistic director of Ghent city theatre NTGent. Rau's radical and activist art gave NTGent a new impetus. Under his direction, the city theatre built a stellar reputation in the international art world. At NTGent, Rau created a series of lauded performances including La Reprise, Lam Gods, Orestes in Mosul, The New Gospel, Antigone in the Amazon and Medea's Children.

Resistance now stands up for artistic freedom: the global campaign, initiated by Milo Rau and the Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen) in 2024, links events and performances about art and politics with the struggle for democracy in different countries. The campaign connected 200 leading cultural organizations and reached 100 million people with the call for a new law at EU level Resistance now: Free culture.

In its second year, the Resistance now Tour is also searching for a “religion for the 21st century,” beyond capitalism, exploitation, and orthodox, traditional religions. As Rau says in his New York speech “The Rebirth of Tragedy”: “A return from our imperial and metaphysical dreams, the beginning of the rebirth of society and art from the idea of life and its tragic vulnerability.”

At the tour stop in Ljubljana, Milo Rau, director and artistic director of the Vienna Festival, discusses the necessity of this fundamental social change with Slovenian philosopher, psychoanalyst, and cultural theorist Mladen Dolar.