100 Million Readers: Our 2024 Year in Review

 

 

FREE REPUBLIC OF VIENNA

 

What a year: In 2024, Milo Rau’s performances and actions enchanted audiences from Taipei to New York, from Belgrade to Bourdeaux, from Shanghai to Cologne, from Prague to Stockholm – touring more than 20 countries. Celebrated from the Venice Biennale to the Vienna Festival, Rau’s newest work, the “unbearable masterpiece” Medea’s Children was voted into numerous Best of 2024 lists and listed as Best Play of the Year a. o. in the Netherlands, Austria and Italy. Following directors like Pina Bausch and Ingmar Bergman, Rau got the Politika Award 2024 for his theatre work.

 

But the Swiss director’s impact on the opera world was even more resounding: While Florentina Holzinger’s opera SANCTA, co-produced by Rau’s Vienna Festival, shocked audiences and critics alike, Milo Rau’s JUSTICE, an “opera like never before”, was nominated one of the “most notable new productions of the season” in the critics‘ survey of Opernwelt. Consequentially, Die Zeit declared Holzinger and Rau “the most important directors in the world today.”

 

But that’s not all: Süddeutsche Zeitung put JUSTICE on its list of “5 operas that will remain” – and Rau’s “masterful version” of Mozart’s Clemenza di Tito received the highest praise: “A true manifesto of what opera can be today”. No wonder that Rau “fell in love with the opera”, as he revealed to Art Basel Magazine.

 

ATHEM OF THE FREE REPUBLIC OF VIENNA

 

2024 was also the year in which Rau could finally realize his “childhood dream”: the ALL GREEKS FESTIVAL at NTGent, in which all 32 surviving Greek tragedies were performed. “I don’t know how to thank this city for the wonderful years I was able to spend here,” as Rau said at his last season presentation. Milo Rau, author of the “Ghent Manifesto” and artistic director of the Ghent City Theatre from 2018 to 2024 – a “game-changing stint” (The Stage) – will remain linked to the house as artist and curator of the Histoire(s) du Théâtre series.

 

But it was the proclamation of the Free Republic of Vienna on 17 May 2024 in front of 36,000 people with which Rau left the deepest mark on the European theater world last year. “The most exciting thing theatre has to offer at the moment,” was how Die Welt summed up the fireworks that ignited Europe’s largest crossover festival in 2024. “Vienna is finally back at the centre of the theatre world,” wrote Der Spiegel, while Agence France Presse witnessed “an institutional revolution” and die tageszeitung called Rau “without doubt the hero of the season”.

 

The Resistance Now! Tour – which started at the beginning of September – culminated in a petition to the EU Parliament that reached more than 100 million readers in 50 countries, according to the European Theatre Convention. With controversial speeches all over Europa such as How to Resist, Beauty will save the world, After the End of History and pamphlets like Culture is our Weapon (Guardian or Le Monde), the Resistance Now! Tour redefined the way cultural institutions are run.

 

“What we do today will be the heritage of the future, the poetry of the future,” as Milo Rau said in his year-end interview with the Portuguese newspaper Público. But will our actions of today stand the test of time? “Beyoncé, Lamar, Eribon, Ernaux, Rau and Holzinger: without the political turnaround in the arts, their lasting success would not have been possible,” as Die Zeit noted in a long essay last week – and criticized the “overestimation of the impact of art”.

 

But whatever the impact: We are looking back on a year that will be unforgettable for us – and forward to another year full of shared experiences and debates! Thank you for your support, cooperation, friendship, enthusiasm, solidarity and critical interest! Next stop: Sidney, Australia.

 

RESISTANCE NOW! – 50 CONTRIES – 100 MILLON READERS

 

 

FREE CULTURE: Join Europe’s largest Campaign for Artistic Freedom!

 

 

OPEN LETTER

 

 

SIGN NOW!

How to Resist? Milo Rau in Mosul and Strasbourg

 

 

A FILM SCHOOL IN MOSUL

 

 

10 DAYS WITH MILO RAU

 

Resistance Now: How to Defeat the Fascists with the Power of Love?

 

RESISTANCE NOW! TOUR

 

 

REPUBLIC OF LOVE – STREAM

 

 

IS THEATRE DANGEROUS?

 

Tomorrow, Wednesday, Milo Rau will open the Crossroads Festival at the Czech National Theater with the debate Is Theatre Dangerous? and the speech After the End of History. On Thursday, in Zurich, the Swiss director discusses the links between film and social change at the Films for Future Festival.

 

On Friday, Rau will give a speech in honor of the Jewish Museum Hohenems which is currently causing a stir with the exhibition Yalla. Arab-Jewish encounters. And finally, he travels to the Central European Forum to debate with Anne Applebaum, Timothy Garton Ash, Agnieszka Holland, Stanislav Asejew & Didier Eribon about the future of a democratic, open Europe.

 

Don’t miss out on the Resistance Now! Autumn Tour – live or online!

 

„AN INSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION“

 

 

„Art is our weapon“: Milo Rau & Florentina Holzinger push theatre beyond its limits

 

CAN BEAUTY SAVE THE WORLD?

 

 

MEDEA’S CHILDREN

 

 

RESISTANCE NOW!

„Almost pornographic“: Milo Rau in New York

 

ANTIGONE IN NEW YORK

 

Hardly any other artist has divided critics as much as Milo Rau has in recent years – especially in the American press. While the director of the Vienna Festival was showered with superlatives by the US media and several of his shows were voted into the best-of polls of the New York Times, Five Easy Pieces at the Skirball Center disturbed with its „almost pornographic intensity„. The Atlantic even wrote of Rau’s oeuvre: „His career would be impossible in the United States.“

 

But judge for yourself: after Stockholm, Amsterdam, Antwerp and Belgrade, the Resistance Now Tour lands in the United States this week. Already today, the Segal Center in New York is showing two films by Milo Rau, followed by a debate with the director and Cameroonian-Italian activist Yvan Sagnet, who plays Jesus in Rau’s feature film The New Gospel.

 

HOW TO RESIST

 

“Resistance has no form, resistance is the form,” as Rau said in his Opening Speech „How to Resist?” at the International Theater Institute’s World Congress last Thursday. What is the aesthetic of the “most influential artist working in political theater”? Workshops on Rau’s films, plays, actions and books at the universities of Yale and Columbia culminate at the end of the week in the Antigone in the Amazon shows at the Skirball Center.

 

But that’s not all. Before his visit to New York, Rau will open the BITEF Theater Festival in Belgrade: “Can Beauty Save the World?” While Antigone in the Amazon is being shown in New York, Rau’s newest work, the “unbearable masterpiece” Medea’s Children, lands in Zagreb and at the Czech National Theater: the bloodiest tragedy of the Western canon – played by children!

 

NEWS & TOUR DATES

 

From The Interrogation to Family, from Medea’s Children to Everywoman, from Germany to China, from talks to a revival of Rau’s “heart-ripping” opera Clemenza di Tito, from a whole week of shows and debates in Taiwan to “ten days with Milo Rau” in France: This autumn will explore Rau’s „global realism“ on all continents and in all its facets.

 

“For where politics fails, where it chases after national discourse gains, only art can provide a remedy: a place where empathy with others, but also with one’s own blind spots, becomes possible. A place where a new, tragic poetry with all its contradictions and moral pitfalls can emerge.” (ITI Speech)

 

NEWS

 

• „How to work with children?“ – Rau’s collaborator and children coach Peter Seynaeve about the work on Medea’s Children

• “The biggest theatre scandal of the Republic” – learn more about the upcoming Burgtheater-Show and the Open Letter by Elfriede Jelinek & Milo Rau

• “Milo Rau, Comparative Lenses” – call for papers for new Documenta edition.

• “Democracy is an agora open to everyone who isn’t a criminal” – Rau on the rise of the Far-Right in Europe.

• “Human rights & good manners” – Mely Kiyak and Milo Rau “bid farewell to this world”.

RESISTANCE NOW: Elfriede Jelinek & Milo Rau Publish Appeal Against Far-Right

 

JELINEK & RAU: RESISTANCE NOW

 

“Vienna is finally back at the center in the world of theatre,” wrote DER SPIEGEL last Saturday in a review of Milo Rau’s first edition of the Vienna Festival, while a few days ago taz – die tageszeitung called him “without any doubt the hero of the season”.

 

Despite such enthusiasm, the Austrian radical right-wing party FPÖ (Austrian Freedom Party) is calling in their election program for an immediate stop to subsidies for “woke events” such as the European Song Contest and the Vienna Festival.

 

It’s just one particularly absurd point in a program “full of hate and conspiracy theories” that calls for the transformation of the country into a nationalist “Fortress Austria”, alluding to Joseph Goebbels‘ “Fortress Europe”.

 

Time to resist! Together with Elfriede Jelinek – with whom Rau is preparing a production of her mythical anti-fascist play Burgtheater – Rau is publishing today the RESISTANCE NOW appeal: “Not a single vote for the FPÖ!”

 

BURGTHEATER BY JELINEK & RAU

 

But it is not only in Austria that the radical right is reaching for power. “One European country after another is falling,” said Milo Rau recently on Swedish television, commenting on the dismissal of the director of the Slovakian National Theater for political reasons.

 

Nationalist parties are on the rise across Europe, from the German AfD to the French Rassemblement National, from Hungary to Austria – and their first victim is the freedom of art.

 

This week, the Vienna Festival and partners from different countries are therefore launching the RESISTANCE NOW TOUR, starting with events in Stockholm, Amsterdam, Antwerp and New York.

 

RESISTANCE NOW TOUR

 

But the strongest resistance is art itself! While special focus programs are being organized in Taiwan, France and Sweden, Zagreb, Prague and Belgrade will experience the „unbearable masterpiece“ Medea’s Children which shook the Venice Biennale last July.

 

“Why isn’t American theatre like this?” asks The Atlantic in an essay. The Swiss director will try to answer this question in September: lectures, panels and films will be grouped around the guest performances of the North American shows of Antigone in the Amazon.

 

HOW CAN WE ACT TOGETHER

 

But the most beautiful recognition to Rau’s recent work as curator and director starts this Thursday at the Flemish and Dutch Theatre Festivals.

 

No less than 3 productions from his last season as Artistic Responsible of the Belgian company NTGent have been invited to the Flemish Theatre Festival 2024: Electra Unbound by Lua Casella, SERDI by Lara Staal and Gruis / aan de twijfel by Werktoneel – congratulations to all artists and the whole team!

 

Milo Rau himself opens the Dutch Theater Festival in Amsterdam with Antigone in the Amazon. And: Together with Lua Casella, Rau starts off the annual conference of the International Theatre Institute (ITI) on 19 September. Because the only answer to nationalism is artistic solidarity!

 

We look forward to an autumn full of debates, beauty and resistance!

„An Institutional Revolution“: Vienna Festival breaks all records!

 

THAT WAS THE FREE REPUBLIC

 

 

NUMBERS & QUOTES

 

 

VIENNA DECLARATION

 

 

“Staging an entire city” and “creating a Baroque World Theater” – that is what Rau and his fantastic team have achieved in Vienna, according to media reports. But that’s not all: the 2023/24 season continues at the Venice Biennale (Italy) with the “unbearable masterpiece” Medea’s Children and at the Aranya Theater Festival (China) with Rau’s and Edouard Louis‘ performance The Interrogation. We wish you a provocative, but also relaxing end of the season!

 

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