„Creating a space of Gentleness“: “Everywoman” and “The New Gospel” premiere in Salzburg and Venice

What remains, what counts at the end of life? After Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s “Jedermann” and Peter Handke’s “Zdenek Adamec”, “Everywoman” by Milo Rau and Ursina Lardi will celebrate its premiere this evening (19.08.)  at 7.30 pm as the third and final acting premiere of this year’s Salzburg Festival. Based on the allegorical play “Everyman” about death and salvation in faith, “Everywoman” is an intimate conversation about the past and the coming, life, death, loneliness and community. What is this – death? Why this extreme test – alone? What could be a humane, an artistic response to the scandal of our mortality?

 
After “Compassion. The History of the Machine Gun”, for which Milo Rau and Ursina Lardi travelled to the Congo together, and the production “Lenin”, in which they subjected the utopias of the 20th century to intensive questioning based on the last weeks of the Russian revolutionary, Rau and “the incomparable Ursina Lardi” (Die Zeit) embark for „Everywoman“ on an existential research into the heart of the loneliness of our time. “But Everywoman points far beyond individual fate, the monologue increasingly escalates into a furious world indictment,” the Wiener Zeitung wrote in a preliminary report on the evening, which interweaves live performance and video (dramaturgy: Carmen Hornbostel; stage: Anton Lukas; video: Moritz von Dungern; music: Jens Baudisch).

 
“Everywoman is about something very simple: creating a space of concentration, of gentleness. To look at one single person and to understand: this being exists, just as I exist. And to ask: Why don’t we put all our energy into finding just such spaces, into living together in them,” says Milo Rau in a conversation in the press kit of the play. Unfortunately, all performances in Salzburg are already sold out, but tickets are still available for the performances at the Berlin Schaubühne (from 15 October) or at NTGent (from 27 November). We look forward to welcoming you at one of the venues!

 
“Our way of life is the social sculpture of tragic failure,” writes Milo Rau in today’s issue of Standard, and continues – with a quote from “Everywoman”: “Everything, everything must change.“ Just two and a half weeks after the Salzburg premiere, Rau and his team turn their attention to perhaps the most powerful spiritual revolutionary in the history of mankind: with “The New Gospel”, Rau’s radical reinterpretation of the New Testament will celebrate its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 6, starring the Cameroonian activist Yvan Sagnet in the leading role of Jesus. A comprehensive press kit on the film (production Fruitmarket, Langfilm, IIPM) shot in southern Italy and its background can be found under this link.