While the world tours of Rau’s most recent creations Antigone in the Amazon and Medea’s Children continue, Rau and his team are currently rehearsing their upcoming show The Seer in Mosul, Iraq.

“What a coincidence that right now, 22 years after the American invasion of Iraq, another seer’s speech has reached us: THE SECOND COMING, the American translation of Elfriede Jelinek’s dark, prophetic play about Trump’s election victory.” (Milo Rau)

Nobel Prize Winner Jelinek, translator Gitta Honegger and Rau immediately decided to present it in a double reading at the very moment of Trump’s Inauguration yesterday (20.01.) – simultaneously and live from Mosul (Ursina Lardi) and New York (Nicole Arsani-Cox).

Starting yesterday (20.01.) at 1pm Washington Time, 7pm Vienna Time and 9pm Mosul Time, Jelinek introduced this first global reading of her work with a statement. THE SECOND COMING was followed by a Q&A with Honegger and Rau, moderated by Frank Hentschker.

This cooperation of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center New York, the College of Fine Arts Mosul and the Vienna Festival is part of the Resistance Now! campaign, in whose name 200 European cultural institutions joined together to fight the destruction of the fundamental rights and freedom of opinion by the new authoritarianism.

But that’s not all: the new year begins with yet another premiere. The mythical series Histoire(s) du Théâtre, curated by Milo Rau, is receiving its sixth instalment, following parts staged by Liddell, Linyekula, Warlop, Etchells and Rau himself.

With No Yogurt for the Dead, world famous director Tiago Rodrigues attempts to imagine his father’s last words – premiering this Thursday, January 23 at NTGent, Belgium.

Don’t miss THE SECOND COMING GLOBAL READING in New York and Mosul and Rodrigues’s heart-breaking Histoire(s) du Théâtre VI in Ghent!