Rehearsals on Antigone in the Amazon are nearing their first climax: Coming Monday, 17 April 2023, the largest massacre perpetrated by the Brazilian military police against the Brasilian Landless Movement (MST) in 1996 will be re-enacted at the scene of the crime: the occupied Transamazonica near Marabá in the Brazilian State of Pará.

The mythical Transamazonica Highway, which not only cuts through the rainforest but also destroys indigenous societies, will be paralyzed for a whole day by MST and Milo Rau’s team and used as a political stage for resistance.

Hundreds of activists, including the survivors of the massacre, who also form the choir for the theatre production Antigone in the Amazon will participate in the restaging of the horrible massacre. “So that what happened is never forgotten,” as a spokeswoman of MST announced.

Meanwhile, the filming of a central part of Antigone in the Amazon is taking place: the dark prophecy of the seer Tiresias about the coming downfall of capitalist society and the necessitiy of resistance. The role of Tiresias is performed by world-famous indigenous philosopher and activist Ailton Krenak, author of Ideas to postpone the end of the world.

ANTIGONE IN THE AMAZON
COMING SOON

After the productions Orestes in Mosulin the former capital of the Islamic State and the Jesus film The New Gospelin the southern Italian refugee camps, Milo Rau and his team travel to the Amazon in Brazil to conclude their Trilogy of Ancient Myths. On an occupied piece of land, in collaboration with MST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra), the world’s largest landless workers’ movement, they create with Antigone in the Amazon an allegorical play about the violent devastations and displacements caused by the modern state.

On 17 April 2023, the largest massacre perpetrated by the Brazilian military police against the MST in 1996 will be re-enacted at the scene of the crime – an occupied highway through the Amazon – as part of the Brazilian premiere of Antigone in the Amazon. The European premiere is scheduled for 13 May at NTGent, Belgium. Indigenous activist Kay Sara will play the role of Antigone, Teiresias will be embodied by South American theatre legend Zé Celso, and the choir will consist of survivors of the massacre.

Connected to the making of Antigone in the Amazon is a political campaign in cooperation with MST and important international non-governmental organisations directed against European multinational companies that shamelessly enrich themselves from the destruction of the Amazon forest. Brazilian director Fernando Nogari, known for his video clips for singer Selena Gomez, provides the video clip for the campaign and a film about the making of Antigone in the Amazon that looks behind the scenes.

“There is no profit in this world. There is only life.”
Kay Sara, protagonist of Antigone in the Amazon

YOUNG GODS ON TOUR

“Milo Rau’s most simple, most intimate and best performance of recent years,” wrote De Morgen after the Ghent premiere of The Interrogation. After previews in Amsterdam, Paris and Zagreb, the shows at NTGent mark the start of an extensive tour through Flanders and Europe of the play, performed “superbly” by Arne De Tremerie.

“There is a whole generation of young gods in Ghent acting at world level”, Rau said to the Belgium television. Today Thursday premieres a new show by one of these very real “goddesses” of NTGent’s global ensemble: Princess Isatu Hassan Bangura’s Great Apes of the West Coast, a biographical tale full of beauty and wisdom.

On 19 January, Princess Isatu Hassan Bangura and Arne De Tremerie can be experienced together: The month-long focus on Milo Rau’s work at the National Theatre La Colline, Paris, starts with a “moment of death, live on stage”: Grief & Beauty, “one of the most anticipated plays of 2023″, according to Le Figaro. The focus continues with the “cruel and heartbreaking” play Family.

Last but not least: A brand new version of IIPM’s classic Hate Radio (pictured above) starts its tour through Switzerland, France and England already tomorrow Friday. One of the “must see shows to see across the UK 2023” according to The Stage. Get one of the last tickets now!

WHY ART? NEW BOOKS

“Order must be disturbed, again and again. Our institutions, our museums, our theatres, our parliaments and our schools must be reformed,” said Milo Rau at his third Poetics Lecture on the eve of the launch of the Let Shepenesis return home campaign and the opening of the retrospective Why art?

In 2023, two overview volumes will be published that summarise Milo Rau’s theatre practice and art theory: the interview and essay volume Was Theater kann (What Theatre Can Do) and the comprehensive manifesto Die Rückeroberung der Zukunft (The Reconquest of the Future).

While recent volumes such as Doing Dramaturgy, Art as an Interface of Law and Justice or Making the Representation Real look at Rau’s work from the outside, here is an opportunity to look deep into the engine room of the work of IIPM and NTGent.

“Working globally means creating networks of theoretical debates and practical solidarity, that are not foreseen in the current system,” as Rau wrote in one of his essays. We look forward to the debates of the coming year! On and off the stage – together with you!

• “Likely to be one of the most talked about shows of the year” – The Stage on Antigone in the Amazon

• “I don’t just want to do theatre” – Milo Rau interviewed in Mouvement

• “Utopia in the Rainforest” – documentary on Kay Sara (protagonist Antigone in the Amazon)

• “Is there a final image of war that will end war?” – Milo Rau/IIPM & Ursina Lardi prepare Philoctetes for Schaubühne Berlin

“I’m under the influence of this young actor,” confessed a critic yesterday in his 2022 Best-Of. Arne de Tremerie, a member of NTGent’s global ensemble, stars in “The Interrogation,” that Milo Rau wrote and directed together with the French author Édouard Louis last year.

After acclaimed performances at the ITA Amsterdam in March and the National Theaters of Croatia and Paris during summer, “The Interrogation” will open the new year on January 6, 2023 – at Rau’s artistic home, the NTGent! Get your ticket for Louis/Rau’s “fundamental ode to failure” here.

Closing out the year tonight will Milo Rau’s second major theatrical success of 2022: his “act of universal humanity”, the adaptation of the Swiss national myth “William Tell”. Rau’s “Volks-Tell” (“People’s Tell”) was the best-selling Schauspielhaus play of the year, selected in the annual Best-Of list of the Swiss television’s critics’ poll and inspired discussions about the role of a modern city theatre during months.

2022 was the year when touring started again. “The most essential play since years,” wrote La Libération after the Paris premiere of Milo Rau’s and Ursina Lardi’s “Everywoman”. “Family”, “Everywoman” and “Grief and Beauty” drew the highest praise from critics, but also sparked opposition due to their radical aesthetics.

“It provokes emotions that cannot be expressed,” wrote Repubblica on the occasion of the Italian tour of “Grief & Beauty”. To kick off 2023, French National Theatre La Colline will host a multi-week focus on Milo Rau’s work. Parallely, a new version of Rau’s classic “Hate Radio” will be presented in Switzerland, France and England in January.

A special mention should be made of Miet Warlop’s/NTGent’s “One Song. Histoire(s) du Théâtre IV” that was selected in the New York Times Best Of 2022. It’s already the 3rd time a play of NTGent’s “Theatre History” series has made it into the annual NYTimes selection, following “La Reprise. Histoire(s) du Théâtre I” (Milo Rau) and “Liebestod. Histoire(s) du Théâtre III” (Angelica Liddell).

All three plays will tour in 2023 – and the 5th chapter of NTGent’s and IIPM’s acclaimed “Theatre History” is already in the pipeline!

“I think Milo represents a break in art history,” French writer Édouard Louis told today Belgian newspaper De Morgen. And indeed, Milo Rau and the NTGent made history in 2022: by founding a film school in Mosul together with the Mosul Fine Arts Academy and the UNESCO. The first 9 films are already touring European film festivals. Now, NTGent and Milo Rau are working to establish a film festival in Mosul!

2022 was also the year of political action in Europe. In March 2022, Milo Rau, NTGent and IIPM published together with hundred activists and politicians the “Ghent Declaration” calling for the regularization of Belgian Sans-Papiers. The “Ghent Declaration” was part of the series “School of Resistance”, which was awarded 2022 the “Segal Center Award for Civic Engagement” as “one of the 10 most significant theatre and performance projects worldwide.”

And 2022 was also the year of retrospectives: The Venice Biennale dedicated the survey show “Activism and Intimacy” to Milo Rau, Doc Alliance opened the platform “The Milo Rau trials”. The University of Cincinnati organized an international congress about Milo Rau’s “Political Theatre of the Future”. And Rau himself critically examined his work in the much-discussed volume “Theatre is Democracy in Small” and the “Zurich Poetics Lectures“.

To close the year, Milo Rau’s hometown St.Gallen awarded him the Great Culture Prize, accompanied by the retrospective “Why Art?”. IIPM invested the prize money in the campaign “Let Shepenesis Return Home”, demanding the return of the eponymous mummy, which had been stolen from her tomb in the 19th century. Shortly before Christmas, the Catholic Church of St.Gallen announced that it would consider restitution.

We look forward to another year of engagement and debate, activism and intimacy – together with you! Thank you for your solidarity, your criticism, your support, your friendship!

“Let us fight together for justice, against looting and robbery,” demanded more than 200 first-time signatories from Egypt in an “Open Letter from the Egyptian Scholars and Civil Society ” yesterday from the St.Gallen Abbey Library, the Catholic Church and the City and Canton of St.Gallen. The Open Letter, signed by countless leading Egyptian Egyptologists, archaeologists, human right activists and the senior commissioners for Egypt’s cultural assets and antiquities, and published by Arab and European media, calls for the establishment of a working group and the opening of the archives.

Among the signatories are archaeology professors from countless Egyptian universities, human rights activists, but also Bassem Ibrahim Bassem, Director General of the General Department of Archaeological Sites and Museums of the Ministry of Antiquities. Meanwhile, the official procedure for restitution has been initiated.

The “Open Letter from the Egyptian Scholars and Civil Society” thus intervenes in a debate on cultural looted property and the exhibition of mortal remains that has been moving Switzerland for several weeks: the Schepenese case. The body of the ancient Egyptian priestess Schepenese, which is kept in the Catholic Abbey Library in St. Gallen, was stolen from her tomb at the beginning of the 19th century. Unwrapped up to the chest, it is exhibited there in a glass coffin for 18 Swiss francs (19.24 US dollars) per entry fee. Every year, over 150,000 tourists marvel at this “attraction” (Abbey Library) in the city of eastern Switzerland.

This open violation of all valid moral and legal standards led to a scandal following the awarding of the “St.Gallen Culture Prize” a fortnight ago. The artist Milo Rau donated his prize money to the investigation of the case under the motto “Let Schepenese return home”. A “St.Gallen Declaration for Schepenese” signed by 100 Swiss researchers, Egyptologists, historians, artists and politicians demanded an end to the degrading exhibition practice and an examination of Schepenese’s repatriation to Egypt. The letter was signed by leading historians Bénédicte Savoy, Gesine Krüger, Jakob Tanner and Erich Keller, as well as cultural figures from Adolf Muschg to Sibylle Berg and Kim de l’Horizon.

The Egyptologist Monica Hanna (University of Aswan), one of the initiators of the “St.Gallen Declaration”, said: “There is no better time than the present to correct the mistakes of the past.” For hardly ever has a moral and legal crime been so clear as in the case of Switzerland’s oldest mummy Schepenese. “That the mummy was grave robbery should be clear to everyone,” the newspaper “Die Ostschweiz” summed up the ongoing debate a few days ago. Even the head of the Abbey Library, Cornel Dora states in “Schepenese. Die ägyptische Mumie der Stiftsbibliothek St.Gallen” (Schepenese. The Egyptian Mummy of the Abbey Library St.Gallen), which he edited: “The coffins of Shepenese originate from a robbery excavation” (p.59)

The Abbey Library and the Catholic Church had initially denied these facts against their better judgement. However, the pressure from politics, science, civil society and the media had finally become too big. In addition to the open letters from Switzerland and Egypt, there were official interpellations in both the municipal and cantonal parliaments of the city in eastern Switzerland. The unusually brutal case of violation of the peace of the dead in the Schepenese case caused an uproar, and countless appeals from politics, research and civil society went to the government and church of St.Gallen. Together with Egypt, St.Gallen now wants to find an ethically and legally acceptable solution.

What do you think? How should human remains from “looted excavations” be dealt with? Is it still justifiable in the 21st century to exhibit a corpse looted in colonial times half-naked for money? How can the “Schepenese case” become a precedent for humane and respectful cultural cooperation? How can we work together with Egyptian research and civil society for a global culture of memory beyond exploitation and dictatorship?

Solidarity with the dead! Let’s set a sign together for a humane and respectful cultural cooperation! Let Schepenese return home!

IN PRAISE OF EXTREMISM
ZURICH POETIC LECTURES

“The Milo Rau Trials”: This is the title under which Doc Alliance, the association of the world’s major documentary film festivals, celebrates “one of the world’s most inspired and controversial theatre directors’ work in film” in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, Milo Rau is holding another, rather intellectual and selfcritical tribunal in Zurich – a tribunal against himself and his art.

Awarded honorary doctorates in Sweden and Belgium, Milo Rau is receiving 2022 what is one of his home country’s most important academic honors: He will host the “Zurich Poetics Lectures” from November 3 on. Rau, who will give his lectures under the title “Why Art?”, follows poets such as Nobel Prize winner Herta Müller, W. G. Sebald (“Austerlitz”) or German Book Prize winner Saša Stanišić.

In the three lectures, Milo Rau will descend to the biogaphical and esthetical sources of his work. The first (“Morality and Paralysis”) takes place at the Schauspielhaus Zurich, the second (“In Praise of Extremism”) at the Literaturhaus Zurich, and the third (“The Reconquest of the Future”) at the Zurich Kunsthaus, where Rau recently staged a shaman action.

“Art is questioned as a public space, as a place of responsibility where the aesthetic appears as a political act.” University of Zurich

POLITICAL THEATRE OF THE FUTURE?
CINCINNATI CONFERENCE

Last week, Milo Rau published an obituary in German, Swiss and Belgian newspapers on the philosopher and sociologist Bruno Latour, who, according to Rau, “created a whole planet of knowledge, cross-references, ideas”. In five points, Rau explores Latour’s influence on the “collective idea of what man is, what the world is, and what knowledge is – and how everything is connected.”

Now, a multi-day congress in the USA is dedicated to the diverse approaches, the artistic and activist work of Milo Rau himself: “What idea of political or critical theatre is inherent in his works? What understanding of “world”, citizenship and global community is promoted in his projects?”, ask the organisers from the University of Cincinnati (USA).

Fifteen lectures by researchers from all over the world will critically examine all possible aspects of Milo Rau’s work: from his “aesthetics of attention” to “transmedial storytelling”, from Rau’s cinematic to his institutional work, from his tribunals and assemblies to the Swiss director’s books, manifestos and finally to the role of solidarity and intervention in Rau’s “Theatre of the Real”.

Conference Program

• “A journey to the origins of his art”: extensive essay on Milo Rau/NTGent’s longterm project “History of Theatre” (with Angelica Liddell, Faustin Linyekula and Miet Warlop)

• “Our favorite Swiss director”: Les Inrockuptibles announce today’s Paris premiere of “Everywoman” with Ursina Lardi

• “A Universal Tale of Love and Death”: after its Europe tour, “Grief and Beauty” finally returns to Ghent

• “Woman, Life, Freedom”: Call to support the protests in Iran