It’s impossible to live on this planet and not be included in the system. Nevertheless, you know very well that something exists called fair trade. There’s such a thing as the fair mining of lithium, as well as other ways to make batteries. The question is how you’ll operate and how you’ll cooperate with the people who live in that area? The hunt for lithium isn’t wrong in and of itself, electric cars aren’t wrong, but the question is how to get to those raw materials and who will pay the price for that and who will earn from that work? That balance is the most important factor ~ Milo Rau
The slogan of the 58th Bitef was ‘beauty will (not) save the world’. This theatre festival’s guest speaker, who was tasked with ceremonially opening the event, seemingly included an addendum to that slogan: Art mustn’t give up on trying to save the world, or at least speaking loudly about that world, both on and off the stage. The speech with which Milo Rau opened October 2024’s Bitef is probably among the most quoted speeches in the history of this Belgrade theatre festival, while it certainly explains why this Swiss national is considered the “most interesting”, “most awarded” and “most controversial” theatre director of his generation. Rau explains that the speech emerged spontaneously, as soon as he realised that the theme of his play to be presented at Bitef overlapped with current events unfolding in Serbia, with the struggle of the people of the Amazon to protect their land from multinational mining companies reflected in Serbia’s own Jadar region.
“When I was in the Amazon, there was one sentence that had been written on all books and flags: “We nurture the earth, and she nurtures us”. What we do to the Earth will be done to us, whether that refers to love or hate, tenderness or greed. Yes, we are once again living in Dark Times (a callback of the title of his play addressing the wars of the former Yugoslavia) and wars surround us. As Sophocles wrote in Antigone: “We have only a little time to please the living, but all eternity to love the dead”. That’s why we celebrate beauty, unity and respect, here in Belgrade and wherever we are,” said Rau.
His warnings about the darker side of globalism drew even more attention: “The Amazon is 10,000 kilometres away from here, but we live in a globalised world: the same tragedy, the same wasteland is everywhere. Like in some teen monster movie, the same company, Rio Tinto, mines lithium in Serbia and bauxite in the Amazon – minerals needed for the ‘sustainable’ future of Volkswagen. It’s no wonder that there’s a saying in the Amazon: When you hear the word sustainable, run as far as your legs can carry you.”
The play Antigone in the Amazon marks the conclusion of a trilogy in which Rau couches ancient myths in a contemporary context. The struggle of Sophocles’ Antigone for justice in the Amazon of the 21st century becomes the struggle of people for a dignified life. It was in Brazil that Rau discovered a fascinating and dark fact: that capitalism is devouring forestland and nature; and that 45% of the land is owned by only the richest 1%. Rau collaborated with the world’s largest movement of farmers in the Amazon rainforest: the Landless Workers’ Movement, MST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra), whose members include around 500,000 families in Brazil. MST members worked together with actors from the city theatre in the Belgium city of Ghent to stage the play. Like the choir of ancient dramas, they are the ones who inform the audience that “man chops down forests in search of gold and other minerals, takes energy from rivers with the help of dams, forces children of the forest to forget about their native lands and takes ownership over the places where their ancestors lived”. According to Rau, this ancient drama provides an excellent foundation because it also includes a choir, which enables ordinary people to have their own voice in the play. “The message of Antigone is that it is better to defend your country. Antigone’s struggle is everywhere and her explicit NO to land grabbing practices is just as essential in Serbia as it is in Brazil,” believes Rau.
Born in Switzerland and today resident in Germany, Rau performs all over the world. He acquired a broad education studying German and Romance languages and literature, but also sociology, at universities in Paris, Berlin and Zurich
This director of political theatre, who notes with pride that he’s also an activist, turns to another connection, one between Serbia and Germany, where he lives. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also spoke during his recent visit to Belgrade about the potential for cooperation between the two countries to be strengthened with the opening of a mine for lithium and boron in the vicinity of Loznica. Rau says that he didn’t appreciate that invitation for Serbian citizens to sacrifice themselves for the sake of Europe. “I think this refers to an abuse of the EU concept. If you go somewhere to earn money, to turn a profit or help a company, if you link the future of Europe to the future of Volkswagen, you will endanger the very idea of the EU.
One nation, in this example Germany, occupies one idea and something that ought to be a democratic process (EU enlargement). People see that and I’m not sure if they remain interested in that project? Why would they be if they are to become an energy colony; a source of raw materials for wealthier members of the Union? People want a different Europe. When I say this, I’m not suggesting that Mr Scholz is literally working directly for a company. This refers to the fact that the political system follows the lobbies of major companies and this is a big problem for citizens and democracy in Europe and worldwide,” said Rau addressing journalists.
Rau rejects as a strawman argument the question of whether movements that oppose mining represent an attempt by “environmental extremists” to halt progress that he himself enjoys, such as driving a Volkswagen or using a mobile phone. “On the one hand, it could be argued that you are correct because it’s impossible to live on this planet and not be included in the system. Nevertheless, you know very well that something exists called fair trade. There’s such a thing as the fair mining of lithium, as well as other ways to make batteries. The question is how you’ll operate and how you’ll cooperate with the people who live in that area? The hunt for lithium isn’t wrong in and of itself, electric cars aren’t wrong, but the question is how to get to those raw materials and who will pay the price for that and who will earn from that work? That balance is the most important factor.” Rau considers movements that are sometimes disparagingly dubbed “eco terrorists” as being far less dandangerous than so-called greenwashing, which he recognises in the attempts of major companies to hide their ambitions to generate even greater profits behind tales of sustainable development and green technologies.
“I wanted to tell the story of this strange world in which we live. I sometimes just want to connect people, while I sometimes want to contribute to some change or to create something beautiful, in order to better understand who we are and how we live”
Born in Switzerland and today resident in Germany, Rau performs all over the world. He acquired a broad education studying German and Romance languages and literature, but also sociology, at universities in Paris, Berlin and Zurich. His plays have been performed at all major international theatre festivals, including in Berlin, Avignon, Vienna, the Venice Biennale etc. Prior to Antigone in the Amazon, Serbian audiences had already seen part of his rich artistic and activist oeuvre, which comprises more than 50 plays, books and films… His play Orestes in Mosul, which he created in collaboration with the students and professors of an art academy in Iraq, was previously performed in Belgrade.
Like many of Rau’s works, this play was created within the framework of his theatre project and production company the International Institute of Political Murder (IIPM). “Many of the projects I’ve made have addressed political violence. It all started because I wanted to create a play in Dresden about the five attempts to assassinate Adolf Hitler. I didn’t complete that play, but I subsequently created plays about the last days of the Ceaușescus, the Rwandan genocide, the war in the former Yugoslavia. A lot of projects including researching the ways violence impacts our society.” Rau has also addressed a paedophilia case in Belgium and the war for strategic raw materials in the Congo. This investigative journey has often seen him connect actors from opposing sides within a single play. The play Dark Age, which addresses the Yugoslav wars of the ‘90s, included the participation of actors from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany and Turkey. Rau says that he would today like to bring together actors from Ukraine and Russia for a joint project. “I wanted to tell the story of this strange world in which we live. I sometimes just want to connect people, while I sometimes want to contribute to some change or to create something beautiful, in order to better understand who we are and how we live.”
Praised by critics and audiences alike, Rau isn’t well loved by the establishment. A number of his plays have been banned. It was forbidden in Germany to perform his play based on transcripts from the trial of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik. The family of Romania’s former president put a stop to the performing of his play The Last Hours of Elena and Nicolae Ceaușescu by taking him to court. Moscow police also stopped a performance of his play The Moscow Trials, dealing with freedom of speech. His play Five Easy Pieces, representing a kind of psychological profile of Belgium serial killer of children Marc Dutroux, was censored or banned in Singapore and some German cities. Interestingly, the same play received awards in Belgium and at the Sarajevo theatre festival.
“Milo Rau is causing offence with his International Institute of Political Murder. He stands for a generation that is reacting with uncompromising attention to the increasingly radicalising reality. Taking a stand and demanding a stance, Milo Rau gives the theatre and society impulses that bring the explosive nature of global conflicts into our midst”. This was the text explaining the 2016 decision to award Rau Germany’s prestigious German ITI Award (International Theatre Institute (Deutsches Zentrum)), of which he became the youngest winner. He has since received German, Swiss or European awards almost every year, while theatre critics in more than ten countries have declared his plays the best. Rau received an honorary doctorate from Sweden’s Lund University in 2019 and an honorary esdoctorate from Belgium’s Ghent University in 2020. As the current artistic director of the famous Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen), he speaks publicly about his concerns over the rise of the political right in Austria. He opposes the cutting of the budget for culture or the funding of only art considered politically and nationally appropriate.
When asked how a Swiss man considered as having been born with a silver spoon in his mouth could possibly be interested in the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, the consequences of mining in the Congo or lithium mining in Jadar, Rau answers with a question.
“Milo Rau is causing offence with his International Institute of Political Murder. He stands for a generation that is reacting with uncompromising attention to the increasingly radicalising reality”. This was the text explaining the 2016 decision to award Rau Germany’s prestigious German ITI Award (International Theatre Institute (Deutsches Zentrum))
“One has to ask where Swiss people got that silver spoon. When I went to the Amazon jungle, I realised that many famous Swiss companies that pay taxes in Switzerland, such as Glencore or Nestle, operate there, mining and growing soybeans or something else. I think Amazonia and Switzerland are very strongly connected, so why would I tell a story about Europe that doesn’t take into consideration the fact that this prosperity is based on exploitation elsewhere? Switzerland’s reality is global. That’s why we need that global solidarity and what I call global realism; a theatre with actors from various countries who can together present a story that we’re all part of.”
Antigone in the Amazon opens with the famous Sophocles’ line “Many things are terrible in the world, but nothing is more terrible than man”. Rau leaves the conclusion of the tragedy to a member of the indigenous people of the Amazon, who takes the place of a Greek prophet in expressing concern that the consequences of the competition for cheap resources – regardless of the damage caused to nature and millions of underprivileged people – could return to Europe like a boomerang. “Our land was stolen from us 500 years ago and we are still alive. I worry about you Europeans, as you’re not used to apocalypse,” concludes this Amazonian prophet.
And Rau himself concludes: “The range from the most beautiful to the worst that man can be is wide. And we are witnessing both. And a person has to wonder how it’s possible that we are both beasts and angels at the same time. I wonder if there’s a system that would encourage us to be the best. Art serves that purpose, to speak the truth and contribute to the development of humanity. So, returning to the start of the story, sustainability is a good idea, we should leave the Earth to generations yet to come, but sustainability is abused in order for some to continue their destruction. That’s why we should listen carefully to what those who’ve already experienced everything – the people of the so-called periphery of the world – have to say about everything.”