Studio Talk: Milo Rau

With Florian Borchmeyer

The works of Swiss theatre-maker Milo Rau tread the borderline between documentary and fiction. From the forthcoming season he will regularly work at the Schaubühne, e. g. on his project »The History of the Machine-gun«, which is presently in development. Using his current rehearsals of »The Civil Wars« as an example, Rau offers a glimpse of his working process. The production, which will premiere in Brussels in May and can be seen during F.I.N.D. 2015, develops half a year’s research within the milieus of Salafist Islam and radical rightwing extremism in Western Europe into a lecture performance for four voices which poses a simple question: is the decline of the Western World imminent and, along with it, the end of the European Union?

Milo  Rau (*1977, Bern) has worked as a freelance director and writer since 2003. He studied sociology, German and Romance studies in Zurich, Berlin and Paris and wrote his dissertation on the aesthetics of reenactment. In 2007 he founded the »International Institute of Political Murder (IIPM)«. His production »Hate Radio« was invited to the Theatertreffen Berlin in 2012.