Milo Rau turned tribunals into theatre. Now his own moral judgement is on trial
The Swiss director has staged court cases against Pussy Riot, mining companies in Congo and Gisรจle Pelicotโs abusers. But after his invitation to Palantir founder Peter Thiel caused a row in Vienna, is Rauโs method eating itself? Milo Rau, once the enfant terrible of continental European theatre, is a little less buoyant these days. The Swiss theatre-maker has done something he says he explicitly hates: he has cancelled a guest. โYes, we hit a wall,โ he says. โBut at least it made the wall visible.โ In his capacity as the artistic director of the Wiener Festwochen theatre festival, Rau, at the end of last month, first invited, then disinvited, the American tech billionaire Peter Thiel. The Austrian weekly Falter called it a fiasco. Continue reading...