Thursday, 23rd April at 8pm ::: Srećko Horvat & Milo Rau
In the digital edition of Philosophical Theatre, on Thursday, 23rd April at 8pm, on Bitef Theatre YouTube channel, the third in the series of discussions will be held between Srećko Horvat and Milo Rau.
Srećko Horvat is going to talk to Milo Rau about his latest performance “Antigone in the Amazon”, while also tackling numerous global issues such as climate change and refugee crisis, in an attempt to explore the role of the theatre from the ancient times up until after the coronavirus pandemic. Not only is it questionable how theatre will look like after the pandemic and in the time of social distancing, but what the role of theatre in altering social reality is.
Born in 1977 in Bern, MILO RAU is a director, author and since 2018/2019 artistic director of the NTGent. Critics have proclaimed him «the most influential» (DIE ZEIT), «most awarded» (Le Soir), «most interesting» (De Standaard) or «most ambitious» (The Guardian) artist of our time. Rau studied sociology, German and Romance languages and literature in Paris, Berlin and Zurich under Pierre Bourdieu and Tzvetan Todorov. Since 2002, he has put out over 50 plays, films, books and actions. His productions have appeared on major international festivals, including the Berlin Theatertreffen, the Festival d’Avignon, the Venice Biennale Teatro, the Wiener Festwochen and Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, and have toured more than 30 countries worldwide.
Rau has received many honours: the European Theatre Prize 2018, the Peter-Weiss-Prize 2017, the 3sat-Prize 2017, the 2017 Saarbrucken Poetry Lectureship for Drama and, in 2016, the prestigious World Theatre Day ITI Prize, as youngest artist ever after Frank Castorf and Pina Bausch. In 2017, Milo Rau was voted “Acting Director of the Year” in the critics’ survey conducted by the Deutsche Bühne. He has been awarded two honorary doctorate degrees, first in 2019 by the Theatre Department of Lunds Universitet (Sweden) and more recently in 2020 by Ghent University (Belgium). Rau is also a television critic, lecturer and a prolific writer.
SREĆKO HORVAT, philosopher originating from Croatia but without a permanent address or residence. He has more than ten books to his name translated into over 15 languages. Horvat's latest published books are Poetry from the Future (Penguin, 2019), Subversion! (Zero Books, 2017); The Radicality of Love (Polity, 2015); Welcome to the Desert of Post-Socialism: Radical Politics after Yugoslavia (with Igor Štiks, Verso, 2015); What Does Europe Want? (with Slavoj Žižek, Columbia University Press, 2014) - Šta Evropa želi? He writes regularly for The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Al Jazeera and others. He was a co-founder of Subversive festival in Croatia (2008-2013), and is currently editing and running the Philosophical Theatre at HNK (since 2014) and with the former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis is an active member of Democracy in Europe (DiEM25) movement.
Digital edition of Philosophical Theatre
Let’s Think the World Over
During the state of emergency caused by the outbreak of COVID-19, Bitef Theatre has launched a digital edition of the Philosophical Theatre. Every Thursday in April, at 8pm, Bitef Theatre YouTube channel will broadcast live discussions with eminent Bitef Theatre artists.
After the successful discussions with the theatre director Oliver Frljić (Zagreb), and the theatre director and former Bitef curator Anja Suša (Stockholm), next are the meetings with the famous names of the contemporary theatre, whose performances we had an opportunity to see at the last-year’s Bitef - Milo Rau (Brussels) and Stefan Kaegi (Berlin). The discussions will be, like in the “good old times”, moderated by Srećko Horvat and Maja Pelević, while the viewers will have an opportunity to ask them questions.
Philosophical Theatre is a project initiated with an idea to re-establish a close relationship between philosophy and theatre. Launched at the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb in 2014, the program has been a part of the Bitef Theatre repertory since the season 2019/20. It tackles the most relevant questions of the present moment and the problem of the societies we live in.
As the initiator Srećko Horvat states, “the link between philosophy and theatre has always been much stronger than the link between philosophy and any other medium or art”. Theatre has always been a place for active deliberation of society and social processes, and Philosophical Theatre creates a space for public discussion, which is nowadays more than necessary.
