ABSTRACT

The chapter discusses recent work by Swiss director Milo Rau (b. 1977), which he describes as ‘globally conceived theatre of humanity’. Turning to Rau’s 2016 productions Five Easy Pieces and Mitleid: Die Geschichte des Maschinengewehrs (Compassion: The History of the Machine Gun), the chapter interrogates Rau’s vision of engaged theatre-making in neoliberal times, where critical disruption has long been integrated into a globalised machinery of the media and the cultural industry. Tackling issues such as sexual violence and child murder, and the West’s fraught relationship with Africa, Rau embraces the manipulative, affective expressivity of contemporary media discourses, and plays with its strategies of empathy and compassion. His pieces thereby undercut an affirmative position of distanced criticality on the side of the spectator. Acknowledging that it is not enough to ‘give a voice’ on stage to the victims of our global world order, Rau instead confronts the spectators with their own culpability and their responsibility for the scandalous tragedies that happen beyond our own ‘safe spaces’.