ABSTRACT
Swiss director Milo Rau’s modern tragedies sidestep the celebrated but imperfect trial-by-jury justice established by Athena in the Oresteia by rejecting her approach to establishing democracy. He departs from Aristotle’s hero of noble character by writing protagonists who are common men and women enmeshed in a tragic mythos not made by the gods but by humans. Unlike classic Greek tragedy, violence is graphically displayed onstage with a theatricality that is both realistically disturbing and cognizant of being faked. His directing recognizes that theatre both constructs and deconstructs realities. Rau’s dramaturgy forgoes suspension of disbelief, unified plot, resolution and catharsis. In so doing, he disenables theatre’s fictional apparatuses. Not unlike Casandra, Rau warns that the “track of blood and bloody guilt” goes far back. Instead of ignoring facts and truth, Rau makes theatre that reveals individual and public life and re-examines history by proposing that the stage and world are deeply entwined in ways that are hard to disentangle.
