| Year and length: | 2025, 85’ (Italian premiere) |
|---|---|
| Text and direction: | Milo Rau |
| Language: | German, Arabic |
| With: | Ursina Lardi, Azad Hassan (video) |
| Set design and costumes: | Anton Lukas |
| Sound design: | Elia Rediger |
| Video: | Moritz von Dungern |
| Dramaturgy: | Bettina Ehrlich, Carmen Hornbostel |
| Research: | Ursina Lardi, Milo Rau |
| Lighting: | Stefan Ebelsberger |
| Translation, language coach (Arabic): | Susana Abdul Majid |
| Advice and coordination (Iraq): | Sardar Abdullah |
| Co-production: | La Biennale di Venezia, Schaubühne Berlin, Wiener Festwochen | Free Republic of Vienna |
| Photo: | © Moritz von Dungern |
Theatre
Milo Rau - The Seer
Description
In The Seer, Ursina Lardi plays a female war photographer who travels to global crisis areas in search of horror stories. She seems to always be one step ahead of the suffering and invulnerable. When she is subjected to violence herself, she becomes a jaundiced Cassandra who seeks to battle the blindness of our times.
Milo Rau’s new play is based on the stories of war photographers, Iraqi citizens and his own experiences, such as his encounter with the teacher Azad Hassan in Mosul: during the occupation by the Islamic State, one of his hands was cut off as punishment. Inspired by Sophocles’ character Philoctetes, who loses everything and is banished from society due to an injury, Rau gets to the bottom of the fragility of our certainties. Why is violence so tempting? What remains when war and terror destroy the world as we know it? Can art alleviate suffering?