What is flight? What is home? What will the new face of Europe look like? With “Empire”, the final installment of his acclaimed European trilogy, Swiss director Milo Rau is presenting a piece at steirischer herbst 
for the first time.

They come from Greece, Syria, Kurdistan and Romania. Two fled to Europe, two live on its fringes. In “Empire”, the four actors draw on their own histories to probe those questions that crop up only briefly and awkwardly during our daily consumption of the media: What is flight? What is home? And what will the new face of Europe look like?

With the final instalment of his acclaimed European trilogy, Milo Rau is presenting a piece at steirischer herbst for the first time. Not without reason is the Swiss director one of the most successful artists on the continent, which he has been scrutinising for years: disputatious, rigorous and unruffled he makes full use of the possibilities of theatre, not only for documentary purposes, but also to take a highly political stand. He achieves this through re-enactments of historical events and lavishly staged court trials, just as impressively as he does now, in the European trilogy, through the power of narration.

The narrators in “Empire” not only talk about loss, prison, death and rebirth, but also about how they process these experiences through art. After previously dealing with the themes of radicalisation in part 1, “The Civil Wars”, and coming to terms with the past in part 2, “The Dark Ages”, Milo Rau now joins them to risk a glimpse into an uncertain future. Intimate and yet of epic dimensions, they create a portrait of a mythical and real-political empire. Are European traditions endangered, or is migration not simply one of them?

Autorin / Autor, Text: Milo Rau
Autorin / Autor, Text: Ramo Ali
Autorin / Autor, Text: Akillas Karazissis
Autorin / Autor, Text: Rami Khalaf
Autorin / Autor, Text: Maia Morgenstern
Kostüme, Bühnenbild, Ausstattung, Raumgestaltung: Anton Lukas
Video: Marc Stephan
Dramaturgie: Stefan Bläske
Dramaturgie: Mirjam Knapp
Tondesign / Sound: Jens Baudisch
Konzept / Idee: Milo Rau
Regie: Milo Rau
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Ramo Ali
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Akillas Karazissis
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Maia Morgenstern
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Rami Khalaf

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