International Festival of Contemporary Theatre

Performances

Marking the 10th anniversary of Homo Novus, we have gathered 11 Latvian artists from various genres for a production of new small scale performances, installations or actions. These works will be based in the British theatre scholar Alan Read’s theory of “theatre as the last human venue” and structured as an event, unified in time and space.

In his book ‘Theatre, Intimacy and Engagement’, Alan Read writes: “The last human venue marks the location and moment of human beings’ awareness of their own eventual extinction. Performance, on the contrary, explores ways in which performance operates as an exciter of sentience, kick-starting our sense of being alive, acting as a pleasurable lengthening of device to extend our inevitable faith. Humans in this venue distinguish themselves from other animals through their experiencing of an extended childhood, in their ability to sustain a controlled, unbroken outward breath and by their unique capacity to aesthetically disappoint.”

‘The Last Human Venue’ programme includes performances by theatre directors Pēteris Krilovs, Vladislavs Nastavševs and Valters Sīlis, and the exhibition by directors Andrejs Jarovojs, Viesturs Meikšāns, set designers Monika Pormale, Izoldes Cēsniece, Reinis Suhanovs, fashion designers MAREUNROL’S and artistic collectives Nomadi and umka.lv.

Hate Radio

Milo Rau / International Institute of Political Murder

3 September 18:00 |

4 September 19:00 | Latvian Railway history museum | 10 and 7* Ls

‘Hate Radio’ reconstructs a 2 hour long broadcast from the Radio-Television Libre des Mille Collines radio station in Rwandan capital Kigali in 1994. It’s a simple radio programme in its format – music, news, talks and phone calls in the studio. However, the broadcast relived on stage is happening in the time of the Rwandan genocide when more than 500’000 Tutsi people were killed. The international community did not divert or stop the slaughter before it ended itself.

You have nice and pleasant broadcasters, popular Western and African music of the time, news and weather forecast and in the midst of it all – agitation towards racial murder. It’s shocking to see how in the studio the blind hate so naturally goes hand in hand with the playfully humorous intonation of the DJs. Informative announcements about where to find and kill another ‘cockroach gang’ mingle with careless chatter, laughter, beer and a cigarette.
What we see on stage is the truth. All the characters are real; every word is said and song is played precisely on the minute as it was in the 1994 broadcast in the RTLM studio, the place where this terrifying crime against humanity was coordinated from.

What makes this performance so unique is the precise details and accurate research made in Kigali’s radio archives and court materials (all the original creators of the broadcast were sued in the Rwandan tribunal). Still, the most powerful aspect of the performance is in the fact that the director Milo Rau is deliberately refusing to talk about the perpetrators and the victims. He presents the recent past whose effects are still being felt reminding that conflicts are never past. They are endlessly present; eternally returning.

About artist

Journalist, researcher and stage director, Milo Rau (born in Switzerland in 1977) intertwines all his skills to “make major historical events accessible to spectators”. Whether he decides to evoke The Last Hours of the Ceausescus (2009), the massacre on Norwegian Utoya island (Breivik’s Declaration, 2012) or, most recently, the conviction of the Russian feminists Pussy Riot (The Moscow Trial, 2013), this young Swiss artist always works in a rigorous way. With the members of the International Institute of Political Crime that he founded in 2007 between Berlin and Zurich, he plunges into painstaking research for each of his projects, multiplying encounters with witnesses from the period, consulting all the archives available on the subject to present aesthetically worked-out reconstitutions of them.

Credits

Script & Direction: Milo Rau
Dramaturgy & Conceptual Managment: Jens Dietrich
Set and Costume design: Anton Lukas

Cast: Afazali Dewaele, Sébastien Foucault, Estelle Marion, Nancy Nkusi, Diogène Ntarindwa

Production managment: Milena Kipfmüller
Video & sound design: Marcel Bächtiger
Publicity: Yven Augustin
Director’s assistant: Mascha Eucher-Martinez
Sound and video assistant: Jens Baudisch
Sound design consultant: Peter Göhler
Scientific collaboration: Eva Bertschy
Corporate design: Nina Wolters
Web design: Jonas Weissbrodt
Project documentation: Lennart Laberenz (Film) & Daniel Seiffert (Photo)
Academic counselling: Marie-Soleil Frère, Assumpta Muginareza & Simone Schlindwein
Casting in Brussels: Sebastiâo Tadzio
Casting in Kigali: Didacienne Nibagwire
Producer: IIPM Berlin/Zürich
Co-producers: Migros-Kulturprozent Schweiz, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) Berlin, Schlachthaus Theater Bern, Beursschouwburg Brüssel, migros museum Zürich, Kaserne Basel, Südpol Luzern, Verbrecher Verlag Berlin, Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre, Ishyo Arts Centre Kigali