Milo Rau: democracy is an ’agora open to everyone who isn’t a criminal’

Colourful coup: Rau and some fellow “revolutionaries” arrive to proclaim their Free Republic at this year’s Vienna Festival. Wiener Festwochen

On the International Day of Democracy, Switzerland’s most controversial theatre director talks about the “ritual” of public votes and the global state of political participation.

Over the past two decades, Milo Rau’s theatrical blurring of boundaries between reality, art and activism has led him to become one of Europe’s top directors.

At the same time, Rau is an outspoken observer of global politics. Often his approach is led by experiments in radical inclusion.

SWI swissinfo.ch spoke to the head of the Vienna Festival about democracy – in its direct, illiberal, and theatrical forms.

SWI swissinfo.ch: Over the past decade you have worked in Italy, Congo, Russia, Belgium, and Brazil. You are currently the artistic director of the Vienna Festival. You follow an approach you call “global realism” and you live in Germany. Do you still fill out a postal ballot four times a year to vote in Switzerland?

Milo Rau: Yes, I insist on it. I think the system of how Swiss votes manage to create a connection between local and national levels is something most other countries don’t do. Elsewhere, people tend to vote in the interest of their own little village, even when the ballot is national.

For example, the version of protectionism advocated by populists like the Freedom Party in Austria or the Alternative for Germany [AfD] might make sense at a local level, but not the national. In Switzerland, thanks to voting four times a year, we’re better able to switch between these levels.

SWI: You recently said Switzerland was a “model for a functioning democracy” – why?        

M.R.: Switzerland allows normal people like me to decide on things which in other countries are in the hands of experts.

But the really nice thing is that after a vote, whether it’s about abolishing the army or capping executive pay, everyone accepts the result. In this sense, votes are extremely antagonistic, but also unifying rituals.

This is quite specific to Switzerland’s size and diversity, where the nation is constructed above the various regions, languages, and cultures. But it’s also similar to ancient Athens, whose strength was that when citizens decided on something, they moved ahead and acted on it together.

Attacked as a “radical leftist” by some, Rau has previously played himself down as a “liberal softie”. Georg Hochmuth/Keystone

SWI: You’ve also referred to the regular ballots as “quasi-cathartic”. But surely the ritual of voting is less important than the actual result?

M.R.: I think this gets to the difference between what populists like the Freedom Party in Austria, the FPÖ, imagine direct democracy to be and what direct democracy actually is. In reality, the result of a vote has to be translated via institutions – parliament and experts – before it becomes law. This means many things are not implemented exactly as voters decide; things which run against human rights are not implemented at all.

This is why the cathartic element is so important: people get to have their say and be heard, as part of a moment in which the popular will – or as it usually turns out, societal antagonisms – becomes manifest.

SWI: On voters’ decisions which run against human rights: the FPÖ and the Swiss People’s Party are highly critical of the European Convention on Human Rights. They say it subverts the popular will. Is there a tension between local democracy and international rights?

M.R.: I think this tension is part of every big project – even nation-building. It’s the old balance between the liberal approach of creating laws and institutions, and the more Rousseau-like focus on the general will of the peopleExternal link. That’s why Switzerland has two chambers of parliament; there’s also a double-majority rule for people’s initiatives, which means a small number of people can kill a widely popular idea. And at the international level, human rights institutions protect minorities from misguided populist decisions.

Overall, the issue is to have a balance. The big problem I see here is at the European Union level, where there are very strong institutions, but no way for people to influence them. To strengthen direct democracy at the EU level would solve many of the real cliches of the EU as an elite technocratic project.

SWI: Your praise of Swiss democracy sounds surprising given some of your previous stances. In a 2015 interview, you said the country was “deeply morally ill”, with reference to its populism, capitalism, and insularity…

M.R.: In the global economy, most European nations are still morally ill. Switzerland is just an extreme example. Tax money comes from companies like Nestlé and Glencore, which are based on a radical exploitation of the Global South, and we all tolerate it. The “morally ill” aspect is the country’s effort to maintain its status as a haven for such firms.

But this is above and beyond the discussion of the democratic system, which at least offers ways to change such things. It’s like praising the work of a great artist who is in the midst of a MeToo scandal.

Rau during rehearsals for Antigone in the Amazon, Vienna, May 2023. Joe Klamar/Keystone

SWI: In 2024, more people than ever are voting in elections around the world, yet figures like Vladimir Putin and Nicolás Maduro are cementing their power. Is global democracy doomed?

M.R.: That’s hard to say. Democracy has often failed. The idea that it was always here, but now it’s disappearing, is a very misguided perspective.

I grew up in the optimistic post-1989 period, a historical high point in terms of numbers, when liberal democracy was seemingly headed for global triumph. But it’s a narrow slice of history. Now I think it’s good to be a bit pessimistic, and at the same time to fight for democracy.

SWI: Even autocratic populists like Maduro claim to be fighting for the will of the people.

M.R.: Democracy is liable to shift form: to a guided democracy, a populist democracy, or to a very institutionalised or exclusive form. So I think the question is how to adapt it to the problems we face. And right now there are opposing views about this. Populists want a radically direct version that seems to be the perfect form, from the Rousseau point of view. And they claim to be the saviours of democracy in advocating it.

Yet if I was to describe their ideas from a more liberal point of view, I would say they are dismantling democracy – by excluding certain groups, for example.

SWI: You tried to democratise the Vienna Festival this year by re-structuring it around a “Free Republic” – a grassroots-type democracy with citizen councils and a constitution. Was the goal to dust off an elitist festival, or to create a symbolic form to set an example for democracy beyond the theatre?

M.R.: Both. Internally, it’s about expanding participation – again, while finding the balance between expert curation and public will. And on the wider, symbolic side, our analysis of why the festival had become disconnected from the public over the past years showed that while lots of tickets were being sold each year, they were mainly bought up by the same small group of theatre-goers.

Questioning how to change this – by lowering the cost of tickets, for example – can help to think about how to lower barriers for getting involved in democracy generally.

SWI: The festival also featured a mock trial of the right-wing FPÖ. The polls say FPÖ could be the strongest party in Austrian elections this month. Don’t debates about banning certain political groups just alienate large parts of the population?

M.R.: The idea of not speaking to certain groups is absurd. If somebody is not a criminal, then they are part of the discussion.

Maybe that’s the heart of democracy: to have a free space of discussion, an agora, for everybody who is not a criminal. Of course, if a party like the AfD or the FPÖ is judged to be anti-constitutional, it should be banned – although the Vienna mock trial did not come to this verdict. But that wouldn’t mean simply excluding their followers by saying they’re all racists or fascists.

The 2024 Vienna Festival was the most popular in 20 years, organisers said. Rau is in charge for at least another four editions. Wiener Festwochen

SWI: What’s in store for Austrian democracy if the FPÖ makes it back into government at the end of September?

M.R.: A concrete scenario could see three parties – the FPÖ, Social Democrats, and People’s Party – getting around 30% of the vote each, or with the FPÖ maybe slightly on top.

The problems could start if the People’s Party then opts to form a coalition with the FPÖ and if FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl becomes chancellor; in that case he could start to directly influence the institutions. And Austria would start to go the Slovakian or Hungarian illiberal way.

I wrote an open letterExternal link recently against the FPÖ’s election manifestoExternal link. Besides the fact that the party wants to cut arts funding, it is just so harshly right-wing on questions like migration and gender: it knows that the more extreme it is, the more popular it becomes. I fear people are now so desensitised that they don’t see this.

SWI: You also wrote an open letter recently criticising the dismissal of the director of the Slovak National TheatreExternal link. Why all the open letters?                

M.R.: It’s a hobby, so it’s hard to stop! But I see two kinds of open letters. One is to call attention to things which are not widely known. For example, many outside Slovakia didn’t realise what was going on there, since the country is not a big player in the European cultural sector. It’s not like if the director of the national theatre in Germany or France was to be fired by the country’s culture minister on political grounds; there, people would notice.

As for the letter against the FPÖ, that’s a way to ready ourselves and to be aware of what could be on the cards if the party becomes the biggest in Austria and enters a governing coalition.

SWI: What’s the biggest challenge for democracy today?

M.R.: For me the big challenge – and the only solution – is to keep thinking in ever larger and ever more global communities. Last century, we thought nation states would gradually become less and less important, but the opposite has happened. Countries have become stronger, and at the same time the liberating power of democracy loses some of its force, because it’s so tied to the concept of the nation – like the welfare state.

Edited by Benjamin von Wyl/gw. Image research by Vera Leysinger.