Performative Compassion: Blindness and Cynicism in Milo Rau ’ s Mitleid. Die Geschichte des Maschinengewehrs (2016) Lily Climenhaga (Alberta) “ Performative Compassion ” undertakes a close reading of Swiss-German director, Milo Rau ’ s 2016 co-production with Berlin ’ s Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, Mitleid. Die Geschichte des Maschinengewehrs [Compassion: The History of the Machine Gun]. Mitleid, Rau ’ s first production with the Schaubühne and his first collaboration with Swiss actor, Ursina Lardi, serves as a direct response to then contemporaneous German refugee crisis. Following the Oedipal journey of Lardi, the production explores compassion culture and cynical humanism, particularly as they occur in the Western European theatrical tradition. This article looks at the production ’ s mise-en-scène - Anton Lukas ’ s stage design, the physical and textual use of the two actors, Consolate Sipérius and Lardi, and the text - as well as identifying how Mitleid fits within Rau ’ s other projects with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In December 2015, in the wake of a massive influx of refugees across Western Europe caused by an escalation in the civil conflict in Syria, Milo Rau and the International Institute of Political Murder, in cooperation with Berlin ’ s Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz premiered Mitleid. Die Geschichte des Maschinengewehrs [Compassion: The History of the Machine Gun]. Mitleid, while exploring similar themes to Rau ’ s other Central African works, does not belong to any of his formal trilogies. The production features Schaubühne ensemble member and award-winning Swiss actor Ursina Lardi (b. 1970) alongside the Burundian-born, Belgium-based actor Consolate Sipérius (b. 1989). Sipérius, in addition to being a successful actor in Europe, is also a survivor of the 1993 Genocide in Burundi - an overspill from the conflict in neighbouring Rwanda. Mitleid takes pains to closely reflect the white, middle-class experience of the Schaubühne audience and their relationship to ongoing civil conflict in nations such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda. Mitleid explores similar themes to Das Kongo Tribunal. It looks at the Western treatment of the violence and poverty cycle through the lens of a specific brand of ignorance facilitated by white privilege. Rau defines Mitleid as a theatrical essay exploring the question of good and evil within the context of Western Europe ’ s economic policy. 1 The production operates on two levels: first, it introduces the Brechtian question of a good person (that in a world that is not good, people cannot be good either), and second, it confronts the audience with a question of compassion: what is compassion and what does it take for the spectator to feel compassion? 2 These two intertwined levels of the production provide a complex commentary on the proliferation of a discourse of differentiation - what postcolonial theorist Edward Said identifies in the Orient. A social construct conceived to define the West in relation to an external other representative of everything it was not, the Orient or (more commonly) the East remains located in the persistent remnants of Western European colonial thought. Rau uses Mitleid to explore the cynicism and Forum Modernes Theater, 33/ 1-2, 70 - 88. Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen DOI 10.24053/ FMTh-2022-0006 inefficiency of NGO culture increasingly visible in the work by performance groups and documentary productions, while providing a scathing commentary on Western compassion culture. ‘ Who Sees Us When We Suffer? ’ : Witnessing the white monologue Rau ’ s two actors present competing, but by no means evenly distributed, monologues, which offer an attack on “ cynical humanism ” - the philosophy that we are humanists, but only in our own backyards - as it appears throughout Western European society and contemporary theatre. While Sipérius performs a short prologue and epilogue, Lardi performs the long monologue that takes up the majority of the production. Lardi takes centre stage (literally), while Sipérius is cast off to the side (stage left to be precise), acting as a witness to Lardi ’ s performance. With clinical precision Sipérius remembers witnessing the murder of her parents in Burundi. She recalls how they were murdered with machine guns, how she was chosen by her adoptive parents out of a catalogue ( “ an IKEA catalogue of children ” ), and her arrival in Belgium. 3 She continues, describing the everyday racism of her white neighbours in Mouscron (a city on the linguistic border of Belgium and its border with France) towards her, who, as the only black person in the city, became an attraction. The unrecognized and normalized racism of her neighbours is revealed through comments such as “ Bambola, ” “ Big Mama, ” “ ein dralles Negger Mädchen ” [ “ a buxom Black girl ” ]. In her new Belgium home, she is reduced to her skin colour and physical attributes. “ This, ” concludes Sipérius ’ s prologue “ is a world without compassion. ” 4 The prologue is a particularly poignant critique of European (particularly German) theatre. A theatre where Iraqi, Afghani, and African theatre-makers can find work in refugee or dance theatre, but not in traditional, German Sprechtheater. 5 Rau critiques this brand of theatre that exists across Germany, Europe, as well as in his own work, labelling it as extremely reductive, and while it is “ gut gemeint, ” well meaning, it largely produces “ beschissene Kunst, ” bad art. 6 The consequence of this highly reductive form of theatre is that the refugee ’ s only trait is the status of survivor and victim. 7 In the opening of her monologue, Lardi wonders what will happen to Sipérius after the production closes ( “ Was macht sie denn, wenn das hier abgespielt ist? ” ). 8 The implication of this statement is that Sipérius ’ s singular use within theatre is as a refugee. The performer ’ s talents and experience as an actor, performer, theatre-maker, or otherwise are disregarded for their status as a survivor. Rwandan theatre-maker Dorcy Rugamba describes this phenomenon as the career of the witness: the Hollywood and European fixation with Rwandan artists purely as survivors. 9 The result in Mitleid is a clear distinction between the figures of Lardi and Sipérius. At the beginning of the production, the primary function of Sipérius appears to be to witness Lardi ’ s (white, European) re-telling of the history that irreversibly changed her life. This history is largely taken away from Sipérius in Mitleid and is instead written - or in the case of the performance, spoken - by Lardi. The power debate connected to the question of who gets to write a history is best illustrated by the image of the machine gun. “ Am Ende des Tages kommt es drauf an, ” Lardi asserts, “ wer die Maschinengewehre hat ” [ “ At the end of the day, it depends on who has the machine guns ” ]. 10 Lardi, in large part through her whiteness, is seemingly immune to the machine gun. 11 She recalls how her father owned guns and how as a 71 Blindness and Cynicism in Milo Rau ’ s Mitleid. Die Geschichte des Maschinengewehrs (2016) child she always considered guns beautiful devices. During the massacre she witnesses, the sound and result are strangely disconnected and surreal for Lardi. This relationship to firearms stands in stark contrast to Sipérius, for whom the sound of the machine gun is hyperreal. Sipérius is still afraid of thunderstorms and has a panic attack at the fireworks display on Belgium ’ s National Day, because for her these are the sounds of a machine gun. 12 It is Lardi who is given the machine gun during the production and it is, therefore, Lardi who tells the story. However, as is later explored, the epilogue undertakes a reversal of this power-machine gun dynamic. Lardi ’ s monologue paints a fictional portrait of the eponymous character played by Ursina Lardi. After completing school in 1994, she travels to the Congo with the NGO “ Teachers in Conflict ” (a name she can barely remember) to teach the less fortunate. In comparison to the simple, straightforward monologue performed by Sipérius - who remains seated at a small, tidy desk at the side of the stage with only a laptop, microphone, and camera - Lardi ’ s long (roughly ninety-minute), complicated, and at times scattered monologue is mirrored in the stage design, which is filled to the point of overflow with garbage: a broken plastic stool, dirty clothes, and a half-burnt sofa. 13 The monologue is carefully constructed from a series of interviews Rau and his production team conducted with NGOworkers and volunteers, in combination with Lardi ’ s own experience during a year abroad teaching in Bolivia. 14 Lardi ’ s monologue speaks to a white Western European experience: Finish school, take time to travel between school and work by volunteering with an NGO or charity, all while quelling that nagging white, middle-class guilt by building houses and helping the less fortunate in a developing country. Importantly, this experience is not unique to the Lardi character, but shared by many audience members (and the actor Lardi herself) as it is part of a larger collective Western European experience. Pierre Bourdieu ’ s (1930 - 2002) notion of habitus is key to interpreting Mitleid. Habitus refers to an internal societal structuring process of practices and representations, “ a system of dispositions, ” semi-unconscious and quasi-automatic practices, which serve to structure the world of the society and individual to which they belong. 15 The expert - the sociologist, the historian, or (in the case of Rau) the director - is also located within the habitus, inescapably influenced by their social, political, and economic surroundings and experiences, but so is the spectator. 16 Habitus serves as a determining factor in the “ collective expectations ” constituting normality, and the white, European, bourgeois Lardi shares the primarily white, European, and bourgeois audience ’ s collective expectations. 17 Lardi ’ s monologue explores the audience ’ s (as well as the real Lardi ’ s and even the director ’ s) habitus, providing insight into the continued colonial and racist discourse of how Europe (and by extension all of the West) perceives what takes place outside its borders. Stuart Young also identifies the place of habitus in his analysis of Mitleid: “ Lardi ’ s story and her unguarded disclosures illustrate a key aspect of habitus, whereby individuals unconsciously acquire and then reproduce cultural and social practices and perspectives. ” 18 The monologue, alongside the numerous examples of everyday racism, presents the various micro-aggressions perpetrated and the assumptions perpetuated by the German theatrical institution, which are connected to the presumption articulated by Consolate Sipérius when describing the Western media ’ s portrayal of conflict in Africa (and external conflict in general): “ In Africa, this type of thing happens all the time. ” 19 72 Lily Climenhaga ‘ A Clear Statement ’ : Staging Europe ’ s Other The stage, designed by Rau ’ s preferred designer, Anton Lukas, is packed to the point of overflow with trash: broken furniture, plastic bags, rotting cardboard, dying houseplants, pieces of metal, and various discarded household items. The trash extends to the edges of the stage without crossing into the seating area. The spectator is confronted with the physical boundary of the stage, the abrupt end of a mountain of trash. The audience is, in reality, not separate from the stage, they are part of the larger performance space as indicated by Lardi and Sipérius ’ s direct address performance style. The spectator is a part of the system creating the disorder on stage, not inherently separate. A classic stage-audience divide is problematized by the monologue-lecture quality of the performance. Lardi speaks directly to the audience, acknowledging their presence while disregarding the fourth wall. 20 The audience is confronted with the performance ’ s rhetoric and discourse, which becomes part of the chaos that litters the stage. The audience is thus brought into the cosmos of chaos from which they are apparently separate. 21 This production, like many of Rau ’ s productions, is performed with projection and live video. The use of video serves as an answer within our highly mediatized society to Lardi ’ s question: “ Wer sieht uns, wenn wir leiden und zugrunde gehen? ” [ “ Who sees us when we suffer and perish? ” ] 22 Everyone sees the suffering, but what do we do with it? Although it is now possible to watch suffering from across the globe, the limits of compassion often fail to extend beyond the borders of our own nations. Equally problematic is the narcissism and egocentrism connected to a culture of public clickshare-donate, which allows people to satisfy any residual guilt with a five-dollar donation - feeding into a multi-million-dollar compassion industry - while able to remain largely apathetic to external suffering. 23 The production explores the inherent central European egocentrism attached to the phenomenon of spring-break activism and like-and-share Facebook charity, as well the privilege associated with this egotism. In the opening of Lardi ’ s monologue, she discusses the now-famous image of the small Syrian child Alan Kurdi who drowned crossing the Mediterranean. She reveals having never seen this image before the (unseen) director showed her, because she doesn ’ t read newspapers or own a television. The director responds to Lardi ’ s ignorance, stating: “ Egal, man kennt das, ohne es gesehen zu haben! ” [ “ It doesn ’ t matter, you know this photo even without having seen it! ” ] 24 Indeed, as the director ’ s seemingly callous remark indicates, this picture has come to symbolize the cost of Western indifference. It also became the image of an online campaign to improve the transportation of refugees from Syria across the Mediterranean. The campaign produced no tangible results and thousands of refugees continue to drown crossing the same small stretch of water (four kilometres) between Turkey and Greece. While the image is emblematic of the Syrian refugee crisis that began in 2015, it is also symbolic of a compassion culture with the best intentions but without results. These images are circulated and, by extension, simplified by the media, abolishing the complexity of the real situations from which they emerged. Such images are emptied as a sign, becoming a myth in the sense of Roland Barthes in that it naturalizes a concept or worldview. 25 In short: In Mitleid, the image and its implicit critique of the inefficiency of Western rhetoric has itself become symbolic of the privilege of Western indifference. This creeping indifference, paradoxically marked by the ability to volunteer for a 73 Blindness and Cynicism in Milo Rau ’ s Mitleid. Die Geschichte des Maschinengewehrs (2016) summer teaching or building houses in Africa or South America (the non-West), donate a few dollars to a charity online, or share an article on Facebook to satiate whispers of guilt, is the target of Rau ’ s pointed critique in Mitleid. He argues there is a systemic, unrealized racism contained within this white, bourgeois, distanced, cynical humanism and “ feel-good ethics. ” 26 This form of humanism only extends to the border of Europe - more specifically the EU - and what happens outside of these borders is of little interest. However, when seated in the theatre it becomes impossible to externalize the clutter and images enveloping the stage. The chaos and disarray are no longer outside the visible boundaries of Europe, but at centre stage. Mitleid plays heavily with the theme of perceived and internalized binaries such as black-white, Europe-Africa, refugee-European, and Tutsi-Hutu. These binaries are best explained by Said ’ s them and us, a concept deeply rooted in the West ’ s definition of itself as inherently other from external places and people. 27 The binary division between the West and the Rest is an essentially Western construction, but with real-world (non-imagined) consequences. Habitus is an inscriptive meaning-making process acquired through the complex interaction between history and socialization, where the “ embodied schemas ” are constructed throughout a society ’ s history and then acquired by the individual through socialization (processes of education as well as individual history). 28 The concept of the West versus the Rest is accompanied by an internalized hegemony that places the West above the rest by assuming the West ’ s cultural superiority and an absolute difference of the West from the Rest: geographically, morally, and culturally. 29 At its core, Mitleid, Larid ’ s performance, and Rau ’ s staging choices comment on a habitus that is directly related to the ways that Europeans (and other members of the Global North) perceive, react to, and act with the Other. Gregor McLennan identifies this deeply problematic relationship of the West with its colonial past in his sociological study of postcolonial critique. McLennan identifies the “ dislocation ” of “ conventional Western thinking ” between self and society. Both are heavily influenced by processes of socialization and the understanding of history and play an important role in self-identification and presentation. 30 The remnants of racist colonial perceptions of one ’ s history and place in the world (informed through processes of socialization) greatly inform how individuals situate themselves in relation to others, both inside and outside their community. Mitleid is, at its core, a bourgeois drama. It is a production constructed for the Schaubühne ’ s notably white and middle-class audience of season ticket holders. However, it simultaneously engages with the German theatre ’ s history of bourgeois theatre. The use of the term Mitleid as the title of this production signals an engagement with this theatre history, gesturing to Aristotle ’ s Poetics (ca. 335 BCE), Gotthold Ephraim Lessing ’ s Hamburgische Dramaturgie [HD] (1767 - 9), and Enlightenment thought on tragedy. Mitleid is translated in both English surtitles and the later Dutch adaptation of the play as Compassion. However, the term Mitleid, in its current usage, doesn ’ t cleanly translate as compassion - which is better encompassed in the more positive word Mitgefühl - Mitleid, on the other hand, contains a notably negative connotation, and is (arguably) more closely related to pity. Mitleid has been translated respectively as pity, sympathy, and compassion, and it is not always clear which of the terms correspond most directly to Lessing ’ s original meaning. 31 As the translators of a 2019 edition of HD (London: Routledge) explicitly state: “ Parsing Lessing ’ s use of Mitleid is 74 Lily Climenhaga not always an easy task. ” 32 Rau ’ s use of Mitleid as the title and a philosophical concept plays with the textual complexity of the term in German theatre history. Mitleid questions the emotional efficacy of the production ’ s monologues to (respectively) generate pity, compassion, or sympathy and how, on an implicit level, the generation of these emotions - particularly in the European, theatrical context - is racially coded, as is the language Lardi uses to stimulate these emotions. It must also be stated that, at least according to Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, it is this same Eurocentric ordering hierarchy that situated Western culture as the successor to antiquity (the Greeks and Romans) and from which the concepts of pathos and ethos were taken and expended by European intellectuals like Lessing. It was this same motivation, to present himself as the inheritor of this ancient legacy, that inspired - at least in part - Lessing to write HD and Laokoon oder über die Grenzen der Mahlerey und Poesie (1766). 33 It is this legacy that imposed Western culture as a system of dominance, a system that was termed civility and carried outwards as a colonial and then neocolonial force. 34 As Marquis de Condorcet (1743 - 1794) wrote just thirteen years after Lessing ’ s death, Europeans were meant to carry the concept of civilization (and civilized) marked by this connection with antiquity outwards: a justification that underwrote Europe ’ s colonial presence in Africa, the Americas, and Asia. 35 Briefly returning to Lessing ’ s theory of Mitleid: In HD, Lessing develops a Mitleidsästhetik - an aesthetic of compassion - in which the performance creates a sympathetic vibration between the actor and spectator through the situation created onstage. 36 Lessing translates Aristotle ’ s eleos as Mitleid, which, most often translated as pity in English, is central to his concept of catharsis (the purging or purification of pity and fear). In this Mitleidsästhetik, fear, Aristotle ’ s phobos (translated by Lessing as Furcht), serves to stimulate compassion (Mitleid). Fear, according to Lessing, is compassion directed back at the spectator that then trains the spectator ’ s capacity for compassion outside the theatre. 37 Compassion is generated by fear, made possible by the audience ’ s identification with the tragic figure; or, as Lessing explains in HB ’ s seventy-fifth essay: [The spectator ’ s] fear is absolutely not the fear that another ’ s impending misfortune awakens in us for the other person, but rather it is the fear for ourselves that stems from our similarity with the suffering person. It is the fear that we ourselves could become the pitied object. In short: this fear is compassion directed at ourselves. [ … ] Out of this similarity would arise the fear that just as we ourselves feel that we resemble him, so our fate could quite easily resemble his; and it is this fear that gives rise to compassion. 38 What Lessing describes in this passage is identification, which is key to both Lessing ’ s catharsis and the emerging bourgeois theatre. In seeing oneself in tragedy - it should be noted that the bourgeois tragedy shifted away from stories of kings and nobility engaged in public life to private persons in domestic life - and finding compassion through an empathy with the characters, there emerges the possibility of moral betterment or improvement that will be carried outside the theatre. 39 Compassion thus acts as a moralizing and transformative force for the spectator, rendering the theatre a moral institution that seeks to provoke the audience to act, as Robert Walter-Jochum summarizes, “ in a socially positive way when exiting the theater. ” 40 However, Lessing ’ s dialogue on catharsis and Mitleid did not emerge in isolation, but was part of a contemporary discussion of Aristotle, tragedy, and eleos. Lessing ’ s inter- 75 Blindness and Cynicism in Milo Rau ’ s Mitleid. Die Geschichte des Maschinengewehrs (2016) est in the intertwined concepts of sentiment and sociability fits with the wider Enlightenment interest in sentimentalism, which was itself connected to the growing prominence of the middle class and the emergence of a bourgeois theatre in England and France. 41 Lessing famously engaged in a dialogue about tragedy through a series of correspondences with his friends Moses Mendelssohn and Friedrich Nicolai, which was itself responding to other philosophical conceptions of sympathy from French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Irish philosopher Edmund Burke among others. Lessing ’ s continuous dialogue reacted against the French neoclassical tradition and to the Anglophone sentimentalist tradition marked by Anthony Ashley Cooper (the third Earl of Shaftesbury) and Francis Hutcheson. Lessing ’ s earlier treatise, Laokoon oder über die Grenzen der Mahlerey und Poesie (1766), directly answers Scottish philosopher Adam Smith ’ s - whom Lessing refers to as “ an Englishman ” in the text - development of the concept of sympathy. 42 Lessing ’ s dialogue on theatre and tragedy works with existing Enlightenment thought to create a distinctly German theatrical form, unique from the popular French tradition Lessing critiques with HB. The dialogue marks a starting point for German bourgeois theatre, while simultaneously serving as a marker of German Enlightenment thought. Much like Friedrich Schiller, who envisioned theatre as a moral institution, Lessing identifies how tragedy and the passions (Mitleiden) it produces foster the best human, i. e., the most compassionate human. 43 He conceptualizes catharsis as a vehicle of moral transformation: “ this catharsis consists in nothing other than the transformation of passions into virtuous faculties. ” 44 Catharsis and tragedy are assigned a didactic or pedagogical role, which Paul Fleming summarizes in Exemplarity & Mediocrity: The Art of the Average from Bourgeois Tragedy to Realism (2009): “ Everything in Lessing ’ s theory comes down to the proper pedagogy of the people [Volk]. Admiration is ‘ a less skilled teacher of the people than compassion, ’ because compassion ’ s effects are immediate and, more importantly, do not require that one already be educated or that one emulates anything. Without further ado, compassion according to Lessing improves one and all, the genius and idiot alike. ” 45 Ingrained in these concepts of sympathy and Mitleid is a pedagogical quality that extends beyond the time and space of the performance; or as Fleming summarizes: “ In Lessing ’ s Enlightenment aesthetics, the purpose of art lies outside the artwork proper: essence and effect are one. ” 46 For Lessing, and many playwrights following him, the transformative effectiveness and the success of a tragedy were measured in compassionate tears shed. 47 Walter-Jochum, in his analysis of Mitleid, “ Affective Dynamics of Excitable Speech in Milo Rau ’ s Breiviks Erklärung and Mitleid, ” identifies the production ’ s engagement with Lessing ’ s reflections on German theatre, noting Lardi ’ s opening monologue: In the European theater, there are easy exercises and there are difficult ones. The easy ones include memorizing your lines, the performance, and what ’ s called documentary theater. What ’ s more complicated is educating the masses in the traditional sense. “ Save the world! Do this! Don ’ t do that! ” And we even manage to do that quite well. Although, when it ’ s done in the proper European way, it is moderately difficult. “ We must oppose the Nazis. We must help the refugees. ” It ’ s like this: In Europe everyone is either for or against the Nazis; or, for or against refugees. 48 Walter-Jochum notes how, with this opening paragraph, Rau identifies how the didactic quality of Lessing ’ s bourgeois theatre has been carried into the present. How inspiring compassion continues to be central to the 76 Lily Climenhaga European political theatre project, but how now this compassion is linked to “ democratic, liberal, and multicultural values. ” 49 However, while Lardi ’ s monologue may initially appear to be a “ Lessingian approach to social solidarity sparked through compassion, ” it reveals itself to be what Walter- Jochum terms the injurious speech identified by Sipérius ’ s prologue. 50 Lardi shows herself to be part of the same systemic racism the production critiques. We hear Lardi ’ s detached superiority over those she worked with in the refugee camp in the DRC and even those she later visited with the director throughout her monologue. This purposeful subversion of expectation and language forces the spectator to reflect on themselves and their own liberalism, particularly towards developmental politics, which remains rooted in the logic of white saviourism. However, the production cannot escape its own entanglement with the racist and neocolonial hierarchies it analyses. Walter- Jochum identifies how Mitleid reinstates and reiterates patterns of injurious speech and reproduces a performative constellation of the hegemonic white voice and marginalized black voice. 51 Postcolonial reflection, the close examination of these colonial structures and binaries (colonial-imperial, West-Rest, modernity-tradition), produces anxiety as it points to the flaws and limitations of canonized institutional discourses that remain firmly based in Eurocentrism. 52 However, to break from this Eurocentric interpretation of current and historical events (such as the naturalization of conflict in nations such as Rwanda, the Congo, and Syria) clashes with the educational and socialized habitus created within this Eurocentric epistemology. McLennan identifies the tendency within discourse to externalize, thus creating an “ abbreviated version of the world. ” 53 Events are simplified to fit within a “ Eurocentred matrix of knowledge, ” perpetuating, often unintentionally, colonial discourse - precisely as is visible through the cynical humanism of Europe, essentially based in a racist assumption of the West as having earned its privilege, while the poverty and social/ political unrest outside the West is the result of poor governing or internal mistakes. 54 The choice of using a white actor for the majority of the production with a black actor playing witness is key to Mitleid ’ s dramaturgy. Black is a symbolically and politically loaded concept, problematic and yet necessary for the definition of white European within the simplistic binary of black and white. While white is located within an absence, black is everything white is not. “ Schwarz, ” Lardi states in her monologue, “ ist immerhin ein klares Statement ” [ “ Black is at least a clear statement ” ]. 55 Black symbolically normalizes violence, illustrating the externalizing process. The question becomes, for whom do we feel compassion and why? 56 The answer to this question again reveals an underlying racism like that Sipérius describes in the prologue, highlighted in Said ’ s othering. 57 The unexamined social structures of the West and remnants of racist colonial narratives within everyday social discourse serve to normalize the portrayal of violence in African (as well as Middle Eastern) nations. Unlike the state of exception that surrounds violence within Europe ’ s borders described in the media, the portrayal of violence in the Global South is both sensational and commonplace; as Sipérius explains in the prologue, “ In Africa, this type of thing happens all the time. ” 58 The essentially racist narratives presented to Western audiences normalize and minimize the true horror of stories such as Sipérius ’ s own. Her story, while terrible, takes on a terrifying contextual normality because of her nationality and black skin, while the violence (fictionally) witnessed by Lardi becomes more worthy of 77 Blindness and Cynicism in Milo Rau ’ s Mitleid. Die Geschichte des Maschinengewehrs (2016) compassion because it is perceived as drastically abnormal. 59 The audience is able to associate and empathize with Lardi ’ s character, because she is representative of their own experience. Rau problematizes this compassion by placing truth against fiction. Sipérius ’ s text is her autobiography, while Lardi ’ s monologue is a collage of experiences both real and imagined. For Lardi, the nightmare is only temporary; even the fictional character is able to largely forget her experience when outside of the Congo. The trauma only exists during the performance, while Sipérius ’ s story extends beyond the moment of performance. Yet this division between reality and fiction is unclear for the audience, as the production never specifies what is fiction and what is reality in the performance text. It is therefore left to the spectator to decide what is truth versus fiction, which risks misinterpretation and misunderstanding. The only clue the spectator is given about the fictionality of Lardi ’ s monologue is her declaration that she is a theatre-artist, a real actor (instead of a refugee actor, although it is revealed in the epilogue that Sipérius is also a professional actor), that makes up the first section of her monologue. Whereas Sipérius opens her monologue with an introduction - “ My name is Consolate Sipérius. I ’ m from Burundi ” - Lardi does not need to introduce herself to the audience at the Schaubühne, where she has worked since 2004, because they already know her. Instead, the Lardi projected above the stage begins her monologue talking about European documentary theatre and the real, onstage, Lardi begins by discussing her job as an actor. 60 The most important question is: Is this performative device enough to distinguish between the documentary and fictional elements of Mitleid? Or does it - either intentionally or unintentionally - inherently lead to confusion and misunderstanding on the part of the spectator? ‘ What is the Situation? ’ : Fiction or Reality Mitleid is a challenging production for its audience, playing with the fine line between reality and fiction - a line Rau purposefully blurs. Working with a celebrated film and theatre actor like Ursina Lardi means a portion of the German/ European audience - particularly at Lardi ’ s home theatre, Berlin ’ s Schaubühne - will be familiar with her biography. Rau plays with this familiarity in his production and what the audience knows and does not know. Lardi indeed spent a year teaching abroad in a developing country but did so in Bolivia and not DRC. Rau ’ s extremely subtle intersection of Lardi ’ s real and fictional experience can be easily overlooked in viewings of Mitleid. Lardi ’ s monologue takes details from her biography, adjusting them and making it difficult at times to separate these two levels of the production. A friend of mine who was particularly affected by the production stated that it is unclear in Mitleid where the fictional experience begins and the real ends. The intermedial element of projection again serves to further blur this line between reality and fiction, extending the documentary nature - and its assumed truthfulness - of the production into a space of uncertainty: Is what we as an audience see and hear true or false? And if it is true, how much of it really happened to Lardi? When the spectator is shown a picture of an eighteenyear-old Lardi at a refugee camp in the Congo, the spectator must ask: can we trust either the image or the narrator? Projections showing the audience maps, short video clips, pictures, and other visual mediums serve to legitimize the account given by Lardi. Rau sets up this convention with Sipérius, who sparingly uses the projection of images in her prologue. A closer look at the use of projection and images is necessary in further analysis of the production to 78 Lily Climenhaga identify how Rau facilitates the illusion of truth within Lardi ’ s fictional monologue and the potential indicators hidden in the performance of this fiction. The production explores the deeply problematic ways in which the West relates to and interacts with non-Western nations. On a deeper level, the production looks at perhaps the most overlooked yet troubling aspect of these conflicts and crises, the inherent failure of Western compassion to produce tangible change or help. Rau points to the continued failure of the “ Kultur des Mitleids, ” a compassion culture, to resolve conflicts, a disposition that in his view began with John F. Kennedy and Willy Brandt, two major Western political figures prominent at the end of the openly colonial era. 61 Rau, a self-proclaimed “ little rich kid ” from Switzerland, employs an extremely self-reflexive critique of this compassion culture and its roots in white privilege. 62 The performance looks directly at the narcissism of NGO culture, which profits and sustains itself from the misery of others - as visible in the presence of the thousand different NGOs at the camp in Gomu in Mitleid. 63 This narcissism is exemplified in the figure of Lardi who travels to the Congo because it would look great on her resume and as a conversation-starter at parties. 64 Only retrospectively does she become aware of the role her whiteness plays in not just giving her credentials in the camp (although she is only a primary school teacher, she is invited to teach a workshop to soldiers and teach adults in the camp), but also in keeping her safe. It is only in her adieu nightmare - which is actually taken directly from Rau ’ s earlier text, “ Sie wissen ja, wie es in Träumen ist …” , written in March 2008 - where she dreams before getting on the airplane that she returns to the camp to say goodbye to her African co-workers, that she recognizes the privilege and protection her whiteness provided. 65 Only through this recognition of privilege and personal profiteering does Lardi realize her complicity. In the dream she returns to say goodbye to her friend and co-worker in the camp, Merci Bien, a woman who is believed to have died after Lardi and her fellow volunteers were evacuated. However, upon returning she discovers Merci Bien surrounded by the soldiers from the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), including the man, Christophe, Lardi saved. Lardi is forced to take part in the humiliation of Merci Bien - made to urinate on her - realizing this is just the first of many humiliations her friend will face. While Lardi is allowed to leave the tent, Merci Bien must stay. As Lardi exits the tent, leaving the men alone with Merci Bien, she is surrounded by Merci Bien ’ s neighbours who demand, “ Hast du jetzt verstanden? Hast du es jetzt begriffen? ” [ “ Do you now understand? Do you finally understand? ” ] 66 The name Merci Bien, which means “ thank you so much ” in French, is reflective of the inherent narcissism of compassion culture and the figure of Lardi. NGO culture is deeply rooted in the equation of charity with solidarity. However, charity (one of the foundations of compassion culture) is rooted in an inherent conception of superiority and the image of oneself as the giver of charity, as a saviour figure. 67 Engrained in this charity and compassion framework is the expectation of thanks. The root of this narcissism is located in the belief that the worker is somehow sacrificing their more valuable time and efforts to help those people who are in some ways lesser. Rau points to the practice in Western European theatre, which places the refugee actor (and in some cases the black actor) in the peripheries as a self-evident condition of being. 68 When Lardi returns to the camp in her dream to say goodbye, she does not receive thanks or recognition and acclaim for her charitable work; instead, she realizes 79 Blindness and Cynicism in Milo Rau ’ s Mitleid. Die Geschichte des Maschinengewehrs (2016) her own contribution to the horrors she witnesses and finally comprehends her own narcissism. In her participation in the humiliation of Merci Bien, Lardi recognizes that she has not helped the people in the camp but has actually contributed to the deteriorating situation. Rau employs a revelatory dramaturgy - which serves an “ Aha! ” function - throughout his work, seeking to uncover unconscious assumptions. 69 Mitleid is, according to Rau, a critique of a society that has blinded itself to the devastating effects of its everyday luxuries and wealth outside its borders. 70 The revelatory function of the production is located in the movement of the figure of Lardi from an implicit to an inescapably explicit knowledge of the West ’ s influence in the conflict and exploitation of African nations. 71 The production furthers the revelatory function through its structural basis in the Oedipus story. 72 ‘ Do you get it now? ’ : Oedipus in the Refugee Camp The figure of Oedipus, who Lardi (both the real actor and the character) played in her youth in an all-female Swiss production, moves from figurative to literal blindness as he searches for the cause of the plague afflicting his kingdom. The Lardi monologue echoes the structure of the Greek play, beginning with Lardi as a young woman, nineteen years old, finishing university and leaving to teach to abroad. Lardi is blind to the reality of the conflict and even upon arriving and witnessing the unrest - the streets of Rwanda ’ s capital filled with the smoke from burning tires and tear gas, people screaming “ murder ” in the streets - fails to realize the severity of the situation. Instead, she sits in the hotel, a wet towel over her face to protect herself from the tear gas, drinking a stolen bottle of wine wondering, “ Lardi, was geht dann hier ab? ” [ “ Lardi, what ’ s happening here? ” ] 73 This action is repeated in the description of her research trip with the unseen figure of the director (clearly a stand-in for Rau) to the Turkish city of Bodrum (the city where the photo of Alan Kurdi was taken) and a refugee camp in Greece, where she is amazed to find the refugees in this camp all look like hipsters (with perfect hair). 74 She recalls how during her first few months in the Congo she could hear the screams of women and children from Rwanda travelling across the water to Goma, a city on the border between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda on the shore of Lake Kivu, during the hundred days of the genocide in 1994. She blares Beethoven music to cover the screams. She then witnesses the mass exodus of Hutu refugees across the border after the RPF gained control of Rwanda - Lardi notes the irony of the hundreds of NGOs in the refugee camp taking care of the former perpetrators of the genocide. She recalls how they fed and took care of the mass murderers in the camp. 75 On her last day at the camp, before the evacuation of the NGO workers, Lardi witnesses the massacre of Hutu refugees (mostly women and children) by the RPF. She recalls the sound of the machine guns and children screaming, how the sounds didn ’ t seem to synchronize with the image much like in an old black and white film. Only retrospectively, with the return of the Merci Bien nightmare, does Lardi come to recognize the role of her complacency, that she shares a responsibility for the roar of the machine gun and the screams. The play, much like Rau ’ s 2015 Das Kongo Tribunal, explores the place of the West in the continuation and production of violence in nations throughout Africa. It illustrates the vehement disavowal by the West of violence within African nations but its willingness and that of its NGOs and 80 Lily Climenhaga similar organizations to profit from misery, as well as the generalized refusal to examine how normal everyday luxuries such as cell phones and laptops are a part of this culture of misery. The mineral columbite-tantalite (commonly known as coltan) is necessary in these devices and is mined by Swiss and Canadian mining corporations in the Congo (a theme examined extensively in Rau ’ s Das Kongo Tribunal), resulting in social disorder and violence as competing political and commercial interests fight over profits. Rau identifies an everyday European banality rooted in a deeply ingrained continuing colonial discourse that, while highly unacknowledged, contributes to the proliferation of violence outside of the Western-European world. The spectator shares in this oedipal journey in an individual movement from blindness to clarity. However, part of the tragedy of Sophocles ’ Oedipus for the ancient Greek theatre is built on the spectator ’ s foreknowledge of the myth, the knowledge even before the play begins that Oedipus has murdered his father and married his mother, and with this knowledge the spectator must watch Oedipus unravel the truth. In the same way, the spectator must watch Lardi recognize her complicity in the horrors she witnesses as she describes the broken system. This involvement becomes painstakingly clear, as does the inefficiency of the aid system. The audience must (like Lardi) recognize that they are also the cause of the plague: they must see and hear the cost of their daily lives and everyday luxuries. Sophocles ’ tragedy concludes with the figure of Oedipus, having discovered the truth that he murdered his father Laius and married his mother Jocasta (fulfilling the prophecy he fought so hard against) and realizing his responsibility for the plague, choosing to blind himself and go into exile. Lardi and her co-workers are evacuated from the refugee camp in Goma, returning to Europe and leaving the refugees behind. Lardi also chooses to return to blindness (not reading newspapers or watching television), turning away from her experience until the performance. She removes herself - effectively blinding herself - from what occurs outside of her own backyard and her role as mother and wife. Mitleid provides a scathing commentary on what Rau defines as compassion culture, shining a light on the narcissism and racist discourse that continues to underscore the core philosophies of non-governmental organizations. 76 Rau ’ s provocative commentary seeks to dissect Europe and the West ’ s “ compassion culture ” by means of the arrangement of various NGO worker accounts in a dry parody of the attitudes of volunteers and helpers. ‘ To cry here [ … ] that would be the worst thing I could do ’ : Compassion vs. Solidarity One of the questions introduced at the beginning of this analysis is the Brechtian “ good person ” question as it appears in Mitleid. Bertolt Brecht ’ s (1898 - 1956) thesis in The Good Person of Szechwan (1941) is that it is impossible for a good person to exist in a world that is itself essentially not good. In Lardi ’ s monologue, Rau turns to Danish film director Lars von Trier ’ s (b. 1956) 2003 film Dogville, which also examines Brecht ’ s good person thesis. 77 Lardi recalls the final dialogue in Dogville - a discussion of morality - between the heroine Grace (Nicole Kidman) and her father the gangster (James Caan). Grace, originally welcomed into the town of Dogville and protected by the townspeople, is raped, abused, and humiliated by her former friends and protectors - strikingly similar to Lardi ’ s dream about Merci Bien. Grace and her father argue about morality: Grace ’ s 81 Blindness and Cynicism in Milo Rau ’ s Mitleid. Die Geschichte des Maschinengewehrs (2016) initial argument - the same argument as in Brecht ’ s Szechwan - is that the townspeople are cruel because of circumstance and should be forgiven because their circumstance does not allow them to be good (first comes food, then morality). However, she reverses her position and concludes the townspeople cannot be forgiven. It is not their circumstance that makes them cruel, but their inherent and inescapable wickedness (visible in their need to humiliate and disgrace Grace, who they view as lesser, thus justifying their derision and malice towards her). When her father, the Big Man, gives her the opportunity to decide what will happen to the people of Dogville, Grace declares (and Lardi quotes): “ Shoot them all. ” 78 Lardi recalls Dogville and Grace ’ s final decision as she describes the RPF marching across the border into the camp at Goma, and the immediate switch between perpetrator and victim as the Tutsi-dominated army - the former victims of Hutu persecution and violence - now have the machine guns. Lardi ’ s cynical monologue reveals the inescapable hypocrisy of Western compassion culture. The clash of the cost of living and the desire for the newest technological gadget in the West with the need for positive self-representation: the belief that I am a good person who donates money to charity, who shares and likes online articles supporting refugees, who signs online petitions against the coltan mining industry in the Congo, who builds houses during spring break and volunteers to work with refugees, that I empathize with and I feel for refugees and other people in need. However, the good person thesis falls apart when confronted with the inherent profiting of Western Europeans, North Americans, and others from industries structured on exploitation, industries that provide the everyday luxuries we are accustomed to. Returning to Brecht ’ s thesis that it is impossible to be a good person when struggling to survive. Rau extends this thesis, asserting it is impossible to be a good person when our privilege and success is built on the backs of exploitation and destitution: “ Man kann nicht gut und gleichzeitig reich sein ” [ “ You cannot be good and also rich ” ]. 79 The concept of compassion as employed by NGOs and other facets of this industry looks to explain issues of inequality on an individual basis, looking at (internal) systemic failures such as idle governments or economic failure; it does not look beyond the borders of these nations. 80 This form of compassion fails to reflect back on itself and its more troubling colonial and infantilizing assumptions about the people it aids. The underlying thesis of Rau ’ s theatrical essay is thus: “ Alle, wir alle sind Arschlöcher! ” [ “ All of us, we are all assholes! ” ] 81 However, Rau implies that it is better to be self-aware than blind. With recognition emerges the possibility of solidarity. 82 Rau examines the question, “ Was ist deine Situation? ” [ “ What is your situation? ” ] and its moral implication. 83 He concludes it is impossible to be a good person in the West, because economic comfort is inescapably and inherently connected to the misery of those outside its borders. There is a bitter irony inherent in an industry built to fight misery while simultaneously dependent on its continuation for its own sustained existence. 84 There are two responses to the realization of this horror: to turn away (intentional blindness) or to recognize complicity. Lardi cynically notes at the end of the play: “ Hier zu weinen, vor diesen Millionen von Toten und Vergewaltigten - das wäre wirklich das Allerletzte ” [ “ To cry here, in front of these millions of dead and raped - that would really be the final straw ” ]. 85 Yet she does cry, because there is nothing else to be done in the face of the monstrous horror of this realization. 86 The trademark of Rau ’ s work is hope, even in the face of seemingly unrelenting 82 Lily Climenhaga cynicism. It is this hopeful quality that sets him apart from many artivists and political theatre artists. Mitleid presents cynicism but is itself not cynical, although it runs a high risk of being misunderstood as cynical. Mitleid uses the figure of Lardi to personify the cynicism the production describes without directly identifying that this is the role of Lardi, and it, therefore, risks a literal interpretation which inevitably fails to grasp the production ’ s underlying political commentary. Yet, it is the possibility of failure that accompanies the Lardi monologue that is rooted in the political aesthetic of Rau ’ s dramaturgy. The revelatory dramaturgy seeks to educate and inform the spectator, drawing attention to hypocrisy. This, according to Lardi, is the purpose of theatre: to show the horror of the world ( “ berichtet der Horror der Welt ” ). 87 The didactic quality of Mitleid works to make the spectator aware, illuminate the failing of compassion and show solidarity is possible. 88 Solidarity for Rau is representative of what compassion lacks. Solidarity does not possess the condescending and exclusionary quality into which compassion often slips, the belief that Europe (and by proxy the European individual or I) has done something intrinsically right and the Others have done something intrinsically wrong to cause their suffering. 89 The question of solidarity - specifically “ What does real solidarity for the suffering of others look like? ” - is a central motif in Mitleid. 90 The production proposes that solidarity can only occur when human crises are approached at eye level, recognizing the West cannot overtake or stop poverty and violence outside its borders as this assumption is based on an antiquated reductionist teleology of the West (and its implied enlightenment) and the Rest (with its implied barbarism). Solidarity can only exist by approaching refugees and those people in places of conflict as complex individuals with agency rather than reducing them to passive subjects. The employment of this discourse appears in Rau ’ s earlier project Das Kongo Tribunal. Solidarity appears in this project by Rau ’ s own acknowledgment of the complexity of the ongoing civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the creation of an international tribunal using witnesses, generals, government officials, and experts. The six-day performance (three days in Bukavu, DRC and three days in Berlin, Germany) approaches the issue of civil war - a war in which European and North American mining companies have played a significant role - in its full complexity, giving people from the highest ranks of the government to the witness of a massacre to experts from Germany the opportunity to present their perspective. Mitleid and Das Kongo Tribunal are connected on a discursive level. Das Kongo Tribunal (both the live performance and subsequent documentary) takes this message of solidarity and looks at the civil war not as a self-explanatory (naturalized) “ African ” conflict, but as a complex situation with diverse internal and external contributing factors while working with experts from both inside and outside the DRC. While Das Kongo Tribunal offers a practical example of this discourse, the performance cannot be reproduced. Its central thesis exists only in the single moment of performance: during the six days of the tribunal in 2015. In contrast, Mitleid, with its reproducible structure (i. e., an existing written text and place in the Schaubühne ’ s repertoire), lays out the critical discourse using the Lardi figure as a case study for white, European privilege. Her cynical, ignorant, and racist voice illustrates the failure of an industry based around compassion. Mitleid looks to start a conversation and provide a new vocabulary for the existing compassion culture and illustrate for the Schaubühne ’ s 83 Blindness and Cynicism in Milo Rau ’ s Mitleid. Die Geschichte des Maschinengewehrs (2016) middle-class German audience how the cycle of poverty and violence is inherently built into the NGO framework. Solidarity is based on standing together and supporting each other as equals rather than investing in the systemic belief one group is inherently right. Solidarity, Rau suggests, is in a small way possible if the spectator is able to recognize the dangers (and extreme limitations) of mass-marketed compassion - the industry ’ s current configuration - and become self-aware. 91 Through this self-awareness, Rau offers his audience a critical discourse that takes into account how poor nations are oppressed by rich nations. 92 This collective moment of recognition and self-awareness is key to Rau ’ s understanding of theatre, particularly tragedy, as a loudspeaker and, by extension, central to how Mitleid illustrates this deep-rooted belief in the potential for transformation. Failure is central for both Das Kongo Tribunal and Mitleid, specifically the recognition of our collective failure. Only in recognizing this failure on a societal level is improvement and change possible. Rau states, somewhat reminiscent of Beckett, “ Gemeinsam zu scheitern, immer besser zu scheitern, bis sich dieses Scheitern in die Institutionen einschreibt als gesellschaftlicher Wandel ” [ “ To fail together, to fail better until this failure becomes part of the institution as a societal change ” ]. 93 While Das Kongo Tribunal looks at failure on a societal, political, and economic level, Mitleid, looks at failure on a smaller, individual scale. ‘ More typical than rain ’ : Conclusion For the epilogue, the production returns to Sipérius. Early in the production, Lardi questions what will happen to Sipérius after the production. The implication is that the figure of Consolate Sipérius, the witness and survivor, is only present as a part of the political statement - a stylistic flourish within an en vogue political theatre piece. Refugee theatre, within its current configuration in Europe, is an outsider theatre - a theatre of individuals who are not normally seen in theatre and who (largely) are only on stage because of their status as refugees, reduced to this single feature of their biography. 94 However, Sipérius is not portrayed as a victim. While the death of her parents in the genocide might be the beginning of her biography, it is neither the only nor the final chapter in it. Instead, Sipérius is given the opportunity to present herself as a complex individual, inside and outside her place as witness. She describes a life extending beyond Burundi, living in Belgium and working as an actor - she played the title role in a 2015 Brussels production of Antigone, reimagined in the middle of a civil war. 95 Too often the compassion industry (and the mass media) paints an image of the people they help as being without past, present, or future. Sipérius, who had the first word, is also given the last word of the production, playing a short sound clip as the stage fades to black. English writer and artist Tom McCarthy wrote in his 2005 novel Remainder, “ Guns aren ’ t just history ’ s props and agents: they ’ re history itself, spinning alternate futures in their chamber, hurling the present from their barrel, casting aside the empty shells of the past. ” 96 This quote is very near to Rau ’ s title Mitleid. Die Geschichte des Maschinengewehrs and Lardi ’ s pessimistic and cynical assertion that at the end of the day - at the end of history - it all depends on who has the machine gun. According to McCarthy, bullets carve the future. However, in the final moment of Mitleid, Sipérius does not play the sound of a machine gun - a sound that is notably absent from the production. Rather, she plays a “ typisch zentralafrikanisches Geräusch ” [ “ a typical central African sound ” ], a sound, she tells the audience, that always disrupts the 84 Lily Climenhaga filming of sad interviews with survivors and documentaries about the genocide: the sound of children playing and laughing. A sound that echoes everywhere except the white district and must be edited out of NGO commercials. 97 Sipérius breaks the cycle described throughout the production of perpetrator to victim and victim to perpetrator (a cycle deeply entrenched in Burundi ’ s history). An image of Sipérius ’ s face is projected on the large screen above the stage, where Lardi and her machine gun appeared moments earlier. The giant face of the survivor is eerily (and purposefully) reminiscent of the giant face of the character of Jewish Shosanna - the only survivor of the massacre of her family at the hands of the Nazis - in the final chapter ( “ Revenge of the Giant Face ” ) of Quentin Tarantino ’ s Inglorious Basterds, when she and her partner burn the theatre down with the Nazis inside. 98 However, rather than point the machine gun at the audience, continuing the chain of violence and hatred, Sipérius plays the children ’ s laughter. 99 The future is no longer carved by the sound of bullets, but instead by the sound of children. This sound brings hope in an ending that Sipérius accurately describes as: kitschy yet beautiful. 100 Notes 1 Milo Rau and Stefan Bläske, “ Wer sieht uns, wenn wir leiden? ” in: Yven Augustin (ed.), Pressemappe: Mitleid. Die Geschichte des Maschinengewehrs, pp. 8 - 14, here p. 8. 2 Milo Rau, “ Über die Bilder ” , KunstBewusst. Museum Ludwig, Cologne, 14.2.2017, Lecture. 3 Milo Rau (dir.), Mitleid. Die Geschichte des Machinengewehrs, Dramaturg: Florian Borchmeyer, Mirjam Knapp, Stefan Bläske, Design: Anton Lukas, Perf.: Ursina Lardi, Consolate Sipérius, Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, Berlin, Germany, 8.7.2016, Performance. 4 Ibid. 5 Florian Merkel, “ In jedem von uns steckt ein Pegidist ” , in: Welt.de, 22.1.2016. https: / / ww w.welt.de/ kultur/ buehne-konzert/ arti cle151350224/ In-jedem-von-uns-steckt-ein- Pegidist.html [accessed 29.3.2017]. 6 Ibid. 7 Rau and Bläske, “ Wer sieht uns, ” p.11. 8 Rau (dir.), Mitleid. 9 While refugee theatre has a long history within the European and German theatrical tradition, since 2015 there has been an explosion in “ refugee theatre ” in the German (and Austrian) theatrical landscape, with a number of actors able to create careers through this specific form of theatre. However, Rau argues against pigeonholing actors, because although refugee theatre offers an entrance into the German and wider European theatre community for these immigrant actors, it is extremely difficult to find work outside of the genre within Sprechtheater or other forms of traditional (or more accurately, non-refugee) theatre. Rolf Bossart and Milo Rau, “ Wenn aus Wasser Eis wird ” , in: Milo Rau, Hate Radio: Materilien, Dokumente, Theorie, Berlin 2014, pp. 8 - 28, here p. 23. 10 Rau (dir.), Mitleid. 11 Eberhard Spreng, “’ Mitleid ’ an der Schaubühne: Die unerbittliche Logik des Gewehrs ” , in: Deutschlandfunk.de, 17.2.2016. h ttps: / / www.deutschlandfunk.de/ mitleid-an-d er-schaubuehne-die-unerbittliche-logik-de s.691.de.html? dram: article_id=342721 [accessed 28.2.2017]; Rau (dir.), Mitleid. 12 Rau (dir.), Mitleid. 13 Ibid. 14 Michael Laages, “ Großreinemachen unter Gutmenschen an der Schaubühne ” , in: Deutschlandfunkkultur, 16.1.2016. https: / / www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/ mitleid-thea terabend-von-milo-rau-grossreinemachen-u nter.1013.de.html? dram: article_id=342815 [accessed 1.4.2017]. 15 Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge 1977, p. 72; Pierre Bourdieu, The Sociologist and the Historian, Cambridge 2015, p. 52; Claire Laurier Decoteau, “ The reflexive habitus: Critical realist 85 Blindness and Cynicism in Milo Rau ’ s Mitleid. Die Geschichte des Maschinengewehrs (2016) and Bourdieusian social action ” , in: European Journal of Social Theory 19/ 3 (2016), pp. 303 - 321, here p. 304. 16 Decoteau, “ The reflexive habitus ” , p. 305. 17 Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, p. 306. 18 Stuart Young, “ Making the Representation Real: The Actor and the Spectator in Milo Rau ’ s ‘ Theatrical Essays ’ Mitleid and La Reprise ” , in: New Theatre Quarterly 37/ 3 (August 2021), pp. 223 - 245, here p. 230. 19 Rau (dir.), Mitleid. 20 This is an illusion of disregarding the fourth wall, because the performance consists of two memorized, non-spontaneous monologues performed by the actors. Although both Lardi and Sipérius do speak to the audience, the performance itself remains a unidirectional dialogue where the actor addresses the spectator without the possibility of the spectator answering or physically responding to the actor during the performance. 21 Rau (dir.), Mitleid.. 22 Rau and Bläske, “ Wer sieht uns, ” p. 12. 23 Laages, “ Großreinemachen unter Gutmenschen ” . 24 Rau (dir.), Mitleid. Rau is actually quoting himself from an earlier interview with Rolf Bossart “ Das ist der Grund, warum es die Kunst gibt, ” in the 2013 publication Die Enthüllung des Realen. In this interview Rau describes the image of Ceau ş escu ’ s trial in 1989 as an image everyone already knows without ever having seen it ( “ Jeder kennt diese Bilder, ohne sie überhaupt gesehen zu haben ” ); Rolf Bossart and Milo Rau, “ Das ist der Grund, warum es die Kunst gibt ” , in: Rolf Bossart (ed.), Die Enthüllung des Realen. Milo Rau und das International Institute of Political Murder, Berlin 2013, pp. 14 - 35, here p. 26. 25 Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers, New York 1972, p. 143. 26 Merkel, “ In jedem von uns ” . 27 Edward W. Said, Orientalism, New York 1979, p. 5. 28 Decoteau, “ The reflexive habitus, ” p. 305. 29 Said, Orientalism, p. 7. 30 Gregor McLennan, “ Postcolonial Critique: The Necessity of Sociology ” , in: Julian Go (ed.), Postcolonial Sociology, Bingley 2013, pp. 119 - 144, here p. 120. 31 Thomas Martinec, “ The Boundaries of Mitleidsdramaturgie: Some Clarifications Concerning Lessing ’ s Concept of ‘ Mitleid ’” , in: Modern Language Review 101 (2006), pp. 743 - 758, here p. 744. 32 Natalya Baldyga, “‘ We have actors, but no art of acting ’ : Performance Theory and Theatrical Emotion in the Hamburg Dramaturgy ” , in: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, The Hamburg Dramaturgy by G. E. Lessing: A New and Complete Annotated English Translation, trans. Wendy Arons and Sara Figal, ed. Natalya Baldyga, London 2019, pp. 13 - 21, here p. 21. 33 Avi Lifschitz and Michael Squire, “ Introduction: Rethinking Lessing ’ s Laocoon from across the Humanities ” , in: Avi Lifschitz and Michael Squire (eds.), Rethinking Lessing ’ s Laocoon: Antiquity, Enlightenment, and the ‘ Limits ’ of Painting and Poetry, Oxford 2017, pp. 1 - 57, here p. 23 and 27. 34 Howard Prosser, “ Reading Dialectic of Enlightenment ” , in: Dialectic of Enlightenment in the Anglosphere: Horkheimer and Adorno ’ s Remnants of Freedom, Singapore 2020, pp. 29 - 44, here p. 30. 35 Daniel Carey and Lynn Festa, “ Some Answers to the Question: ‘ What is Postcolonial Enlightenment? ’” , in: Daniel Carey and Lynn Festa (eds.), The Postcolonial Enlightenment: Eighteenth-Century Colonialism and Postcolonial Theory, Oxford 2015, pp. 1 - 34, here p. 1 - 2. 36 Baldyaga, “‘ We have actors ’” , p. 19. 37 Paul Fleming, Exemplarity & Mediocrity: The Art of the Average Bourgeois Tragedy to Realism, Stanford 2009, p. 56. 38 Lessing, The Hamburg Dramaturgy, pp. 239 - 240. 39 Fleming, Exemplarity & Mediocrity, p. 54; Benjamin W. Redekop, “ United and Yet Divided: Lessing ’ s Constitution of an Enlighted German Public ” , in: Benjamin W. Redekop (ed.), Enlightenment and Community: Lessing, Abbt, Herder, and the Quest 86 Lily Climenhaga for a German Public, Montreal 2000, pp. 58 - 122, here p. 105 - 106. 40 Ibd., p. 104 - 106; Robert Walter-Jochum, “ Affective Dynamics of Excitable Speech in Milo Rau ’ s Breiviks Erklärung and Mitleid ” , in Theater 51/ 2 (2021), pp. 97 - 107, here p. 102. 41 Redekop, “ United and Yet Divided ” , pp. 84 - 85. 42 Katherine Harloe, “ Sympathy, Tragedy, and the Morality of Sentiment in Lessing ’ s Laocoon ” , in: Lifschitz and Squire, Rethinking Lessing ’ s Laocoon, pp. 157 - 176, here p. 157; Redekop, “ United and Yet Divided, ” p. 90. 43 Fleming, Exemplarity & Mediocrity, p. 48. 44 Lessing qtd. Fleming, Exemplarity & Mediocrity, p. 65. 45 Ibid., 60. 46 Fleming, Exemplarity & Mediocrity, p. 74. 47 Ibid., p. 48. 48 Milo Rau, “ Compassion: The History of the Machine Gun. A Theater Essay ” , Theater, 51/ 2 (2021), pp.109 - 125, here: p. 110 - 111. 49 Walter-Jochum, “ Affective Dynamics ” , p. 102. 50 Ibid., p. 103 - 104. 51 Ibid., p. 105. 52 McLennan, “ Postcolonial Critique ” , p. 120 - 121. 53 Ibid., p. 126. 54 Ibid., p. 127. 55 Rau (dir.), Mitleid. 56 Rau, “ Über die Bilder, ” 14.2.2017. 57 It is important to note that this process of externalizing is highly present within contemporary theatre culture, which - as Rau points out - remains embedded in this deeply colonial categorization of Africa as the ultimate Other. Andreas Tobler and Milo Rau, “ Afrika (1) ” , in: Rolf Bossert and Milo Rau (eds.), Wiederholung und Ekstase. Ästhetisch-politische Grundbegriffe des International Institute of Political Murder, Zurich 2017, pp. 20 - 29, here p. 23. 58 Rau (dir.), Mitleid. 59 Spreng, “‘ Mitleid ’ an der Schaubühne ” ; Rau (dir.), Mitleid. 60 Rau (dir.), Mitleid; Young, “ Making the Representation Real, ” pp. 229 - 230. 61 Laages, “ Großreinemachen unter Gutmenschen ” . 62 Joost Raemer, “ Theater should be a transformative experience: Milo Rau ’ s cheerful and non-cynical brand of political drama ” , in: Culturebot Maximum Performance, 17.10. 2014. http: / / www.culturebot.org/ 2014/ 10/ 22 293/ theater-should-be-a-transformative-ex perience-milo-raus-cheerful-and-non-cyni cal-brand-of-political-drama/ [accessed 19.2. 2017]. 63 Merkel, “ In jedem von uns ” ; Rau (dir.), Mitleid. 64 Rau (dir.), Mitleid. 65 Milo Rau, “ Sie wissen ja, wie es in Träumen ist …” , in: Milo Rau (ed.), Althussers Hände: Essays und Kommentare, Berlin 2015, pp. 241 - 244. 66 Rau (dir.), Mitleid. 67 Tania Singer, Milo Rau, and Florian Borchmeyer, “ Globaler Realismus - globales Mitgefühl. Tania Singer im Gespräch mit Milo Rau und Florian Borchmeyer ” , in: schaubuehne.de, pp. 3 - 8, here p. 3. https: / / www. schaubuehne.de/ en/ uploads/ Schaubuehne_ Tania-Singer_Interview.pdf.pdf [accessed 21.3.2017]. 68 Ibid., p. 5. 69 Milo Rau, “ Milo Rau (Köln) IIPM ” , in: Art Talks, Campus der Künste, Basel, Switzerland, 30.3.2017, Lecture. 70 Merkel, “ In jedem von uns ” . 71 Rau and Bläske, “ Wer sieht uns ” , p. 14. 72 Ibid., p. 14. 73 Rau (dir.), Mitleid. 74 Prior to the production of Mitleid, Rau and his production team went on a research trip to a refugee camp in Idomeni on the Greek- Macedonian border. Images from this research trip are employed within the production; Harald Wolff and Milo Rau, “ Aufgeklärter Katastrophismus ” , in: Bossert und Rau, Wiederholung und Ekstase, pp. 43 - 48, here p. 43 - 44. 75 Rau (dir.), Mitleid. 76 Langes, “ Großreinemachen unter Gutmenschen ” . 77 Spreng, “‘ Mitleid ’ an der Schaubühne ” . 87 Blindness and Cynicism in Milo Rau ’ s Mitleid. Die Geschichte des Maschinengewehrs (2016) 78 Lars von Trier (dir.), Dogville, Lions Gate Entertainment, 2003, Film; Rau (dir.), Mitleid. 79 Kathrin Hönneger and Milo Rau, “ Regisseur Milo Rau: ‘ Alle, wir alle sind Arschlöcher! ’” , in: srf.ch, 22.2.2016, Podcast. http: / / www.srf. ch/ sendungen/ focus/ regisseur-milo-rau-alle -wir-alle-sind-arschloecher [accessed 3.4. 2017]. 80 Jakob Hayner, “ Der Kongo ist die Konsequenz von Europa ” , in: Jungle World 3, 21.1.2016. https: / / jungle.world/ artikel/ 2016/ 03/ der-kongo-ist-die-konsequenz-von-euro pa [accessed 6.4.2017]. 81 Hönneger and Rau, “ Alle, wir sind alle ” . 82 Merkel, “ In jedem von uns “ . 83 Spreng, “‘ Mitleid ’ an der Schaubühne ” . 84 Ibid. 85 Rau (dir.), Mitleid. 86 Rau and Bläske, “ Wer sieht uns ” , p. 14. 87 Rau (dir.), Mitleid. 88 Merkel, “ In jedem von uns ” . 89 Ibid. 90 Singer, Rau, Borchmeyer, “ Globaler Realismus ” . 91 One issue that presents itself in Mitleid is the question of how to articulate these issues of privilege and hypocrisy to workers within NGOs and other facets of the compassion industry. For Rau, the first step in creating sustainable change is recognition, which is in part possible through theatre. The idea of recognizing our failure (and this includes Rau ’ s own place within this system) and in this collective recognition working to “ fail better ” is key to how this conversation must take place. 92 Hayner, “ Der Kongo ist die Konsequenz ” . 93 Singer, Rau, Borchmeyer, “ Globaler Realismus ” . 94 Rolf Bossart and Milo Rau, “ Ereignis ” , in: Bossert and Rau, Wiederholung und Ekstase, pp. 65 - 70, here p. 69 - 70. 95 Stefan Bock, “ Mitleid. Die Geschichte des Maschinengewehrs ” , in: Kultura-Extra, 31.1.2016. https: / / www.kultura-extra.de/ the ater/ spezial/ urauffuehrung_milorau_mitle id.php [accessed 5.4.2017]. 96 Tom McCarthy, Remainder, London 2007, p. 190. 97 Rau (dir.), Mitleid. 98 Spreng, “‘ Mitleid ’ an der Schaubühne ” . 99 Hayner, “ Der Kongo ist die Konsequenz ” ; Rau and Bläske, “ Wer sieht uns, ” p. 8. 100 Rau (dir.), Mitleid. 88 Lily Climenhaga