It will be the first performance of Elfriede Jelinek’s highly controversial play Burgtheater in Vienna: Milo Rau is staging the satire about Austria’s Nazi ties, narrated at hand of a renowned family of actors, at Burgtheater itself. Thus it emerges that Burgtheater is not only one of the great legends of theatre history but also a prophetic vision of the current political situation.

’If it’s performed in Vienna, it will surely be the greatest theatre scandal of the Second Republic!’ When Elfriede Jelinek announced her ‘wicked farce with song’ in 1981, not even she had an idea that Burgtheater would cast her in the role of ‘Nestbeschmutzerin’, a traitor fouling her own nest. The satire deals with Austria’s Nazi ties, narrated at hand of a renowned family of actors. Swiss director Milo Rau, to whom Jelinek has now granted exclusive rights for a late Burgtheater premiere, considers this narrative just the starting point. He takes a look at Austrian society: what is our relationship to fascism and collaboration? And how does the theatre – specifically the Burgtheater – figure in that?