 So, welcome everybody here to the Martinie Siegel Theatre Center at the Graduate Center CUNY. I'm live here at the Graduate Center, which is on 34th Street and 5th Avenue, close to the New York Public Library. And this is an event we added on very short notice to our program. We have with us the great Milo Rao, the Swiss Theatre Maker, a game leader and inventor of new rules or applying old rules to the world of theatre. And this evening is dedicated to Navalny and his work, his fight, his political work, his dreams for a better life, how it could be. And even so, Navalny himself didn't work in the sphere and in the arenas of theatre. We feel close to the work because also what we do, I think, is a fight against injustice. It's a fight for progressive justice and it is imagining a better world, a different world, because the world, how it is, does not work well. For us, it works a little bit better or much better than in many parts of the world, but in others like Russia or in the global south, and everybody does not end a Milo Rao through his work, has shown us. Navalny was part of Milo Rao's significant work, one of his most well-known work of the Moscow Trials. So first of all, Milo, thank you for joining us on such a short notice. It's over midnight in Europe. Where are you at the moment? I'm in Germany, so it's just over midnight. Thanks for having me, Frank. Yeah, so it is quite an evening. We just screened the Navalny documentary again, the CNN documentary that is available on HBO Max. It's a very moving, watching it now, knowing that it was the last time that he saw his wife and he said goodbye in that final scene. Also a sad thing, René Polish, a great worker in the theatre from the Giesen Institute, the lead artist leader of the Volksbühne Berlin, also died two or three hours ago, unexpectedly. So it's quite a sad day. On the other hand, the work goes on and Milo, I've always seen your work as a work of politics with other means, and not as war, but in theatre, in the art. Tell us a little bit about your idea of Moscow Trials and how did you meet Navalny? The story of the Moscow Trials started in, I don't remember exactly when, it was like in 2010, when an NGO called Memorial, you know, an organization that was also declared terrorist some years ago already now and closed. They had the Peace Nobel Prize, by the way, I think some years ago too, they asked me to do a play about the Moscow Trials, because the Moscow Trials as a term are referring to the trial Stalin did against his opponents in the party and in the army in the 30s of the 20th century. So against Bukhavien, against Trotsky and everybody who was not online and didn't want to follow him into this so-called Stalinism. And I went to Russia and I remember I was in the Sokhov Centre having a little speech about my plan to restage the Moscow Trials. And then one dissident stood up and said, yeah, but we have exactly these trials today. And there were two trials at that moment, Moscow Trials were three trials against dissidents and at that moment there were already two trials against two art exhibitions, dissident art exhibitions in the Sokhov Centre and people were in prison or exiled or not allowed to work anymore. And I remember I started researching about these trials and friends of mine, the Pussy Riot, the punk group, they did several concerts on the Red Square on the roof of the McDonald's and so on and so on. And I remember one day they said, okay, tomorrow we will play in the Holy Saviour Cathedral and everybody was like, okay, why not? Because there was no reaction. You were in Moscow when they decided to do that? Yeah, yeah, this was in 2012. And then for some reason Putin at that time, I think the president was mediative, they decided to make a show trial out of it to bring the Orthodox majority of Russia closer to the regime to pretending that they would care for the feelings of the two ladies present in the Holy Saviour Cathedral during this concert of two minutes. So it was a completely fake trial and two of the three went to prison and I decided to take this as the third trial that I would rework. So not working on the historical trials but on the trials happening at this very time as show trials. I gathered all the, the concept is very simple. I gathered everybody involved in these trials. So from Pusterite, Katya, for example, then a lot of dissidents but also a lot of Orthodox people. For example, Maxim Chevchenko, who I mean, I couldn't meet him now anymore because he's having speeches in the Ukraine, in the occupied Ukraine. So he became a really, really strong hand of the Putin regime. But at that time this kind of discussion was still possible. He staged, let's say, a real trial which was artificial but everything that was set and everybody who was appearing in this trial was real. In the Sachov Center we invited everyone. That's what the film is about that you will see. And one of the people I invited was of course also Alexei Navalny who I think sometimes later would run for becoming the mayor of Moscow. He didn't, but he was close and he was already very respected, I remember at that time. Of course there was, we discussed, I think last time I was in the Siegel Center about the little differences in, especially under a situation of political pressure for example in the Russian opposition that let's say the fights inside the opposition are as hard as they are between the opposition and Putin himself. And that still today it's the same. And Alexei Navalny was one and you can also see it in this HPO documentary who was trying to bring together and this was very disputed also by myself. When I met him, what we in the West would call right-wing nationalists together with liberal forces together with more let's say more classical, economical, independent people and so on. So he was trying to construct an opposition until his end by the way and that's I think the reason why he went back to Russia even if this was a kind of an action that was difficult to explain. And the fun fact is that when you watch now I think you can see him perhaps once or twice in the public but his statement we just cut out at one point of the editing of the film because at that point for the Moscow trial itself his statement was not so interesting. He was very much trying to be politically correct at that very moment to bring a majority of people behind him for the elections. So for the film it was not so interesting what he was saying. He was not so deep into the cases either he was not close to Pussyright and so on but he was as you can see in the film already at that time an extremely charismatic personality. And of course then after the attack in 21 I think and when he went to Berlin and then to the Schwarzwald I mean there he really became another figure bigger than Hodor Kowski bigger than Boris Nemtsov, bigger than all the others, bigger than Pussyright even I would say and he became this symbol of resistance and that he was killed now I think everybody is still in deep confusion. For me it's a quite nice moment in the end of the documentary that you just streamed when he's asked but what will you do when you die and you can see in his eyes and in his voice and his reaction that he can't imagine, like nobody can imagine that he would die it's such an absurd idea and that's now what happened 10 days ago. Yeah, we all thought it would be more like a Nelson Mandela, someone who spends the decade and then comes back as a powerful leader who actually can unite front. And what do you think about an opposition leader like him bridging the political antagonism? What did you think of his strategy to create a front? Yeah, I have to say that at that time I criticized it like I think most of western intellectual and artists would do but when you were in Russia for example for me the first shock was when I was working together with Pussyright and we created a popular tour from people from all parts of Moscow and we wrote them together like in a movie trial that they would give the final verdict. So 12 people from all political backgrounds, from all educational backgrounds, from all different parts of Moscow vary from the outside, vary from the center, you know, people like us but people that were never in the university and are nationalists. And demographically it was quite well made this tour but I understood quite fast that you will not find any tour in Russia who would liberate Pussyright because nobody was okay with what they did even if it was quite clear what they did and why they did it politically and what was their statement but you saw that 80 or even 90 percent and we are talking about 2013 and as I said before when I look at this film now this country fell into darkness and you could not imagine to have this discussion in the Sakhov center which is by the way closed again. So this is not it's like already two years later I lost my visa like one year or not even a year like one month later and it changed very fast and then the first I mean then they invaded the Crimea and then they invaded two years ago now the Holy Ukraine and for me it was a shock to understand that 90 percent of Russia is what we would call nationalist or right-wing or at least not liberal left, you know, so it's a different situation and I think it's also in this movie when Alexei is saying yeah of course I understand that for you from the West preaching nationalists and liberals seems to be a very strange strategy but Russia is not a normal political context in that sense that you have these two sides and you can decide and every side is strong enough. If you would not go together somehow with Russian nationalism which is a very very strong dissident power too. I don't think that you have any chance to the urban elite is too small and I think there is no other choice. Of course what he did is that in still in 2013 he was sometimes a bit too close to really right-wing people and he changed that in a he learned and he changed and he for whatever reason but this is this is the biography of a politician and I think it's super impressive that if you look at how he developed how he strategically moved because if you compare him with the other well-known dissidents his power his charisma his strategy to bridge and to bring together a majority I mean for example he had this strategy of what he called clever election to say that even if you are not for the other candidate then Putin you should vote for him and just that Putin would lose some percentage and you know all this kind of quite let's say yeah in a negative term you could say quite changing and even a bit opportunistic approach to what his power or in another moment in a documentary because I just watched it again he says what would I do if I would have the power I would divide it immediately and I think all this is part of his strategy that he over the years slowly developed and yeah and in 2013 this was not really not 100% visible it became visible in the dark ages because 2013 was just before the dark ages so you know there was the winter games of Sochi so they opened a bit they liberated even Pussy Riot a bit later and so on and so on we could do our performance in the Sakhov centre I mean you will see in the movie that also the secret police they also stop it at one point but today you could not even start to do it and this completely changed and yeah most probably you would have been if you had done it even a couple of years ago be arrested you would be in jail for being a foreign agent and to destabilise and Russia so if you look back at it this is a piece of resistance as you know part of your school of resistance your great seminars you did and in the face of this political murder you know that we now experience looking better what do you think of it as a piece of theatre what comes to your mind yeah I think what was very you know I didn't intend to do it I really wanted to restage the Moscow trials the trial against Bukharin because I was always very impressed by the by the stature of this of this historical figure so he was the intellectual of the Communist Party in the 30s and when these trials happened there was this very beautiful quote which is deeply Marxist to say I'm not guilty individually but objectively I am guilty you know as the figure that I was in history as part of the middle class and so on and so on and as the one who was building up Stalinism actually and this was for me a very Shakespearean story but when I arrived there and this became a bit typical for all my work I did after the Moscow trials I immediately felt that I had to react to the actual context that I had to actualise this idea of the Moscow trials and understood immediately that what was happening there was exactly the same what happened in the 20s already 100 years before in Russia that the kind of opening society changed into totalitarianism again and I think it was I read just some days ago an interview about from Victoria V the writer that in Russia there were only two moments of democracy so one was from February to October 1917 and the other one was really in the very late in the end moments of Gorbachev and in the beginning of Yeltsin you had a little window of democracy too that was immediately closed again and of course everybody as you said in this Mandela logic everybody when you at 2013 you had the impression because in the 2012 you had these big manifestations these big demonstrations and then in 2013 you had this you had the Pussy Riot trial but still you had this opening it was not 100% sure that Putin would come back it was not 100% I mean Ukraine didn't happen of course Georgia happened but it was really it was another moment and there was the hope for an opening and when I look back to this project I exactly feel this Fatah Morgana this European hope that even Russia would become part of the European Union and the times of the Cold War would not come back but yeah history went back from where we came and it I mean the story that we know from the I mean when you look for me the strangest thing with Alexei Navalny dying in prison like before him Boris Nemtsov died in prison now nine years ago it's really history repeating itself so that this would happen in Europe again that you kill your opponents is really impressive because in the 70s in the 80s in the 90s in the even in the zero years this didn't happen anymore in Russia you know it somehow stopped so we are before the 70s somehow and also the invasion of Ukraine when did nobody expected it because it was too it was just too absurd the one of G9 would do this you know so all this is is and you can even feel it in the in the last scene of the film with with with Alexei Navalny that for him going back to Russia he didn't expect what nowadays all this this this interpretation you can read in many articles that he was a kind of a holy man expecting this and he wanted to confront it etc but I think not at all he also grew up in a kind of a postmodern Russia which was not killing its opponents so it was not it was not happening anymore and so this is a yeah this is a changing of of of of time time and how was the atmosphere in the room and it was shown was it did it work that idea of a resistance a piece of theater of documentary theater theater of the read the global real did it work and then when we did it it worked very well it was I remember that we had one journalist in the room. She's American I think we talked about her Masha Gessen and she wrote for the New York Times quite a nice text and she was saying and this was really the perhaps it's the format perhaps it was the context and it was the heat of the situation but she she wrote after two three minutes you completely forgot that this was not real that this was as you say a kind of a mock trial but everything was real you know it was like a surrealistic daydream and everything was real and you when you when you when you look at the film you have exactly the same the same feeling of something that is happening and when the advocate that we hired which was the advocate of push your right and she lost the first trial the real trial and then she was asked by Charles but why would you do this trial again why do you do a staged trial and she said you know why because this is the first time that I do a trial in Russia which is not staged which I don't know how it will end because nobody scripted it and that was exactly what we did and this was this surrealistic quality of it that you didn't know how it would end I remember just before the final verdict I was I was waiting there's a jury the popular jury would come back and I was not sure if they would not judge guilty again push your right you know but this time in the Sachov Center this time organized by artists and I said so what would this be as a message if they are judged by Putin and then again in the center of of of dissident intelligence by a popular I mean then everything is lost somehow and yeah but in the end we were happy enough that it was not that was not the case but it was close and all these elements made it made it extremely real in the sense of that you don't know what will happen next and how it will end it was an incredible piece of theater I'm so glad that you as part of your aesthetic work that you document your work that we can still see it even we weren't there in the moment. We just had you here and you talked about your book where you said, if you can demonstrate it on stage you can demonstrate system structures. It also means you can change it and that's why it's important to show it instead of, you know, theater showing individual, you know, stories of love or problems with the parents or lost a child or whatever to say now in the Brechtchen sense to really show and open up apocalyptic way in the opening what's hidden. Then perhaps you know we give hope that we can change and as you say for a short moment a window opens something that's a beyond the visible something that is invisible is with us, and I do see your work as a work of Navalny just on a different stage. So, tell us a little bit I know you're now opening also the Vienna Festwochen and the Free Republic, and you have a press conference coming up so I was saying that's also interesting what do you do as a theater maker now and the time where we live in like what to do. And as they say right now what are you doing and how do you see it as a as an act of political resistance aesthetic resistance the aesthetic of resistance. You know, Vienna where we opened this festival was the was the capital of modernism for reasons we don't know today but in Europe, you know, new music, psychoanalysis, new painting everything happened there in the beginning of the 20th century. And they also created what they call the red Vienna kind of a free republic in the tradition of the community of Paris. So really civic society taking its sovereignty it's its power back from the parties from the kings from the army from everything, creating for a very short time, a free republic where everything was decided democratically by the people itself. And the system again took over and you are shifted slowly to the Second World War and then to the Cold War and so on and so on. So I had the impression that now in the beginning of the 21st century 100 years after classical modernism or first modernism we need a second modernism. Decentralized perhaps not elitist perhaps not only male perhaps not only central European etc. And perhaps Vienna as an international city very close to the east full of Russians full of Ukrainians full of ex-Yugoslavians could be the place to do it and to try it again and to create institutions. And so of course we will have Vienna trials to against the the right wing parties against but also against the Vinofest Wachen itself. We created an academy that you hosted it the Academy Second Modernism to network female composers worldwide and to create the yeah another way of producing another way of involving the public into what yeah what will become our institution our guideline to curate the next and the over next and so on festivals and yeah as you say we have we have a press conference on Friday to to announce it together with our artists and our our partners and everything. And then in maybe start and we we we took this this model of the free of the free republics of the beginning of the 20th century just to say okay. It's an experiment that includes everything so for example when you take the Alexi Navalny experiment of course he involved the social media involved. Public movement he involved direct action he involved he made films I mean he was not only you tubing a bit he made really one hour long. Real films you know that good films interesting films touching films. He was a very good speaker etc etc and I think to try to to bring this kind of figures we invite a lot of politicians from Russia of course so dissident politicians. We invite from Angela Davis from the US by the way so we have a lot of different people from different parts of. Of the globe to come to Vienna to discuss and to reflect together with us what could be the. The upcoming society the post capitalist society the society that comes after this dark ages we are so deeply in in this. In these years now. Yeah you're going to have I think around in a whole thing I will come and some of your composers you did this symposium also here in New York where only 2% of. Women were represented on musical stages which is shocking. So tell us a bit what what will you change at the Vienna festival and how do you see it. In a sense of a Navalny of you know showing the new that you know often comes with a scare as I'm a mother said but what. And then the man has beauty in it so what is your plan to engage the city of Vienna. The most the most simple example is the what you call the council of the Republic so Vienna is the one of the five biggest cities of the European Union and their 23. Neighborhoods you know it's like it's a city it's not so big it's perhaps three million and from this 23 neighborhoods we take from every neighborhood three people we bring them together. And we mix them with the people you you just mentioned international intellectuals Elfride Yellenek and you know people that are really. Yeah that that that are the international part of it then we have partner organizations for example the landless movement and so on. That come to Vienna to and all these people together form the Council of the Republic. Decide on how we want to curate how we want to invite what will be you talked about the two percent what will be the quarters do we want to have quarters do we want to cancel people. Or do we invite everybody perhaps you heard about this this conflict we had three weeks ago I invited the Russian composer and the Ukrainian composer. And there was such a big shit storm and I can understand it even even the. The Ukrainian ambassador called me and everybody said but you can't invite this. This this this composer in this way at this this this conductor in this very moment and I said but I think it could be a nice. A nice constellation but in the end it was impossible so we will also try to find out what in times of of war is still possible in this utopic space of. Of an art festival. Of incredible possible what's not possible to connect as in neighbors communities generations and not only most probably might have been as one of the politicians you might have invited to come over and to participate so. Really thank you Milo stanging for up until past midnight you have a early flight at 8 o'clock more or less really means a lot to us congratulations again on your work we will follow. What you do there we also trying to see the global theater festival in New York is thinkable here in the summer and how we then could connect but to Emily how round I think now we move over to screen. The Moscow trials it was 2013 when it was a yes yeah so have a look what Milo did as a reaction you know to go out of the theater where he was hired to do is as now we should go out in the world we should. Connect to what's real and we should have an impact and we should think outside traditions of this theater but actually following the river so thank you again and thank you. Here we go so I'm sleep well and all the best for your work and say for you Frank and everybody.