Milo Rau gave the opening speech at the Prague Crossroads Festival opening ceremony

After the End of History

Opening Speech of the Prague Crossroads Festival, Prague, at the Czech National Theatre
6 November 2024 by Milo Rau

Dear Friends,
I am delighted to be here in Prague to open the Prague Crossroads Festival, which I am told was founded in honor of Václav Havel, one of the greatest playwrights and politicians that Europe has known in the last century. It feels, as you might imagine, crazy to be speaking in Prague at a moment like this: It is the day that Donald Trump was elected President of the United States for the second time. At the same time, we are celebrating this month the 35th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, also called the “Gentle Revolution” – and thus the fall of the Stalinist dictatorship in large parts of Europe. Two glimpses into the past: a creepy return on the one hand, a moment of historical hope on the other.

Until recently, opening a theatre festival in Europe was a purely formal act. You thanked the sponsors and rattled off the usual buzzwords: democracy, freedom, diversity, Europe – you name it. So, as I prepared for this speech, I couldn't help but think of Havel and the bureaucratic language he created for his absurd theatre plays. He called it “Ptydepe”: a meaningless set of empty phrases, developed by a central bureaucracy, for the use by employees kept busy doing nothing at all.

As you know, I come to you from Austria: not Havel’s, but Hitler’s home country. For the first time since the fall of National Socialism, we have had a far-right parliamentary president for two weeks now. His first official act was to invite the Hungarian president, Victor Orbán, to Vienna. Another demagogue – Kickl, the leader of our far-right Party, Austria’s “Freedom Party” that won the elections – and Orbán signed a paper in which they demand “peace” – meaning peace with Russia – and the dissolution of the European Union. In this nice paper, the union of Austria and Hungary is called “the axis” – I don't need to remind you who last called a political alliance in Europe an “axis”. But that's not surprising from a party that wants to ban more or less everything that is not “Austrian” enough, including my own festival, and yet calls itself the “Freedom Party”.

Whatever one wants to say about this neo-fascist language: it is not “Ptydepe” – but a very clear language. A language of hatred, of power. They don’t want crossing roads, they want parallel roads, they don’t want Europe, they want national states. Sometimes I think that we liberals have been, as Havel says about the socialist bureaucrats, “busy doing nothing at all” in recent decades. Perhaps some of you were more realistic than me: But could it be that we were too sure that democracy was indeed the “End of History”, as the American philosopher Fukuyama wrote shortly after 1989?

But that is probably what the end of history actually looks like: a return, or even a revenge of the past on the present. I am in Prague for the first time in my life, in the city where the idea of socialism with a human face was developed in 1968. It was smashed by Russian tanks, but still in 1989, more than a few people hoped for a united Europe that would have been neither socialist nor capitalist, but would have combined the best of both systems. What we got was nothing more than the unification of the old socialist and old capitalist elites – under the banner of neo-nationalism. A few weeks ago, a Serbian philosopher told me a joke: When the Berlin wall fell, we realized too late that it had fallen on us, the Ex-Yugoslavs. But I think it fell on all of us, all Europeans. When Václav Havel became president 35 years ago – I was 12 at the time – it seemed as if the old platonic dream had been fulfilled: the philosopher in power! But the man who had spent so many years in prison, who had been censored, who had suffered so much – he too could not prevent the rise of nationalism, for example the division of Czechoslovakia.

The most famous quote from Greek Tragedy is: Suffer and learn, from Aeschylus’ Oresteia. But today, as nationalism, war, discord, small-mindedness, fear and censorship are once again returning throughout Europe, the question arises: what did we learn since 1945 and 1989? Was the so-called European dream merely that sleep of reason that produces monsters? Be it 1945 or 1989: I think that only by understanding, embracing the past can we reclaim the future. Not in empty words, not with nice speeches, but in every encounter, in every artistic act, in every festival, and of course: in every election. “We need to find clear images for vague ideas,” is a famous quote from Godard, and I would add: We need clear actions, we need direct solidarity. We need solidarity with all those who have already become victims of the new fascism.

I know that activism can be as empty as words. I know that theatre is above all a place of doubt and a place of truth, a place where we admit our failures, where we can laugh and cry – about ourselves, our contradictions, our mistakes, our illusions. But theatre is also a place of revolt, of radical moral sensitivity. Every play, however melancholic and absurd, sad and funny it may be, is a place where past and future meet, despair and hope. Or, in the words of another Czech, Miloš Forman, who said about Václav Havel: “If a playwright succeeds in making us laugh or cry, or both, he's an artist. But if a playwright succeeds in orchestrating the overthrow of a dictatorship without a single bullet being fired, it's a miracle.”

Let's make this miracle happen again. Let's start a second Gentle Revolution. Europe, democracy, freedom, diversity: Let’s give back meaning to these words. Because otherwise, they will soon be nothing more than poetry from the past.

Thank you.