Performative Compassion: Blindness and Criticism in Milo Rau’s Mitleid. Die Geschichte des Maschinengewehrs (2016)

Abstract

“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.