This thesis takes The Vienna Trials (later renamed The Vienna Congress), a key project of the Wiener Festwochen, as a case study in relational aesthetics and political performance. Through its careful staging—solemn venues, celebrity performers, and extended exchanges of dense information—it produced a highly active and open form of audience participation. Rather than a conventional two-hour theater evening, the Trials unfolded over three consecutive days, two to three weekends per year, thus fundamentally reshaping theatrical temporality.
Drawing on auto-ethnographic recollection, video documentation, and dramaturgical materials, I argue that the event was not only a theatrical simulation of democratic practices but also a collective performance of democracy itself—and, at times, of its failures. The spectators’ presence, fatigue, attention shifts, and negotiations with the format turned the audience into co-performers. The theater space thus expanded beyond the stage, generating an unusual density of interaction that blurred the line between performer and spectator.
Equally, the economic structure of the project—low ticket prices stretched over exceptionally long performance durations—deliberately challenged the commodification and entertainment-orientation of contemporary theater. Instead, it created temporary, localized “micro-utopias” where empathy and laughter coexisted with scrutiny, critique, and endurance. The tension between the dramaturgical team’s intended effects and the actual audience experience are central to my analysis, revealing achieved, failed, and unexpectedly realized theatrical outcomes.
Rather than focusing solely on the invited speakers (politicians, activists, intellectuals), I propose to interpret the Trials as performative democracy emerging from the audience’s collective imagination of justice and fairness. Unlike politicians, who often arrived with strategic agendas, spectators spent entire weekends together simply out of interest in presence and engagement. Without their embodied attention—sitting, watching, being recorded in the official livestream—the most dramatic speeches risked collapsinginto mere spectacle. Ultimately, the seriousness and impact of the performance were evaluated and co-produced by the audience’s unconscious performances.
The thesis will consist of a close reading of the opening session of The Vienna Trials: Attacks on Democracy (2024). Drawing on primary materials such as video documentations, transcripts of proceedings compiled by the author, and ethnological notes, the study further integrates contextual sources including interviews with dramaturgs and scholars as well as audience testimonies. Secondary literature encompasses research on courtroom drama, theories of realism, relational aesthetics, and the intersections of theater and politics, while engaging only marginally, if at all, with Milo Rau’s published writings.
The study will be framed through four key concepts frequently referenced in scholarship on Rau and related works—Realism, Tribunal, Pre-enactment, and Utopia. Clarifying these terms in specific cases will help situate The Vienna Trials within broader traditions of political theater, from Greek tragedy to Brechtian realism, while also highlighting its engagement with contemporary relational aesthetics, where human interaction itself becomes the artistic medium. The analysis focuses on dramaturgical strategies such as opening statements, cross-examinations, and verdicts, exploring how these formal elements shape audience reception and influence perceptions of justice, legitimacy, and democracy. Situating The Vienna Trials within the broader lineage of performative legal interventions and political theater, the thesis ultimately seeks to articulate its distinctive contribution to contemporary debates on democracy in the arts.
Bibliography
Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.
Climenhaga, Lily M. (Re)Creation Processes: Milo Rau and the International Institute of Political Murder . Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2019.
Dahl, Robert A. Democracy and Its Critics . New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.
International Institute of Political Murder. “About IIPM.” Accessed May 2026. letzter Zugriff am 15. März 2026, https://international-institute.de/en/about-iipm-2/.
Wiener Festwochen. 2024. “Anschläge auf die Demokratie.” Wiener Festwochen. letzter Zugriff am 15. März 2026, https://www.festwochen.at/anschlaege-auf-die-demokratie.
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