Staging Transitory Europe: Precarious Re-enactment Variations from Le Birgit Ensemble's Memories of Sarajevo to Milo Rau's The Dark Ages

Abstract:In the theatre productions of the Birgit Ensemble, Memories of Sarajevo (2017) and Milo Rau's The Dark Ages (2015), the Bosnian war becomes the starting point for a far-reaching reflection on Europe's past and present "status quo" through the respective adapted narrative form of re-enactment. Usually understood as a realization of the past or, instead, an absent-present, by following Mathias Meiler, one sheds light on the re-enactment as a certain way of narrating a historical transition and, at the same time, problematizing this choice of 'translation'. Thus, the different degrees of mediation between 'unfamiliar' and 'familiar', 'present' and 'absent', with the help of various theatrical means, give rise to different implications with regard to the relationship between past and present Europe.