The Department of German at NYU and Deutsches Haus at NYU present “The Second Coming — Milo Rau in conversation with Elisabeth Bronfen.” In this conversation, the director and author, Milo Rau, and the author and cultural critic, Elisabeth Bronfen will discuss the reasons for and impact of the recent revival of global fascism in Europe and the U.S.; the role of resistance with a particular focus placed on the arts, and on some recent stagings by Rau such as Elfriede Jelinek’s “Endsieg / The Second Coming.”

About “Endsieg / The Second Coming:”

Democracy is in a serious crisis, and people are confused. Elfriede Jelinek responded to Donald Trump’s second election victory with an important text: ENDSIEG, a grim sequel to Am Königsweg / The Burgher King, her play about the United States election eight years ago. Jelinek shows how his followers see the “new old king” as a divinely chosen redeemer. But the king is not alone; there are shadows behind him, his political and economic cliques, fighting for his attention and with each other. And the resistance is collapsing: “I say there is nothing more, there is nothing else, the other no longer exists, there is nothing to see, there is only the one left,” states the blind seer. So, what is left besides Jelinek’s relentless exploration of our times?

About the participants:

Elisabeth Bronfen is an author, a cultural critic, and a freelance curator. She is an emerita from the University of Zurich and Global Distinguished Professor at New York University. Her areas of specialization are: Literature and visual culture, femininity and death, crossmapping as a hermeneutic process, and psychoanalysis. Her publications include Night Passages. Philosophy, Literature, Film (2013), Crossmappings. On Visual Culture (2022) and Serial Shakespeare. An Infinite Variety of Appropriations in American TV Drama (paperback 2025). She is also the author of a cookbook, entitled Obsessed. The cultural critic’s Life in the Kitchen (2019) and a novel, Händler der Geheimnisse. Her most recent publication, Shakespeare’s Serial World: Patterns, Obsessions, Repetitions, will appear with Routledge in 2026. Milo Rau is the artistic director of the Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen) | Free Republic of Vienna. The director and author, who is known for his work at the interface of art and activism, has published over 100 plays, films, books, and actions. His theatre productions have been shown at all major international festivals, including the Berlin Theatertreffen, the Festival d’Avignon, the Venice Biennale, the Vienna Festival, and the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, and have been touring in over 30 countries worldwide. From 2018 to 2024, Milo Rau was Artistic Director of NTGent (Belgium). Milo Rau has received many awards, including the 3sat Prize 2017, the Saarbrücken Poetics Lectureship for Drama 2017, and, as the youngest artist after Frank Castorf and Pina Bausch, the renowned ITI Prize of the World Theatre Day in 2016. In 2017, Milo Rau was voted Director of the Year in a survey conducted by Deutsche Bühne, in 2018, he received the European Theater Prize for his work, and in 2019, he was the first artist ever to be appointed Associated Artist of the European Association of Theatre and Performance — EASTAP. In 2020, he received the renowned Münster Poetry Lectureship for his complete artistic oeuvre. His plays were voted “Best of the Year” in critics’ surveys in over 10 countries. In 2019, he received an honorary doctorate from Lund University in Sweden, and in 2020, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Ghent University. The Swiss Film Award followed in 2021, and in 2022, he gave the Lectures on Poetics at the University of Zurich. A star honours him on the ‘Sibiu Walk of Fame’ (2023), and the Bitef Festival honoured him with the Politika Award for Best Director in 2024.

Attendance information:

While NYU has ended COVID-19-related restrictions and policies, we continue to remind and recommend to members of the NYU community that they stay up-to-date on their boosters and stay home if they feel sick. Masks are always welcome.

Time: 6:00 pm EDT

Free!

Registration