About the work
“Die Seherin” (The Seer) is a theatre piece by Milo Rau, who is responsible for text and direction; the actress Ursina Lardi, who also plays the lead, collaborated on the text. It premiered on 5 June 2025 at the Wiener Festwochen, as a Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz production co-produced with the Wiener Festwochen and La Biennale di Venezia; the Berlin premiere at the Schaubühne followed in September 2025. The roughly 90-minute piece is performed in German and Arabic and combines Lardi’s monologue with video recordings of the Iraqi teacher Azad Hassan.
Plot
A war photographer has spent years travelling through conflict zones and capturing the suffering of others on camera, seemingly invulnerable, until she herself experiences violence. The observer turns into a bitter Cassandra who goes unheard by an indifferent public while chasing ever more extreme images of violence. Alongside her, Azad Hassan recounts how the so-called Islamic State took Mosul in 2014 and how he lost a hand under the occupation. Echoes of the Cassandra myth and of Sophocles’ “Philoctetes” run through the narrative.
Cultural significance
The piece continues Rau’s long engagement with violence and its representation, which he had previously set in Iraq in “Orest in Mossul” (2019). Critics valued the way it holds the audience responsible as fellow viewers of images of violence instead of offering moral absolution, but felt the mythological references were not fully realised.