AN OTHER NOBEL PRIZE DINNER

Every year on 10 December, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death, the Swedish cultural elite gathers for the iconic Nobel Prize Dinner at Stockholm City Hall. Following the award ceremony, laureates dine alongside the royal family, accompanied by speeches, music and festivities in the Golden Hall.

This year, in parallel to the official banquet, another dinner unfolds in Stockholm: An Other Nobel Prize Dinner, a new work by Milo Rau, created for Konträr on the invitation of Artistic Director Freja Hallberg, in collaboration with Anna Kölén, Servane Dècle, and Jamie Man.

The work mirrors the ceremonial structure of the Nobel tradition – a six-course dinner, speeches, music – but transforms it into a performance. All speeches are drawn from the testimonies that exposed the Arnault case, which led to the suspension of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2018. Through diary entries, essays and memoirs read publicly for the first time, a hidden narrative of Sweden’s cultural establishment emerges: a world shaped by literature, power, desire, money – and the women who refused silence.

The music for the evening is composed and performed by one of the leading female composers of our time: Jamie Man.                      The dinner is curated by chef: Alice Knutas. 

Ways of witnessing
• Dinner Seat – six courses served at the long table at the heart of the work.
• Gallery Seat – a more distanced vantage point, overlooking the entire action.

Confidentiality
This is a strictly mobile-free evening. Guests are not permitted to photograph, film, or document the event.
Konträr will document the work, but never faces or any identifying images of the audience. Confidentiality is absolute.

A Konträr production within RESISTANCE NOW! by Vienna Festival.