Premiere „Orestes in Mosul“ / Poetics professorship for Milo Rau

Premiere of “Orestes in Mosul” on 17 April at NTGent and 17 May at Schauspielhaus Bochum

“Rau is a maniac who continuously transgresses the boundaries of what is possible,” says Johan Leysen – who plays Agamemnon in “Orestes in Mosul” – on Belgian television as part of a panel discussion on the new play by the Swiss director. Last week he was with Milo Rau and his team in northern Iraq in the completely destroyed city of Mosul, the heart of the former “Islamic State”. The team made recordings there with Belgian and Iraqi actors for “Orestes in Mosul”, which, after a preview in Mosul on 27 March, will debut in Belgium on 17 April at NTGent and make its German premiere on 17 May at the Schauspielhaus Bochum.
“Theatre must take place where the drama is,” says Milo Rau. “There is no better place to bring Aeschylus’s tragic trilogy of revenge and forgiveness to the stage than Mosul.” A first detailed report on the team’s trip to northern Iraq and the preview of the play on World Theatre Day in Mosul can be found in the Dutch-language daily De Standaard. You will find comprehensive information on the background of the production in the press kit.

The premiere of “Orestes in Mosul” will be accompanied by the publication of the third volume in the “Golden Books” series – a joint project of NTGent and the Verbrecher Verlag of Berlin. Why Mosul? What happens when artists from Europe and Iraq work together? How can a classic be translated into the present? The book gives an insight into the development of the production and collects material and original texts as well as background interviews with actors from Europe and Iraq.

Milo Rau assumes poetics professorship at University of Münster

It was announced three days ago that Milo Rau, who was recently awarded the first honorary doctorate of the Faculty of Fine and Performing Arts at Lund University in Malmö, Sweden, is to assume a post as lecturer at the University of Münster. “Milo Rau, probably the most advanced, controversial and influential European playwright, author and director working today, will become the third holder of the poetics professorship at the German Studies Institute of the University of Münster in winter semester 2019/20,” according to an announcement on the university’s website. Milo Rau “stands for a new form of political theatre that realises social fantasies, explodes conventional dramatic formats and provocatively intervenes in political reality,” the announcement continues.