“Celebrated Metatheater”: “Die Wiederholung” comes to Berlin’s Schaubühne & NTGent opens its season

the theater autumn starts for the IIPM with two season openings. After performances in four countries celebrated by international critics “ecstatically” (Agence France Press), “The Repetition” comes to Berlin on its European tour and opens as first German premiere the 2018/19 season at the Schaubühne on September 1.

Like last year’s theatre essay “Five Easy Pieces” shown at the Berlin Theatertreffen, “The Repetition. History of Theatre” disconcerts in its mixture of analysis and violence, distance and joy of acting not only the international, but also the German press: “Rau is not concerned with enlightening the act, but with gradually removing his play from every simple truth. As a result, the crime gains a glistening beauty on stage”, according to DIE ZEIT.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung saw the “relentless reconstruction of a lynching murder”, the FAZ noted: “Rau plays virtuously with the feelings of the audience”. Deutschlandradio, on the other hand, notes the “liberating cheers” that La Reprise “triggered in the international press” on its tour, but judges that “even this celebrated metatheatre can only demand the desired catharsis, not achieve it”. Transcendence or tragic violence? Form your own opinion: the first play staged according to the rules of the “Ghent Manifesto” can be seen at the Schaubühne from 1 to 4 September and will then travel on to Paris to the Festival d’Automne.

Shortly afterwards, the next opening follows: the opening of the NTGent itself, which Rau and his team will lead artistically from the 2018/19 season on. From 28 to 30 September, Milo Rau will open the season with  “The Ghent Altarpiece” and Miet Warlop with “Ghostwriter”, while the Congolese choreographer Faustin Linyekula – who will continue the NTGent series “History(s) of Theatre” in the coming season – will premiere his new piece “Not Another Diva” in Belgium.

But three premieres are not enough: on the last weekend of September, all three NTGent venues will become an exhibition space in which artists of the coming season will give an insight into their work. Guests such as Dalilla Hermans, Béatrice Delvaux, Renzo Martens and Ulrike Guérot as well as the first two volumes of the Ghent theory series “The Golden Books” (Volume 1: Global Realism / Volume 2: The Ghent Altar) flank the performances with a comprehensive debate on the “City theatre of the Future”.