„Orestes in Mosul“ starts tour / Next season NTGent & IIPM / Milo Rau shoots Jesus film
“One of the most valuable things that the director has ever created” (NZZ), even a “new benchmark for the reinterpretation of classic works” (NRC). These are just two descrptions of “Orestes in Mosul”, Milo Rau’s latest production, which celebrated its Belgian premiere at NTGent on 17 April. This Friday, 17 May, the Belgian/German/Iraqi co-production will debut at the Schauspielhaus Bochum in Germany.
While the international tour of “Orestes in Mosul” continues (world premiere in Mosul, 27 March 2019), the Swiss director and his team are already at work on their next production. Shooting for “The New Gospel”, a modern film about the life of Jesus, will begin in summer. Together with refugees and farmers, along with actors from the Jesus films of directors Pier Paolo from Pier Paolo Pasolini to Mel Gibson, Milo Rau will film the Passion of Christ anew in and around Matera, the 2019 European Capital of Culture.
But that’s not all. With a family of actors, Rau will also bring one of Belgium’s most notorious family crimes to the stage. And in Brazil, a major performance is taking shape, together with the Landless Workers’ Movement. Interested? Here you find the season booklet 2019/20 of the NTGent.
>>> “A new benchmark for the reinterpreation of classic works”: After premieres in Iraq and Belgium “Orestes in Mosul” makes its German debut
“Breathtaking, from the first to the last minute” (De Tijd), a “deeply political production” (Deutschlandfunk), “a global contemporary tragedy” (NZZ), that captivates with its “humility and dignity” (Schweizer Fernsehen RTS). These were the views of the critics on the occasion of the Belgian premiere in Ghent. Previously, reporters from the New York Times, FAZ, Standaard and ARTE had observed the rehearsals in the ruined city of Mosul.
“Can Greek Tragedy help heal a scarred city?” asked the NYTimes in its report. The German SZ Magazine dedicated a cover story to the project, wonderfully illustrated by Armin Smailovic. In the taz and in the Tagesanzeiger, Rau himself described – critically and thoughtfully – the artistic and ethical borderline experience that he had exposed his team to in Mosul.
What does it mean to make art in a war zone? Is artistic solidarity between Europe and Iraq even possible? Where does meaningful cooperation end and life-threatening catastrophe tourism begin? A series of events on “Orestes in Mosul”, which according to the „Süddeutsche Zeitung“ shows the “crazyness, but also the limits” of the concept of “Global Realism” propagated by Rau, will take place in cooperation with the Academy of Fine Arts Mosul and the Goethe Institute Erbil.
This Thursday in Bochum (16.05.) we will start with a conversation between the theatre professor and actor Suleik Al Khabbaz and the Erbil ISIS specialist Sardar Abdullah, both Iraqi team members of “Orestes in Mosul”. Together with Milo Rau and Johan Simons, co-producer of “Orestes in Mosul”, they reflect on the future of global theatre. All further dates will be announced on the NTGent website in the coming weeks.
>>> “Milo Rau places Ghent at the centre of Europe”: The season presentation of the 2019/20 season
“Milo Rau makes Ghent the centre of Europe”, the NZZ recently stated on the occasion of the Belgian premiere of “Orestes in Mossul”. Over the past nine months, artists from all background and continents, from Flanders to Congo and from Brazil to Syria, have provided Ghent with a theatre experiment that transcends all cultural boundaries. Starting out with the aim of “bringing art to eye level with the global market economy”, the possibilities of an internationally active “city theatre of the future” were pushed right to their limits – and often beyond.
A consistently intercultural and interdisciplinary ensemble, a continuously multilingual repertoire, tours on five continents: “Ghent might be a place to watch and learn from in years to come as they produce and present work that is more challenging, restlentlessly curious and, above all, representative of its citizens and facing up to ist historical past,” wrote the English critic Verity Healey on the occasion of the decolonisation festival “Same Same but Different” organised by NTGent jointly with Vooruit, CAMPO and Black Speaks Back in February and March.
Where does NTGent and IIPM go in the coming year? What will happen next with the “global ensemble”? While this week the first international production by the German director Ersan Mondtag (dramaturgy: Eva-Maria Bertschy) will celebrate its premiere at the NTGent Arca – developed together with the dancer duo Les Mybalés Nathalie and Doris Bokongo Nkume – the public presentation of the 2019/20 schedule was on 22 May at the NTGent Schouwburg. Here you can find the Season Booklet of NTGent 2019/20.
>>> “The New Gospel”: Milo Rau shoots a Jesus film in Italy
What would Jesus preach in the 21st century? Who would be his disciples? And how would today’s bearers of worldly and spiritual power react to the return and provocation of this most influential prophet and social revolutionary in human history? With “The New Gospel” Milo Rau and his team return to the basic sources of the Gospel and stage it as a Passion play of the poor and disenfranchised. In Matera in southern Italy, on the site of the great Jesus films by directors Pasolini to Mel Gibson, a new gospel for the 21st century is being created with a cast of refugees, unemployed smallholders and actresses from the classic Jesus films.
“Jesus was a social revolutionary, the leader of a landless movement. I asked myself: Who are the landless now and who could be their leader?”, Rau tells the journalist and editor Jakob Augstein in an interview. “For no matter how many millions of Matera may be provided by the EU Commission for its festivities as the “European Capital of Culture”: one only need venture a few kilometres away from the tourist centre to find oneself in the middle of the area of the EU in which all the contradictions of the neoliberal world order are concentrated”, the director writes in the press kit.
An army of African slave labourers, estimated at half a million people, vegetates in the camps and ghettos scattered across the landscape, where they are exploited on the tomato and orange plantations for a handful of euros a day.
Together with these disenfranchised people, a new film version of the Passion of Christ will be made in May: a manifesto of solidarity, a revolt for a fairer, more humane world. As already with “The Congo Tribunal”, nominated for both the Swiss and the German Film Awards, Milo Rau and the IIPM are again collaborating with Fruitmarket GmbH and Langfilm Zürich for this new film.
On 6 June, a public press conference will be held in Matera in the presence of the director and the main actor.
Landless Workers’ Movement.
>>> “A new benchmark for the reinterpreation of classic works”: After premieres in Iraq and Belgium “Orestes in Mosul” makes its German debut
“Breathtaking, from the first to the last minute” (De Tijd), a “deeply political production” (Deutschlandfunk), “a global contemporary tragedy” (NZZ), that captivates with its “humility and dignity” (Schweizer Fernsehen RTS). These were the views of the critics on the occasion of the Belgian premiere in Ghent. Previously, reporters from the New York Times, FAZ, Standaard and ARTE had observed the rehearsals in the ruined city of Mosul.
“Can Greek Tragedy help heal a scarred city?” asked the NYTimes in its report. The German SZ Magazine dedicated a cover story to the project, wonderfully illustrated by Armin Smailovic. In the taz and in the Tagesanzeiger, Rau himself described – critically and thoughtfully – the artistic and ethical borderline experience that he had exposed his team to in Mosul.
What does it mean to make art in a war zone? Is artistic solidarity between Europe and Iraq even possible? Where does meaningful cooperation end and life-threatening catastrophe tourism begin? A series of events on “Orestes in Mosul”, which according to the „Süddeutsche Zeitung“ shows the “crazyness, but also the limits” of the concept of “Global Realism” propagated by Rau, will take place in cooperation with the Academy of Fine Arts Mosul and the Goethe Institute Erbil.
This Thursday in Bochum (16.05.) we will start with a conversation between the theatre professor and actor Suleik Al Khabbaz and the Erbil ISIS specialist Sardar Abdullah, both Iraqi team members of “Orestes in Mosul”. Together with Milo Rau and Johan Simons, co-producer of “Orestes in Mosul”, they reflect on the future of global theatre. All further dates will be announced on the NTGent website in the coming weeks.
>>> “Milo Rau places Ghent at the centre of Europe”: The season presentation of the 2019/20 season
“Milo Rau makes Ghent the centre of Europe”, the NZZ recently stated on the occasion of the Belgian premiere of “Orestes in Mossul”. Over the past nine months, artists from all background and continents, from Flanders to Congo and from Brazil to Syria, have provided Ghent with a theatre experiment that transcends all cultural boundaries. Starting out with the aim of “bringing art to eye level with the global market economy”, the possibilities of an internationally active “city theatre of the future” were pushed right to their limits – and often beyond.
A consistently intercultural and interdisciplinary ensemble, a continuously multilingual repertoire, tours on five continents: “Ghent might be a place to watch and learn from in years to come as they produce and present work that is more challenging, restlentlessly curious and, above all, representative of its citizens and facing up to ist historical past,” wrote the English critic Verity Healey on the occasion of the decolonisation festival “Same Same but Different” organised by NTGent jointly with Vooruit, CAMPO and Black Speaks Back in February and March.
Where does NTGent and IIPM go in the coming year? What will happen next with the “global ensemble”? While this week the first international production by the German director Ersan Mondtag (dramaturgy: Eva-Maria Bertschy) will celebrate its premiere at the NTGent Arca – developed together with the dancer duo Les Mybalés Nathalie and Doris Bokongo Nkume – the public presentation of the 2019/20 schedule was on 22 May at the NTGent Schouwburg. Here you can find the Season Booklet of NTGent 2019/20.
>>> “The New Gospel”: Milo Rau shoots a Jesus film in Italy
What would Jesus preach in the 21st century? Who would be his disciples? And how would today’s bearers of worldly and spiritual power react to the return and provocation of this most influential prophet and social revolutionary in human history? With “The New Gospel” Milo Rau and his team return to the basic sources of the Gospel and stage it as a Passion play of the poor and disenfranchised. In Matera in southern Italy, on the site of the great Jesus films by directors Pasolini to Mel Gibson, a new gospel for the 21st century is being created with a cast of refugees, unemployed smallholders and actresses from the classic Jesus films.
“Jesus was a social revolutionary, the leader of a landless movement. I asked myself: Who are the landless now and who could be their leader?”, Rau tells the journalist and editor Jakob Augstein in an interview. “For no matter how many millions of Matera may be provided by the EU Commission for its festivities as the “European Capital of Culture”: one only need venture a few kilometres away from the tourist centre to find oneself in the middle of the area of the EU in which all the contradictions of the neoliberal world order are concentrated”, the director writes in the press kit.
An army of African slave labourers, estimated at half a million people, vegetates in the camps and ghettos scattered across the landscape, where they are exploited on the tomato and orange plantations for a handful of euros a day.
Together with these disenfranchised people, a new film version of the Passion of Christ will be made in May: a manifesto of solidarity, a revolt for a fairer, more humane world. As already with “The Congo Tribunal”, nominated for both the Swiss and the German Film Awards, Milo Rau and the IIPM are again collaborating with Fruitmarket GmbH and Langfilm Zürich for this new film.
On 6 June, a public press conference will be held in Matera in the presence of the director and the main actor.