„Rethink theatre completely“ – an Everywoman, three cinema movies and a theatre encyclopedia: this will be our autumn 2020!

“Milo Rau wants to rethink theatre completely,” the Belgian newspaper De Morgen wrote, when the artistic director of NTGent announced the programme for the 2020/21 season at the beginning of June. “Question everything” is the motto of the multimedia programme in which Rau and his team want to take their reinvention of the city theatre, which they began two seasons ago, to a completely new aesthetic level – together with artists such as Luanda Casella, Lara Staal, Luk Perceval, Monster Truck, Angelica Liddell, Mokhallad Rasem, Peeping Tom or Picho Womba Konga.

Already within 6 weeks, a theatre monologue, which Rau is currently working on with the actress Ursina Lardi, will have its premiere. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Salzburg Festival, the Schaubühne actress Ursina Lardi and Rau, who have already worked together for Mitleid and Lenin, question Hofmannsthal’s classic in today’s context: “Everywoman” (Schaubühne Berlin / Salzburger Festspiele) is a performance about the normal life, the terrible suddenness of death and the solidary power of art – premiere on 19 August in Salzburg, from 15 October in Berlin and from 27 November in Ghent!

Also in a few weeks from now, several films by Milo Rau will come to the cinema. Criticized by the international press for his explicit portrayal of a collective suicide, celebrated as a “soulful hymn to life” (The Guardian) and voted by several critics polls as „best of the season“: “Family” becomes a feature film and can be seen in Belgian cinemas and selected theatres from the beginning of September. Milo Rau’s adaptation of the New Testament “The New Gospel”, coproduced together with Furitmarket GmbH and Langfilm Zürich, is also in the final stages of production: alongside Maia Morgenstern, Enrique Irazoqui and Marcello Fonte, it features the activist Yvan Sagnet as the first black Jesus in European film history.

But that is not all: as was announced today (09.07.2020), the production “Orestes in Mosul”, already nominated for the Berlin Theatertreffen, will open the Dutch theatre festival as one of the 9 best performances of the past year. “It is perhaps one of the most important productions by Milo Rau”, said the jury, “as interesting as it is heartbreaking”. On the occasion of the opening of the theatre festival, a documentary film about the controversial production will be shown for the first time: “Orestes in Mosul – The Making Of“, directed by Daniel Demoustier.

The rehearsals for the final episode in Rau’s Trilogy of Tragedies – Antigone in the Amazon – will be resumed in autumn. The speech “This madness has to stop”, with which the Antigone actress Kay Sara both opened the Vienna Festival and the streaming series School of Resistance last month, has been translated in over 10 languages, went viral online and is already being considered as a new classic in protest speeches.

An excerpt from Kay Sara’s speech will also be featured in perhaps the craziest joint project of the IIPM, NTGent and the Berlin-based Verbrecher Verlag: the book “Why Theatre?” (ed. by Kaatje de Geest, Carmen Hornbostel & Milo Rau) for which 100 of the world’s most influential artists and intellectuals were asked exactly that question. An encyclopedia of the current state of theatre with contributions by Tania Bruguera, Nora Chipaumire, Chto Delat, Extinction Rebellion, Susanne Kennedy, Angélica Liddell, Édouard Louis, Rabih Mroué, Toshiki Okada, Alain Platel, René Pollesch, Tiago Rodrigues, Kirill Srebrennikov, Miet Warlop and many, many others.