”Where understanding ends is where Milo Rau’s theatre work begins.”
25.7.2019
– Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Milo Rau is a Swiss born director and author, best known for founding the International Institute of Political Murder (IIPM) in 2007. In 2018, he became the artistic director of the Belgian theatre NTGent. Hailed as one of the most influential directors of our time, Rau has studied sociology, Germanic and Romanic languages, and literature in Paris, Berlin, and Zürich. He was granted the European Theatre Prize in 2018 and was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Theatre Department of Lund University in 2019.
Rau's La Reprise. Histoire(s) du théâtre (I) is one of the major international productions in this year's Tampere Theatre Festival. A permeating theme in the Main Programme of this year's Festival is the societal pressure to resolve the deepest conflicts of our time, and as Rau states, “where politics fails, art has to step in.”
In the play, Rau reconstructs the murder of a young man that happened in Liège, Belgium in 2012. It became the most discussed performance of Festival d'Avignon in 2018. According to The New York Times (19.7.2018) the production ”took a true murder and turned it into layered, carefully calibrated theater”. The Guardian (11.7.2018) described it as ”an extraordinarily mature, crystalline, engaging and compelling piece of theatre.”
La Reprise is the first play to follow the rules of collective theatre dictated in the Ghent Manifesto. Published in May 2018, Rau's ”ten commandments of modern theatre” strive for the making of more democratic theatre. Its aim is to raise awareness in the minds of theatre professionals about the unwritten rules that restrict artistic freedom and both the creators' and the works' diversity.
For Rau, the goal of representing real life traumatic events is not to be provocative, but to put truth and difficult matters under a microscope. Through background research into the themes of the performances, the director aims to respect and give dignity to those affected by the trauma of real events. His works are often interpretations of the making of theatre itself as well as the relationship between reality and depiction – La Reprise is no exception.
Even though Rau tries to thoroughly revamp the traditions of theatre with his work, he is also uncompromising in his use of the mythic elements of the stage. Even in La Reprise the ancient relationship of theatre and tragedy opens and closes in a touching and unusual way – a way you need to witness for yourself.
La Reprise. Histoire(s) du théâtre (I)
TTT Suuri näyttämö
Sat 10th Aug 20.00
Sun 11th Aug 13.00
Tickets 42 / 38 €, students 22 € Theatre Festival & 45,50 / 41,50 €, students 24,50 € Lippupiste
Duration 1h 40min
Age recommendation 16+
Performed in French and Flemish, subtitled in Finnish and English
The original text was composed from the following sources:
Alex Marshall. Is Milo Rau Really the Most Controversial Director in Theatre? The New York Times. 3.10.2018: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/03/theater/milo-rau-ntgent-controversy.html
Andrew Todd. Avignon festival review – shock, awe and 10 hours of Don DeLillo. The Guardian, 11.7.2018: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/jul/11/avignon-festival-review-10-hours-of-don-delillo
International Institute of Political Murder. About IIPM: http://international-institute.de/en/about-iipm-2/
Laura Cappelle. At Avignon Festival, Lots of Imagination on Show, but Few Women. The New York Times. 19.7.2018: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/theater/france-avignon-festival-theater.html
Laura Cappelle. Sex, sheep and terror: the scandalous theatre of Milo Rau. The Guardian. 8.10.2018: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/oct/08/sex-sheep-and-terror-theatre-milo-rau-lam-gods
Matt Wolf, Laura Cappelle, A.J. Goldman: Best (and Worst) Theatre in Europe in 2018. The New York Times. 20.12.2018: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/theater/best-theater-europe-2018.html
NTGent. Ghent Manifesto: https://www.ntgent.be/en/manifest
NTGent. Milo Rau: https://www.ntgent.be/en/ensemble/milo-rau
Text: Salla Hokkanen
Translated from Finnish: Lotta Salomaa