Medea’s Kinderen
Milo Rau / NTGent
One of the European theatre greats of our time, accustomed to examining violence on stage, now addresses the violence inflicted on or suffered by children. A police case is the starting point.
In Medea’s Kinderen [Medea’s Children], Milo Rau takes a new, deep look at the role of children in theatre. The starting point is a real crime: the case of a mother who, in total despair, decided to kill her children and take her own life - but survived. This modern tragedy is interwoven with the classical tragedy Medea, the most infamous case of relationship conflict and infanticide in Western literature.
After Five Easy Pieces (2016) performed in 2017 at Barcelona’s Teatre Lliure, Milo Rau again directs a group of children who are perpetrators or victims of violence. The children take a real-life violent crime and perhaps the darkest origin story of European culture as an opportunity to reflect on themselves: on family history, first loves and first encounters with death, on desires for the future and fears of the end of the world that haunt us all. How does a child cope with the divorce of their parents? With injustice, the end of friendships, pressure at school? How do they cope with the radical power of Medea – with tragedy in general? Children, condemned to silence in the classical tragedies, finally have their say this time around.
Medea’s Kinderen is a play by director, writer, filmmaker, and Wiener Festwochen director Milo Rau. Born in Bern, he is as ambitious as he is controversial. In 2007 he founded the International Institute of Political Murder and, until 2024, he was director of NTGent. In Barcelona, he made our hair stand on end by reconstructing reality at its grittiest in Hate Radio (Grec 2013), introduced us to a Belgian Salafist in The Civil Wars (Grec 2015); and at Grec 2018, in La Reprise. Histoire(s) du théâtre (I), he explored how to bring raw violence to the stage, reconstructing the murder of Ihsane Jarfi, a young gay Belgian man (also the subject of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Ihsane, which will be seen at this edition of Grec) who was beaten and left to die a painful death in 2012 in Liège.
Produced by NTGent
In co-production with Wiener Festwochen, La Biennale Di Venezia, ITA - Internationaal Theater Amsterdam and Tandem - Scène nationale (Arras Douai).
Discipline
- Theater
Dates and times
Tuesday 22/07 - 20:30 h
Space
Durada
Language
- Espectacle en neerlandès amb sobretitulació en català
Prices
Other criteria
- International
- Essentials
Artistic sheet
Cast: Peter Seynaeve / Lien Wildemeersch, Anna Matthys / Juliette Debackere, Emma Van de Casteele / Ella Brennan, Jade Versluys / Bernice Van Walleghem, Gabriël El Houari / Aiko Benaouisse, Sanne De Waele / Helena Van de Casteele, Vik Neirinck / Elias Maes · Concept and direction: Milo Rau · Dramaturgy: Kaatje · De Geest Set design: ruimtevaarders (Karolien De Schepper, Christophe Engels) · Prop design: Joris Soenen · Costume design: Jo De Visscher · Lighting design: Dennis Diels · Video design: Moritz von Dungern · Sound design: Elia Rediger · Acting coaches: Peter Seynaeve / Lien Wildemeersch · Child coordinator: Dirk Crommelinck
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