Milo Rau & NTGent:
Medea's Children

Directed by Milo Rau and featuring children from diverse backgrounds, including migrant and refugee families, Medea's Children is a haunting, heart-rending and highly provocative play where children are given voice to reflect on the issues of identity, belonging, loss and the future. Against the background of the myth of Medea, this documentary-theatre piece examines what it means to be a child in a world of conflict, migration, uprootedness and social disintegration.

With Medea’s Children, house artist Milo Rau takes a new, in-depth look at the role of children in theatre. A real criminal case is the starting point: the case of a mother who, in total despair, decides to kill her children and take her own life – but she survives. This modern tragedy is interweaved with the classical Medea, the most infamous case of relationship conflict and infanticide in Western literature. 
 

Milo Rau (1977, Bern) is director, writer, filmmaker and the artistic director of Wiener Festwochen, the well-known arts festival in the Austrian capital. Critics call him the "most influential" (Die Zeit), "most awarded" (Le Soir), "most interesting" (De Standaard), "most controversial" (La Repubblica), "most scandalous" (New York Times) or "most ambitious" (The Guardian) artist of our time. Since 2002 he has published over 50 plays, films, books and actions. Rau has received many awards, including the 3sat Prize 2017 and, as the youngest artist after Frank Castorf and Pina Bausch, the renowned ITI Prize of the World Theatre Day in 2016. In 2017, Milo Rau was voted "Acting Director of the Year" in a survey conducted by Deutsche Bühne. In 2018 he received the European Theatre Prize for his life's work. From 2018 to 2023, Milo Rau was artistic director of Ghent city theatre NTGent. Rau's radical and activist art gave NTGent a new impetus. Under his direction, the city theatre built a stellar reputation in the international art world. At NTGent, Rau created a series of lauded performances including La Reprise, Lam Gods, Orestes in Mosul, The New Gospel, Antigone in the Amazon and Medea's Children.