"The New Gospel" director.
Born 1977 in Bern (CH), is director, writer and since the 2018/19 season artistic director of NTGent (Belgium). 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. His theatre productions have been shown at all major international festivals, including the Berlin Theatertreffen, the Festival d‘Avignon, the Venice Biennale, the Vienna Festival Weeks and the Brussels Kunstenfestivaldesarts, and have been touring in over 30 countries worldwide.
Rau has received the 3sat Prize 2017, the Saarbrücken Poetics Lectureship for Drama 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 and in 2019 he was the first artist ever to be „Associated Artist“ of the „European Association of Theatre and Performance - EASTAP“. In 2019 he received an honorary doctorate from Lund University (Malmö), in 2020 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Ghent University. In 2020 he received the renowned Münster Poetry Lectureship for his complete artistic oeuvre, his plays were voted „Best of the Year“ in critics‘ surveys in over 10 countries.
Rau‘s previous films (Die letzten Tage der Ceausescus, Hate Radio, Die Moskauer Prozesse, Das Kongo Tribunal) have been awarded with a Special Award at the Festival des Deutschen Films, the Zürcher Filmpreis and the Amnesty International Prize), his last film Das Kongo Tribunal was nominated for the German and Swiss Film Awards. In addition to his work as a director, Rau is also a television critic, lecturer and writer with 15 publications to date, which have been translated into English, French, Italian, Dutch, Chinese and Norwegian, among others. Rau‘s literary work has been awarded some of the most prestigious German literary prizes, including the „Radio Drama Prize of the War Blind“ (2014) and the two most prestigious German literary prizes for committed literature: the „Peter Weiss Prize“ (2017) and the „Gerty Spies Literature Prize“ (2020)
