The collaboration between Romaeuropa Festival and Milo Rau continues with his new creation: LA LETTRE. Commissioned by the 2025 Festival d’Avignon as part of the Pièce Commune project, the director — currently at the helm of the Wiener Festwochen and formerly leading NTGent in Belgium — has been invited to take on the challenge of creating an essential piece, free from elaborate sets, adaptable to any space (even non-theatrical), and inspired by a specific idea of Popular Theatre. With LA LETTRE, Rau adopts an unusually ironic approach to the stage, questioning the role of theatre in today’s world.
What is popular theatre today? the director asks. On stage, Olga Mouak and Arne De Tremerie — long-time collaborators and performers in works such as Antigone in the Amazon and Compassion: The History of the Machine Gun — create a new and intimate encounter with the audience every night. Theatre thus becomes a collective experience, where spectators are no longer mere observers but active participants in a shared reflection on the meaning and function of live performance today.
LA LETTRE draws inspiration from sources ranging from the figure of Joan of Arc to Chekhov’s The Seagull, engaging with themes that have long defined Rau’s work — generational conflict, politics, love, and death — while this time seeking a new dimension of lightness and poetry. Between irony, stand-up, and social critique, the piece explores the role of the actor: caught between mask and identity, truth and fiction, allowing theatre and life to merge in a constant dialogue with the audience.
Born in Bern in 1977, Milo Rau is a director, playwright, essayist and filmmaker. He creates a theatre of the real that is directly relevant to our contemporary concerns. He questions violence in society in plays seen at Romaeuropa Festival such as Histoire(s) du Théâtre I – La Reprise, Orestes in Mosul, Family, and Antigone in the Amazon. For him, the starting point is the intimacy of people and their daily lives, to tell the story of the violence and grandeur of a tragedy. Milo Rau has created some fifty shows since 2002, and in 2017 he was appointed Artistic Director of the NTGent (Belgium) and currently directs the Vienna Festival – Wiener Festwochen.
Olga Mouak is a French actress based in Paris. Born and raised in Orléans, she began her journey in the performing arts in Bordeaux, studying dramaturgy and theatre theory. After an exchange year at RESAD in Madrid, Olga joined the École nationale d’art dramatique in Montpellier, graduating in 2016. Since then, she has worked with directors such as Eva Doumbia, Gwenaël Morin, Milo Rau, and Bob Wilson, performing on stages across several European countries. An eclectic artist, her repertoire includes modern and classical theatre and dramatic and comedic roles in front of the camera. She has appeared under the direction of Emmanuel Bércot in the film De Son Vivant and, fluent in English, can also be seen in the Netflix series Kaos.
Arne de Tremerie, a graduate of KASK Drama in Ghent in 2020, is currently involved in the theatrical productions Antigone in the Amazon and The Interrogation by Milo Rau / NTGent, on tour in Belgium and abroad. In the past, he has performed in Anatomy of Pain by Lies Pauwels, No Coincidence, No Story by Berten Vanderbruggen and Siona Houthuys, and Konijn met pruimen by Laika. A member of the Camping Sunset collective, he has appeared in Zomergasten, Happiness, and TEN OORLOG. He has also acted in films such as Coffee (2016) and Bastaard (2019) and TV series such as L’Aquila Grandi Speranze (2018), Blackout (2020), and Assisen (2023). In November 2025, Arne will begin a new production titled LA LETTRE, directed by Milo Rau, which will have its premiere at the Festival d’Avignon in the summer of 2025. A new album with his band Outer will also be released in the spring of 2025.
With: Olga Mouak and Arne De Tremerie
Direction: Milo Rau
Text: Milo Rau & the company
Dramaturgy and assistant director: Giacomo Bisordi
Set design, lighting and costumes: Milo Rau and Giacomo Bisordi
Accessories: Milo Rau, Giacomo Bisordi and Julie Louvain
Production Festival d’Avignon
Coproduction Éclat-Centre National des Arts de la Rue et de l’Espace Public-Aurillac,Théâtre de la Manufacture – Centre Dramatique National Nancy Lorraine, Théâtre du Bois de l’Aune/Biennale d’Aix- en-Provence, Théâtre Silvia Monfort (Paris), Théâtre Public de Montreuil Centre Dramatique National, Le Canal Théâtre du Pays de Redon, CCAS les activités sociales de l’énergie, Théâtre du Champ au Roy (Guingamp), Théâtre Durance (Château-Arnoux-Saint-Auban)
Acknowledgements Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe (Paris), Stéphane Braunschweig and the team at La Mouette, La Commune CDN d’Aubervilliers, Les Plateaux Sauvages (Paris)
Cover © Christophe Raynaud de Lage
