What is the relationship between staging and authenticity? Between action on stage and the concrete experience? And how can theatre come to meet and retrace life? These are the questions that have rendered the Swiss director, essayist and documentary-maker Milo Rau one of the most popular artists in Europe and in the world today.
The Repetition. Histoire(s) du Théâtre (I) appears as a new possibility for answering such questions and, at the same time, as a homage to the history of the most ancient art of humanity. Since its beginnings, the theatre has been a ritualised experience of the original sins and collective traumas. Facing the structure of tragedy through the form of crime games (Ihsane Jarfi’s brutal homicide in 2012 in Liège), Rau brings six professional/non-professional actors who investigate the experience of tragedy in the post-industrial era.
The question of the representability of violence and of traumatic events on the stage, which has its roots in the origins and power of the theatre itself, becomes an instrument for questioning this art form and the way in which it meets the gaze of the spectator.
