Milo Rau

[1] His father's Jewish family moved from Germany to Switzerland to escape the Nazis shortly before World War Two, while his mother, surnamed Larese, had Italian origins.

[3] Since 2002, he has been active as a playwright, author, and director in Switzerland and abroad, working with the Maxim Gorki Theater and Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin, Staatsschauspiel Dresden, the Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers in Paris, and many other theatres.

The company was originally founded to coordinate Rau's project The Last Days of the Ceausescus, but over time, its focus broadened to "the multimedia treatment of historical and sociopolitical conflicts."

[8] A documentary film (Die letzten Tage der Ceausescus), co-directed by Marcel Bächtiger and Rau, includes the stage production and footage from backstage at the Odeon, as well as eyewitness interviews and archival material,[9][10] and deconstructs the play.

[26][27] It was his intention to establish a "global popular theatre", specialising in international tours,[28] and upon assuming the directorship he published his 10-point "Ghent Manifesto",[19] in which he declared "It's not just about portraying the world anymore.

[32] Rau and his NTGent team travelled to the state of Pará in Brazil, where Amazonian forests are being destroyed and replaced by the cultivation of soy monoculture.

In collaboration with the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST; "Landless Workers Movement"), and NTGent, Rau created Antigone in the Amazon, an allegorical play about the impact of the modern state and impact on traditional land rights, which causes huge displacements of people and devastation of culture.

[11] Alongside his work as a playwright and director, Rau has taught directing, cultural theory, and social sculpture at various universities and conservatories.

[39] He has also engaged in more overtly political actions, from introducing a self-declared interim government in St. Gallen, Switzerland, and calling for foreigners' right to vote (City of Change).

[42][43] the Hörspielpreis der Kriegsblinden,[44] and the jury prize of the festival Politik im Freien Theater,[45] among others, and was the youngest-ever winner of the Preis des Internationalen Theaterinstituts [de].

[46] In 2015, the Tages-Anzeiger wrote: "Milo Rau, whose documentary-theatrical explosions regularly fill houses, has managed to cast his art far out of the ivory tower.

In 2018, Rau was awarded the XV Europe Prize Theatrical Realities, in Saint Petersburg,[48] with the following motivation:A time when the complexity of the world and the events that characterise the whole planet is being neutralised by a torrent of too-speedy and superficial information, often in the service of economic and political interests, history can become volatile and confused with news items.

Rau's work, enriched by his remarkable literary, sociological, journalistic, cinematic and visual experience, is something that can give us hope that a vision that is critical, humanistic, cosmopolitan and throws light on the world can still be conceivable today.