Milo Rau (born in Switzerland in 1977) is the artistic director of the NTGent since the season 2018/19. He studied sociology, German and Romance languages and literature in Paris, Berlin and Zurich under Pierre Bourdieu and Tzvetan Todorov, among others. Since 2002, he has put out over 50 plays, films, books and actions. His productions have appeared at all of the major international festivals, including the Berlin Theatertreffen, the Festival d’Avignon, the Venice Biennale Teatro, the Wiener Festwochen and the Brussels Kunstenfestivaldesarts, and have toured more than 30 countries worldwide.
Rau has received many honours: in 2016, the prestigious ‘World Theatre Day ITI Prize’, as youngest artist ever after Frank Castorf and Pina Bausch. In 2017: ‘the Peter-Weiss-Prize’, ‘the 3sat-Prize’, ‘the
Saarbrucken Poetry Lectureship for Drama’ and he was voted ‘Acting Director of the Year’ in the critics’ survey conducted by the Deutsche Bühne. In 2018 he received the European Theatre Prize, and most recently in 2019 he was awarded the first honorary doctorate by the Theatre Department of Lunds Universitet (Sweden). Rau is also a television critic, lecturer and a very productive writer.