"Superb" and "A triumph": unique collaboration between Milo Rau and Édouard Louis on stage at NTGent

In May this year, The Interrogation  was already a guest at our theatre, the performance then being the epilogue of the presentation of our new season. "A tender and melancholic play", as Louis and Rau themselves describe the performance. "A demonstration for vulnerability". In January, this unique collaboration between the two giants of the European art world will be presented to the general public in Belgium for the first time.

Édouard Louis is a young French author who has been rapidly conquering the literary world since 2014 with his autobiographical novels. In them, he describes, among other things, the poverty, racism, and disgust for his homosexuality he had to deal with during his childhood. Milo Rau is an award-winning director and author, and artistic director at NTGent since the 2018-2019 season. In The Interrogation, played by Arne De Tremerie, Louis and Rau zoom in on the question of whether art can help us escape our biography. Or is art merely the precipitation of a failed liberation?

"Arne de Tremerie, a fantastic young actor, is remarkable. He has charm. He is tall, blond, he can remind you of a very young Edouard.... He has a very eloquent look, a clear voice. It is very beautiful, it is pure and simple and it goes to the bottom (...)," Armelle Héliot, renowned French cultural journalist, wrote about The Interrogation. "Life is not easy. But you have to persevere in your being. We could say more, but we won't: discover this highly successful dramaturgical 'essay' (...) full of discoveries, precise, nervous and tender, full of melancholy. Superb."

"From the small form emerges a grand spectacle," said Guillaume Lasserre of Médiapart. "Delightfully carried by actor Arne de Tremerie, whose confusing resemblance to the writer adds a little more to the unsettling feeling between fiction and reality (...) The play stems from Rau and Louis' need to describe the melancholy of the fight itself, the impotence and power of art."

"A particularly engaging performance with excellent acting and subtle direction," wrote Johan Thielemans of Pzazz. "A triumph."