Medea's Children Milo Rau / NTGent

With Medea’s Children, house artist Milo Rau takes a new, deep look at the role of children in theatre. A real criminal case is the starting point: the case of a mother who, in total despair, decides to kill her children and take her own life - but she survives. This modern tragedy is interweaved with the classical tragedy Medea, the most infamous case of relationship conflict and infanticide in Western literature. 

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A group of children take this bloody crime case and the perhaps darkest origin narrative of European culture as an opportunity to reflect on themselves: on family history, first love and first encounters with death, on desires for the future and fears of the end of the world that haunts us all. How does a child deal with the divorce of its parents? With injustice, the breaking of friendships, the pressure at school? How do they deal with the radical power of Medea – with tragedy in general? The children, condemned to silence in the classical tragedies, finally have their say this time around.

Medea’s Children: the absurd and blood-drenched tragedies of adult life seen through the eyes of children – a small history of theatre and a school of life as cruel as it is poetic.

This performance is a co-production with Wiener Festwochen, La Biennale Di Venezia, ITA - Internationaal Theater Amsterdam and Tandem - Scène nationale (Arras Douai).