Medea's Children

A theatre history in miniature, where children find their voices and reflect on separation, injustice and the power of tragedy.

With Medea’s Children, renowned director 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. 

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.

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.