Lam Gods

Milo Rau made his debut as artistic director of NTGent in the season '18-'19 with 'Lam Gods'. In this reconstruction on stage of the Ghent Altarpiece by the brothers Van Eyck, a panorama of our present world emerges and at the same time a manifesto for art and spirituality in human life.

Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, martyrs and angels: the motifs are Christian and spiritual. But the faces of the figures are realistic, they show faces from Ghent. The van Eyck brothers immortalised their patrons and clients, but also their neighbours and colleagues. Thus, one of the first works of modern realistic art was at once documentary and mythical, ordinary and universal.

In his productions, director Milo Rau often mixes amateurs with professional actors, and reality with fiction. For Lam Gods, his opening production as the artistic director of NTGent in 2018, Rau put more than 50 citizens on stage. Lam Gods is an ode to the city of Ghent and its inhabitants.

In Lam Gods, Rau connects the everyday with the spiritual, just as the Van Eyck brothers did: just as the altarpiece consists of different layers that overlap, just as the real mixes with the symbolic, so people from Ghent will tell about their lives on stage. In a casting that was filmed over many months, this project plunges into the here and now of a city community: who is the Cain of Ghent, who is the Abel? Who plays Adam and who plays Eve? Who are the martyrs of the 21st century? The crusaders and the just judges? The patrons? What do they tell us about the themes of this painting, about original sin and human suffering, about faith and tragedy, death and redemption?