Milo Rau, born in Bern in 1977, is the artistic director of the Wiener Festwochen | Freie Republik Wien. Critics have described him as the »most influential« (Die Zeit), »most awarded« (Le Soir), »most interesting« (De Standaard), »most controversial« (La Repubblica), »most scandalous« (New York Times) or »most ambitious« (The Guardian) artist of our time. Rau studied sociology, German and Romance languages and literature in Paris, Berlin and Zurich under Pierre Bourdieu and Tzvetan Todorov, among others. The director and author, who is known for his work at the interface of art and activism, has published over 100 plays, films, books and actions. His theater productions have been shown at all major international festivals, including the Berlin Theatertreffen, the Festival d'Avignon, the Venice Biennale, the Wiener Festwochen and the Brussels Kunstenfestivaldesarts and have toured over 30 countries worldwide. From 2018 to 2024, Milo Rau was Artistic Director of NTGent (Belgium).
Rau has received many international awards, including the 3sat Prize 2017, the Saarbrücken Poetry Lectureship for Drama 2017 and, in 2016, the prestigious ITI Prize of the World Theater Day as the youngest artist after Frank Castorf and Pina Bausch. In 2017, he was voted Acting Director of the Year in the Deutsche Bühne poll, in 2018 he received the European Theater Prize for his work and in 2019 he was the first artist ever to be an Associated Artist of the European Association of Theatre and Performance (EASTAP). In 2020, he received the prestigious Münster Poetry Lectureship for his artistic oeuvre. His plays have been voted the best of the year in critics' polls in over 10 countries. In 2019, Rau received an honorary doctorate from the University of Lund in Sweden, and in 2020 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Ghent. This was followed by the Swiss Film Prize in 2021 and the Zurich Poetry Lectures in 2022. A star honors him on the Sibiu Walk of Fame (2023) and the Bitef Festival honored him with the Politika Award for Best Director in 2024.
