The first collaboration between bestselling author Édouard Louis and director Milo Raum results in a very personal text about doubting and failing.
Louis and Rau have been friends for a long time, a friendship born out of their joint search for an art of the real. “The core of theatre is the same as in literature: to show what is difficult to show. Theatre should not be a safe place”, Louis wrote about Rau’s play Family.
With the performance The Interrogation, they present now a very personal text about doubting and failing. The play was written and staged by Louis and Rau in spring 2021, originally commissioned by Kunstenfestivaldesarts, IIPM & NTGent, but never premiered. Now it’s finally live to see. Performed by NTGent global ensemble actor Arne De Tremerie, The Interrogation is a “demonstration for vulnerability”, a moment of poetic standstill.
Can we escape our biography through art, or is art only the record of a failed liberation? “It’s a deeply melancholic play, a fragmentary play, a tender play”, as Louis and Rau said in an interview – a constant exchange on theatre and reality, failing and transformation, fiction and truth, on becoming and being
Édouard Louis has gained worldwide success in recent years with his books, in which he describes his life from his teenage years, his struggles in a small town in northern France and growing up as a young homosexual man. Theatre plays a crucial role in his life. Playing theatre himself brings him into contact with literature, but also teaches him how to survive through acting.
Milo Rau proves in projects like The Congo Tribunal, La Reprise, Orestes in Mosul, The New Gospel or School of Resistance that theatre does not have to be detached from society but that it is a necessary contribution to politics, culture, and society – a place to tell true stories that shape our society.
Arne De Tremerie (born 1992) graduated from KASK Drama in Ghent in 2020. He is currently performing in the production Grief and Beauty by Milo Rau and NTGent, touring Belgium and abroad. In the past, he has appeared in Anatomy of Pain by Lies Pauwels, No Coincidence, No story by Berten Vanderbruggen and Siona Houthuys and Konijn met pruimen by Laika, among others. He is a member of the collective Camping Sunset and performed in Zomergasten, Happiness and TEN OORLOG. Arne has appeared in the feature films Coffee (2016) and Bastaard (2019) and in television series such as L'Aquila Grandi Speranze (2018) and Black-out (2020). In Milo Rau’s play The Interrogation (2021), Arne presents the monologue which runs throughout the piece affording him the following review by Pzazz: 'De Tremerie demonstrates a broad palette of acting styles: from small and honest to ironic and broadly theatrical (...) The Interrogation thus became a particularly captivating performance with excellent acting and subtle direction.' The Interrogation will soon be on tour in Belgium and abroad. In November 2022, Arne will premiere his own project Baby, created and performed together with Eleonore Van Godtsenhoven. He will also release a new album with his band Outer in the autumn.
