Theater maker Yves Degryse and curators Barbara Raes and Melih Gençboyaci succeed Milo Rau as artistic directors of NTGent. For the first time, a couple will be the head of a Flemish cultural institution.
The news was not expected until next week, but on Tuesday evening the board of directors of NTGent already took the plunge. Yves Degryse, Barbara Raes and Melih Gençboyaci will take over the artistic direction of the Ghent city theater from October. They thus succeed Milo Rau, who becomes intendant of the Wiener Festwochen. Together, the trio will further develop the outlines of Raus’ policy plan and set their own accents. Under his leadership, NTGent secured a subsidy of 3.38 million euros for the next ten years. Striking: Degryse and Raes do not only become partners in the workplace, they are also partners in real life. The trio was chosen from thirty candidates.
‘NTGent has evolved from a city theater with a permanent ensemble to a maker house with diverse voices and artistic practices’, the trio state in a press release. ‘That rich palette also brings with it a rich palette of questions, challenges and perspectives. That is why we believe that this polyphony should also be present in artistic leadership.’ Milo Rau is already enthusiastic about his succession: ‘I could not imagine a better continuation of my work at NTGent and I look forward to continuing to work with Raes, Degryse and Gençboyaci as a house artist from the 2024-2025 season.’
Fire ritual in the city
In addition to roles in the TV series Callboys and Chantal, Yves Degryse is best known as a director of Berlin. The popular Antwerp company will soon become one of NTGent’s new home makers, alongside Luanda Casella, Lara Staal and Milo Rau. With their high-tech documentary theatre, Berlin zooms in on unusual places and stories and likes to play tricks on reality. With their portraits of Jerusalem, the American mining village of Bonanza and Berlin (The making of Berlin can be seen at Het Theaterfestival in September), they toured in 28 countries. Degryse will also continue this focus on urbanity at NTGent. With Private lives, Berlin is already planning a new creation for the public space.
Barbara Raes is also no stranger to the theater world. As a programmer, she worked for arts center Buda and Vooruit (now Viernulvier) until she fell out in 2014 with a burnout and left the sector. She retrained as a funeral director and in 2016 founded Beyond the Spoken, a workshop for new farewell rituals that she leads from Lillo aan de Schelde, the abandoned dock workers’ village where she lives with her family. She will further expand this practice under the wings of NTGent. For example, the first full season of the new trio will start in 2025-2026 with a fire ritual in the city.
The Dutch-German-Turkish Melih Gençboyaci was one of the co-founders of the theater collective Schwalbe. In recent years he worked at Production House Theater Rotterdam as a curator and artistic coordinator, where he made room for the new generation of theater makers and international collaborations. He will also take on the role of developer in Ghent.
2023-07-04 19:14:29
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