Grief and Beauty by Milo Rau

For theatre lovers seeking rich and complex plays in avant-garde productions by diverse European directors, there is no better venue in Paris than the Théâtre de la Colline. Since 2016, the theatre’s director Wajdi Mouawad, who is also a playwright and director, has devoted himself to championing four key principles: new writing and devised pieces, diversity, youth, and place.

This season, the Théâtre de la Colline presents Grief and Beauty, a new play by Swiss playwright, essayist, and journalist Milo Rau. Grief and Beauty is the second part of Rau’s Trilogy of Private Life, which plunges audiences into the most deeply intimate scenes and tells stories of human courage, resilience, and vulnerability. Performances of the play will alternate with those of the first part of the trilogy Familie.

In Grief and Beauty at the Théâtre de la Colline, Milo Rau takes a forensic look at suffering, death and final goodbyes, as well as at our capacity for remembrance and solidarity in the face of life’s fragility. Four actors assist a woman who has made the decision to be euthanized. Together, they bring to life her own personal stories about art, love, goodbyes, memories and forgetting. A true love song to life, Grief and Beauty pays tribute to the tiny but beautiful banalities of everyday life through dramaturgy that is rooted in unflinching realism. The most gut-wrenching testimonies are transformed into poetry in this play where raw emotion becomes a thing of beauty.