MARKETPLACE 76 JAN LAUWERS & NEEDCOMPANY

Transcription

1 JAN LAUWERS & NEEDCOMPANY MARKETPLACE 76 A Needcompany production. In coproduction with the Ruhrtriennale (Bochum), Burgtheater (Vienna), Holland Festival (Amsterdam). With the support of the Flemish authorities. Maarten Vanden Abeele 1

2 MARKETPLACE 76 written and directed by Jan Lauwers I dust everything off, give the curtains another shake, beat the carpets and polish the floor but don t put the dust bags out yet because it s Wednesday and people might start wondering. I take another look at the 76 notches I ve made in the doorframe with a kitchen knife. They are all exactly the same length. The space between each successive notch is exactly the same too. I have always been very neat and precise. I touch them with my fingertips. The small differences in relief give me a cold shiver. For 76 days I have waited, searched. I have been laughed at and listened to with understanding. My decision is final. 76 notches. Neat and tidy. The way I have lived. Now I m going to make a filthy mess of it. Marketplace 76 is the darkest story Jan Lauwers has written for his high spirited ensemble. With Lauwers himself in the role of narrator and leader of the brass band, Needcompany sings and dances the story of the village. A village that is mourning the consequences of a tragic explosion on the marketplace. The performers bring mourning and sorrow, incest and abduction, paedophilia and suicide to life in a passionate community full of excessive love, friendship, happiness and survival. The questions Jan Lauwers asks in the play go to the heart of twenty first century politics. In a globalised world, the things that once held a society together tradition, religion, ethnicity, nationality and so on have lost their self evident binding force. The possibility (or impossibility) of coexistence is the crucial issue in Jan Lauwers plays over the last decade: Isabella s room (2004), The Lobster Shop (2006), The Deer House (2008) together the Sad Face Happy Face trilogy are all stories about the forces that bind a group together or break it apart. In Marketplace 76 Jan Lauwers tells the story of the deliverance of a community. The market was and still is the starting and finishing point of demonstrations and events, expressions of the citizens will. It is the place for public speaking. The things that concern the community take place on the marketplace, and vice versa: whatever happens on the marketplace concerns the community. The epic play gives Lauwers the opportunity to let the village undergo a sort of psychoanalysis. 2

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4 PRESS Depicting and channelling the darkest emotions with bright colours and formidable tableaux vivants: as always, Lauwers is a master at this. Knack 'The dead have their place and a voice in Jan Lauwers wonderland. A profoundly human place, that deserves all the applause it gets.' Der Standard 'Fully in line with the notion of cathartic theatre, Lauwers succeeds in celebrating man with all his longings and fears, and also with his deepest abysses and imperfections.... Exceptionally exciting theatre.' Wiener Zeitung The boldness with which Lauwers casts his vision at our feet is like a cluster bomb that does not leave you unscathed. This performance has more great ideas in store than many other artists have in their whole oeuvre. This is a quality only great artists have: not having to save on inspiration. An inexhaustible source. De Standaard A portrait of our absurd world painted in the strongest possible colours. De Morgen 'A joyous macabre dance.' Libération 'It paints a brilliant picture with a palette rich in nuances linked to characters who are frightening and pitiful as well as generous and moving, but above all human.' La Gazette 'A theatrical adventure, marvelously sang and danced' L'Humanité 'Excellent and brilliant, and the audience asks for more.' La Provence Click here for the complete reviews 4

5 MARKETPLACE 76 Author, Director, Set Designer Jan Lauwers Performers Hans Petter Dahl Catherine Travelletti Benoît Gob Anneke Bonnema Julien Faure Sung Im Her Yumiko Funaya / Mohamed Toukabri Grace Ellen Barkey Romy Louise Lauwers Emmanuel Schwartz / Jules Beckman Maarten Seghers Elke Janssens Kurt d Outrive, commissioner Antoinette d Outrive, the commissioner s wife Benoît De Leersnyder, butcher Anneke De Leersnyder, the butcher s wife Alfred Signoret, plumber Kim Ho Signoret, the plumber s wife Michèle Signoret, Alfred and Kim Ho s daughter Alfred and Kim Ho s son Tracy, the baker / Oscar, the baker s son Pauline, the baker s daughter Sweeper Karel Tuymans / Squinty Jan Lauwers Composers Rombout Willems (summer, spring), Maarten Seghers (autumn), Hans Petter Dahl (winter) Costumes Lot Lemm Dramaturgy & Subtitles Elke Janssens Assistant Choreographer Misha Downey Sound Ditten Lerooij Lighting design Ken Hioco Production Manager Chris Vanneste Technical Manager Marjolein Demey Puppet maker Paul Contryn (de Maan) 5

6 Dramaturgical Introduction Erwin Jans English Translations Gregory Ball French Translations Anne Vanderschueren German Translations Rosi Wiegmann Costume Assistant Lieve Meeussen Singing coach Lucy Grauman Technicians creation Luc Galle (chief), Irmgard Mertens, Klaas Trekker, Elke Van Der Kelen Trainees Camille De Bonhome, Sophie Lichtenberg, Mafalda Ferraz Photographer Maarten Vanden Abeele A Needcompany production. Coproduced by the Ruhrtriennale, Burgtheater (Vienna), Holland Festival (Amsterdam). With the support of the Flemish authorities. 6

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8 PERFORMANCE CALENDAR SEASON Opening night Ruhrtriennale, Jahrhunderthalle, Bochum 7, 8, 13, 14, 15 September 2012 Kasino, Burgtheater, Vienna 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 October 2012 Belgian premiere Concertgebouw Bruges 12 October 2012 Kaaitheater, Brussels 24, 25, 26, 27 October 2012 Teatro Central, Seville 23, 24 November 2012 Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt 12, 13, 14 April 2013 Kasino, Burgtheater, Vienna 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 May 2013 desingel, Antwerp 30, 31 May and 1 June 2013 Holland Festival, Amsterdam 21, 22 June 2013 PERFORMANCE CALENDAR SEASON Festival d Avignon 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17 July 2013 Biennale di Venezia 6 August 2013 La Bâtie, Geneva 10, 11 September 2013 Kaaitheater, Brussels 12, 13 November 2013 SPIELART, Munich 18 November 2013 Scène Nationale de Sète et du Bassin de Thau 21, 22 November 2013 PERFORMANCE CALENDAR SEASON MESS, International Theater Festival, Sarajevo 12 October 2014 NTGent 4, 5 February 2015 CC De Grote Post, Ostend 7 February 2015 T2G Théâtre de Gennevilliers, Paris 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 March 2015 La Halle aux grains, Scène nationale de Blois 11, 12 March 2015 Theater aan het Vrijthof, Maastricht 17 March 2015 Click here for the latest tour dates 8

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10 THE DELIVERANCE OF THE COMMUNITY Water of love deep in the ground No water here to be found Some day baby when the river runs free It ll carry that water of love to me. Dire Straits Prologue. We are five friends, one day we came out of a house one after the other, first one came and placed himself beside the gate, then the second came, and placed himself near the first one, then came the third, then the fourth, then the fifth. Finally we all stood in a row. People began to notice us, they pointed at us and said: Those five just came out of that house. Since then we have been living together; it would be a peaceful life if it weren t for a sixth one continually trying to interfere. He doesn t do us any harm, but he annoys us, and that is harm enough; why does he intrude where he is not wanted? We don t know him and don t want him to join us. There was a time, of course, when the five of us did not know one another, either; and it could be said that we still don t know one another, but what is possible and can be tolerated by the five of us is not possible and cannot be tolerated with this sixth one. In any case, we are five and don t want to be six. And what is the point of this continual being together anyhow? It is also pointless for the five of us, but here we are together and will remain together; a new combination, however, we do not want, just because of our experiences. But how is one to make all this clear to the sixth one? Long explanations would also amount to accepting him in our circle, so we prefer not to explain and not to accept him. No matter how he puts his lips we push him away with our elbows, but however much we push him away, back he comes. (Franz Kafka) 1. How much society can we cope with? Why five and not six? Who is the sixth one who is not allowed in but does not allow himself to be sent away either, and continues to haunt the community? How much living together can a society bear? This is also the question Jan Lauwers asks in the play Marketplace 76. It seems like a paradoxical, almost absurd question, but it goes to the heart of twenty first century politics. At the start of this third millennium the word coexistence no longer has any obvious meaning. In a globalised world, the things that once held a society together tradition, religion, ethnicity, nationality and so on have lost their self evident binding force. As early as 1887, on the eve of the modern era, the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies made a fundamental distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. The Gemeinschaft is a model of coexistence based on strong affective ties and solidarity, while the Gesellschaft is defined by individualism, economic ties and mutual competition. The historical development from a Gemeinschaft based on traditions and recognisability to a Gesellschaft marked by alienation and 1

11 pluralism is irreversible. By definition, living in a globalised world means living with strangers. Modern society is no longer a home for everyone. It is a homeless society. We are faced with opinions and philosophies that we do not share, and which we may even utterly reject. We have to learn to accept that people do not have to agree with each other to be able to participate in a society. Society is not a double bed, a circle of friends or a family, idealised or otherwise. The speed at which changes in modern society take place personal mobility, migration, cultural diversity cannot but lead to clashes, conflicts and crises. At the speed of life we are bound to collide with each other, is the motto of the American film Crash (2004) directed by Paul Haggis. The streets of our cities have developed into contact zones in which cultures and people previously divided by geography, history, race, ethnicity, etc. are forced to live together. And yet there have to be foundations. What can keep us together? What is the minimum we need to have in common in order to function as a society? Some see the individual (and his rights and obligations) as the absolute benchmark for any form of coexistence. In addition, the process of globalisation has breathed new life into old forms of community and created new forms. The fear of alienation and of the unknown has reinforced the identity of religious, ethnic and national communities. The community becomes the demarcation line, the boundary between what is one s own and what is foreign. Groups revert to the feeling of a closed community, a nostalgic and imaginary idea of identity, tradition and continuity. The outsider becomes the enemy, the threat that has to be kept at a distance. Five of us, but not six! 2. In my opinion, the possibility (or impossibility) of coexistence is the crucial issue in Jan Lauwers plays over the last decade: Isabella s Room (2004), The Lobster Shop (2006), The Deer House (2008) together the Sad Face Happy Face trilogy are all stories about the forces that bind a group together or break it apart. The film Goldfish Game (2002) is also a story of a small community that is violently torn apart. The close ensemble of actors that Lauwers has built up over the years paradoxically enough enables him to stage the vulnerability and fragility of society. In Goldfish Game the seemingly clearly comprehensible network of friendships and loves is washed over by a story of international human trafficking, forced prostitution, rape and violence. However surreal Lauwers moral fables may be, with their accumulation of incidents and their eccentric design, reality with all its horror is never far away. Jan Lauwers: The feeling from which Marketplace 76 grew was one of exasperation. Exasperation at the state of affairs in our part of the world. Bertolt Brecht had a maxim hanging in his workroom: It is hard always to be in a rage. Brecht is often mentioned when people are talking about my plays. I do recognise myself in his demand for rage. The first image I had for this production was that of street cleaners in their orange uniforms. We don t pay the slightest attention to them. We hardly see them. This indifference is shocking. Some of them are highly educated and when they come here they have to clear up our dirt. Is it a coincidence that they are all foreigners, Africans and North Africans? It s not even a question of skin colour. It s all about a group of people who are completely outside the system and are also kept there. In the play there is a dialogue about the theft of a necklace. Squinty, the thief, says: I stole it myself, so it s mine. When people have nothing and then steal something, it is a form of survival. Modern society has become a machine that results in exclusion, marginality and fragility on a large scale: the poor, unemployed, homeless, illegal immigrants, refugees, migrants and so on. While street cleaners hardly stand out in society, in their orange uniforms they are a prominent presence in the play. Is it no more than a coincidence that for Buddhists orange is the colour of the rising sun and of spiritual awakening? The street 10

12 cleaners make appropriate (or inappropriate) comments on the dramatic action. They are a raw but vigorous voice from the margins of society, like the dead, who in Lauwers productions are never completely dead and continue to haunt the living with their absent presence. The dead children, for example, who, sitting on the backs of gulls as they fly around, make sure the living get a good dose of droppings. Other dead people take on the role of narrator together with the street cleaners. Without the dead, the story of the living cannot be told! The time when the dead enjoy themselves has come, as we hear halfway through the play. 3. Whereas the Sad Face Happy Face trilogy and Goldfish Game were set in the intimacy of the family and circle of friends, Marketplace 76, as the title suggests, is set in a public space. In many villages and towns the marketplace is still the central square. It is the place where, in the past, the economic life of the town or village was played out and where its social and political life was organised. It is the place where not only all sorts of commercial products, but also the latest news, the judgments and prejudices, the gossip and the reputations circulated. The market was and still is the starting and finishing point of demonstrations and events, expressions of the citizens will. It is the place for public speaking. The things that concern the community take place on the marketplace, and vice versa: whatever happens on the marketplace concerns the community. It is no coincidence that the church and the town hall are often close to this market square. In Ancient Greece the agora was the heart of the polis, the place of public debate and political discussion. The word agora means meeting place. The agora was in the first place the place where free citizens gathered and held meetings. Where they discussed politics and philosophy. This public nature later reappeared in the coffee houses of the eighteenth century, the salons of the nineteenth century, the shopping arcades of Paris, the boulevards, the pavement cafés and so on. However, in postmodern urban life little remains of this idyllic image of the town as a place of public openness, debate, encounter, detachment and respect. The ideal of detachment and neutrality has been replaced by a complex interplay of diversity, competition, spectacle, voyeurism, physicality, temptation, consumerism and so on: From the centre of civilisation and intellectual exchange, and the idealising humanist concept of public openness, to the chaotic marketplace full of differences and conflicting interests, from transparency to obscurity: this is a summary of the recent history of modern, urban public openness. according to the Dutch sociologist René Boomkens. The media and the internet have in many ways become the modern equivalent to the agora. Though they often seem more like a Roman circus, filled with blooddrenched spectacle and cheap entertainment, than a place for debate. Lauwers brought this world of pretence and lies to the stage in his previous production, The art of entertainment (2011). The marketplace is also more a circus than an agora. In addition to the typical fountain that adorns many a market square, there are also piles of rubbish, rotting food, street animals, homeless people, beggars and riffraff. In the conversations between the characters we also find all the linguistic waste together and all the language registers intermingle: intimate, obscene, racist, sexist, xenophobic, coarse, inappropriate, insulting, cursing, harsh, aggressive, etc. The plain language as we have heard it spoken recently in the byways and gutters of the internet. At the same time, this vernacular speech can express great vitality and a more direct communication with a broader audience. A theatre maker and writer like Brecht was well aware of this. The quest for direct and accessible forms of communication has been one of the driving forces behind Lauwers theatre, especially since Isabella s Room. 11

13 Maarten Vanden Abeele 4. Imagine : this is how the narrator opens the story. The first character to be addressed is the spectator. He thus immediately becomes part of a unique laboratory set up. The spectator is invited. Not in the first place to watch what will be shown. But to imagine something. An experiment in imagination. Imagine: A small village at the foot of a mountain. Remote. Poor. The people are sombre. Lauwers clearly wanted to show the similarities to Lars von Trier s Dogville. Dogville tells the story of a small community that is disrupted by the arrival of Grace, a woman who is seeking refuge in the town. The way the people deal with and misuse her shows the dark and perverse underside of a seemingly decent community. Grace is the sixth who turns up and exposes the moral failure of the community. Just like Von Trier, Lauwers tries to show the unconscious and suppressed aspects of a society. Like the warp and weft, these dark forces, together with everyday propriety, form the texture, the woven fabric, on which the community vainly wishes to rest. From above, the pattern looks clear and neat, but underneath all you find is loose ends knotted together. As long as this woven fabric is not torn, the community remains intact. As long as this unstable equilibrium is not upset, the community can continue to believe in itself. Lauwers populates this village with typical common people: the Commissioner Kurt d Outrive and his wife Antoinette, the butcher Benoît de Leersnyder and his wife Anneke, the baker Tracy and her children Pauline and Oscar, the plumber Alfred Signoret, his Korean wife Kim Ho and their daughter Michèle. This time there is no real main character around whom events unfold. It is all about a network of relationships that is virtually impossible to retell. Marketplace 76 opens in the aftermath of a major catastrophe. It starts with the preparations for a memorial ceremony for the gas explosion that took place a year previously and killed 24 people, including 7 children. The village is trying in vain to make some sense of this great calamity: If it had been a terrorist act there would have been something heroic about it, is the 12

14 comment of a street cleaner. But it was just a banal accident: Did that make the suffering any the less, or did it actually make it unbearable? Catastrophes (wars, disasters, attacks, murders etc.) shatter the symbolic fabric of a society. The act of mourning consists of making a place for the terrible event in the self definition of the community. The broken story has to be repaired. Collective rituals are needed to deal with collective traumas. Shared suffering is suffering halved. In rituals we try by means of coded actions and words to give shape to the shapeless, to that which defies words. It throws up a protective shield between us and the abyss that the trauma opens up. But in this play, the commemoration goes wrong almost immediately. With howling microphones and mourning parents who interrupt each other, trying to outbid one another in their degrees of grief. Human, all too human. Nothing remains of the official protocol. The village community finds neither form nor words for its sorrow. The trauma undermines the commemorative clichés. The private makes itself felt in public. The drunken Anneke, for instance, laments that her husband Benoît no longer wants to have sex with her since their child died in the explosion and she herself was paralysed and is now in a wheelchair. Lauwers piles up the dramatic events in this production. It s as if he wants to raise the pressure on this small community as much as possible so as to push it into a serious crisis. Just before the commemoration, the son of Tracy the baker jumps out of a window after an incestuous episode with his sister Pauline, who is immediately accused of having pushed her brother. At the end of the commemoration, a boat falls from the sky, with just one person in it: Squinty. Later he tells us that he is the sole survivor of a group of boat refugees and it is suggested that he may have pushed the others overboard. Then yet another drama hits the village: the paedophile plumber Alfred Signoret abducts Pauline and keeps her prisoner in the catacombs under the fountain on the square for 76 days. The day she is found by two street cleaners, her mother Tracy commits suicide. The central section of the play is the trial of the plumber and his Korean wife Kim Ho, who was an accessory to Pauline s abduction because she wanted to prevent her husband from violating their own daughter, Michèle. At one time, this village was conceived as a haven for every form of thought. A focus of non violent resistance, with a profound faith in man, says Commissioner d Outrive. But what if violence casts this haven of thought into a deep abyss and totally undermines the faith in mankind? The marketplace finds itself in the grip of its underground catacombs. Behind the characters Alfred Signoret and Kim Ho we see the couple Marc Dutroux and Michèle Martin. In the nineteen nineties, Dutroux abducted six young girls and murdered four of them with the knowledge of his wife. The case created a national and international sensation and caused an unprecedented political crisis in Belgium. In this case politics, morality, law, media and public opinion have become inextricably entangled. But Lauwers writes his own story of crime and punishment. 5. How much sorrow can a society cope with? The succession of calamities leads this small community into total impasse. The mourning of the lost children does not take place as it should. Feelings of guilt and sorrow block the life instinct. The fountain of life is closed off. Literally. The men no longer sleep with their wives. No more children are born. What is more, the paedophile plumber s abduction of Pauline and the complicity of his wife Kim Ho confronts the community with its feelings of vengeance: The pain the villagers have felt for more than 400 days is now showing itself in vengeance. The plumber, who stole one of their children and abused her will have to compensate them. He takes the blame for all their grief. He must die for the other 24 dead. Although he is by no means innocent, the community sacrifices him as a sort of scapegoat: a clumsy movement on Squinty s part knocks the plumber into the basin of the fountain, but the commissioner and the 13

15 butcher stop him from being saved and then blame Squinty. The inhabitants hang the plumber s body above the stage; the words of the song go: A dead man is hanging in the sun / And the seagulls? They just have fun. The community gets another chance when it comes to trying Kim Ho. They realise than atonement may be an alternative to punishment and so they imprison Kim Ho in her own house for 76 days, the same time that Pauline was locked up in the catacombs. But to this her daughter Michèle adds: If there is anyone who thinks that my mother has sufficiently atoned, he may undo the lock earlier. No one is happy with this suggestion. The villagers are still weighed down by their suffering: The hope that this atonement will bring them peace and love dwindles day by day, comments the dead baker. The community still has to endure a long winter before deliverance unexpectedly appears in the form of Kim Ho herself. 6. The outsider, the rejected sixth person in Kafka s story, the woman who was never really accepted by the community and was complicit in a horrific abduction, now becomes the community s ultimate life saver. At the time when the village men were no longer sleeping with their wives, they all came to her. Kim Ho identifies fully with her role as a whore: I have not behave as whore. I am whore, she says in her broken English. Unlike Grace in Dogville, Kim Ho gives herself to the men generously. Grace, by contrast, is forced into sex. She is misused by the inhabitants of Dogville. Which is why in the end she has no other choice than to have all the people of the town killed. Death, the ultimate punishment, is the only way to give them back their humanity. In Lauwers story, the ending that unfolds is much more optimistic. Kim Ho is not forced or misused: I love men and I love sex. Fantastic. Even bad sex is good. In fact if you think about it there s no such thing as bad sex. In connection with Goldfish Game I once wrote: Behind the human drama an anthropological study is being carried out almost imperceptibly into the mechanisms that keep a group together and drive it apart. At the heart of these mechanisms is death, one s own death and that of others, as the irreducible empty space that determines and circumscribes all human action. The same applies to Marketplace 76. But whereas in the film the small community, in the fatal stranglehold of fate, comes to grief as a result of its traumas and its secrets, in Marketplace 76 there is a dialectic moment, a moment of reversal. This too comes very close to Brecht. The epic narration gives Lauwers the opportunity to let the village undergo a sort of psychoanalysis, in which Kim Ho functions as a pharmakon, both poison and cure. As the plumber s wife and accomplice she is part of the cause of the calamity that descended on the community, but at the same time she is also the remedy. Her generous sexuality ultimately gives the village a giant baby whose father is unknown, but of which just about any man in the village could be the father. This baby, the first in two years, reconciles the inhabitants with themselves and their past. Kim Ho is the fons amoris, the fountain of love, the ode to Venus that had stood dried up on the market square. This whore s child is given the name Amor. Love. But not in the romantic sentimental sense, the way Richard Wagner immortalised it in Tristan und Isolde and as is dished up every day in diluted form in pop music and in Hollywood scenes. Love as a fatal fusion, as a tragic destiny. In Lauwers case love is more anonymous and vitalist in nature, bound up with life and survival. Not a veiled death wish, but an affirmation of Life. There was a time in Sumer, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece when whorehouses and brothels did not exist. At that time and in those countries their place was taken by the Temples of the Sacred Whores. In these temples men were cleansed, not soiled, morality was restored, not violated, and sexuality was not dirty, but divine. The whore was originally a priestess, a pointer towards the divine, because it was through her body that you entered the sacred circle and your honour was restored. 14

16 Warriors, soldiers, defiled by the struggle in the world of men, came to the Sacred Whore, the Quedishtu, which literally means the unsullied, to be cleansed and reunited with the gods, according to Deena Metzker. We here find ourselves in the very slippery area of a naïve New Age salvation theory or a simplistic Jungian psychology. Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus is the title of a 1992 book that is still very popular worldwide. The author, John Gray, says that men and women deal with each other as if they were from different planets. The inhabitants of Mars are focused on power and performance. They are individualistic, aim for independence and are goaloriented. By contrast, the inhabitants of Venus are more sensitive, and more involvement oriented. They help and support each other and derive their sense of self esteem mainly from relationships and conversations. But Lauwers skips this overly simple common or garden psychology, which informs countless books on relationships. In his view, Venus stands for a more archaic, anonymous and collective principle. In an interview, he said: I am slowly but surely formulating thoughts regarding the notion of a utopian society. With a laugh he refers to matriarchy: Women have always played a central part in my work. Women are quite simply stronger. When I saw Marina Abramović s performances, in which, standing at a table of knives, she asked the public to cut her body, I thought it was a highly female thing to do: a cut in your body is nothing compared to the pain of childbirth. I would very much like to live in a matriarchal society. And preferably one with Grace Ellen Barkey as president. Lauwers is not drafting a political programme in the narrow sense. Or perhaps he is: according to the French philosopher Badiou, politics is the word for a longing to begin. In this sense Kim Ho represents a break with the consensus. She represents both the Sacred Whore and the Primal Mother. She is a passionate radicalised version of Isabella. A female version of Zorba the Greek. Her sexual generosity is the equivalent of the last words in Molly Bloom s long closing monologue in James Joyce s Ulysses: and yes I said yes I will Yes. The affirmative life principle. The rebirth. Epilogue. If you visit the Needcompany website, the first thing you will come across is a photo of Jan Lauwers and Grace Ellen Barkey engaged in an intimate kiss. Three words under the photo guide visitors to more information about the company s work and programme: Love Liefde Amour. Erwin Jans 15

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18 WORK FOR THEATRE JAN LAUWERS & NEEDCOMPANY 1987 Need to Know Opening: 24 March, Mickery, Amsterdam 1989 ça va Opening: 18 March, Theater am Turm, Frankfurt 1990 Julius Caesar Opening: 31 May, Rotterdamse Schouwburg 1991 Invictos Opening: 18 May, Centro Andaluz de Teatro, Seville 1992 Antonius und Kleopatra Opening: 14 February, Teater am Turm, Frankfurt 1992 SCHADE/schade Opening: 21 October, Theater am Turm, Frankfurt 1993 Orfeo, opera by Walter Hus Opening: 23 May, Bourlaschouwburg, Antwerp 1994 The Snakesong Trilogy Snakesong/Le Voyeur Opening: 24 March, Theater am Turm, Frankfurt 1995 The Snakesong Trilogy Snakesong/Le Pouvoir (Leda) Opening: 11 May, Dance 95, Munich 1996 Needcompany's Macbeth Opening: 26 March, Lunatheater, Brussels 1996 The Snakesong Trilogy Snakesong/Le Désir Opening: 6 November, Kanonhallen, Copenhagen 1997 Caligula, No beauty for me there, where human life is rare, part one Opening: 5 September, Documenta X, Kassel 1998 The Snakesong Trilogy, reworked version with live music Opening: 16 April, Lunatheater, Brussels 1999 Morning Song, No beauty for me there, where human life is rare, part two Opening: 13 January, Lunatheater, Brussels 2000 Needcompany s King Lear Opening: 11 January, Lunatheater, Brussels 2000 DeaDDogsDon tdance/djamesdjoycedead Opening: 12 May, Das TAT, Frankfurt 2001 Ein Sturm Opening: 22 March, Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg 2001 Kind Opening: 21 June, Het Net, Bruges 2002 Images of Affection Opening: 28 February, Stadsschouwburg, Bruges 2003 No Comment Opening: 24 April, Kaaitheater, Brussels 2004 Isabella s room Opening: 9 July, Cloître des Carmes, Festival d Avignon 17

19 2006 All is Vanity Opening: 8 July, Théâtre Municipal, Festival d Avignon 2006 The Lobster Shop Opening : 10 July, Cloître des Célestins, Festival d Avignon 2008 The Deer House Opening: 28 July, Perner Insel, Hallein, Salzburger Festspiele 2008 Sad Face Happy Face, A Trilogy, Three Stories on Human Nature Opening: 1 August, Perner Insel, Hallein, Salzburger Festspiele 2011 The art of entertainment Opening: 5 March, Akademietheater (Burgtheater), Vienna 2012 Caligula Opening: 17 May, Kasino, (Burgtheater), Vienna 2012 Marketplace 76 Opening: 7 September, Ruhrtriennale, Jahrhunderthalle, Bochum 2014 Begin the Beguine Opening: 1 March, Akademietheater (Burgtheater), Vienna Click here for an updated list. 18

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21 PUBLICATIONS IN BOOK FORM BY OR ABOUT JAN LAUWERS LAUWERS, Jan, Leda, Bebuquin (Antwerp), a coproduction with IT&FB publishing company, Amsterdam, VANDEN ABEELE, Maarten, The Lucidity of the Obscene, Needcompany in cooperation with IT&FB publishing company, Brussels/Amsterdam, LAUWERS, Jan, La Chambre d Isabella followed by Le Bazar du Homard, Actes Sud papiers, Paris, STALPAERT, Christel, BOUSSET, Sigrid, LE ROY, Frederik, (eds.), No Beauty for Me There where Human Life is Rare. On Jan Lauwers' theatre work with Needcompany, Academia Press, IT&FB publishing company, Ghent/ Amsterdam, LAUWERS, Jan, Restlessness, Mercatorfonds, BOZAR Books, Needcompany, Brussels, LAUWERS, Jan, Sad Face Happy Face, Drei Geschichten über das Wesen des Menschen, Fischer Taschenbuche Verlag (Frankfurt), LAUWERS, Jan, La maison des cerfs, Actes Sud papiers, Paris, LAUWERS, Jan, KEBANG!, Uitgeverij Van Halewyck, FREEMAN, John, The Greatest Shows on Earth. World Theater form Peter Brook to the Sydney Olympics, Libri Publishing, Oxfordshire, PRIZES Mobil Pegasus Preis, Internationales Sommertheater Festival Hamburg, for the best international production, ça va, Thersitesprijs, Flemish theatre critic prize, Obie Award in New York for the play Morning Song, Kinematrix Prize for Digital Format, International Film Festival Venice 2002, Goldfish Game, Grand Jury Honor for Best Ensemble Cast, Slamdance Film Festival, Goldfish Game, Le Masque, prize awarded by the Académie Québécoise du Théâtre in Montréal, Canada, for the best foreign production, La Chambre d Isabella, Prize awarded by the Syndicat Professionnel de la Critique de Théâtre, de Musique et de Danse in France, for the best foreign production, La Chambre d Isabella, Culture prize awarded by the Flemish Community 2006, theatre literature category, for the De kamer van Isabella and Ulrike scripts. Grand Prix Golden Laurel Wreath Award for Best Performance / MESS Festival Sarajevo, for Isabella s room (2009). Decoration of Honour in Gold for Services to the Republic Austria,

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23 JAN LAUWERS (long version) Jan Lauwers (Antwerp, 1957) is an artist who works in just about every medium. Over the last twenty years he has become best known for his pioneering work for the stage with Needcompany, which was founded in Brussels in Needcompany has been artist in residence at the Burgtheater in Vienna since Over the years he has also built up a substantial body of art work which was shown in an exhibition at BOZAR (Brussels) in Jan Lauwers is awarded with the Decoration of Honour in Gold for Services to the Republic Austria (2012). Jan Lauwers studied painting at the Academy of Art in Ghent. At the end of 1979 he gathered round him a number of people to form the Epigonenensemble. In 1981 this group was transformed into the Epigonentheater zlv collective which took the theatre world by surprise with its six stage productions. In this way Jan Lauwers took his place in the movement for radical change in Flanders in the early 80, and also made his international breakthrough. Epigonentheater zlv presented direct, concrete, highly visual theatre that used music and language as structuring elements. Their productions were Already Hurt and not yet War (1981), de demonstratie (1983), Bulletbird (1983), Background of a Story (1984) and Incident (1985). Jan Lauwers disbanded this collective in 1985 and founded Needcompany. NEEDCOMPANY Jan Lauwers needs company. He founded Needcompany together with Grace Ellen Barkey. They together are responsible for Needcompany larger scale productions. The group of performers Jan Lauwers and Grace Ellen Barkey have put together over the years is quite unique in its versatility. Their associated performing artists are MaisonDahlBonnema (Hans Petter Dahl & Anna Sophia Bonnema), Lemm&Barkey (Lot Lemm & Grace Ellen Barkey), OHNO COOPERATION (Maarten Seghers & Jan Lauwers) and the NC ensemble, which includes the inimitable Viviane De Muynck. They create work of their own under Needcompany s wing. Since Needcompany was founded in 1986, both its work and its performers have been markedly international. Its first productions, Need to Know (1987) and ça va (1989) which received the Mobiel Pegasus Preis were still highly visual, but in subsequent productions the storyline and the main theme gained in importance, although the fragmentary composition remained. Lauwers training as an artist is decisive in his handling of the theatre medium and leads to a highly individual and in many ways pioneering theatrical idiom that examines the theatre and its meaning. One of its most important characteristics is a transparent, thinking acting and the paradox between acting and performing. This specific approach is also to be found in his adaptations of Shakespeare: Julius Caesar (1990), Antonius und Kleopatra (1992), Needcompany s Macbeth (1996), Needcompany s King Lear (2000) and, at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg, Ein Sturm (2001). After directing Invictos (1996), the monologue SCHADE/Schade (1992) and the opera Orfeo (1993), in 1994 he started work on a major project called The Snakesong Trilogy, which signalled his first full emergence as an author: Snakesong/Le Voyeur (1994), Snakesong/Le Pouvoir (1995) and Snakesong/Le Désir (1996). In 1998 he staged the reworked version of the whole Snakesong Trilogy. 22

24 In September 1997 he was invited to take part in the theatre section of Documenta X (Kassel), for which he created Caligula, after Camus, the first part of a diptych called No beauty for me there, where human life is rare. With Morning Song (1999), the second part of the diptych No beauty..., Lauwers and Needcompany won an Obie Award in New York. In May 2000, at the request of William Forsythe, Lauwers created, in co production with Ballett Frankfurt, the piece entitled DeaDDogsDon tdance/djamesdjoycedead (2000). Images of Affection (2002) was created on the occasion of Needcompany s 15 th anniversary. Jan Lauwers presented three monologues and a dance solo under the title No Comment (2003). Charles L. Mee, Josse De Pauw and Jan Lauwers wrote pieces for Carlotta Sagna ( Salome ), Grace Ellen Barkey ( The tea drinker ) and Viviane De Muynck ( Ulrike ) respectively. Six composers Rombout Willems, Doachim Mann, Walter Hus, Senjan Jansen, Hans Petter Dahl and Felix Seger wrote a musical composition for the dance solo by Tijen Lawton. Broadly speaking the themes of this performance are those Lauwers has reformulated and redefined ever since the start of his work with Needcompany: violence, love, eroticism and death. A collection of several thousand ethnological and archaeological objects left by Jan Lauwers father urged him to tell the story of Isabella Morandi in Isabella s room (2004) (Avignon theatre festival). Nine performers together reveal the secret of Isabella s room with as central figure the monumental actress Viviane De Muynck. This play was awarded several prizes, including the 2006 Flemish Community Culture Prize in the playwriting category. In 2006 he created two pieces for the Avignon Festival, one of which is The Lobster Shop, whose script he wrote himself, and All is Vanity, a monologue by Viviane De Muynck, which the actress herself adapted from Claire Goll s book of the same name. The Salzburger Festpiele has invited Jan Lauwers to make a new production, The Deer House, for summer Together with Isabella s Room (2004) and The Lobster Shop (2006) this new production makes up a trilogy on human nature: Sad Face Happy Face. The trilogy as a whole was performed for the first time at the Salzburger Festspiele Since 2009 Jan Lauwers is artist in residence at Vienna s Burgtheater. The art of entertainment was premiered in 2011, afterwards the leading role was played by Dirk Roofthooft. Caligula (2012) and the text by John Cassavetes Begin the Beguine (2014) were also collaborations with the Burgtheater. Jan Lauwers wrote Marketplace 76 for the Needcompany ensemble. It was premiered in September 2012 during the Ruhrtriennale. The Blind Poet (2015), Jan Lauwers latest play, will premiere during the 2015 Kunstenfestivaldesarts. PROJECTS In 1999 Jan Lauwers launched Needlapb, a one off occasion for ideas, notes, sketches and random thoughts. Needlapb enables one to see the initial stages of various projects in which experimentation gropes its way towards the stage. Just for Toulouse (Théâtre Garonne, 2006) was the first of a series of evenings when Needcompany s associated performing artists presented installations and performances. In 2007 Just for Brussels was presented at BOZAR. 23

25 He founded OHNO COOPERATION together with Maarten Seghers to give concrete shape to their mutual artistic commitment. Up to now this has taken the form of listening to, looking at, thinking about and making music, visual art and performances: The Grenoble Tapes (2006), O.H.N.O.P.O.P.I.C.O.N.O. (2006), The OHNO Cooperation Conversation On The O.H.N.O.P.O.P.I.C.O.N.O. Ontology (2007). They are combined in an OHNO cooperation evening (2008). In 2009 the artist curator duo OHNO COOPERATION invited several artists to participate in The Tragedy of the Applause Roubaix. In August 2011 OHNO COOPERATION curated the fifth OPEN AIR in Antwerp, in the frame of which it invited several artists. The OHNO Cooperation Conversation On The O.H.N.O.P.O.P.I.C.O.N.O. Tautology (2014) was created on commission to Fidena Jan Lauwers was selected in the margin of the Biennale in Venice (2012) for the workshop of Dramatic Arts. Curator Alex Rigola invited a group of prominent theatre makers, resulting in a performance called The Seven Sins (2011) and The Impossible Act (2013). In 2014 Lauwers presents Just for Venice there. FILMPROJECTS Jan Lauwers also has a number of film and video projects to his name, including From Alexandria (1988), Mangia (1995), Sampled Images (2000), C Song (2003), C Song Variations (2007) and The OHNO Cooperation Conversations on the O.H.N.O.P.O.P.I.C.O.N.O. Ontology (2007). During summer 2001 Lauwers shot his first full length film with the working title Goldfish Game (2002). The script was written together with Dick Crane. Goldfish Game is the story of a small community of people who are violently torn apart. The premiere took place at the Venice Film Festival (in the New Territories (Nuovi Territori)) category. The Kinematrix internet magazine (Italy) proclaimed Goldfish Game the best film in the Formati Anomali (Unusual Forms) category. The jury report said: An innovative style of directing that surpasses the limits of the digital medium. Goldfish Game was selected for the Buenos Aires International Human Rights Film and Video Festival in 2002, the Ghent Film Festival in 2002 and the Solothurn Film Festival in Switzerland in At the Slamdance Film Festival (January 2004), Goldfish Game was awarded the Grand Jury Honour for the Best Ensemble Cast. In February 2003 Jan Lauwers made a silent short film on violence, called C Song. This film has been shown to a limited audience several times, during the Needlapbs at STUK in Leuven and the Kaaitheater Studios in Brussels, and also in War is Not Art at the Vooruit in Ghent. In April 2004 C Song had its official premiere at the Courtisane short film festival in Ghent. It was subsequently selected for the International Short Film Festival in Hamburg in 2004 and in July 2004 was screened in the old water tower at Bredene on the Belgian coast as part of Grasduinen 2004, SMAK aan Zee. C Song Variations (2007), a short film made in connection with The Lobster Shop, had a preview at BOZAR (Brussels) in April and its premiere at the Temps d Images festival in La Ferme du Buisson (Paris) in October It was then shown at the haus der kunst (2007) in Munich. For the SPIELART Festival in Munich (2007) he did a video project together with Maarten Seghers: The OHNO Cooperation Conversations on the O.H.N.O.P.O.P.I.C.O.N.O. Ontology. The OHNO Cooperation Conversation On The O.H.N.O.P.O.P.I.C.O.N.O. Tautology (2014) was created on commission to Fidena

26 VISUAL ART At the request of the curator Luk Lambrecht, Jan Lauwers took part in the Grimbergen 2002 exhibition together with 8 other artists (including Thomas Schütte, Lili Dujourie, Job Koelewijn, Atelier Van Lieshout, Jan De Cock and Ann Veronica Janssens). In spring 2006 his work was included in the DARK exhibition at the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam. In 2007 Jan Lauwers had his first solo exhibition at BOZAR (Brussels), curated by Jérôme Sans (former director of Palais de Tokyo, now at the UCCA). To accompany this exhibition he also compiled the first book to focus on his art work from 1996 to At the Artbrussels art fair (2007), Lauwers was invited to make a site specific work for BOZAR. Luk Lambrecht has invited Jan Lauwers to take part in Down to Earth, a group exhibition of ceramics at Strombeek cultural centre, which includes work by Ann Veronica Janssens, Heimo Zobernig, Atelier Van Lieshout, Lawrence Weiner, Kurt Ryslavy and Manfred Pernice. In May 2009 Jérôme Sans invited Jan Lauwers to exhibit at Curated by_vienna 09. Curated by brought 18 Viennese contemporary art galleries together with international curators. In September 2011 Champ d Action and M HKA organised the 8th Time Canvas, during which Jan Lauwers Last Guitar Monster was shown. Deconstructions were made by Jan Lauwers using disused museum material. These museum installations have already been shown at BOZAR (Brussels) and the haus der kunst (Munich) in They formed the setting for a six hour marathon performance by the NC ensemble on which the whole of Jan Lauwers mental world converged. The result was The House of Our Fathers, which was shown at the Museum M in Leuven, the 16 th Internationale Schillertage in Mannheim (2011). And during Hannover s Kunstfestspiele Herrenhausen in

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28 LINKS TO THE BIOGRAPHIES Grace Ellen Barkey Anneke Bonnema Hans Petter Dahl Julien Faure Yumiko Funaya Benoît Gob Sung Im Her Romy Louise Lauwers Emmanuel Schwartz Maarten Seghers Mohamed Toukabri Catherine Travelletti ROMBOUT WILLEMS Rombout Willems is a musician and composer. He lives and works in Haarlem. He has composed music for several Needcompany productions by Grace Ellen Barkey & Jan Lauwers. He also teaches at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and in the Modern Dance Department at the Amsterdam College of Arts. 27

29 Hooikaai 35 B 1000 Brussels tel fax Artistic director Jan Lauwers Executive director Yannick Roman: yannick@needcompany.org Artistic coordination Elke Janssens: elke@needcompany.org General manager Eva Blaute: eva@needcompany.org Production manager Chris Vanneste: chris@needcompany.org Technical manager Marjolein Demey: marjolein@needcompany.org 28