JAN LAUWERS & NEEDCOMPANY MARKETPLACE 76

JAN LAUWERS & NEEDCOMPANY
MARKETPLACE 76
© Maarten Vanden Abeele
A Needcompany production.
In coproduction with the Ruhrtriennale (Bochum),
Burgtheater (Vienna), Holland Festival (Amsterdam).
With the support of the Flemish authorities.
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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 story of villagers startled by an explosion in which 24 people lose their lives,
including 7 children. The tragedy of the dead children weighs heavily on the surviving villagers. Too
much grief dominates their lives. Until one day a boat falls from the sky: ‘A lifeboat fallen from the
sky’.
Jan Lauwers has written Marketplace 76 a kaleidoscopic epic story composed of four seasons. It is a
meticulous report on a number of villagers who have been overtaken and driven forward by time,
and in spite of everything are not always able to survive heroically. Marketplace 76 reconciles such
dark themes as mourning and sorrow, incest and abduction, pedophilia and suicide with excessive
love, friendship, happiness and survival.
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© Maarten Vanden Abeele
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MARKETPLACE 76
Author, Director, Set Designer
Jan Lauwers
Performers
Hans Petter Dahl Kurt d’Outrive, commissioner
Catherine Travelletti Antoinette d’Outrive, the commissioner’s wife
Benoît Gob Benoît De Leersnyder, butcher
Anneke Bonnema Anneke De Leersnyder, the butcher’s wife
Julien Faure Alfred Signoret, plumber
Sung-Im Her Kim-Ho Signoret, the plumber’s wife
Yumiko Funaya Michèle Signoret, Alfred and Kim-Ho’s daughter
Grace Ellen Barkey Tracy, the baker / Oscar, the baker’s son
Romy Louise Lauwers Pauline, the baker’s daughter
Emmanuel Schwartz Sweeper
Maarten Seghers Karel Tuymans / Squinty
Jan Lauwers
Elke Janssens
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
Luc Galle
Lighting technician
Marjolein Demey
Puppet-maker
Paul Contryn (de Maan)
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Dramaturgical Introduction
Erwin Jans
English Translations
Gregory Ball
French Translations
Anne Vanderschueren
German Translations
Rosi Wiegmann
Costume Assistant
Lieve Meeussen
Singing Coach
Lucy Grauman
Technician
Irmgard Mertens, Klaas Trekker, Elke Van Der Kelen
Trainee Assistant Director
Camille De Bonhome
Production Trainees
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.
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© Maarten Vanden Abeele
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PERFORMANCE CALENDAR SEASON 2012-2013
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
Click here for the latest tour dates
© Maarten Vanden Abeele
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THE DELIVERANCE OF THE COMMUNITY
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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
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 streetcleaners
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
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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.
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© 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
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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
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utcher 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.
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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.
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Erwin Jans

© Maarten Vanden Abeele
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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
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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
Click here for an updated list.
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© Maarten Vanden Abeele
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PUBLICATIONS IN BOOK FORM BY OR ABOUT JAN LAUWERS
– LAUWERS, Jan, Leda, Bebuquin (Antwerp), a coproduction with IT&FB publishing company,
Amsterdam, 1995.
– VANDEN ABEELE, Maarten, The Lucidity of the Obscene, Needcompany in cooperation with IT&FB
publishing company, Brussels/Amsterdam, 1998.
– LAUWERS, Jan, La Chambre d’Isabella followed by Le Bazar du Homard, Actes Sud-papiers, Paris,
2006.
– 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, 2007.
- LAUWERS, Jan, Restlessness, Mercatorfonds, BOZAR Books, Needcompany, Brussels, 2007.
- LAUWERS, Jan, Sad Face | Happy Face, Drei Geschichten über das Wesen des Menschen, Fischer
Taschenbuche Verlag (Frankfurt), 2008.
- LAUWERS, Jan, La maison des cerfs, Actes Sud-papiers, Paris, 2009.
- LAUWERS, Jan, KEBANG !, Uitgeverij Van Halewyck, 2009.
- FREEMAN, John, The Greatest Shows on Earth. World Theater form Peter Brook to the Sydney
Olympics, Libri Publishing, Oxfordshire, 2011.
PRIZES
– Mobil Pegasus Preis, Internationales Sommertheater Festival Hamburg, for the best international
production, ça va, 1989.
– Thersitesprijs, Flemish theatre critic prize, 1998.
– Obie Award in New York for the play Morning Song, 1999.
– Kinematrix Prize for Digital Format, International Film Festival Venice 2002, Goldfish Game, 2002.
– Grand Jury Honor for Best Ensemble Cast, Slamdance Film Festival, Goldfish Game, 2004.
– Le Masque, prize awarded by the Académie Québécoise du Théâtre in Montréal, Canada, for the
best foreign production, La Chambre d’Isabella, 2005.
– 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, 2005.
- 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, 2012.
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© Maarten Vanden Abeele
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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 1986. Needcompany has been artist-in-residence at the Burgtheater in
Vienna since 2009. Over the years he has also built up a substantial body of art work which was
shown in an exhibition at BOZAR (Brussels) in 2007. 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.
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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 2008. 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 2008.
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).
The art of entertainment (2011) which was premiered in Vienna, is currently running and the leading
role is played by Dirk Roofthooft. Caligula, also a collaboration with the Burgtheater, also was
premiered in Vienna in May 2012.
Jan Lauwers wrote Marketplace 76 for the Needcompany ensemble. It was premiered in September
2012 during the Ruhrtriennale.
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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.
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. 0ntology (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.
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 2007.
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, after the 16 th Internationale Schillertage in Mannheim (2011).
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 2003. 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.
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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 2007. 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.
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 2006. 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 2007.
The House of Our Fathers – a house measuring 20 x 5 x 5m – is the basis for a major new project by
Jan Lauwers. A ‘house’ work of art that examines time, place and perception (the essential difference
between theatre and art). It will be expanded over the years to form an entirely independent work of
art to which Jan Lauwers invites other artists. A first version of this house was exhibited in 2011 in
the Kunsthalle (Mannheim) during the Schillertage. A second version was shown in Museum M in
November 2011 (Leuven). Work is currently ongoing on a large version for Hannover’s
Kunstfestspiele Herrenhausen in 2013.
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© Maarten Vanden Abeele
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LINKS TO THE BIOGRAPHIES
Grace Ellen Barkey
Anneke Bonnema
Hans Petter Dahl
Julien Faure
Yumiko Funaya
Benoit Gob
Sung-im Her
Romy Louise Lauwers
Emmanuel Schwartz
Maarten Seghers
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.
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Hooikaai 35
B-1000 Brussels
tel +32 2 218 40 75
fax +32 2 218 23 17
www.needcompany.org
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
Financial director / Sarah Eyckerman: sarah@needcompany.org
Tour manager & communication / Laura Smolders: laura@needcompany.org
Production manager / Luc Galle: luc@needcompany.org
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