Theatre Jan Lauwers says, 'No Comment' Words fall short. In extreme situations when mouths fall silent, the image screams. The TV programme No Comment on Euronews showed images from the war in Iraq without providing commentary. Do images say that much more, or just the opposite? This is one of the questions that occupy Needcompany director Jan Lauwers. With the title No Comment, his latest production premiered at the Kaaitheater. Josse De Pauw, Charles Mee and Lauwers himself each wrote a monologue for Grace Ellen Barkley (The Tea Drinker), Carlotta Sagna (Salome) and Viviane De Muynck (Ulrike) respectively. Six composers wrote the music for Tijen Lawton's dance solo. The poster shows photos of Lauwers' four muses, without comment. "Explaining an image invariably runs the risk of emasculating it," says Lauwers. Yet still he gives an interview. No comment? Jan Lauwers: "This year I intended to give no opinions in my work. It is currently almost impossible to find someone without an opinion. It is no longer acceptable. Yet it is a relief when you can. Because, in the end, giving an opinion, is invariably engaging in the well-known battle. You see that also with the war in Iraq: pacifists against patriots, it is a simplified battle, an opinion for the sake of an opinion." If that is not an opinion... "I call this production 'No Comment' because I simply want to create what I want to create. In the performing arts there is another tendency toward conceptualism and with this the child is thrown out with the bathwater. When the means become the goal, you are on the wrong track. A body is of course something rational, but it is also sensual. Artificially dividing this duality leads to a fundamentalism that I detest. Both aspects must be present naturally. I connected the four solos in 'No Comment' in a dramaturgical line: I begin by dissecting the image and I end with only thought." The three monologues for three women were written by three men. Was it clear to you who would write for whom? "The figure of the tea drinker immediately appealed to Josse De Pauw because he is married to a Japanese and personally recognises this double culture. Grace Ellen Barkey, who plays the tea drinker, is from Indonesia. I did not know the American author Charles Mee personally. He had seen Morning Song in New York (where Lauwers won an Obie Award in 1999, LiLa) and via e-mail proposed working together. He made an adaptation of Salome for Carlotta Cagna because she had played this role in Le Désir (from the Snakesong Triology. LiLa). I myself wrote Ulrike for Viviane De Munck." In your work you always opt for a certain level of abstraction. Do anecdotes not distract us from what is really important? "I search for a form of universality. The anecdote may never be the goal. The anecdote as realistic reflection or naturalism is abhorrent, because it has nothing more to do with the essence of theatre. On the other hand, however, there is the fact that an image is only an image when it stays in your imagination, as remembrance." You said about yourself: 'I don't direct, I create images'. The TV programme 'No Comment' could also be seen as a critique of the gratuitous image. Are you not cross-examining yourself? "There are always two foundations present in my work. There is the image and there is the theatrical given of a person on stage. The latter cannot be sampled or digitised. I have no critique to offer to the image. I want to analyse what it means. Theatre, image, art: they are not unambiguous concepts. There are actors who maintain that they are artists, others refer to themselves as 'mere' medium. Art is precisely about calling virtuosity into question. It is sometimes said that I make 'visual theatre'. I must admit that I do not understand what is meant by this. Perhaps the basis of the comparison is already wrong: they still compare my work with repertoire theatre. Yet we have long since agreed that theatre is more than this. In the new repertoire theatre, author and director are less separate. The artist becomes one, such that fleeting theatre, more so than before, consists only in the moment."