• about
  • about
  • about
  • 2023

    After the success of Billy's Violence, the desire to continue this intense tale was so strong amongst the artistic team, cast and crew that it has led to a sequel: Billy’s Joy. Once again, Victor Lauwers turns his hand to reworking Shakespeare’s plays and see what they can still mean in our time - a time of great controversies, vulgar polemics, cancel culture, structural racism, climate change, war. What is there left to laugh at? Is humour the coward's weapon or a form of activism?

    In his only opera, 'Le Grand Macabre', György Ligeti created a large, discursive world theatre in which the plain, unvarnished human condition, with all its base desires and weaknesses becomes the cause of a full-blown, imminent apocalypse.

    2022

    A magnificent monologue based on Joyce's Ulysess that, in these #MeToo times, reinforces the need for equality for women. After first being voiced by Viviane De Muynck, the Needcompany production now also has a Spanish version starring the Chilean star Gaby Hernández, in cooperation with Santiago A Mil International Festival.

    AMOPERA is the first part of a triptych around the idea of 'meta-opera', which aims to reflect on the medium of opera. This first instalment - the love part - is an intense collaboration between Klangforum Wien and Needcompany on opera and music theatre from the past hundred years.

    2021

    For Billy's Violence, Victor Afung Lauwers researched the ten tragedies of Shakespeare and rewrote them into violently loving, intimate dialogues in which the woman is the central focus, stripped of any historical reference or anecdotal content.

    In Lauwers’s setting for L’incoronazione di Poppea at the Vienna State Opera, his melancholy yet cheerful, humorous and sceptical style meets the great human draughtsman that is Monteverdi. All participants meet on one level: “In our version of L'incoronazione di Poppea every singer, musician and dancer is an independent force – and everyone wants to survive as one”.

    Intolleranza 1960 is an opera that provides more questions than answers. Can it in fact be called an ‘opera’ at all? Or does it offer a statement of much greater importance? Does it transcend its own political content when it is staged today, as Intolleranza 2021?

    2020

    Molly Bloom presents the inner monologue of the unfaithful wife of Leopold Bloom. A new creation by Viviane De Muynck and Jan Lauwers, based on the final chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses.

    On 3 and 4 July, at MILL, Needcompany’s laboratory, we will be presenting a durational performance of 2 x 8 hours: The House of Our Fathers / Mothers of Inventions, a reimagining of a durational installation conceived by Jan Lauwers and Needcompany more than 10 years ago. Now the house is being realised in Molenbeek by Grace Ellen Barkey, Maarten Seghers and Jan Lauwers and 20 performers of all generations. It will be Corona-proof and full of the joy of the making.

    2019

    All the good tells a story about loss and hope. A love story at a time in which Europe is sacrificing its values and a large group of people are succumbing to hate and incomprehension.

    2018

    In Jan Lauwers’ setting for 'L’incoronazione di Poppea' at the Salzburg Festival, the gods do penance like cripples and the protagonists literally walk on the bodies of their sins, their deeds, their killing. The obsession with power, intrigue, cruelty, violence and manipulation triumphs on a background full of Baroque beauty.

    2017

    Only the jester can express critical thoughts to the king without fear. OHNO COOPERATION (Maarten Seghers, Jan Lauwers and Elke Janssens) takes this privilege as a mission in its study of the place of art and the artist in society.

    On the basis of his lifelong archives, Jan Lauwers is building a monumental installation in which he reinterprets past works and materials and confronts them with art history.

    Statements as ‘an artist has to be nice, so you can understand’ and ‘if art is our lover, then who the f*** are you?’ are chanted all around, making the theatre hilarious, passionately and violently burst its seams.

    Following the success of Isabella’s room (2004), which looked at Lauwers’ family history, he is now exploring the history of Hertmans’ family, somewhere between art and war, and in the midst of the Flemish struggle.

    This bleak and glimmering allegory about love and death was the last play the legendary filmmaker John Cassavetes wrote before his death.

    2016

    If art does not penetrate the observer’s memory it does not exist.

    2015

    Whereas nature aspires to chaos, art was invented to find a certain balance in that chaos. Art, after war ...

    By tradition,  Needlapb  offers an insight into future Needcompany projects. In order to shed some light on the ...

    An apartment at the end of a street by the sea. With a seaview, despite the covered windows. They ...

    Jan Lauwers starts out from the performers’ family trees and is writing a new story based on their various nationalities, cultures and languages.

    2014

    The party for the memory of a party.

    Just for Bozen | Bolzano
    Just for Sarajevo
    Just for Venice
    2013

    If art does not penetrate the observer’s memory it does not exist.

    2012

    Not a reconstruction, not nostalgia, but a work that always seeks out new problems.

    And what's the use to me of a firm hand, what use is the amazing power that's mine, if I can't have the sun set in the east, if I can't reduce the sum of suffering and make an end of death?

    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.

    2011

    The art of entertainment  is a black, almost cynical comedy about a famous actor, who decides to bring ...

    The art of entertainment  is a black comedy about a famous actor, who decides to bring his life ...

    If art does not penetrate the observer’s memory it does not exist.

    If art does not penetrate the observer’s memory it does not exist.

    2008

    Art is actually all about man and human nature and all good art is a self-portrait of the observer.

    2007

    C-Song Variations  tells several stories about people and fate. The link between all these ‘sea songs’ is the ...

    In the museum installations (deconstructions) there are performances lasting a whole day, and the observer decides for himself how long he wants to watch a particular action.

    If art does not penetrate the observer’s memory it does not exist.

    2006

    On the day he has chosen he puts on his best suit and by way of farewell goes to his favourite restaurant, ‘The Lobster Shop’, to eat just one more lobster with armorican sauce.

    2005

    Farewell to Warhol The last performance of Images of Affection was in Rakvere on 16 June ...

    2004

    Laugh and be gentle to the unknown.

    2003

    Jan Lauwers has been working on the C-Songs since 2001. He wrote and directed a short film without words ...

    No Comment focuses on the fate of four women who look back at lives marked by radical ...

    2002

    Jan Lauwers’ art work has an independent existence, but receives support from Needcompany whenever his visual and theatrical worlds ...

    “You have the ability to turn this paradise into a living hell.” In this reversal from paradise to hell, the story develops into a modern-day fable in which man becomes the sum of his secrets, his past and his moral choices.

    Jan Lauwers’ art SUMMER EXHIBITION - GRIMBERGEN 2002 ...

    “Love it and trust it and leave. ” ( Don DeLillo ) Images of Affection is a play ...

    2001

    When grandpa shouted, ‘Centina, it’s six o’clock, grandma not only knew what time it was, but also that she ...

    When Prospero throws out his books at the end of The Tempest, he says, ‘Despite all the wisdom and ...

    2000

    At William Forsythe's request, Lauwers took up the challenge of creating a piece in which the two companies confronted ...

    The weight of this sad time we must obey; Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. ...

    1999

    Morning Song is the second of the two-part stage production No beauty for me there, where human life is ...

    1998
    From Alexandria
    The Snakesong Trilogy
    1997
    Caligula. No beauty for me there where human life is rare, part one
    The Moustache of Duchamp
    1996
    1995
    Snakesong / Le pouvoir (Leda)
    1994
    Snakesong / Le voyeur
    1993
    1992
    Antonius und Kleopatra
    Schade/ Schade
    1991
    1990
    1989
    1987
    Needcompany
    Ensemble weNEEDmoreCOMPANY Invisible Time Contact
     
    productions
    Jan Lauwers Grace Ellen Barkey Maarten Seghers performing arts visual arts Film
     
    tour dates
    Full calendar
     
    Publications
    Books Music Film
     
    Newsletter
    Subscribe Archive
    NEEDCOMPANY  |  info@needcompany.org  |  Privacy  |  Pro area
    This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site, you are agreeing to our cookies policy.