Bridge Stories started in the cold winter of 2022 when people were sleeping on the bridge in front of Klein Kasteeltje / Petit-Château. Next to the many solidarity actions of the neighbours providing food and shelter, Cinemaximiliaan felt the need to invite people for artistic expression, as art would give them their name back.

Bridge Stories - a sense of belonging is a way to ‘bridge’ the gap and nurture connections between newcomers and locals.

The libretto 'Lee Miller in Hitlers Bathtub' is a portrait of a woman who at the end of her life said that she felt like a cow who had been milked dry. A woman in the shadow of many men. Famous men. Notorious men. Jan Lauwers wanted to make a portrait that was no longer that of Lee but of so many women in the history of art who have been gagged. And then there is this one photo: 'Lee in Hitler’s bathtub' What does it mean for Lee that she chose to
take a bath in the monster’s bathtub? What does it mean moreover to let her photo be
taken there? The text begins at the moment when Lee Miller stands in
front of Hitler’s bathtub in her stinking clothes, which still reek of the corpse smells from
Dachau.

A Sublime Mistake — played by Gonzalo Cunill — is based on all the slightly lost male characters in Jan Lauwers’ oeuvre. An intimate portrait of a man who looks at the world in astonishment and fails to understand why he is even part of it.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The party for the memory of a party.

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

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.

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.

Three Stories on Human Nature.

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

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.

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.

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

Laugh and be gentle to the unknown.

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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. ...

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