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. 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 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 zlvcollective 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 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 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.

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 15th 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 will be performed for the first time at the Salzburger Festspiele.