Needcompany,
Bruxelles

ISABELLA'S ROOM

“Laugh and be gentle to the unknown.”

Isabella’s room contains a secret. It is the location of a lie. It is the location of the lie that dominates Isabella’s existence. This lie is an image. An exotic image. The image of a desert prince. Isabella is the daughter of a desert prince who disappeared on an expedition. This is what her foster parents, Arthur and Anna, told her. They lived together in a lighthouse on an island, where Arthur was the lighthouse-keeper. Like an island, the lighthouse is an area of transition: somewhere between the sea and the land, between solid and fluid, between inside and outside. The lighthouse is built on the land, but it yearns for the sea. Isabella yearns for the desert, the desert prince, Africa.

This is how the life-story of the old blind Isabella begins. But it soon becomes clear that a terrible, unutterable truth lies hidden beneath the story of the desert prince. Anna and Arthur cannot live with their secrets and escape into drink. Anna dies and Arthur throws himself into the sea. Isabella’s quest for her father, the desert prince, does not lead her to Africa but to a room in Paris, filled with anthropological and ethnological objects.

Isabella tells the story of her life, but she does not tell it alone. All those who were important to her tell it with her; many people in her life who had died: Arthur and Anna, her lovers Alexander and Frank. And not only do they tell Isabella’s story together, they also sing it. This is not the first time in a piece by Jan Lauwers that live music is played and that the actors sing, but it has never happened in such an open and inviting way as here. (Erwin Jans)

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 artwork, 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 around 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 reserved a place in the movement for radical change in Flanders in the early 80s, 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 with Grace Ellen Barkey founded Needcompany.

Needcompany is first and foremost a theatre company, which, since its inception in 1986, has presented itself as markedly international, multilingual and multidisciplinary. It produces both spoken-word and dance theatre. A unique ensemble has been developed over the years; an evolving ensemble, that has created an impressive series of stage productions that have toured the world. Jan Lauwers, the company’s founder and artistic director, has always applied himself to more than one discipline at a time. Although he is best known for his theatrical work, as an artist he has always alternated work with a group of people (‘I need company’) with work in the solitude of his studio, where he concentrates on his visual art and on writing that is often intended for the stage. The Salzburger Festpiele

has invited Jan Lauwers to develop 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.