Jan Fabre: Belgian Theatre Magician

Abstract

The critics called out: Beware of charlatans, magicians, and gurus in the theatres! Beware of the critics, came the resounding echo, the critics who left the theatre of the Flemish artist and director Jan Fabre in protest and spilled their venomous ink in the press. But the opinions expressed were sharply divided. More than a few enthusiasts, driven by curiosity, remained in the theatre and intoned his praises. The radical disapproval of some was matched by the admiration of others, who would soon come to believe that, in the midst of short-lived theatre fads, Jan Fabre, born in 1958 in Antwerp, would belong among the leading directors in European theatre. That was 1984. The theatre that was being discussed seemed more brutal and persevering than ever before--a theatre that was fundamentally not theatre, worse yet, was a betrayal of theatre itself. This trumpet blast heralded the beginning of not only Fabre's international career, but also the international reputation of the new Flemish theatre. The role of "commanding Flemish theatre avantgardist" fell to Fabre, but at the same time choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker as well as director Jan Lauwers and his teacher, director Jan Decorte, were renovating northern Belgian stagecraft, moving away from the conventions of European civic theatre. At the Venice Biennale in June 1984, the audience in Teatro Carlo Goldoni saw for the first time Fabre's now legendary production of The Power of Theatrical Madness (De macht der theaterlijke dwaasheden). A piece--if one could call it that-in which everything was done "wrong" that could possibly be done "wrong" in the theatre. The spectators were allowed to come and go as they pleased. Out in the foyer, the bar remained open for four hours. Inside, a slender, blond young woman who had been bumped from the stage into the orchestra pit, tried for 20 minutes to climb back onto the stage. Whenever the increasingly enraged, crying, screaming, and cursing Els Deceukelier seemed about to succeed, actor Paul Verwoort would shove her off again, insultingly screaming a password at her: eighteen hundred seventysix (1876). It was no game, rather it seemed mercilessly, deadly serious. A loudly ranting horde of barefoot men and women ran in place. The sweat of these trained endurance runners sprayed into the front rows, and their panting filled the theatre with the level of intensity one might expect in a sports sta-