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JOSSE DE PAUW<br />
BY<br />
JEF AERTS AND ANNE-MARIE VAN WIJNSBERGHE<br />
KRITISCH THEATER LEXICON<br />
VLAAMS THEATER INSTITUUT<br />
2001
the critical theatre lexicon is a series of portraits of<br />
major dramatic artists of the twentieth century.<br />
these portraits are commissioned by the vlaams theater<br />
instituut and the four flemish universities: u.i.antwerp,<br />
university of ghent, k.u.leuven & v.u.brussels. this<br />
publication forms part of an all-embracing historical<br />
project on the performing arts in flanders in the<br />
twentieth century. the editorial board comprises theatre<br />
academics from the four universities and people from the<br />
theatre world. publication started in september 1996.<br />
THE STORY OF JOSSE DE PAUW<br />
As an introduction to an extract from Cesare Pavese’ Conversations<br />
with Leuco, Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> once outlined his relationship<br />
with urban living: ‘I advance step by step, and sometimes take a<br />
step backwards because something moved in the undergrowth.<br />
Life ambles past me at my tempo and I become for a moment part<br />
of every shop window I pass. Later, night will fall and everything<br />
that cannot or does not want to sleep ambles on. The dark brings<br />
inquisitiveness. The arguments are fiercer, and the loving too.<br />
And questions are asked. The answers are for tomorrow, in daylight,<br />
when the others again see things completely clearly again.’ 1<br />
Step by step and sometimes a step backwards: it is not hard to<br />
uncover an artistic credo here in the artist’s walking pace, and it<br />
comes as no surprise that <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> also used this quotation in<br />
2000 as a foreword to the programme of his first season as artistic<br />
head of HetNet in Brugge. When we examine <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s<br />
career, the concern for maintaining his own rhythm, and the<br />
inquisitive wanderings among the arts along paths that have been<br />
made passable by his own (or a friendly) hand, may be the most<br />
significant node from which his artistic work emerges. It is striking,<br />
for example, that since the founding of Radeis in 1977, he<br />
has hardly ever worked in an ‘ordinary play’ directed in an ‘ordinary<br />
way’. And when it did occur, it was on his own ground<br />
and/or with people in whom he trusted absolutely (e.g. Exiles,<br />
1993, directed by Peter Van Kraaij for Kaaitheater). Josse <strong>De</strong><br />
<strong>Pauw</strong> likes to work close to his own self, and preferably in an<br />
organisational setting that he himself chooses (Schaamte,<br />
Kaaitheater, Laagland, HetNet), with like-minded artists and in<br />
a stimulating environment (Brussels). From this warm nest the<br />
creative journey can commence. <strong>De</strong>spite being such a home-lover<br />
and having such a need to repeatedly rediscover the same people<br />
and places, the seeker and traveller’s eye also makes its appearance<br />
in <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s work. Wandering around the world, or in an<br />
image of this world, is usually the precursor of the actual artistic<br />
work. The medium chosen is of less importance: <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> is just<br />
as active in theatre, film and literature.<br />
Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> progresses through his own stage history step<br />
by step, but never without ‘sometimes a step backwards’ where-<br />
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josse de pauw<br />
by the past is involved in the future. It is not without reason that<br />
such fine curves become visible in this artist’s highly diverse<br />
work. Before taking a closer look at these patterns, it is worth<br />
giving a chronological overview of several biographical facts.<br />
The major productions and organisations will be covered in<br />
greater depth in the relevant chapters.<br />
Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> was born in Asse on 15 th March 1952. After secondary<br />
school he did not really know in which direction to go.<br />
Neither the plays performed by the school dramatic group and<br />
the youth movement, nor the recitation lessons given by Mandus<br />
<strong>De</strong> Vos at the local academy of music had aroused a desire to<br />
become a professional actor. Indecisive, he went on several journeys<br />
and worked for some time for a solicitor, until other people<br />
persuaded him to enrol at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels.<br />
During his course in the Dramatic Arts (1971-75) he performed<br />
in several productions by the Mechelse Miniatuur Theater (with<br />
Mandus <strong>De</strong> Vos, among others) and as soon as he had graduated<br />
he ended up at the BKT, where Eva Bal was also working.<br />
The sculptor and set designer Pat van Hemelrijck, a friend from<br />
<strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s youth, shared his dissatisfaction with the theatre of the<br />
time and together they dreamed of creating street-theatre on the<br />
road. In spring 1977 they were commissioned to make their first<br />
play by the Mallemunt music and entertainment festival. Initially<br />
accompanied by Erik <strong>De</strong> Volder and Jan <strong>De</strong> Bruyne, and later by<br />
Dirk <strong>Pauw</strong>els and Georges Brouckaert, the Radeis company<br />
rolled its way around village squares, parks, streets, festivals and<br />
schools and soon found its way to international venues too. They<br />
received substantial back-up in this from the Schaamte artists’ collective<br />
and the Kaaitheater Festival, headed by Hugo <strong>De</strong> Greef. A<br />
whole series of Radeis productions followed, all with a fragmentary<br />
structure within which the chief element was an original, pioneering<br />
non-verbal entertainment. The group finally closed its<br />
books after the Olympic Arts Festival in Los Angeles in 1984.<br />
One year later, in 1985, Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> brought out his own<br />
theatre project called Usurpation, which he performed together<br />
with Mieke Verdin and the musicians Peter Vermeersch and<br />
Danny Van Hoeck. After seven years of wordless theatre he<br />
introduced his own writing for the first time. Furthermore, music<br />
now also played a major part. Usurpation was the pivotal point<br />
in his search for a bridge between the legacy of Radeis and the<br />
rest of his stage career.<br />
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the story of josse de pauw<br />
During this period, <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> also acted in a visualisation of<br />
Dylan Thomas’ radio play Under Milk Wood (1987) by the<br />
Dutch company Orkater, and in Jan <strong>De</strong>corte’s Het Stuk-Stuk<br />
(1986) and In Ondertussendoor (1987). The medium of film<br />
inspired him to continue exploring the writing abilities first<br />
apparent in Usurpation. In 1986 he met the young film-maker<br />
Peter Van Kraaij during a course in scenario-writing. Together<br />
they created the feature-length film Vinaya, which was brought<br />
out in 1992 but was given hardly any chance on the commercial<br />
circuit.<br />
The artistic alliance of <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> and Van Kraaij developed on<br />
the stage too. They together created Ward Comblez. He do the<br />
life in different voices (1989) and Het Kind van de Smid (1990),<br />
both produced by the Kaaitheater. Initially, Van Kraaij concentrated<br />
on introducing some order into the writing <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> provided<br />
him with, but for the second piece he also wrote material<br />
himself. In 1991 Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> was awarded the three-yearly<br />
State Prize for Playwriting.<br />
<strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> also remained true to his permanent home at the<br />
Kaaitheater. He acted, for example, in Eric Rohmer’s Trio in B<br />
flat (1991), directed by Jan Ritsema, and the following season he<br />
wrote and acted in <strong>De</strong> Meid Slaan together with the Dutch actor,<br />
director and writer Tom Jansen. In 1993 he also played the part<br />
of Richard Rowan in James Joyce’s only play, Exiles, directed by<br />
Peter Van Kraaij. In 1995 he performed Chantal Akermans’ solo<br />
piece <strong>De</strong> Verhuizing, directed by Jürgen Gosch, and in early 1998<br />
this was followed by Wolokolamsker Chaussee I-V after Heiner<br />
Müller (a coproduction with Theater Antigone in Kortrijk).<br />
Two years after <strong>De</strong> Meid Slaan, <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> and Jansen decided<br />
to set up an interdisciplinary working structure of their own,<br />
called Laagland. The main principles they put forward were language,<br />
simplicity and acting pleasure. In 1995, in their first<br />
Laagland production, Trots Vlees, an adaptation of James<br />
Purdy’s Clearing in the forest, they extended the theme of friendship<br />
which they had first broached in <strong>De</strong> Meid Slaan.<br />
For the 1998 Kaaitheater production Weg, <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> renewed<br />
his contact with Peter Vermeersch. Just as in his first play,<br />
Usurpation, the ties between acting, language and music were<br />
drawn exceptionally tightly. The piece was extremely well<br />
received by the public and the press and was also selected for the<br />
1999 Dutch-Flemish Theatre Festival.<br />
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josse de pauw<br />
The 1998 season provided a major break in <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s career.<br />
Weg was not only both a moment of coagulation and a new start<br />
in his artistic work, as we shall show later, but after this production<br />
<strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> also brought his years of collaboration with the<br />
Kaaitheater to an end. After the departure of Hugo <strong>De</strong> Greef,<br />
who would later work in Bruges, <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> also decided it was<br />
about time he looked around elsewhere. In 1999 he ended up at<br />
Victoria, the theatre production company in Ghent, which was<br />
headed by his former Radeis colleague Dirk <strong>Pauw</strong>els.<br />
After a series of interim presentations in front of an audience,<br />
in spring 2000 he completed the music-theatre production Larf.<br />
With three actors (<strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, Tom Jansen and Dirk Roofthooft)<br />
on stage, accompanied by the sculptor Koenraad Tinel and a<br />
proper big band (including Peter Vermeersch and Roland Van<br />
Campenhout), this was his largest-scale production to date. In<br />
Larf, the achievements of Weg were further distilled and focused.<br />
On 20 th November 2000 he was awarded the prestigious Océ<br />
Podium Prize for the two productions.<br />
After spending two years at Victoria, from autumn 2000 <strong>De</strong><br />
<strong>Pauw</strong> was granted the responsibility for a company of his own.<br />
At the request of Hugo <strong>De</strong> Greef, he took over the artistic leadership<br />
of Theater <strong>De</strong> Korre, which, after the departure of his predecessor<br />
Bob <strong>De</strong> Moor, was renamed HetNet. In addition to<br />
reruns of Weg and Larf, the first season included two youth productions<br />
directed by <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> (Charlotte Mutsaers’ Cheese! and<br />
his own piece Ubung) and a series of compilation evenings<br />
(Sproken).<br />
In directing these two pieces he clearly gave a little more shape<br />
to the previously barely definable persona of Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> the<br />
stage director. At one point in the past he had coached the then<br />
very new actors’ company Stan in Jan, scènes uit <strong>het</strong> leven op <strong>het</strong><br />
land (1989) and Brigitje (1991). He saw himself rather as a guide<br />
or a privileged spectator than as a director. <strong>De</strong> vrouwen, a coproduction<br />
by Kaaitheater and NTG, in which <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> was to have<br />
ventured fully into directing, was cancelled.<br />
To limit Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s artistry to his stage work would do<br />
less than justice to his artistic versatility; he is an actor, playmaker,<br />
film-maker and writer. Over the years he has made a<br />
name for himself as an actor in the film, television and video circuits.<br />
Among the public at large, he is best known for his parts<br />
in the feature films <strong>De</strong> Stille Oceaan (Digna Sinke, 1983), Skin<br />
8/ Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001<br />
the story of josse de pauw<br />
(Guido Henderickx, 1986), Crazy Love (Dominique <strong>De</strong>ruddere,<br />
1987), Sailors don’t cry (Marc Didden, 1988), Just Friends (Marc-<br />
Henri Wajnberg, 1993), Hombres Complicados (Dominique<br />
<strong>De</strong>ruddere, 1997), S (Guido Henderickx, 1998) and Iedereen<br />
Beroemd (Dominique <strong>De</strong>ruddere, 2000). In addition, apart from<br />
plays (including one play for young people, called Zetelkat, the<br />
first performances of which were given by Luxemburg in 1999)<br />
and film scenarios, he also writes songs (the libretto for <strong>De</strong><br />
Oplosbare Vis (1994) by the Walpurgis Ensemble and fragments<br />
of text for Momentum (1994) by the Blindman Quartet), stories<br />
and articles with a very personal approach for newspapers and<br />
magazines (including <strong>De</strong> Standaard and Humo). In autumn 2000<br />
Houtekiet published the hefty volume Werk, which gathers<br />
together virtually all <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s writings over the last ten years.<br />
9/ Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001
ARTISTIC DEVELOPMENT:<br />
DE PAUW’S WAY AND WEG<br />
June 1998. Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> and Peter Vermeersch perform the<br />
music-theatre project Weg in the Kaaitheater Studios. Two musicians<br />
(Peter Vermeersch and Pierre Vervloesem) and one actor<br />
occupy the stage and present an intimate theatrical concert. <strong>De</strong><br />
<strong>Pauw</strong> uses words, stories and the cadences of speech, the two<br />
musicians use melancholy, jazzy, sometimes folky melodies and<br />
rhythms. <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> is not just an actor, but one of the players in<br />
this construction in language, sounds and music for three voices.<br />
By way of the life story of one son (Jos) we hear the outpourings<br />
of the family life of two generations, focusing alternately on the<br />
mothers, fathers and children (with their birth being the first step<br />
towards an identity of their own). Events in everyday contacts are<br />
mixed with poetical journeys in a more fictional world of the<br />
imagination. Melancholy, happiness and a cheerful sorrow alternate<br />
with each other, as for example in the narrator’s confession<br />
after his marriage: ‘We lived a long time together… not as happily<br />
as we had thought. Hoped. But hope is a habit to be overcome.<br />
It was good. Or rather, it was what it was.’ The language-oriented<br />
construction of <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s narration is striking, as he constantly<br />
interacts with the music in his flow of images, conspicuous<br />
repetitions (‘Ask your dad’) and melodious speech (occasionally<br />
running away into melancholic song). Sometimes they complement<br />
each other, or alternate, are meticulously interwoven or<br />
drown each other out as if in an intense musical conversation.<br />
Weg turned out in various respects to be a point of coagulation<br />
– let’s call it a rounding up – of <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s artistic career. In this<br />
small-scale production several threads that had unwound<br />
throughout his work were knotted together into a whole. In<br />
addition, it also contains the seeds of the future: Weg is equally<br />
the precursor of Larf and the work <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> wants to do in<br />
Bruges. In any case, it forms a handy starting point from which<br />
to take each of the paths we intend to follow in the course of this<br />
book. Here is a short summary:<br />
1. First there was acting, and only then theatre. Although <strong>De</strong><br />
<strong>Pauw</strong> had been through a complete evolution in using language<br />
on stage, the same view of acting shone through both the non-<br />
10 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001<br />
artistic development: de pauw’s way and weg<br />
verbal Radeis pieces and the flow of words in Ward Comblez.<br />
Weg is also marked by this form of acting. Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> stands<br />
at the microphone and starts to tell his story. He uses several registers,<br />
voices and points of view: as a narrator, poet, entertainer<br />
or melancholic, he uses a dialect, a combination of a sort of<br />
housing estate Flemish and the standard language. <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> himself<br />
remains absent. Although he allows himself to be carried<br />
along by the stories and the physical aest<strong>het</strong>ics of the language,<br />
he himself remains visible. This means the distinction between<br />
narrator and character or actor and human being is constantly<br />
being displayed and then smoothed away again.<br />
2. Weg is based entirely on the alliance between music, language<br />
and theatre. It is both jazz with words and words set to<br />
jazz. The border area between the musicality of the composition<br />
and that of the verbality (rhythm, intonation, timbre, poetry,<br />
speech, pitch, etc.) is very consciously explored. In this respect<br />
there are two important aspects: the physical qualities of the<br />
script (or formless sounds) as a full part of a (musical) composition,<br />
and the particular form of performance in which this takes<br />
place. Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> likes entering into confrontation with musicians<br />
on stage and inserting himself as an actor into the musicians’<br />
concert (or improvisational ensemble).<br />
3. Journeys and travellers form a key element in <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s<br />
work. It can just as easily be about geographical restlessness and<br />
migration as about the journey as a metaphor for departure,<br />
parting or waiting for a return. The many layers of meaning in<br />
the title are thoroughly explored. Among the things we see are<br />
the ‘weg’ [path] that refers to the life-path, the country road,<br />
departure, intervention in time, parting, the empty space, etc.<br />
This constant in the content of the performance is accompanied<br />
by a certain expression of form. <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> often employs his narration<br />
(both verbally and purely visually) to evoke images of his<br />
characters’ actual or imagined journeys. The actor, the person<br />
and the story merge into one in the figure of the narrator.<br />
4. Weg is not the first production set up by the <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> and<br />
Vermeersch duo. Among other things, they collaborated on<br />
Usurpation, Ward Comblez and Walpurgis’ musical theatre production<br />
<strong>De</strong> Oplosbare Vis. This would later be followed by Larf.<br />
The decision to repeatedly put on new productions with the same<br />
people, once fruitful cooperation has turned out to be possible,<br />
is one of the foundations of <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s work.<br />
11 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001
josse de pauw<br />
5. Lastly, Weg cannot be considered without reference to its<br />
social-artistic environment. The need for a fixed working environment<br />
is as important to <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> as his loyal selection of likeminded<br />
artists. He started his fully professional career with<br />
Radeis under the wing of Schaamte; twenty years later he was still<br />
making pieces in that same establishment (though now repainted)<br />
under its later name Kaaitheater. The decision, as from 1998, to<br />
move first to Victoria and then to HetNet was one aided by the<br />
fact that these were companies in whom he dared put his complete<br />
trust. This is part of the essence of <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s survival strategy:<br />
as an artist it is only in an open, supportive setting that he<br />
can create with complete freedom those things he really wants to.<br />
In the following chapters we shall try, on the basis of these five<br />
paths, to form a clear view of the artistic choices on which Josse<br />
<strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s work has been built over the last twenty years. To this<br />
end we shall refer to a number of key productions.<br />
Playing, Lying and Radeis<br />
‘The hardest thing about being an actor is understanding that<br />
what you are acting is a confession about who you are. An actor<br />
cannot do anything but act himself, and every role I play is part<br />
of me. There is nothing human that is foreign to me, and that is<br />
sometimes a reality that’s hard to bear.’ 2<br />
Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> is one of those actors whom you cannot ignore.<br />
With his extraordinary presence – resolute and awkward at the<br />
same time; rather ponderous and yet charming – he draws the<br />
attention towards himself. And then he begins to act: without<br />
words, like a cartoon, as in Radeis, or just the reverse, cautiously<br />
chewing on every syllable of the lines he wants to speak. The<br />
contrast is a false one, or rather, behind the apparent rift between<br />
the two acting styles lies the same basic principle, the same<br />
approach to the relationship between the person and the character.<br />
In the above quotation <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> expresses his view of acting<br />
very clearly: on stage you make a genuine confession about yourself,<br />
because you cannot/must not hide yourself away as a human<br />
being. As an actor you try to bring a role closer towards you, you<br />
try to recognise yourself in the part in order then to invest in it.<br />
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artistic development: de pauw’s way and weg<br />
When <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> starts to speak, you first of all hear his own<br />
voice. This explains the great importance he attaches to the<br />
choice of writing, the sentences he has to articulate. <strong>De</strong>ception is<br />
absolutely forbidden. Lying is allowed: that’s how one builds up<br />
the fiction that makes theatre what it is. But it goes wrong when<br />
the lie leaves no space for the reality of the space, the actors and<br />
the audience; then the lying has become deceit. This man’s acting<br />
is transparent and yet well-grounded, aloof from the character<br />
yet not averse to a degree of pathos. It is perfectly acceptable that<br />
the actor or narrator becomes engrossed in the lines he speaks,<br />
the poetry or the story. It is only when the actor surrenders<br />
entirely to the responsibility of the character, or hides behind hollow<br />
scenery and costumes, that the spectator is made to look<br />
foolish. ‘On a stage you represent something,’ says <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>,<br />
‘and it must also be about your own ideas, even if it is by way of<br />
Shakespeare. An actor should not hide behind the director or the<br />
theatre’s artistic management.’ 3 This probably explains why <strong>De</strong><br />
<strong>Pauw</strong> is so emphatically choosy about the directing and the<br />
organisation in which he works. To better understand this penchant<br />
for freedom and responsibility in his acting, it is a good<br />
idea to examine the decisive early period of <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s career.<br />
Looking at the productions of the Radeis travelling theatre company<br />
(1977-84), it becomes clear that being an actor is more than<br />
a masked act with characters.<br />
Radeis International grew initially out of a feeling of dissatisfaction<br />
with the theatre establishment in the late seventies. Just like<br />
the instructive ‘political’ theatre of the time, Radeis reacted<br />
against the dullness, the lack of critical insight and the hierarchy<br />
of the major repertory companies. As a group, Radeis functioned<br />
without any hierarchic relationships and occasionally the organisations<br />
were thrown open to other groups. Some of Radeis’<br />
pieces also involved other play-makers (Erik <strong>De</strong> Volder), jugglers,<br />
clowns, musicians (<strong>De</strong> Snaar); and just once Radeis undertook a<br />
travelling project with other groups: Carte Blanche.<br />
With such initiatives as Carte Blanche and the professionally<br />
run Schaamte, Radeis went radically against the existing theatre<br />
company structures.<br />
From the very beginning Radeis resisted political theatre, which<br />
after a period of bloom (including the international success of the<br />
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josse de pauw<br />
Internationale Nieuwe Scene) was dismissed as putting too much<br />
emphasis on the ‘message’, and as too single-minded and serious.<br />
For that matter, several of these companies were themselves soon<br />
to end up at the heart of the renewal and redefine their instructional<br />
function: e.g. Het Trojaanse Paard led by Jan <strong>De</strong>corte and<br />
<strong>De</strong> Mannen van den Dam with Herman Gilis.<br />
At the end of the seventies a lively amalgam of political theatre<br />
collectives and small alternative groups worked on the margins<br />
of the repertory and chamber theatre scene, and they travelled<br />
round with shows full of clowning, performance and object theatre.<br />
This was the sort of theatre that was seen on circuits like that<br />
of the Shaffy Theatre and the alternative Mickery in Amsterdam.<br />
The main focus was an examination of the basis underlying theatre<br />
and acting conventions and the relationship with the audience.<br />
Sincere communication with a broad public was once again<br />
considered fundamental. One international festival, the Festival<br />
of Fools (1980) organised by the superclown and jester Django<br />
Edwards in Amsterdam, tried to allow theatre to function once<br />
again as a feast and game of fools and push the message-based,<br />
doctrinal political theatre aside. It was at this festival that Radeis’<br />
international career began.<br />
The history of the group is above all the story of an artistic<br />
friendship between four young men with a shared dream: to see<br />
the world. In order to be understood outside the Low Countries,<br />
they decided to make theatre without words. Yet it was not the<br />
collective’s intention to make mime performances (at that time a<br />
lot of theatre people were going to Paris to take lessons at<br />
Jacques Lecocq’s school). Radeis developed an hilarious language<br />
entirely its own which functioned as a whimsical sound setting<br />
for the action. The basis of Radeis’ pieces lay in the intermezzi<br />
and lazzi of the Commedia dell’arte, clown acts and popular<br />
variety theatre. The performances were put together like a revue<br />
with alternating gags and intermezzi. Radeis’ basic characters<br />
remained largely the same in the various productions: Dirk<br />
<strong>Pauw</strong>els as the poor, likeable soul in swimming trunks, the eternal<br />
victim of unfolding events; Pat van Hemelrijck as the stooge,<br />
or constantly busy manipulating objects; Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> as the<br />
‘little man’ in the overall and the wonky hat (his appearance is<br />
sometimes reminiscent of Jef Cassiers, whom he greatly<br />
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artistic development: de pauw’s way and weg<br />
admired), at first the instigator, and then the one with the payoff,<br />
or the star of the one-man show who rambles stoned across<br />
the stage. The actors did not always disappear behind their characters,<br />
were not always one with their act and themselves regarded<br />
with suspicion or resignation the next theatrical situation that<br />
would overcome them and make victims of them. This double<br />
awareness enhanced the comic effect but at the same time made<br />
it possible for the spectator to see the whole stage setting as a<br />
theatrical construct which the actors and characters experienced<br />
as a sort of absurd, divine body. What started with the casual trying<br />
of a penny-whistle became the buzzing of a mosquito, which<br />
then had to be located. It became completely hilarious when they<br />
all tried to kill the mosquito with a fly-swatter – for which purpose<br />
the mosquito had to keep still (meaning that no sound was<br />
allowed to be made by the whistle) – but did not succeed because<br />
no one could keep from blowing. The demonstrable source of the<br />
plague of mosquitoes was visible on stage (the whistle), but the<br />
stage reality remained stronger than level-headed analysis and<br />
was therefore irreversible. The obsessional forgetting of the theatrical<br />
cause and the imperturbable persistence with the same act<br />
led, paradoxically enough, to a feeling of real time in the performance.<br />
Its duration and tenacity meant that the act tumbled from<br />
fiction into real time.<br />
Radeis characters were frequently the victims of a world governed<br />
by theatrical codes and conditions which they took seriously<br />
in an absurd way, even when they had created them themselves.<br />
In the end, the picaresque inventiveness and frivolity with<br />
which these little people tried to remain upright in this world was<br />
also what always made them ‘survivors’. Faced with the world<br />
outside they continued to react in a theatrical way (e.g. by taking<br />
the notion of a praatpaal [talking post: motorway telephone] literally;<br />
by staying the night next to a parking meter). Real time in<br />
the show and theatrical inventiveness in the world outside.<br />
Many of the elements of Radeis’ visual theatre refer to typical<br />
elements from the circus, cartoons (exaggeration, absurd payoff)<br />
and variety theatre. The typical ingredients of variety were<br />
often not performed, but quoted or shown with deliberate clumsiness:<br />
in crudely overaccentuated tear-jerkers, frivolous movements,<br />
exaggerated scene changes, etc. This meant the ingredi-<br />
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josse de pauw<br />
ents themselves sometimes came across as grotesque, rather than<br />
their effects (e.g. the scene changes in Radeis wegens ziekte).<br />
In addition to the non-verbal material and the variety tradition,<br />
Radeis opted for a highly specific humorous approach. The<br />
absurd situations, drawn randomly from life, often gave shape to<br />
minor examples of universally recognisable objectionable behaviour.<br />
The humour arose when over-familiar topics or objects<br />
were suddenly deposited in the surprising context of the gag.<br />
However, Radeis’ main concern was not to get as many people<br />
laughing as possible; what was much more important to them<br />
was what the audience were laughing at.<br />
Once again, lasting research was more important than quick<br />
success. The rhythm and timing of the visual and/or musical<br />
humour played a decisive part. Not the quickfire gag that cuts<br />
through everything on its way to the target, but the slowly built<br />
pay-off. In their quest for laughter they preferred to advance as<br />
slowly as possible, because the slower the jaw muscles opened,<br />
the more powerful the humour. Quick, sharp pay-offs conceal<br />
the trouble that leads to virtuosity and honest dealing with the<br />
audience. According to Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> this slowness was essential<br />
to Radeis’ work. ‘Speed is often an obligatory way of handling<br />
humour,’ he says. ‘One exacts respect from the audience by<br />
sheer force.’ 4<br />
Another pillar of Radeis’ performances was the importance of<br />
the set and the props. The dressing of the stage was never simply<br />
a background, but always actually participated in the action.<br />
Here too a certain evolution was discernible in the way the actors<br />
approached the objects. Whereas in the initial shows the objects<br />
invariably took centre stage and the action revolved entirely<br />
round the set (Radeis wegens ziekte), the attention gradually<br />
shifted towards the involvement of the objects in the acting. They<br />
no longer functioned as gadgets, but became things with an independent<br />
life, object-actors that entered into dialogue with the<br />
actors who manipulated them (Echafaudages).<br />
The unique thing about Radeis was that its members worked in<br />
different disciplines: a trained actor (Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>), a sculptor<br />
(Pat van Hemelrijck), a mime-artist and ceramist (Dirk <strong>Pauw</strong>els)<br />
and an engineer and cabaret artiste (Jan <strong>De</strong> Bruyne), who was<br />
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artistic development: de pauw’s way and weg<br />
later replaced by a photographer and technician (Georges<br />
Brouckaert). Each member had his own speciality within this<br />
non-hierarchical structure and was responsible for it. In fact this<br />
quartet made several sorties into other media: they wrote a series<br />
of short films (L’Union fait la Force, 1982), worked on television<br />
programmes for Belgian, Dutch and German broadcasters (3<br />
Short Movies for Belgian Television), designed a number of theatrical<br />
cartoons for Viewmaster, tinkered with a photo-novel and<br />
even recorded a single (Praten met jou/Fietsen op de heide).<br />
Radeis did not put on high-flown theatre packed full of political<br />
posturing or heavyweight philosophy. Their theatre was<br />
intended to be without pretension, ‘with not too much fuss’. This<br />
‘new variety’, as Johan Wambacq described their work, 5 was naturally<br />
not completely noncommittal (the later productions had a<br />
clear theme), but Radeis insisted that the audience was free to<br />
interpret the performances (or not) as they wished. Or, as it was<br />
so expressively put on the programme sheet for Echafaudages, ‘I<br />
know there is something in it,’ said the man. He opened his wife’s<br />
shopping bag, and yes: a pound of bacon, six eggs and a bottle<br />
of still water. It was for him to choose.’<br />
Radeis made its debut in 1977 with Sirkus Radeis, an independent<br />
production by the Beursschouwburg for the Mallemunt festival.<br />
On a highly-coloured, self-designed old-style bandstand,<br />
the performers put on a popular show as a tribute to real circus<br />
artists. <strong>De</strong>spite its success, the group was soon forced to switch<br />
to making productions for theatres because of the unreliable<br />
Belgian weather and the low financial yield from street-theatre.<br />
In this sense, Radeis wegens ziekte, theater zonder veel cinema<br />
(1978-81) was their first ‘real’ production. The circus ring was<br />
replaced by the arc<strong>het</strong>ypical interior of the Flemish country cottage.<br />
The set here made its resolute entrance as an additional<br />
actor. The props danced across the stage in all directions and<br />
combinations. Four men sat at the table, stood waiting, cleaned<br />
or moved in various configurations on the stage. At the beginning,<br />
much play was made of the length of the performance. It<br />
was in this piece that the actors came closest to the real time of<br />
a performance. The (deliberate) dullness and clumsiness were<br />
thematised, in a staged radio talk by Wim Van Gansbeke [a theatre<br />
critic] who prematurely announced the end of the show<br />
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josse de pauw<br />
(whereby the build-up of tension focused mainly on the passage<br />
of time). In addition to these quite new (meta-theatrical) elements,<br />
there were also a considerable number of constituents<br />
from the world of cartoons (e.g. an immensely long arm that<br />
crawled over the stage) and parodic variants on variety theatre<br />
(e.g. catch and acrobatic numbers, puppet numbers, dance and<br />
music numbers). Radeis wegens ziekte was a chain of more or<br />
less separate absurdities whose main connection was the set. The<br />
agency behind all this absurdity was also written into the performance.<br />
Is it the four directors who sit in their film-set chairs at<br />
the end? Or the implacable voice that shouted where the actors<br />
had to drag parts of the scenery: ‘Attention. Position K2.<br />
Interior: upstage middle. Position K1. Interior: 30° left, position<br />
K2. Position K3. As arranged.’<br />
The next production, Ik wist niet dat Engeland zo mooi was<br />
(1979-83) was invited to the Amsterdam Festival of Fools and<br />
from there took off internationally (with an adapted title: I didn’t<br />
know the continent was so beautiful). Whereas it was hardly possible<br />
to distil any theme out of Radeis wegens ziekte, in its successor<br />
the group was more focused on a goal. This production no<br />
longer consisted of a series of numbers quite separate from each<br />
other, but was a more or less coherent whole: four holiday-makers<br />
who end up in cheerless surroundings fill it up in no time at<br />
all with things that can be used to make jokes. The piece<br />
arranged fairly classical acts as intermezzi (2 clowns, acrobats,<br />
megaphone band, etc.) in a basic structure that combined variants<br />
on variety (striptease, Hawaiian dance) with a surprising<br />
series of absurdities. There is a permanent humorous contradiction<br />
between events on stage and the very clear frame of reference<br />
(holiday-makers). In the booklet The Flemish Theatre and<br />
the work of Radeis, Carlos Tindemans described the piece as ‘A<br />
clown’s work of high level, homogeneous from concept to structure’.<br />
6 Frivolous meta-theatricality remained a trade mark of<br />
Radeis in this piece too. It was not by chance that the performance<br />
ended with several words (spoken by Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>): ‘La<br />
mare. Teatro esperimentale’.<br />
Gag-o-matic (1979-80) was not really a theatre production, rather<br />
a sort of travelling exhibition, a peepshow, made out of the sets of<br />
the previous productions and specially intended for fairs and such-<br />
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artistic development: de pauw’s way and weg<br />
like. The actors’ performance was reduced to minimal proportions,<br />
and in fact they became the invisible manipulators of a<br />
miniaturised theatre of objects. The spectators could peep at about<br />
fifty miniature scenes through peepholes.<br />
Radeis once more increased their dramatic unity in the last but<br />
one production Vogels [Birds] (1981-84). The successive situation<br />
sketches formed a proper mini-story with a beginning, middle<br />
and end. The acting area was filled by an immense birdcage.<br />
A small bird-being suddenly hatched from a giant egg and was<br />
soon seeking freedom. Two other birds, who had lived in the<br />
cage for some time, followed the newcomer when it escaped.<br />
After an enjoyable exploratory trip (full of nonsensical jokes)<br />
they return to the cage. The youngest bird-being has had slightly<br />
too much enjoyment from his freedom and has to be punished<br />
(by having an egg smashed on his head: another clown act).<br />
Although Radeis prided themselves on not appearing moralistic,<br />
in this case it was more difficult to ignore the direct symbolism.<br />
The synthesis of Radeis’ work and at the same time the end of its<br />
artistic career was Echafaudages (first version 1981, second<br />
1983). In the second version in particular, this piece followed a<br />
logical, coherent pattern. The group now introduced a clear<br />
social discourse, regarding the relationship between worker and<br />
machine. The action was set on a building site, near some scaffolding.<br />
Even before the working day began, the work area was<br />
brought to life by invisible hands: machines made strange<br />
sounds, a trestle went for a short walk, etc. Then the actors<br />
themselves made their entrance, as workers. The machines are<br />
caressed, lamps light up when they are stroked, a circular saw<br />
roars for its breakfast, two machines enter into a jealous duel for<br />
attention and love. After this confrontation with their equipment,<br />
the workers direct their energy at each other. In this way<br />
they escape the dreary reality in all kinds of games and fantasies.<br />
At the end the workers form a protest march with an odd solidarity,<br />
and march lame and stumbling towards the audience with<br />
the red flag raised. In this play, the act of communication with<br />
the props reaches a peak. The actors manipulated the objects in<br />
such a way that with only minuscule movements they began to<br />
lead a life of their own. All at once the smallness of the animated<br />
objects became the centre of the action.<br />
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Radeis performed in twenty-four countries (at Caracas, Avignon,<br />
Los Angeles, etc.) until they decided to stop in 1984. The members<br />
wanted, in this way, to avoid lapsing into routine. This success<br />
story was brought to an end after the festival in Los Angeles.<br />
<strong>De</strong>spite the fact that Radeis had developed into a major Belgian<br />
export product, appearing on many international stages, the<br />
company never received any direct subsidy. As an experimental<br />
group, they did not fit into the norms of the 1975 theatre act,<br />
since they only had one professional actor. In May 1978 Hugo<br />
<strong>De</strong> Greef set up Schaamte together with Radeis, and other artists<br />
and groups immediately joined them. This working structure was<br />
in the first place intended to offer a basis (financial, among other<br />
things) onto which performing artists could fall back or from<br />
where they could take off in their artistic projects. We shall<br />
return to Schaamte’s work more extensively later.<br />
Several main elements can be pointed out with regard to Radeis’<br />
influence on <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s later work and especially on his acting:<br />
to start with, there was the enormous desire for freedom that led<br />
to the Radeis actors working on stage. They acted free of the prevailing<br />
theatre tradition, boundaries between disciplines and<br />
even the language barrier. Of all the players, only <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> had<br />
had professional training for the theatre.<br />
The non-hierarchical form of working was also crucial; the<br />
mutually reinforcing desires of four people from which Radeis’<br />
theatre was born. They were attuned to each other like jazz musicians.<br />
For <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, collaboration on the basis of a healthy dose<br />
of ‘complicité’ and playfulness remained an important prerequisite<br />
for making plays in his later career. The conversation with<br />
several voices but no clearly apparent central focus also turned<br />
up again later as the non-hierarchical structure of his performances<br />
and writings.<br />
For Radeis, the relationship with the audience took absolute priority:<br />
the audience was an essential protagonist. Although the<br />
succession of gags and frivolous and absurd situations had a<br />
humorous effect, the player’s main intention was to make the<br />
spectator reflect on the reason for this jollity. This was done,<br />
among other ways, by playing with the factor of time. By sophisticated<br />
timing (slow, often repetitive), low-key humour and subtle<br />
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artistic development: de pauw’s way and weg<br />
irony they built up the tension in the audience. Just as Josse <strong>De</strong><br />
<strong>Pauw</strong> was to do in his later plays, they were guarded in unfolding<br />
a particular item. The employment of a double consciousness<br />
(person/character) among the actors and audience was ahead of<br />
innovations in acting that came in the course of the eighties.<br />
This matter of making the rhythm tangible so as to deepen the<br />
spectator’s vision led to another aspect: the sensory. The Radeis<br />
actors juggled and talked to real objects, just as <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> was to<br />
do later with the props that had been transformed into language<br />
in the world of his imagination. Radeis’ acting was born out of<br />
the same quest for authenticity which is constantly present in <strong>De</strong><br />
<strong>Pauw</strong>’s work. The experience of the authentic arises from the<br />
actor’s honesty to the spectator, whom he does not underestimate,<br />
and whereby, most importantly, he does not allow himself<br />
to be tied down by ill-considered words (or a superfluous set).<br />
When jazz combines with words: Usurpation<br />
Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> only allowed the spoken word to seep very gradually<br />
into his work as an independent play-maker. After eight<br />
years of making wordless plays with Radeis, the epic narrator<br />
who appeared in Ward Comblez or the chattering actor in <strong>De</strong><br />
Meid Slaan needed a little leg up. This arrived in 1985 in the<br />
shape of the Schaamte production Usurpation. Passages he had<br />
written himself were cautiously, almost reluctantly, introduced as<br />
a consequence of the actor’s great need to speak. Initially, <strong>De</strong><br />
<strong>Pauw</strong> let music hold his hand. Just as in Weg, made twelve years<br />
later, the speech and rhythm were largely determined by the<br />
interaction with two musicians who shared the stage with him.<br />
It was entirely fitting for <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s way of doing things that<br />
his musical blood-brother Peter Vermeersch already made his<br />
appearance in Usurpation as a composer and musician.<br />
Vermeersch on saxophone and Danny Van Hoeck on percussion<br />
do not so much follow the actors as guide the whole performance,<br />
marking the scene changes and occasionally drowning<br />
the sparsely spoken words. A great many silences fall between<br />
the arc<strong>het</strong>ypical man (<strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>) and woman (Mieke Verdin), but<br />
this silence is made eloquent by the hard jazz surrounding it. The<br />
compositions form a third voice that shifts alternately between<br />
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josse de pauw<br />
the two protagonists and then retires to the background as sound<br />
wallpaper. Just as in Weg, the aim is a perfect integration of<br />
music, theatrical action and words.<br />
The confrontation between the sexes is acted out amidst a lot<br />
of old furniture (with some truncated legs so that they stand at<br />
an angle) and chandeliers. This set was designed by Gorik<br />
Lindemans. The restrained stage setting reflects the clearance<br />
that is also to be found in the spoken passages.<br />
‘C’est ma place au soleil. Voilà le commencement et l’image de<br />
l’usurpation de toute la terre’ – these words appear in the publicity.<br />
The content of the play develops out of this quote from the<br />
pensées of the 18 th -century philosopher Pascal. <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> does this<br />
by emphasising the hard moments in a married couple’s struggle<br />
to keep their relationship together. These nameless characters<br />
remain largely withdrawn. There is hardly any genuine dialogue:<br />
the speakers quote extracts from writings straight to the audience<br />
(e.g. ‘I know a lot of people and couples. People who live with<br />
each other’) and only rarely speak to their partner (e.g. ‘I love<br />
you’). The use of microphones increases the distance between the<br />
speakers even more. The importance of the music is emphasised,<br />
even in the writing, by a series of lyrics (mainly from the twentieth-century<br />
French repertoire) with added commentary. In his<br />
monologue the male character puts the tragedy experienced in<br />
love relationships into perspective with a somewhat ironic-nonsensical<br />
undertone. In a joke about suffering in love, for example:<br />
‘I would like to be able to take good moments like that and crush<br />
them into a ball like aluminium foil. Then I would choose one of<br />
my seventeen rotten teeth and force that ball into it. Then I<br />
would rush to a dentist, like lightning, and ask if the gap can still<br />
be filled. And the dentist would fill the gap and I would always<br />
experience good moments like that. It would become infected<br />
and fester. It would hurt, but I would know that it was<br />
toothache. Not all that moaning about the pain of love. Just<br />
ordinary toothache.’<br />
<strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> tells these poetic, moving little stories hesitatingly,<br />
almost stammering.<br />
<strong>De</strong>spite the major contribution made by the music, <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s<br />
intention with Usurpation was to make real actor’s theatre. Not<br />
with grand gestures and chanted dialogues as in the traditional<br />
speech-oriented companies, but by looking for a new, more<br />
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restrained manner of acting. <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> and Verdin acted with a<br />
strikingly intense physical effort. In fact, during rehearsals they<br />
received regular physical training from Anne Teresa <strong>De</strong><br />
Keersmaeker, who was also with Schaamte. Just as in Elena’s<br />
Aria (1984), <strong>De</strong> Keersmaeker’s latest production at that time, in<br />
Usurpation the characters on stage wondered what they were<br />
doing there, it was as if they had lost their way on stage.<br />
There was little unanimity among the critics regarding<br />
Usurpation. Most critics found the performance by no means<br />
‘overwhelming’. Everyone thoroughly agreed on the influence of<br />
three theatrical innovators of the eighties: there were the resemblances<br />
to <strong>De</strong> Keersmaeker, there was a powerful physical charge<br />
as in the work of Jan Fabre, and lastly, Jan <strong>De</strong>corte was thought<br />
to have inspired the cheerless stage design, reminiscent of the<br />
fifties, and the evolution of the action. Some completely demolished<br />
the play, others considered it a worthy effort but only a few<br />
really praised it. The Knack, for example, had this to say:<br />
‘Usurpation was made on the basis of a genuine respect for people<br />
and for the theatre medium. It is one of the ‘purest’ performances<br />
ever made in this country.’ 7 In the Netherlands, however,<br />
Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> was enthusiastically received as the latest asset of<br />
the young Flemish theatre. Our northern neighbours considered it<br />
splendid that the body was cast into the struggle and that the<br />
script no longer dominated relationships on stage in this quest for<br />
the essence of theatrical methods. But the audience that had got<br />
to know <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> through the comical Radeis pieces were disappointed<br />
in their expectations and initially stayed away in droves.<br />
Yet with hindsight, Usurpation was a very important piece in<br />
the context of the whole of <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s work. It was not only the<br />
bridge between Radeis and a future as a actor of words and a<br />
writer. Several other artistic principles were also clearly present<br />
in 1985. For instance, the play was created entirely in the course<br />
of the working process. The script arose out of the performers’<br />
acting, their contact with the music and the use of silence. This<br />
close connection between the writing and the practice of playmaking<br />
remains a constant even today. In addition there is the<br />
fusion of various materials and disciplines (music/movement/language)<br />
which turns up so frequently in <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s work. And<br />
finally, Usurpation presents itself as a work of art in a state of<br />
continuous development; an artistic event which is only brought<br />
to life by its collision with the stage.<br />
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josse de pauw<br />
Storytellers as travelling companions; <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> as a<br />
writer: Ward Comblez and Het Kind van de Smid<br />
‘Words can be so beautiful … without their untidy context’,<br />
thinks Ward Comblez, the first-person narrator in Josse <strong>De</strong><br />
<strong>Pauw</strong>’s monologue of the same name. In Ward Comblez. He do<br />
the life in different voices, in 1989, and Het Kind van de Smid,<br />
in 1990, language finally moves completely to the fore. In Ward<br />
Comblez, Peter Van Kraaij, who trained as a film director, took<br />
the parts of first reader, coach and director. The writing of Het<br />
Kind van de Smid was a case of true co-authorship, which was to<br />
lead to years of collaboration. Whereas movement and the materiality<br />
of language (sounds, intonation, rhythm, etc.) played the<br />
leading part in previous productions, from now on more attention<br />
was paid to meanings, to the evocative effect of words and<br />
to poetry. This attention to the text naturally had consequences<br />
for the acting. Both Ward Comblez and Het Kind van de Smid<br />
are very literary plays, or rather, they are easy to read on paper.<br />
There are, moreover, constant shifts between traditional dramatic<br />
categories such as plot development, building tension and psychological<br />
character sketching. On stage they are given the necessary<br />
theatrical power because characters in dialogue are<br />
replaced by one or more narrators. What remains is the intimate<br />
and direct confrontation between text, speaker and listener. In<br />
this respect it is striking how tight the relationship between the<br />
text and the acting is drawn: the words we hear are the account<br />
of the process of storytelling. We follow the narrators in the construction<br />
of their story, as if they thought up the events at the<br />
moment we come into contact with them. Or, the action of the<br />
plays is in the act of narration itself, in the language. ‘Autor-<br />
Erzähler und Schauspieler-Erzähler sind identisch’, 8 wrote<br />
Marianne Van Kerkhoven regarding the German translation of<br />
Ward Comblez. Nor does the process of gestation end at the last<br />
line of writing, but carries on in the performance – night after<br />
night. Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, as the narrator, bridges the two functions.<br />
<strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s acting is almost a-theatrical, orally imploring and<br />
with a plastic evocativeness. The emotional charge is stimulated<br />
or punctured by traces of pathos. You catch an occasional<br />
glimpse of it in his words, a gesture slightly too firmly sustained<br />
in which the speaker at times loses himself.<br />
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artistic development: de pauw’s way and weg<br />
The physical act of narration brings the theatrical space to life.<br />
The staging was also kept extremely frugal in both productions.<br />
Nothing was to distract from the text, or rather, the narration. All<br />
the objects on the stage are functional in one way or another: a<br />
kitsch holiday snap and some women’s clothes in Ward Comblez;<br />
an anvil, peat and old history prints in Het Kind van de Smid.<br />
Apart from this, the empty set is filled with language by one or<br />
more actors. Sometimes they come close to identifying with the<br />
characters whose name they bear, and then the distance gradually<br />
increases again. And in fact Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> calls them ‘actors<br />
who play narrators, and who perform a text’. 9 That which<br />
Comblez does on his own by allowing himself to be swept along<br />
by the stories and then suddenly putting himself above them, also<br />
takes place in Het Kind van de Smid, but then between four narrators.<br />
The strength of this play lies in the tension between being<br />
swept along by the story and distancing oneself; in the collective<br />
construction by the actors and the way they pick up on the signals<br />
they send each other. In this connection, <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> and Van<br />
Kraaij like to refer in interviews to the interplay with jazz musicians.<br />
This fluid view of acting, in which the texts come to life in<br />
a different way every night, naturally demands a suitable attitude<br />
from the director Peter Van Kraaij. He gives a brief outline of his<br />
working method in Theaterschrift 1991, no. 2: ‘I am very<br />
reserved, and only gently make adjustments. It would be fatal to<br />
direct every moment of a performance like this.’ 10<br />
The rhythm of the narration is usually slow. The characters<br />
look, in their words, for a way their story will evolve. By inserting<br />
longer, descriptive passages, speech is slowed down, and then<br />
suddenly spurts ahead with an eye to new storylines that may<br />
captivate the audience and show the actor what he is involved in.<br />
He tries, on the spur of the moment, to bring the strength of the<br />
narration to life in a theatrical context.<br />
Not many words are needed in either play to bring the images<br />
into focus. The language has an independent nature: clusters of<br />
letters are not there simply to communicate feelings and events,<br />
but start a life of their own that evolves by way of repetition,<br />
elliptical sentences, accumulation, imagery, sound similarities<br />
and rhythm. This use of language is clearly apparent in the following<br />
extract from Ward Comblez:<br />
25 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001
josse de pauw<br />
I walk, hobble, stagger, limp, drag myself to the door.<br />
Outside the rain thrashes my skin.<br />
He hangs stretched out in the twisted top of an olive tree.<br />
The wind shakes, thrashes, knocks, lashes, whips, bludgeons<br />
the tree fiercely.<br />
The water beats in tankfuls against his bare body.<br />
He smirks, giggles, cheers, whoops, roars, snorts, crows,<br />
bellows out above the storm.<br />
He has gone mad.<br />
I take the tree next to his.<br />
The workings of the linguistic technique are exposed by means<br />
of comical associations and word games. The language then<br />
appears to be something quasi-autonomous that is confronted by<br />
the authors during the process of growth. The course of the writing<br />
process is quite intuitive; the reality grows almost organically<br />
out of the words. The hand of the play-maker also makes its<br />
presence felt, however: a great deal of importance is attached to<br />
the richness of the sound of what is written, to the musicality it<br />
produces, and to its expressiveness when the text is spoken<br />
aloud. The abundant use of ellipses and short, dry sentences<br />
which are aloof and put things in perspective, does not detract<br />
from the fact that even on stage, <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s language is very<br />
involved, warm and evocative.<br />
In <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s writing, poetry is more than a stylistic quality.<br />
Ward Comblez and Het Kind van de Smid are not in the first<br />
instance about what the characters think and feel, at least not<br />
explicitly, but focus on sensory perception. The characters’ inner,<br />
emotional world is reflected through this experienced description<br />
of the outside world. In Het Kind van de Smid, for example,<br />
Pomp describes his own birth, as if he had stood watching it as<br />
an uninvolved spectator:<br />
She had gone into the forest alone that day.<br />
When the tendrils of mist wrapped themselves round the bushes,<br />
she was squatting down in the undergrowth.<br />
She had spread out the blanket and bitten the rattlesnake’s<br />
rings to pieces.<br />
Labour started soon after.<br />
Then the Smith appeared out of the thicket.<br />
Shocked, helpless, foolish. Each contraction drew him closer.<br />
26 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001<br />
artistic development: de pauw’s way and weg<br />
She took hold of his arm and pressed.<br />
After a short while the child broke out of her body.<br />
Pomp, she said. First born.<br />
The basic theme from which the Ward Comblez monologue<br />
unfolds is simple: Ward Comblez is waiting, waiting hopelessly<br />
for the beloved whom he now has to miss. To ease his sorrow, he<br />
(re)experiences his long journeys in his mind. Miscellaneous<br />
descriptions of snapshots in Algeria, Curaçao and Crete are<br />
linked together by recollections of what is past: the conversations<br />
he had with his wife, the poem by T.S. Eliot that he found so<br />
‘lovely’. It is tempting to read Ward Comblez as an extension of<br />
and sequel to Usurpation. In this piece, the duel between the man<br />
and woman has come to an end, and loneliness is at its heart. ‘In<br />
the past I wrote about the trouble of being together, and this<br />
piece is about the trouble of being alone’ 11 , says <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>.<br />
Ward Comblez was created in 1989 on commission to<br />
Kaaitheater. The performances underwent several interesting<br />
changes of text and set design and ran on into spring 1990. The<br />
music for the performance was once more by Peter Vermeersch,<br />
and Franky <strong>De</strong>coninck was responsible for the set installation.<br />
Peter Van Kraaij read and corrected the writing and guided the<br />
process of performing the script in the way a coach would. In this<br />
respect, Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> refers to Ezra Pound’s position as the first<br />
reader of T.S. Eliot’s work, from whose poem The Waste Land he<br />
quotes several extracts in this monologue.<br />
‘A man’s waiting has something feminine about it.’ This was<br />
the motto accompanying Ward Comblez, inspired by Roland<br />
Barthes’ book Fragments d’un Discours Amoureux. The French<br />
philosopher writes on the fact that the woman is traditionally<br />
given the role of the one who waits: she is sedentary, while the<br />
man always takes off. He writes: ‘Ils’ensuit que dans tout homme<br />
qui parle l’absence de l’autre, du féminin se déclare: cet homme<br />
qui attend et qui souffre est miraculeusement féminisé’. 12 Ward<br />
Comblez awaits his beloved. W<strong>het</strong>her she has gone forever<br />
remains uncertain. So the play is a sort of labour of sorrow.<br />
When someone leaves, you accuse them of infidelity, according to<br />
Barthes, because you are the one who is left behind. In order to<br />
be able to continue your life you want to forget your beloved and<br />
your shared life as soon as possible. But you forget that forgetting<br />
is in its turn a form of infidelity. To escape from the barren<br />
27 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001<br />
Ward Comblez.<br />
He do the life in<br />
different voices
josse de pauw<br />
land of his emotions, Ward Comblez calls on his imagination. In<br />
the quest for a new fertility, language is the means to forget, to<br />
talk oneself out of reality. As if, by talking, Comblez wants to<br />
make history stand still for a moment. At the same time, language<br />
turns out to be inadequate to the task of making past experiences<br />
fully tangible.<br />
Ward Comblez describes all this from the outside. He looks,<br />
with a resigned melancholy, at a life that is passing him by. In foreign<br />
parts he is confronted with his clumsiness, his alienation<br />
from nature, and his incapacity to switch back to a different<br />
rhythm of life: Algerian women joke about him when, by mistake,<br />
he goes to urinate under their window. In Curaçao he fails<br />
to catch a parrot fish with his bare hands and his friendship with<br />
a Cretan muleteer goes wrong because he failed to listen to the<br />
man’s advice ‘never to go too fast’ and so let the mule plunge<br />
down the mountain. Astonished, amused, pitying and most of all<br />
fascinated, Ward Comblez observes other people and worlds,<br />
realising perfectly well that he actually has little to do with them.<br />
Comblez’s stories are composed of a quite complex orchestration<br />
of voices. For example, there are the levels within the speaker’s<br />
‘ego’ (those of the author, the narrator, who describes, and<br />
the protagonist, who experiences), the alternation between traveller<br />
and lover, the words of the people mentioned, shifts in the<br />
tone of narration, an inter-sexual voice (extracts from The Waste<br />
Land and the words of an Algerian song) and the voice of the<br />
formal quality of the language. This division reinforces the sense<br />
of Comblez’s fragmentary identity and the different ways he tries<br />
to deal with the world. Moreover, there is the voice of the lowkey<br />
humour and the irony that playfully tickles the impending<br />
melodrama and the tragedy into putting itself into perspective.<br />
At one point, for instance, he makes cautious comment on his<br />
amorous writings for the departed lover:<br />
When she was still my love I wrote:<br />
‘She has soaked her hair in henna. But cautiously.<br />
Smoulderingly.<br />
And a pale neck, as it should be. … Hips with brains and legs<br />
which, with pride and self-assurance, carry all that beauty from<br />
step to step, and she decides where it goes.’<br />
I was rather proud of that. She thought it exaggerated.<br />
28 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001<br />
artistic development: de pauw’s way and weg<br />
The various voices, the dialectic between present and past, the<br />
pendulum movement between waiting and escaping, the distance<br />
and proximity, are forms of expression of a person trying to<br />
make a way for themselves through the devastation of love.<br />
Loneliness sets the multi-voiced mechanism to the work that<br />
offers the individual various paths by which to break out of the<br />
circle of solitude and thereby make an effort to create a new<br />
bond with the world.<br />
Just as in Usurpation and Het Kind van de Smid, the production’s<br />
design was characterised by a restrained choice of theatrical<br />
symbols. The stage is virtually empty: on an area covered in<br />
brown wrapping paper stand a table, a chair, an ashtray, a television<br />
wrapped in paper and a cassette recorder from which<br />
comes the voice of Edward Fox, reading What the thunder said).<br />
Fairly central on the stage is a second chair on which hang a red<br />
skirt and an item of underwear, the only tangible reminders of<br />
the absent lover. Ward Comblez walks listlessly back and forth,<br />
sits down, stands up again. Although he does address the audience<br />
from time to time, he mainly tells his stories to and within<br />
himself. In the background is a gigantic slide projection screen<br />
showing a kitsch photo of a paradisaical waterfall. The same picture<br />
also lights up in the wrapped television, and in this case the<br />
water is actually flowing: this mobile tourist kitsch is thoroughly<br />
destroyed by the traveller’s expressive stories.<br />
After the first series of performances there arose the need for a<br />
broader setting round the figure of Comblez himself, in order to<br />
increase the distance from and the internalisation of the character:<br />
the audience now heard a accurately drawn biography, the<br />
set was made more frugal, and before he started to speak as<br />
Comblez, <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> put on a sweatband, which he then took off<br />
again after the closing line. This enhanced the purity of the act of<br />
narration. This reworked version of Ward Comblez was the stepping<br />
stone to Het Kind van de Smid.<br />
In 1990, Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, now with Peter Van Kraaij as a full coauthor,<br />
worked on a minor epic set in the nineteenth century. The<br />
play was performed for the first time in the Kaaitheater Studios<br />
in Brussels on 18th <strong>De</strong>cember. <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> himself played the part<br />
of the Child [<strong>het</strong> Kind], accompanied by Frank Vercruyssen<br />
(Pomp), Willy Thomas (commentator) and José Verheire (the<br />
29 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001<br />
Het Kind<br />
van de Smid
josse de pauw<br />
Smith). With a minimum of acting movement, the actors tell us<br />
about the figures in the story or speak through them. Sometimes<br />
they come close to a genuine character, and then shortly afterwards<br />
leave it again. The actors remain above all themselves;<br />
they are speaking bodies who build up the story together and<br />
alternately allow each other to speak. In so doing, the commentator<br />
Willy Thomas uses a microphone and a portable loudspeaker,<br />
while dressing up in carnival hats, false spectacles,<br />
beards and ears. He narrates in an ironic and sarcastic manner;<br />
this tone keeps the deeply serious theme in balance while strangling<br />
any possibility of pamphleteering but at the same time<br />
emphasises the seriousness of the findings. The other actors narrate<br />
in a deliberate, subtle and intimate manner.<br />
The inspiration for the text came both from Van Kraaij’s study<br />
of American history and <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s reading of Robert Hughes’<br />
The Fatal Shore. From this they distilled the story of an Irish<br />
smith who emigrated to America in the early 19 th century to enter<br />
the service of the Corps of Discovery that President Jefferson had<br />
commissioned to chart the unexplored Missouri river. There he<br />
witnesses an Indian woman (Sacajaweja) giving birth to the child<br />
of a white Canadian. After the death of the Canadian, the Smith<br />
also fathers a child by her. The first-born is called Pomp, the second<br />
just Kind [Child]. Through the life of these two half-brothers<br />
we experience the history of the exploration of north-west<br />
America and the contact with Indian tribes, the famine in Ireland<br />
and the penal colony in Australia.<br />
The research work that accompanied this writing process is<br />
clear to see in the quotation of historic details and the references<br />
to historical events that are scattered throughout the play.<br />
Although the writing is in the same visual, poetic language as<br />
Ward Comblez, this is a more complex play with broader intentions.<br />
The various voices which, in the monologue, centred on<br />
the narrator, are in Het Kind van de Smid divided into different<br />
figures. In this play, the different voices have become a more<br />
clearly structuring element. History also becomes a separate<br />
voice, which is both informative and creates and epic setting.<br />
Extracts from authentic documents are read out to the audience:<br />
speeches by Indian chiefs, extracts from logbooks, a quotation<br />
from President Thomas Jefferson, etc. become part of the writing,<br />
in their original form. Actual dates and geographic locations<br />
are constantly being given, which makes the real historic frame-<br />
30 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001<br />
artistic development: de pauw’s way and weg<br />
work a prominent presence. The references in the following passage,<br />
for instance, describing the death of the Indian woman<br />
Sacajaweja (the Smith’s wife and mother of the Child), absorb it<br />
into the epic progress of time, as a detail in the mass white exploration<br />
of North America.<br />
The Smith<br />
Soshone camp, autumn 1812<br />
The Indian woman is ill. The medicine man is busy day and<br />
night. I do not sleep.<br />
Soshone camp, autumn 1812<br />
That old fellow with his rattles is starting to get on my nerves.<br />
This is a white illness.<br />
The Child<br />
It was autumn 1812. We took the Indian woman to Fort<br />
Manuel. The white doctor there would cure her. …<br />
The Smith<br />
Fort Manuel, autumn 1812<br />
Her nails in my arm.<br />
The Child<br />
20 th September, 7 o’clock in the evening, the Indian woman,<br />
our mother, died.<br />
Set against this immense background, the story of these fictional<br />
characters assumes a form. The three characters are narrators:<br />
they have hardly any dialogue with each other but their narrations<br />
build up the story piece by piece. Both Pomp and the Child<br />
tell about themselves in the first person and about each other in<br />
the third person , but they rarely use the dialogue we-form. Just<br />
as in Ward Comblez, the epic preterite is a form of expression in<br />
storytelling. <strong>De</strong>scriptions of nature and human movements<br />
throughout the play slow it down somewhat. Erwin Jans called<br />
this ‘the slow rhythm of observation’ 13 . The images evoked are<br />
highly distilled. The environment is sketched using few but carefully<br />
chosen words. This distances us from what is being told,<br />
and in this lies the poetry of the text.<br />
In Het Kind van de Smid, Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> and Peter Van Kraaij<br />
create the possibility for the individual to sustain himself in an<br />
intersubjective relationship with time by way of a poetic narration.<br />
The two half-brothers metaphorically embody the universal<br />
dialectic between an internalised search for connections in life (as<br />
31 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001
josse de pauw<br />
in the now blind Pomp, who stays with the Snake people) and a<br />
physical, external endurance of the world (such as the Child’s<br />
journey across Ireland and the penal camps in Australia). The<br />
one goes to look, the other sees; the one experiences everything<br />
physically, the other knows. The two worlds come into contact<br />
at the end of the narration. The two half-brothers find each other<br />
again in two short sentences:<br />
Pomp<br />
They built a statue of our mother.<br />
The Child<br />
I know. I’ve seen it.<br />
At the heart of the tale lies the impact that social organisation<br />
and history have on the individual, his search for an identity and<br />
dealing with power. Migration is a key word. Although it is not<br />
explicit, the authors do assume a clear position in the multiculturalism<br />
debate by arguing for mutual tolerance and the<br />
acknowledgement of the great similarities between different peoples<br />
instead of the hyperbolic emphasis on differing views.<br />
Ward Comblez and Het Kind van de Smid display similarities not<br />
only in form but also in content. Just as in other productions by<br />
<strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, we hear traveller’s tales in which the narrators go in<br />
search of their own place in the world. Ward Comblez takes us to<br />
Algeria, Curaçao and Crete; with the Smith and the Child we end<br />
up in the Australian camps after a while in America and Europe.<br />
In both pieces we see a cyclical ending to the journey. The issue<br />
of identity, which led to these wanderings, is not only a matter of<br />
the individual, but extends to the Other and the power balances<br />
so created, leading ultimately to a number of questions about a<br />
broader cultural individuality. In this respect, history functions as<br />
a grand background against which the story stands out. In Ward<br />
Comblez it is still about the condensed, personal history – closely<br />
associated with a geographical setting; in Het Kind van de<br />
Smid history is completely opened up. The imagination plays a<br />
prominent part in each of these facets. In the narration, truth and<br />
fantasy join forces to form the speaker’s story.<br />
Both productions were received very well in Flanders and the<br />
Netherlands. The award of the 1990 Dr Oscar <strong>De</strong> Gruyter Prize<br />
32 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001<br />
[1] Echafaudages by Radeis. 1982-1984.<br />
Production: Schaamte.h
[2] Ik wist niet dat Engeland zo mooi was by Radeis. 1979-1983.<br />
Conceived and performed by: Jan <strong>De</strong> Bruyne, Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, Dirk <strong>Pauw</strong>els,<br />
Pat Van Hemelrijck. Production: Schaamte.<br />
[3] Vogels by Radeis. 1981-1984. L. to r.: Georges Brouckaert,<br />
Pat Van Hemelrijck, Dirk <strong>Pauw</strong>els, Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>. Production: Schaamte.l<br />
[4] Ward Comblez. He do the life in different voices (Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> with<br />
Peter van Kraaij). 1988-1989. Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> as Ward Comblez.<br />
Production: Kaaitheater in association with Lantaren/ Venster, Rotterdam,<br />
Beursschouwburg and <strong>De</strong> Voorziening, Groningen.<br />
[5] Weg (Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>). 1997-1998. With Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, Peter Vermeersch<br />
and Pierre Vervloesem. Music: Peter Vermeersch. Production: Kaaitheater.
[6] <strong>De</strong> meid slaan (after Baudelaire, Lucebert, Sidney Michaels, Strindberg,<br />
Kotaro Takamura, Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, Tom Jansen). 1993-1994.<br />
Actors: Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, Tom Jansen, Fumiyo Ikeda. Directors: Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>,<br />
Tom Jansen. Production: Kaaitheater, Nationaal Fonds Amsterdam. <strong>De</strong> keizer<br />
van <strong>het</strong> verlies (Jan Fabre). Regie: Jan Fabre. Troubleyn, mei 1996. Met<br />
Dirk Roofthooft.<br />
artistic development: de pauw’s way and weg<br />
to <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> for his acting in these two plays says it all. But in the<br />
longer term it was mainly <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s position as a fully-fledged<br />
playwright that was established by these narrations. In 1991, for<br />
instance, he received the three-yearly State Prize for Dramatic<br />
Literature. In 1993, Ward Comblez was included in a German<br />
anthology of seven plays from the Dutch-speaking countries and<br />
in 1998 International Theatre & Film Books published a French<br />
edition of Ward Comblez and Het Kind van de Smid.<br />
A great many critics experienced the texts not so much as plays<br />
but as literary creations. The terms ‘epic’, ‘storytelling’ and ‘narrative<br />
theatre’ were frequently used to describe them. In <strong>De</strong><br />
Standaard one could read that Het Kind van de Smid ‘does not<br />
comply with the characteristics of a traditional dramatic text’. ‘If<br />
it were not so easily performable one might venture to call it a<br />
‘reading drama’. But fortunately that genre belongs permanently<br />
to the past. On the other hand the work lends itself more to reading<br />
than a great many other dramatic texts’. 14 Several journalists<br />
added to this by belittling the performance of the play, ‘Het Kind<br />
van de Smid … seems to me more suited to being read than acted.<br />
It has such a wealth of images which on stage are simply beaten<br />
flat’, 15 said Toneel Theatraal, and the reviewer in Knack ‘very<br />
much had the impression that reading the play is the best way to<br />
appreciate its poetry’. 16 One journalist went very far, writing, ‘I<br />
think this book is so fine that it might be better not to go and see<br />
the play’. 17 Nevertheless, <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s plays were not alone in<br />
Flemish dramatic literature in the second half of the eighties.<br />
Ward Comblez and Het Kind van de Smid do not comply with<br />
the traditional categories of theatricality. Their writing displays<br />
similarities with a contemporary discourse whose main elements<br />
are the ties with theatrical practice, the diversity of materials and<br />
disciplines and the uncompleted nature of the text (text developing<br />
on stage). Such requirements as direct dialogues and the deictic<br />
reference to a topical context are of less importance. 18<br />
Dialogue/duologue: <strong>De</strong> meid slaan and Trots vlees<br />
In 1993, Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, together with the Dutch actor, director<br />
and author Tom Jansen, presented <strong>De</strong> meid slaan, produced by<br />
Kaaitheater and the Nationaal Fonds Amsterdam. Whereas Het<br />
Kind van de Smid still opted for narration in order that the actors<br />
37 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001
josse de pauw<br />
did not get bogged down in their characters during dialogues,<br />
what we suddenly get here is a real dialogue play. This naturally<br />
has major consequences for the relationship between the actor<br />
and the script. Although the autobiographical reality of the<br />
friends <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> and Jansen is to some extent used in <strong>De</strong> meid<br />
slaan, the play can no longer be categorised as narrative theatre.<br />
During the performance, the acting is central to the direct confrontation<br />
with each other and with the audience. This is reflected<br />
in the fragmentary composition of the text (whose content<br />
was selected for its performability) and in the pleasure the actors<br />
have in performing. <strong>De</strong> meid slaan is, more than anything else,<br />
actor’s theatre.<br />
From an overall point of view, this acting is also a constant in<br />
the content of the play. Acting is seen as a means of survival, in<br />
which people position themselves in roles opposite each other in<br />
order to divide up the positions of power. In this respect language<br />
is the most important weapon. Sometimes the dialogues are sidetracked<br />
into a sort of cross-interrogation; then again the different<br />
voices speak in unison. <strong>De</strong>spite the great affinity between the<br />
real lives of the actor-authors and the play itself – the characters<br />
on stage are called simply Tom, Josse and Fumiyo – a certain distance<br />
is maintained. The dialectic between the people and the<br />
actors on stage provides for a constant tension between truth and<br />
imagination.<br />
The writing process was accompanied with an exchange of<br />
poetry, stories and music, over which they spoke on the basis of<br />
their own experiences or by linking it to events in the world.<br />
After the geography of Ward Comblez and the epic history of<br />
Het Kind van de Smid, we are now served with a spectrum of literary<br />
and cultural history. The authors made use of Baudelaire,<br />
Lucebert, Sidney Michaels, Strindberg and Kotaro Takamura.<br />
More and more personal elements were gradually added to the<br />
text. They took the title from Spanking the Maid by the<br />
American writer Robert Coover, a book about power relationships.<br />
No real story is told; though a few major themes can be<br />
pointed to: the piece is about the macho behaviour friends display<br />
‘between themselves’. Two actors meet up again after a long<br />
time. In their armchairs, the two men awkwardly think up possible<br />
topics of conversation, with regular uncomfortable silences.<br />
They converse with each other by way of the literary texts or the<br />
plays they know: Jansen speaks about Baudelaire’s Le spleen de<br />
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artistic development: de pauw’s way and weg<br />
Paris; the story of a man visiting a friend. <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> comes up<br />
with the first lines of a poem by Lucebert, stalls, thinks, and has<br />
it finished off by Jansen. The dialogue gradually evolves into an<br />
intellectual duel. All at once a Japanese woman appears behind a<br />
glass partition. It is Fumiyo Ikeda (who is in reality Josse <strong>De</strong><br />
<strong>Pauw</strong>’s wife). Her presence upsets the male intimacy and gives a<br />
completely different turn to both men’s behaviour. They try to<br />
win her favour and overwhelm her with knowledge. Then they<br />
ask her to recite a Japanese poem. When she then translates the<br />
text into Dutch, her language is constantly and pedantically corrected.<br />
It ends in a violent argument because the host thinks<br />
Jansen is becoming too intimate with her. Fortunately a kitsch<br />
present of broken glassware is able to save their friendship.<br />
As has already been mentioned, friendship at work has been an<br />
abiding starting point throughout <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s stage career. The<br />
special thing about his kinship with Tom Jansen is their shared<br />
concern with acting. The two men got to know each other while<br />
shooting a trial film by Guido Hendrickx for the NOS television<br />
channel. What they recognised in each other was the way of acting,<br />
the pleasure of performance and the boldness needed to take<br />
risks. It was therefore no surprise that two years after <strong>De</strong> meid<br />
slaan, the two friends suddenly came up with their own production<br />
company, called Laagland, which was intended in the first<br />
place to function as a place where several like-minded artists<br />
could work together.<br />
The first Laagland production, Trots vlees, opened at Monty in<br />
Antwerp on 14 th June 1995. Just as in <strong>De</strong> meid slaan, the basis<br />
of this piece was friendship, the difference being that this time<br />
the starting point was an existing play which they had not written<br />
themselves: this was the one-act play Clearing in the Forest<br />
by the American writer James Purdy. This is also the major difference<br />
with the remaining, more or less independent productions<br />
by <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>. In fact the play was used in its entirety, though<br />
the actors did add their own opinions as well as various other<br />
texts to Purdy’s play, including a poem by Lucebert, an essay by<br />
the 19 th -century gastronome Brillat-Savarin and the tear-jerker<br />
‘Een kleine foto van mijn meisje’ [‘A little photo of my girl’]. <strong>De</strong><br />
<strong>Pauw</strong> touches on the underlying motivation for interpersonal<br />
communication in this production too: Purdy goes in search of<br />
intimacy, open wounds and the internal power balance lurking in<br />
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josse de pauw<br />
all human relationships. In so doing he comes up with such<br />
explosive questions as ‘how far can two men go in their friendship<br />
before it is called homosexuality? How often can you hurt<br />
someone before they run away? How much damage can you do<br />
without causing a final break? In fact they are subjects that <strong>De</strong><br />
<strong>Pauw</strong> and Jansen had already dealt with together.<br />
In <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s career, productions like <strong>De</strong> meid slaan and Trots<br />
vlees are important because they clearly show another side of this<br />
play-maker as a poetic writer and storyteller. The pleasure of acting<br />
with Tom Jansen, on the basis of recognisable, possibly autobiographical<br />
facts, here has the edge over the plastic aspect of<br />
storytelling as in the duo <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> and Van Kraaij, or the musical<br />
interaction of the duo <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> and Vermeersch. His work<br />
with Dominique <strong>De</strong>ruddere in film (Crazy Love (1987), Wait<br />
Until Spring, Bandini (1989), Hombres Complicados (1997) and<br />
Iedereen Beroemd (2000)) and with Hugo <strong>De</strong> Greef in the area<br />
of structure and organisation, can be described as a sort of<br />
‘league of two’. And what about his collaboration with Mandus<br />
<strong>De</strong> Vos, who gave the young <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> his first lessons in recitation<br />
and with whom he later appeared on several occasions at the<br />
Mechels Miniatuur Theater (Francesco Furioso (1973) and <strong>De</strong><br />
bende van Jan de Lichte (1974))?<br />
In each case <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> commences his collaboration with the<br />
same energy, adapting himself entirely to the discipline and<br />
friendship of each successive partner. In addition, <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> leaves<br />
traces of his own evolution as a play-maker in the career of each<br />
of these partnerships. His collaboration with Peter Van Kraaij,<br />
for instance, grew from a monologue, through a narration for<br />
several voices, and a film with dialogue (Vinaya) to a proper<br />
existing play (Exiles), with all that entails. It was with Tom<br />
Jansen that he introduced a considerable number of direct dialogues<br />
for the first time, and then included an existing one-act<br />
play in their next production together.<br />
Larf: a ‘concert dramatique’<br />
After Weg, which was discussed at the start of this book (see pp.<br />
10-12), <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> went to Ghent to make Larf at Victoria. The<br />
artistic director, Dirk <strong>Pauw</strong>els, asked him to make a piece that<br />
40 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001<br />
artistic development: de pauw’s way and weg<br />
would fit into the Time Festival 2000’s theme of ‘Mad Kings’.<br />
What is more, with the Vooruit Geluid music event, Brussels 2000<br />
and the Festival of Flanders as extra production partners, there<br />
were sufficient financial resources to make a large-scale production<br />
of it.<br />
Since Usurpation in 1985, it had always been <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s dream<br />
to combine words and music on stage. This was realised in a<br />
highly ingenious way in Weg. At that point his collaboration<br />
with the composer Peter Vermeersch reached a peak. But <strong>De</strong><br />
<strong>Pauw</strong> wanted to take it one step further. As he said a few days<br />
before the opening night, ‘I saw Weg much more as a story with<br />
a thread, whereas Larf is much further away from a clear storyline.<br />
It is a sort of evocation, more associative. This was a deliberate<br />
choice: I wanted to break up the writing even more, there<br />
is much more music in it. … Music is in itself highly abstract. I<br />
feel that the more you go in that direction in language, the closer<br />
you get to music.’ 19<br />
In the end Vermeersch brought his sixteen-man big band The<br />
Flat Earth Society with him, and the blues legend Roland Van<br />
Campenhout also took part, so that the three actors, <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong><br />
and his artistic brothers-in-arms Tom Jansen and Dirk<br />
Roofthooft, were physically clearly in the minority.<br />
The performance starts in complete silence. The sculptor and<br />
painter Koenraad Tinel crosses the stage with a bucket and a<br />
huge paintbrush. With great energy he starts to paint on a sheet<br />
of white fibreglass lying on the floor. While he creates a crude<br />
image of a larva, other sounds gradually become perceptible: the<br />
clatter of musical instruments, a voice, a few notes. Tinel’s movements<br />
are also amplified by way of a microphone. When his work<br />
is finished, the cloth is flown so that it hangs as a backcloth. The<br />
actors and musicians then enter. They put everything together on<br />
the spot. The platform, chairs, instruments and instruments and<br />
a few bits of set are brought on quietly and efficiently.<br />
Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we are telling the story of Baby<br />
becomes King. We are calling the baby Larva, because in the<br />
beginning that is what it looked like most. Larva himself did not<br />
know he would be born, so he is beyond reproach, but on the<br />
other hand little Larva was ramapolo toolinparky esterantic<br />
mavoose. Malasikapoo and flimbikly bararst…’<br />
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It is with this short prologue that Tom Jansen introduces the spoken<br />
word into the performance. The start of the story of Larfken<br />
is already upset after several sentences and lapses into an abstract<br />
baby-talk, the sort of nonsense adults are in the habit of coming<br />
out with over the baby’s cot. The atmosphere is immediately<br />
established:<br />
Little Larva, Larva wee<br />
Is a butterfly what you will be?<br />
Yesssssssssssssssssssss!<br />
Little Larva, Larva son<br />
And do you know the way it’s done?<br />
Nooooooooooooooooooo!<br />
Larva, Larva, little nit<br />
Scratch your skin all to bits!<br />
Oooooooooooooooooooo!<br />
josse de pauw<br />
‘And then the music pierces to the bone,’ is the following stage<br />
direction, and that is exactly what happens. While the actors<br />
describe how the royal baby came into the world, the sounds of<br />
woodwind and brass, percussion, electric guitar, vibraphone,<br />
keyboards, bass and a female voice resound through the fairytale<br />
narration. Lyrical phrases, melancholy reflections on the birth<br />
and the constantly repeated ‘rock-a-bye, rock-a-bye’ set the tone.<br />
The birth and the first signs of life are cloyingly described.<br />
The child grows up perfectly and is loved by everyone until it<br />
learns to speak. ‘I’, is its first word. And the second and third: ‘I.<br />
I. II. IIIIIIII…’ Dirk Roofthooft goes on endlessly bellowing the<br />
word. Gradually other words appear and the first sentences take<br />
shape: ‘I am the world. I want. Give me what is mine.’ The eagerly<br />
expected child turns out to be a pain in the neck, obsessed with<br />
such a hunger for power that nothing less than the royal throne<br />
is good enough for him.<br />
Whereas during the beginning section of the play the three<br />
actors simply sat on chairs amongst the musicians, as speaking<br />
voices in the orchestra, from the moment Larf ascends the throne<br />
42 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001<br />
artistic development: de pauw’s way and weg<br />
they separate themselves from the group. They put on wrought<br />
iron adornments by Tinel and each climbs one of the huge<br />
thrones high above the big band. Once there they start to speak:<br />
on the importance of the threat of an enemy for the smooth functioning<br />
of the state, on the guilt of the corrupt woman, on what<br />
lives and what does not, on the creation of flowery meadows and<br />
on the genesis of mankind. The theory of natural selection which<br />
they support leads to the burning of a monkey figure while the<br />
kings laugh and shout (‘Ape face! Ugly mug! Get back up your<br />
tree!). From this point on the political undertone in the play<br />
becomes paramount. It is not only that power as a universal fact<br />
becomes the point of the play, but its practical consequences are<br />
also examined.<br />
In a r<strong>het</strong>orically sophisticated speech the kings address the people:<br />
‘Ladies and gentlemen, my dear people, Jean, Jeanine and<br />
Sigiswald, chers compatriotes, mesdames, messieurs. Things are<br />
going well. Very well. We have little or no reason to complain.’<br />
This is followed by a description of just how good things are,<br />
how fine life can be and how cleverly we are able to protect ourselves<br />
from all manner of calamity. The state is an oasis of good<br />
fortune and no burglar, war or storm can harm it. The public,<br />
which is initially invited to join in this contemplation of all the<br />
nice things they are able to experience everyday, are little by little<br />
also given more unpleasant morsels to digest. The rulers refer<br />
increasingly often to the misery outside, the villains and goodfor-nothings<br />
who do not know how to organise their own lives.<br />
And then comes the dénouement:<br />
We have ever been an hospitable and helpful people.<br />
But if they loom up out of the desert in their hordes to settle<br />
here in our oasis, if they cross the great waters in their rickety<br />
ships to pitch their tents here on our shores, if, like Icarus, they<br />
start to sew on wings and flap them wildly about,<br />
to fly up towards our sun…<br />
Then we should not stand silently looking on!<br />
…<br />
It is not our fault that others appear incapable of shaking off<br />
the ape!<br />
Then, when all three of them reel off ‘The Lion of Flanders’ word<br />
by word, no doubt is left about <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s intentions. Certainly<br />
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josse de pauw<br />
in the context of asylum policy and the election success of the farright<br />
Flemish Block party in 2000, from this point on the audience<br />
has the political message fairly thrown at it. But <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong><br />
thinks this is still not enough. He then has the three kings perform<br />
a bare-bottomed ‘Larva dance’ at the front of the stage.<br />
While turning round like ‘broken dervishes’ they each pick up a<br />
microphone. The comments they make on power gone astray<br />
include ‘I didn’t know anything about it’, ‘They say so many<br />
things’ and ‘I was told that later, but I don’t know w<strong>het</strong>her it’s<br />
true’. The music corroborates this denial and leads to the ultimate<br />
finale: against the backcloth the king, played by a suitably<br />
dressed Roland Van Campenhout, rises towards heaven. He<br />
breaks into a blues number, but after several verses the big band<br />
again storms into it.<br />
It is quite clear that in both form and content, Larf was a very<br />
daring piece. What had been achieved in Weg was explored even<br />
further, but the intimate nature of the earlier piece had to give<br />
way to a much more broadly constructed whole. More speakers,<br />
more musicians and, what is more, less of a leading role for the<br />
word. There were no real characters: <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, Roofthooft and<br />
Jansen all gave shape to the king and other speakers. They<br />
repeated each other’s words, took up each other’s lines, like three<br />
voices together helping a text grow. In most cases it was the<br />
music that indicated when a passage ended or when the tension<br />
was rising. That which was done on a limited scale between a<br />
narrator and two musicians in Weg was here given its full splendour.<br />
Starting from the theme of ‘mad kings’, <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> commenced<br />
an analysis of the aberrations of power in the broadest sense.<br />
One of his sources of inspiration was Herodes by W.H. Auden,<br />
which he performed in autumn 1999 as a monologue on the<br />
occasion of Tg Stan’s tenth anniversary. In this speech, King<br />
Herodes justifies the murder of innocent children and is able to<br />
do so in such a way that his reasoning comes across as credible.<br />
<strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> composed his speech on patriotic happiness and the<br />
threat from ‘the apes’ in the same way. <strong>De</strong>spite the clear reference<br />
to the far right, it was not so much his intention to touch upon<br />
the political situation in Flanders as to offer a view of power.<br />
Starting from something universal, the birth of a child, he systematically<br />
examined where power became uncontrollable. The<br />
44 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001<br />
artistic development: de pauw’s way and weg<br />
fact that Larfke’s first word was ‘I’ does not necessarily mean<br />
that the baby was doomed to end up a dictator. As <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> says,<br />
‘A child has to concentrate on itself, if it is to have a chance of<br />
survival. Later this ‘I’ has to be put into perspective and related<br />
to other ‘I’s, so that life becomes livable and practicable’ 20 .<br />
Everyone has to protect what is dear to him, that is normal, the<br />
only question is to what extent others are allowed to affect this<br />
happiness. It is precisely on this distinction between a sort of<br />
healthy egoism and an unhealthy overdose of it that the play<br />
turns. In this respect it may be that Larf came closest to the<br />
theme <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> and Peter Van Kraaij touched on in Het Kind van<br />
de Smid, whose main topics were also ‘the migration of peoples’<br />
and dealing with the power over one’s own life and others’.<br />
Like its predecessor Weg, Larf was in the main positively received<br />
in the press, apart from a few comments on its rather untidy<br />
structure. On 20 th November 2000 <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> received the Océ<br />
Podium Prize for the two pieces. After Weg’s selection for the<br />
Dutch-Flemish Theatre Festival and the extremely favourable<br />
reviews of <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s collected dramatic and prose writings in<br />
Werk, this prize was again a recognition of what he had achieved<br />
in the theatre in previous years.<br />
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STRUCTURAL AND<br />
ARTISTIC CONTEXT<br />
With a view to survival: the structural context<br />
In Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s theatre work, it is not only his views on acting<br />
and writing that form a clear thread, but its structural context<br />
also has its own recognisable pattern. In the same way as he<br />
opts for the familiar collaboration with a few artist friends, he<br />
has for twenty years never really left his niche in Brussels. Until<br />
Weg in 1998 he still floated along with the same, though now<br />
mature, arts centre where his story once started with Radeis. For<br />
this reason <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s work cannot be seen independently from<br />
the organisational structure of Schaamte/Kaaitheater. The more<br />
recent developments in Laagland, Victoria and HetNet are also<br />
the direct consequence of encounters that took place in this<br />
Brussels establishment.<br />
First there was Radeis. As we have said, as a result of a lack of<br />
subsidies, in May 1978 the group sought a haven at Schaamte,<br />
under the care of Hugo <strong>De</strong> Greef, who since 1977 had also been<br />
the organiser of the biennial Kaaitheater Festival. This non-profit<br />
organisation was not intended to be a theatre agency or manager,<br />
but a basis on which its performing arts members could fall<br />
back or from where their projects could be coordinated.<br />
Schaamte functioned as a production and distribution company<br />
and the performers who were its members bore their financial<br />
burden in solidarity while carrying out their creative artistic<br />
work with total independence. After Radeis, Anne Teresa <strong>De</strong><br />
Keersmaeker and Jan Lauwers and his Epigonentheater also<br />
joined, among others. It was due to Schaamte that these new performing<br />
artists were given the chance to build up their theatre<br />
careers, even far beyond our borders.<br />
As from its second edition, the emphasis of the Kaaitheater<br />
Festival was on formally innovative theatre and productions of<br />
its own. Radeis was also involved several times. Their performance<br />
of Ik wist niet dat Engeland zo mooi was at the 1979<br />
Kaaitheater Festival signalled the start of their breakthrough and<br />
in the early eighties the company took off internationally. The<br />
festival’s purpose was to provide Flemish theatre with new stimuli,<br />
to expand the possibilities and to take it to an international<br />
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structural and artistic context<br />
level. In this way the Kaaitheater Festival also had a major influence<br />
on the innovative movement of the eighties. It was no coincidence<br />
that three pioneering productions were included in its<br />
programme: Jan <strong>De</strong>corte’s Maria Magdalena (1981) was a<br />
Kaaitheater production, in 1983 Anne Teresa <strong>De</strong> keersmaeker<br />
presented Rosas danst Rosas and Jan Fabre started his international<br />
operations at the 1983 Kaaitheater Festival with Het is<br />
theater zoals te verwachten en te <strong>voor</strong>zien was. Both Radeis and<br />
the Rosas dance productions added to the renown of the<br />
Schaamte production company.<br />
After five festivals, the director <strong>De</strong> Greef considered the form<br />
outdated. For this reason the Kaaitheater Festival switched to<br />
full-season operation in 1987 and then merged with Schaamte.<br />
Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> remained a permanent lodger in this renewed centre,<br />
which from then on was called simply Kaaitheater.<br />
According to him, the Kaaitheater does not impose any work<br />
specifications on the artist, but tries to guarantee the best possible<br />
working conditions so that creativity can develop according<br />
to its own dynamic. It was as a result of the direct assistance of<br />
Kaaitheater that he was able, together with Peter Van Kraaij, to<br />
make Ward Comblez, Het Kind van de Smid and the full-length<br />
film Vinaya. He was also able to call on them for the production<br />
of <strong>De</strong> meid slaan. In addition, <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> played parts in the<br />
Kaaitheater productions Het Trio in Mi-Bémol, Exiles, <strong>De</strong><br />
Verhuizing and Wolokolamsker Chaussee – V (a coproduction<br />
with Antigone) and wrote texts and lyrics for <strong>De</strong> Oplosbare Vis<br />
and Momentum, two pieces coproduced by Kaaitheater. In 1994<br />
Hugo <strong>De</strong> Greef asked him to direct a play himself. This was to<br />
be the first time that the Kaaitheater entered into a joint venture<br />
with one of the Flemish repertory companies (Nederlands Toneel<br />
Gent). However, the play, called <strong>De</strong> vrouwen, was cancelled<br />
before completion.<br />
In 1995 <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> and Jansen founded Laagland. Their purpose<br />
in this Dutch-Flemish organisation was to bring together likeminded<br />
artists who guaranteed artistic quality and to work<br />
towards fruitful confrontation and collaboration. This kinship<br />
was intended, broadly, to express itself in a focus on language<br />
(writing, translation, poetry, language for the sake of language)<br />
and on the artist in his relationship to this language and to his<br />
fellow performer. This was linked to the quest for simplicity, in a<br />
direct and profound form of communication. In this instance,<br />
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josse de pauw<br />
simplicity does not mean superficial identifiability or unambiguousness;<br />
the point was to clarify the content by exploration using<br />
language and form. This quest for a way of communication<br />
which, although theatrical, was not intended to be aest<strong>het</strong>icising,<br />
coincided with the urge to make plays that were not hermetic.<br />
The aim of Laagland was to build up a repertoire of performances<br />
that were easy to tour, even beyond the Dutch-speaking<br />
boundaries. The pleasure of acting and the urge to reach a broader<br />
audience (in both numbers and location) went hand in hand.<br />
What is more, Laagland did not present itself as a purely theatrical<br />
organisation, but wished to be active in several areas at the<br />
same time: theatre, film, television and literature. Some of the<br />
basic principles (breakdown of boundaries, interdisciplinary<br />
work, the freedom of the artist) were already to be found in the<br />
organisation of Radeis and Schaamte.<br />
A fine example of the operation of Laagland was the monologue<br />
<strong>De</strong> Wijze van zaal 7 by the Dutch photographer Hans<br />
Aarsman. Three major storytellers were behind the production:<br />
Dirk Roofthooft acted, Tom Jansen directed and Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong><br />
was responsible for the dramaturgy. <strong>De</strong>spite the success of plays<br />
like this, which was invited to the 1996 Theatre Festival,<br />
Laagland’s request for operational subsidy from the Dutch and<br />
Flemish authorities (8.9 and 12.8 million BEF respectively) was<br />
rejected. The advisory boards advised against it because it was<br />
too thinly spread over time (2 productions per year), because the<br />
audience reached was too small, the use of people and resources<br />
was uneconomical and, in addition, the use of subsidies for<br />
reflective work was not even recognised by the Dutch system.<br />
This meant that Laagland was not able to develop to the full and<br />
for the time being <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s room at the Kaaitheater boarding<br />
house remained occupied. In 1997 Hugo <strong>De</strong> Greef decided to<br />
leave the Kaaitheater and this meant the start of a new period in<br />
the structural and artistic aspects of <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s work too.<br />
‘After the change of director, Kaaitheater also took an artistic<br />
turn. With the new team we have sought ways of working<br />
together, because that is what we all wanted. But it is not different:<br />
I am one of the old guard, and then it is not so evident to go<br />
along with the changes. I also had the feeling I would repeat the<br />
same stories there. At Victoria that need not happen. I shall be<br />
able to do there what I want to.’ 21 This was <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s comment<br />
48 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001<br />
structural and artistic context<br />
on his 1999 decision to move to the Victoria theatre production<br />
company, led by his former Radeis colleague Dirk <strong>Pauw</strong>els in<br />
Ghent. After five interim presentations before an audience, he<br />
came up with Larf, his biggest production to date. Apart from<br />
the name of the producer, there appeared to be no sign of a break<br />
with his past at the Kaaitheater, especially since his favourite performers<br />
also moved from Brussels to East Flanders for the occasion.<br />
But in fact he did not work at Victoria for very long. In the<br />
end, the offer to take over the leadership, from 2000 on, of the<br />
former Theater <strong>De</strong> Korre in Bruges, now called HetNet, provided<br />
him with more opportunities for doing the things he really<br />
wanted.<br />
Once again it was Hugo <strong>De</strong> Greef who presented <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong><br />
with a decisive choice in his career. After leaving Kaaitheater and<br />
being appointed as intendant of Bruges 2002, <strong>De</strong> Greef was<br />
asked by the director of Theater <strong>De</strong> Korre, Robrecht <strong>De</strong><br />
Spiegelaere, to look for a replacement for the then incumbent,<br />
Bob <strong>De</strong> Moor. This is how <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s name came up, and he,<br />
after some hesitation, accepted on condition that he could adapt<br />
the function of artistic director entirely to suit himself. Just as<br />
had happened previously with Laagland, HetNet’s application<br />
for subsidy was at first also rejected by the performing arts advisory<br />
board. After a review, however, it did in the end qualify for<br />
aid from the Flemish Community.<br />
Almost all the artists with whom he had in the past established<br />
ties will also find themselves working at HetNet: the actors Tom<br />
Jansen and Dirk Roofthooft, the director Peter Van Kraaij, the<br />
composer Peter Vermeersch, sculptor Koenraad Tinel and many<br />
others. The dramaturge Marianne Van Kerkhoven, who had<br />
until then supervised most of <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s productions, also moved<br />
to Bruges. ‘Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> was never able to settle in the major<br />
hierarchical theatre establishments,’ she wrote in the introduction<br />
to the 2000 season brochure. ‘This is a perfect working setting<br />
for him, a sort of collective with a constantly changing set of<br />
people in which his creations and those of his artistic friends will<br />
be able to thrive with the greatest possible freedom.’ 22<br />
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josse de pauw<br />
The wanderer in the landscape:<br />
artistic context and reception<br />
Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> has never worked very much in the larger Flemish<br />
companies. He always continued to hone his own approach,<br />
which he was free to mark out in the so-called ‘secondary circuit’.<br />
Nevertheless, in the Radeis performances he at one time<br />
encountered, and supplied inspiration to, the innovative movements<br />
of the eighties and the present generation of play-makers<br />
have probably learnt something from him too – even though his<br />
career has not always been seen as a continuous thread. The fact<br />
that Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> is usually understood to be a loner and not<br />
as part of the shifting panoramic landscape of theatre is sustained<br />
by several factors. There is for instance his loyalty to an artistic<br />
family, the need to be able to work in peace and the somewhat<br />
slow tempo at which new productions appear. In addition, the<br />
need to play various fields, both in theatre and the other arts,<br />
means that he is hard to force into one particular tradition or<br />
development in theatre. Yet <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> is in this regard by no<br />
means alone in Dutch-language theatre. In fact, by consciously<br />
standing on the sidelines of the theatre establishment, he more<br />
than once ended up at the heart of theatrical renewal.<br />
The first extremely important event in this respect was the development<br />
of Radeis. Not only did the group’s international reputation<br />
have a great influence on the development of Kaaitheater<br />
(festival and organisation), but in addition, in the early eighties<br />
Radeis’ wordless theatre contributed to the emergence of the radically<br />
renewed discourse on physical theatre and contemporary<br />
dance in Flanders. Their unconventional handling of visuality<br />
and the body, free from traditional theatres of movement and<br />
objects, was a step in this direction. Furthermore, their frivolous,<br />
disarticulating and often mildly destructive treatment of theatre<br />
conventions undoubtedly had an influence on postmodern theatre<br />
productions in subsequent years.<br />
Against the background of what was later to be labelled the theatrical<br />
renewal of the eighties, Radeis was very early in making an<br />
impression: they were already working on their own house style<br />
in 1977, one which was also enthusiastically received abroad<br />
after 1980. The whole Radeis repertoire had already been (pro-<br />
50 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001<br />
structural and artistic context<br />
visionally) shaped before 1981, whereas controversial productions<br />
by Jan <strong>De</strong>corte (Maria Magdalena), Ivo Van Hove (<strong>De</strong><br />
Geruchten), Herman Gilis (Het Laxeermiddel) and Jan Fabre<br />
(Het is theater zoals te verwachten en te <strong>voor</strong>zien was) only<br />
appeared as from that year. Even the other two resident Schaamte<br />
companies, Anne Teresa <strong>De</strong> Keersmaeker with Rosas and Jan<br />
Lauwers’ Epigonentheater, only really started to operate fully in<br />
the early eighties.<br />
The influence (direct and indirect) of Radeis cannot be separated<br />
from the interaction with the international theatre scene. For<br />
Belgium, Radeis were a successful company abroad, which at the<br />
same time opened up the borders in order both to bring in other<br />
innovative companies (The Wooster Group, Pina Bausch, Jürgen<br />
Gosch, Maatschappij Discordia, etc.) and to promote its own<br />
groups abroad. The boundary-breaking nature of this new generation,<br />
in terms of both geography and form and discipline, had<br />
found a wordless messenger in Radeis. This group’s acutely<br />
funny and, most importantly, unpretentious theatre was sufficient<br />
to burst forever the petrified legacy of the late seventies.<br />
Not by using the tough approach of what was later to be labelled<br />
the ‘Flemish wave’, but with jollity, subtlety and, above all,<br />
aware of the relative nature of every theatre tradition. Whereas<br />
others, mainly because they were unhappy with dramatic arts<br />
education in their own country, looked for new languages of<br />
movement elsewhere, Radeis sought renewal within itself and in<br />
the tradition of popular theatre, by upsetting the old theatrical<br />
codes. Radeis was at the same time a very early exponent (e.g. in<br />
their opposition to the increasingly slogan-based theatre of political<br />
awareness) and stimulator of theatrical renewal, which was<br />
accompanied by a changed attitude to the actor and the dramaturgical,<br />
disciplinary and stage material used. Old dramatic<br />
precepts were unremittingly attacked. It was, for example, no<br />
longer necessary to play characters. Empathic-portrait acting and<br />
pedantic acting were replaced by acting oriented very much to<br />
the ‘here and now’, which consciously dealt with such notions as<br />
the distance and proximity of the character and the person. The<br />
use of the dialogue-based dramatic text gave way to an abundant<br />
variety of materials and disciplines with which one entered into<br />
a ‘dialogue’.<br />
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josse de pauw<br />
One aspect of this theatrical renewal did not touch Radeis (or<br />
Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> himself): the rise of the director as the pivotal figure<br />
in the production. A non-hierarchic structure was one of the<br />
prime elements of Radeis’ work, with the personal responsibility<br />
of each individual member forming the basis of a healthy operation.<br />
In this sense the company came closer to the actors’ theatre<br />
of the late eighties and early nineties (in such groups as<br />
Compagnie <strong>De</strong> Koe, <strong>De</strong> Vereniging van Enthousiasten <strong>voor</strong> <strong>het</strong><br />
Reële en <strong>het</strong> Universele and TG Stan), in which the role of the<br />
director again lost out to that of the actor. This is probably one<br />
of the reasons why Radeis was only included as a footnote in the<br />
authorised history of theatrical renewal: the group had no explicit<br />
figurehead like Jan Lauwers (Epigonentheater), Van Hove<br />
(AKT), Gilis and <strong>De</strong>hert (Arca), <strong>De</strong>corte (Het Trojaanse Paard),<br />
Peyskens (Stuc) and Bogaerts and Vandervost (<strong>De</strong> Witte Kraai),<br />
who were able to articulate their artistic principles and present a<br />
human face.<br />
Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> was never cast in the role of innovator even after<br />
Radeis broke up. Usurpation, in 1985, for instance, was received<br />
in the first instance as a child of its time, influenced by developments<br />
in physical theatre and in Jan <strong>De</strong>corte’s work. <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s<br />
association with <strong>De</strong>corte and the renewed Trojaanse Paard company<br />
was, moreover, encouraged by the parts <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> played<br />
for this company between 1986 and ‘88 (Het Stuk-Stuk and In<br />
Ondertussendoor). Apart from this the production was seen as a<br />
new stage in the personal development of his work. There was no<br />
mention of a possible contribution to a broader artistic context.<br />
It was only much later that Usurpation was included as a point<br />
of interest in the Flemish theatre canon. The situation is well<br />
summed up by Johan Wambacq’s statement in <strong>De</strong> Nieuwe<br />
Maand in 1986, that Usurpation was ‘the most sorely underestimated<br />
production’ of the previous ten years. 23<br />
<strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> soon distanced himself from (post)modern director’s<br />
theatre. In Ward Comblez, which he wrote himself in 1988, he<br />
employed storytelling as an intimate, direct and highly personal<br />
form of theatre. The evolution towards a remote aest<strong>het</strong>ics in the<br />
directors’ theatres appeared no longer to suit him. But he was not<br />
the only one who started to write for himself. From the second<br />
half of the eighties increasing numbers of actors and directors<br />
52 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001<br />
structural and artistic context<br />
took up the pen (e.g. Jan <strong>De</strong>corte, Arne Sierens, Jan Fabre, Willy<br />
Thomas and Paul Pourveur in Flanders and Frans Strijards and<br />
Gerardjan Rijnders in the Netherlands) in order to develop a<br />
form of writing that did not fall behind the particular needs of<br />
the practices of the time. Taking its ability to be performed<br />
before an audience as the only theatrical criterion, these innovators<br />
desacralised drama and actively involved it in everyday practice.<br />
In the way text is handled in Ward Comblez and Het Kind<br />
van de Smid, and later in <strong>De</strong> meid slaan too, we see a number of<br />
mechanisms appear which came equally into use in a much<br />
broader innovative movement. For example, the text is on no<br />
account still unilaterally oriented towards performance. Diverse<br />
materials and disciplines are used in the work (e.g. song lyrics,<br />
historical documents and letters) or else they are given a new<br />
functionality (e.g. as a narrative or as speech). Lastly, these texts<br />
are very much part of a process, with events on stage evolving<br />
from moment to moment. In this process it comes down to<br />
sounding out what can be said or shown on stage: by means of a<br />
monologue or polyphonic approach, a view into autobiographical<br />
elements or the interweaving of lyricism, travel stories, drama<br />
and music. All this led to the quite original position <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong><br />
occupies as a playwright. His probing and narrating dramaturgy<br />
links up seamlessly with his quest for authenticity as a performer<br />
and actor.<br />
Whereas play-makers in the late eighties opted increasingly for a<br />
somewhat remote, aest<strong>het</strong>icising approach (with regard to the<br />
text, the characters and the audience), in Ward Comblez and Het<br />
Kind van de Smid, <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> appeared to be deliberately abandoning<br />
this course. Instead, he decided to almost completely<br />
remove the distance. In his narrations, the boundary between<br />
autobiography and text, actor and person and player and public,<br />
certainly became very thin. It was therefore not entirely unexpected<br />
that in 1989 he was asked by Frank Vercruyssen, Jolente<br />
<strong>De</strong> Keersmaeker, Waas Gramser and Damiaan <strong>De</strong> Schrijver to<br />
supervise their graduation project at the Antwerp Conservatory.<br />
This production, Jan, scènes uit <strong>het</strong> leven op <strong>het</strong> land (after<br />
Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya) was revived as a full production in the<br />
first season of Tg Stan. <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s quest for an honest, no-nonsense<br />
theatre was apparently also appreciated by a new generation<br />
of actors. In the 1990 season the group once again called in<br />
53 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001
josse de pauw<br />
<strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> to follow the rehearsals of Brigitje as a coach. It is<br />
notable that in theatre criticism and chronicles, <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> is only<br />
sporadically mentioned alongside such companies as<br />
Maatschappij Discordia (a loyal guest at Kaaitheater), Tg Stan<br />
(Matthias <strong>De</strong> Koning was a supervisor of the company’s first productions<br />
together with <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>), Cie <strong>De</strong> Koe and Dito’Dito.<br />
Nevertheless, in Usurpation there was already close collaboration<br />
with Mieke Verdin (now with Dito’Dito). <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s choice<br />
of Frank Vercruyssen and Willy Thomas (Dito’Dito and often as<br />
a guest at Tg Stan) for Het Kind van de Smid possibly says more<br />
about the relationship between <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s artistic outlook and<br />
that of other companies. On the occasion of the tenth anniversary<br />
of Tg Stan in <strong>De</strong>cember 2000 and the associated festive programme<br />
in which several ‘like-minded performers’ appeared, <strong>De</strong><br />
<strong>Pauw</strong> was also one of the invitees. He performed W.H. Auden’s<br />
monologue Herodes, which contributed to the development of<br />
Larf. The affinity (let’s call it a similar colour rather than an<br />
explicit resemblance) is to be found primarily in a similar attitude<br />
to acting and the speaking of lines. The actor’s performance is<br />
transparent, and the person is clearly to be sensed behind the<br />
character. An important element is ensemble work, in which the<br />
actors’ pleasure in performing also remains palpable. Content<br />
and language are the most important means of communicating<br />
with each other and with the audience. Technical tours de force,<br />
a superfluous set and any form of aest<strong>het</strong>ics that hinders direct<br />
contact with the audience are avoided. Instead, space is given to<br />
playful irony, rhythm and deliberate speech. At its heart is the<br />
emancipated actor, who is himself responsible for what he wants<br />
to tell. The absence of a real director (there usually isn’t one, at<br />
most a coach/questioner) is closely connected to this. A great<br />
many differences can also be pointed out, of course: <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong><br />
likes to use a sort of sensual Flemish in which he cherishes every<br />
word on his lips before he lets go of it. In contrast to the sharp,<br />
rapid dialogues of Tg Stan and Cie <strong>De</strong> Koe, he gives us guarded,<br />
meticulously timed speech whereby the poetry of the written<br />
word also comes to the surface.<br />
With Weg in 1998 and Larf in 2000, <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> received the<br />
recognition as a performing artist that he deserved. The selection<br />
of the first piece for the 1999 Dutch-Flemish Theatre Festival,<br />
and the award, for both pieces, of the Océ Podium Prize in 2000,<br />
are the most obvious expressions of acclaim. Several days after<br />
54 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001<br />
structural and artistic context<br />
the prize was awarded, <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> said, ‘I received this prize for<br />
my plays Weg and Larf, but I also see it as a crowning of my<br />
career. I really had the feeling that everyone was pleased to see<br />
me get it. I have quite often received unsightly little statues, but<br />
money – real money – is after all the most solid proof of appreciation<br />
one can get.’ 24 The publication of virtually all <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’s<br />
writing in the book Werk, extremely well received by the literary<br />
critics, has also brought him much attention in 2000.<br />
One reason why <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> has in the past been honoured for<br />
his artistic work, but is seldom named on the list of recent theatre<br />
innovators, is that he operates largely alone. Because he has<br />
never had his own company, collective or theatre group, (except<br />
for Radeis), he is more often seen as an individual in a changing<br />
landscape. His recent appointment as artistic director of HetNet<br />
in Bruges may change this. Just like Tom Jansen and Dirk<br />
Roofthooft, <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> belongs to that group of actors in the Low<br />
Countries who have acquired a respected position of their own<br />
on the basis of their highly personal approach to and mastery of<br />
the profession. Association with a company, a particular director<br />
or a successful production is of secondary importance. To the<br />
outside world, <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> is in the first instance a versatile artist<br />
who writes, acts, makes films and plays, and all in a number of<br />
semi-casual working relationships. The fact that, precisely as a<br />
result of this position, he is constantly involved in the margins of<br />
theatrical renewal (most clearly in internationalisation, multidisciplinarity<br />
and the emancipation of the actor) usually goes unnoticed.<br />
As an artist, <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> has never presented himself as an<br />
innovator. He enthusiastically joins in the changes, or encourages<br />
them, and then soon completely changes direction. Throughout<br />
his twenty-year career, this artistic integrity, combined with the<br />
authenticity of his story, has been the most important thread<br />
recognised by critics, play-makers and audiences. The cancellation<br />
of two productions (Wolf, planned for 1985, and <strong>De</strong><br />
vrouwen, for 1995) because proper collaboration could not be<br />
guaranteed, only serves to reinforce this. <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> is seen in the<br />
first place as an honest, independent and, above all, talented<br />
artist. Someone who prefers searching to knowing, probing to<br />
grasping and growing in the course of time to running in the<br />
race. In his introduction to Cesare Pavese’s text in Etcetera – the<br />
piece that is also quoted in the first programme book at HetNet<br />
– Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> ends his description of urban life with the fol-<br />
55 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001
josse de pauw<br />
lowing lines, which, to conclude, are also a fine expression of his<br />
own artistic path:<br />
‘Real walkers, with knee breeches and rucksacks, will call what<br />
I do sauntering. It’s fine by me. As long as I don’t have to have a<br />
goal, do not have to keep a record of the kilometres covered, and<br />
am allowed to forget the names of the significant places.’ 25<br />
56 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001<br />
notes<br />
1. Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>. ‘Manifest. Van saters en eiknimfen’, in: Etcetera, 14, 56-67,<br />
August 1996, p. 36.<br />
2. Anne-Marie Van Wijnsberghe, interview with Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, 15 th November<br />
1996.<br />
3. Mark Schaevers. ‘Vroeger wou ik priester worden, nu God’, in: Humo, 20th<br />
<strong>De</strong>cember 1990.<br />
4. Anne-Marie Van Wijnsberghe, interview, 15 th November 1996.<br />
5. Johan Wambacq. ‘Radeis rijdt zich vrolijk te pletter’, in: Etcetera, 2, 5, January<br />
1984.<br />
6. Carlos Tindemans. The Flemish Theatre and the work of Radeis. Published by<br />
the Flemish Community, General Commission for International Cultural<br />
Cooperation, Brussels, Schaamte, 1984, p. 15. This booklet was published on the<br />
occasion of Radeis’ performance at the Olympic Arts Festival in Los Angeles and<br />
apart from various individual articles, is the only thing published about Radeis.<br />
7. Edward van Heer in Knack, 20 th March 1985.<br />
8. Marianne Van Kerkhoven in Sieben Stücke aus Flandern und den<br />
Niederlanden, Verlag der Autoren, Frankfurt am Main, 1993, p. 490.<br />
9. Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> in conversation with Anton Segers, ‘Wat Josse zegt over wat<br />
men over Josse zegt’, in <strong>De</strong> Scène, 33, 310, September 1991, pp. 3-5.<br />
10. A conversation with Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> and Peter Van Kraaij, ‘Het staat op de<br />
scène, dus we noemen <strong>het</strong> theater’, in Theaterschrift, 1991, p. 14.<br />
11. Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> in conversation with Freddi Smekens, ‘Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>: de durf<br />
van een rasacteur’, in <strong>De</strong>ze Week, 22 nd March, 1989.<br />
12. Roland Barthes, Fragments d’un discours amoureux, Editions du Seuil, Paris,<br />
1977, p. 14.<br />
13. Erwin Jans, ‘Het wachten van Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’, in Etcetera, 10, 37, April<br />
1992, 33.<br />
14. Jan Lampo, ‘Het Kind van de Smid’, in <strong>De</strong> Standaard, 23 rd February 1991.<br />
15. Hanny Alkema, ‘Fantasy als wapen’, in Toneel Teatraal, 112, 7, September<br />
1991, 33.<br />
16. Edward Van Heer, ‘Verre Familie’, in Knack, 9th January 1991.<br />
17. Jef Verheyen, ‘Het Kind van de Smid’ in <strong>De</strong> Morgen, 18 th January 1991.<br />
18. See also Jef Aerts, ‘Het drama <strong>voor</strong>bij? Analyse van theaterteksten van Josse<br />
<strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>. Toneelmatigheid in Ward Comblez en Het Kind van de Smid.’<br />
Unpublished MA dissertation, Leuven, 1995.<br />
19. Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> in conversation with Jef Aerts, ‘Een groot cadeau’, in Tijd<br />
Cultuur, 3 rd May 2000.<br />
20. Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> in conversation with Bart Vanegeren, ‘Ik ben een labiel konijn,<br />
een dolgedraaid insect’, in Humo, 3 rd October 2000).<br />
21. Anne Brumagne, ‘Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> gaat aan de slag bij Victoria’, in <strong>De</strong> Morgen,<br />
29 th January 1999.<br />
22. Marianne Van Kerkhoven, in Het Net, seizoen 2000-2001, 2000, p. 9.<br />
23. Johan Wambacq, ‘Het nieuwe Vlaamse theater: pure Diogenes!’ in <strong>De</strong><br />
Nieuwe Maand, no. 7, 1986.<br />
24. Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> in conversation with Piet Piryns and Tine Vandendriessche, ‘Ik<br />
voel me goed als ik bekeken word’, in Knack, 29 th November 2000, p. 14.<br />
25. Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, ‘Manifest. Van saters en eiknimfen’, in Etcetera, 14, 56-57,<br />
August 1996, 36.<br />
57 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001
WORK / THEATRE HISTORY<br />
Theatre<br />
The following are ordered by season with the title of the production in<br />
italics, the name of the author in brackets, the role played by Josse <strong>De</strong><br />
<strong>Pauw</strong> (if known), the name of the director, the producer, and the location<br />
and date of the opening if known.<br />
1972-1973<br />
Repelsteeltje (T. Braun and T. Payer). Role. Director: René Verreth.<br />
MMT. / Helena of de levensvreugde (André Roussin). Role. Director:<br />
Frans Dijck. MMT.<br />
1973-1974<br />
Francesco Furioso (Mark Alexander). Role. Director: Eddy Van der<br />
Auwera. MMT. / <strong>De</strong> bende van Jan de Lichte (Pieter <strong>De</strong> Prins after Louis<br />
Paul Boon). Role. Director: Jaak Vissenaken. MMT.<br />
1976-1977<br />
Vreemd kind in je straat (Eva Bal). Role. Director: Eva Bal. Arca<br />
Nationaal Eigentijds Theater. / Emballage Kado (improvisation). Role.<br />
Director: Eva Bal. Producer: Rudi Van Vlaanderen. BKT / Johnny so<br />
long (Vivienne C. Welburn). Role. Director: Ronny Waterschoot.<br />
Producer: Rudi Van Vlaanderen. BKT. / Sierkus Radeis (Radeis).<br />
Concept and creation: Jan <strong>De</strong> Bruyne, Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, Erik <strong>De</strong> Volder,<br />
Pat van Hemelrijck. Production: Beursschouwburg for Mallemunt. (July<br />
1977, last performance date unknown).<br />
1977-1978<br />
Radeis wegens ziekte. Theater zonder veel cinema (Radeis). Concept and<br />
creation: Jan <strong>De</strong> Bruyne, Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, Dirk <strong>Pauw</strong>els, Pat van<br />
Hemelrijck. Production: Beursschouwburg in collaboration with<br />
Schaamte. (May 1978 – March 1981).<br />
1978-1979<br />
Tijdelijk Geschift (improvisation). Role. Director: Eva Bal. Producer:<br />
Rudi van Vlaanderen. BKT.<br />
1979-1980<br />
Gag-o-matic (Radeis). Concept and creation: Jan <strong>De</strong> Bruyne, Josse <strong>De</strong><br />
<strong>Pauw</strong>, Dirk <strong>Pauw</strong>els, Pat van Hemelrijck. Production: Schaamte. (July<br />
1979 – February 1980). / Ik wist niet dat Engeland zo mooi was<br />
58 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001<br />
work / theatre history<br />
(Radeis). Concept and creation: Jan <strong>De</strong> Bruyne, Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, Dirk<br />
<strong>Pauw</strong>els, Pat van Hemelrijck. Production: Schaamte. (21 July 1979 –<br />
February 1983).<br />
1980-1981<br />
Vogels (Radeis). Concept and creation: Georges Brouckaert, Josse <strong>De</strong><br />
<strong>Pauw</strong>, Dirk <strong>Pauw</strong>els, Pat van Hemelrijck. Production: Schaamte. (14<br />
February 1981 – May 1984)<br />
1981-1982<br />
Echafaudages (Radeis). Concept and creation: Georges Brouckaert,<br />
Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, Dirk <strong>Pauw</strong>els, Pat van Hemelrijck. Production:<br />
Schaamte. Co-production: Shaffy Theater, Amsterdam. (first version 23<br />
September 1981- January 1983).<br />
1984-1985<br />
Usurpation (Josse de <strong>Pauw</strong>). Actors: Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> (man), Mieke<br />
Verdin (woman). Music: Peter Vermeersch and Danny Van Hoeck. Set:<br />
Gorik Lindemans. Director: Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>. Production: Schaamte. Coproduction:<br />
Beursschouwburg and Lantaren/Venster, Rotterdam.<br />
Beursschouwburg. 7 March 1995.<br />
1985-1986<br />
Wolf (Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>). Role. Music: Peter Vermeersch and Danny Van<br />
Hoeck. Dramaturge: Marianne Van Kerkhoven. Director: Jan Lauwers.<br />
Production: Schaamte. (unperformed).<br />
1986-1987<br />
Onder <strong>het</strong> melkwoud (Dylan Thomas, translated by Hugo Claus).<br />
Adaptation: Aat Ceelen. Role: Kapitein Kat. Music: Thijs van der Poll,<br />
Bart van Rosmalen. Orkater. Opening: 20 March 1987. / Het Stuk-Stuk<br />
(Jan <strong>De</strong>corte). Role: Finnish Diplomat. Director: Jan <strong>De</strong>corte. Jan<br />
<strong>De</strong>corte and Co. Beursschouwburg. 15 January 1987.<br />
1987-1988<br />
In Ondertussendoor (Jan <strong>De</strong>corte). Role. Director: Jan <strong>De</strong>corte. Jan<br />
<strong>De</strong>corte and Co. Beursschouwburg. 11 November 1987.<br />
1988-1989<br />
Ward Comblez. He do the life in different voices (Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> in collaboration<br />
with Peter Van Kraaij). Role: Ward Comblez. Set: Francky<br />
<strong>De</strong>coninck. Music: Peter Vermeersch. Dramaturge: Marianne Van<br />
Kerkhoven. Director: Peter Van Kraaij. Production: Kaaitheater. Coproduction:<br />
Lantaren/Venster, Rotterdam, Beurschouwburg and <strong>De</strong><br />
Voorziening, Groningen. Beursschouwburg. 17 March 1989.<br />
59 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001
josse de pauw<br />
1990-1991<br />
Het Kind van de Smid (Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> and Peter Van Kraaij). Actors:<br />
Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>: ‘Het Kind’, Willy Thomas: ‘Commentator’, Frank<br />
Vercruyssen: ‘Pomp’, José Verheire: ‘Smid’. Music: Alfred Schnittke.<br />
Dramaturge: Marianne Van Kerkhoven. Director: Peter Van Kraaij.<br />
Production: Kaaitheater. Co-production: Felix Meritis, Amsterdam,<br />
Kaaitheater. 18 <strong>De</strong>cember 1990. / Het Trio in Mi-Bémol (Eric Rohmer).<br />
Role: Paul. Music: Mozart. Director: Jan Ritsema. Production:<br />
Kaaitheater. Kaaitheater. 17 May 1991. / Brigitje (after Gorki, Kroetz,<br />
Slavkin, Timmermans, Lorca, Muller, Shakespeare). Coaching: Josse <strong>De</strong><br />
<strong>Pauw</strong>. Tg Stan. Théatre de la Balsamine. 23 May 1991)<br />
1992-1993<br />
<strong>De</strong> meid slaan (after Baudelaire, Lucebert, Sidney Michaels, Strindberg,<br />
Kotaro Takamura, Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, Tom Jansen). Actors: Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>,<br />
Tom Jansen, Fumiyo Ikeda. Director: Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, Tom Jansen.<br />
Production: Kaaitheater, Nationaal Fonds Amsterdam. Kaaitheater. 17<br />
Februari 1993.<br />
1993-1994<br />
Exiles (James Joyce). Role: Richard Rowan. Director: Peter Van Kraaij.<br />
Kaaitheater. 10 November 1993. / Momentum (text contributions by<br />
Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>). Music: Eric Sleichim. Set: Trudo <strong>Engels</strong>. Production:<br />
Blindman Kwartet. Co-production: Kaaitheater. Kaaitheater. 21 January<br />
1994. / <strong>De</strong> Oplosbare Vis (Witold Gombrowicz). Lyrics: Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>.<br />
Actors: Dirk Van Dijck and Rijszard Turbiasz. Music: Peter Vermeersch.<br />
Production: Ensemble Walpurgis. Co-production: Kaaitheater. <strong>De</strong>Singel.<br />
23 February 1994.<br />
1994-1995<br />
<strong>De</strong> verhuizing (Chantal Akerman). Role. Director: Jurgen Gosch.<br />
Production: Kaaitheater. Kaaitheater. 11 January 1995. / <strong>De</strong> Vrouwen<br />
(after Michel <strong>De</strong> Ghelderode). <strong>De</strong>sign: An Weckx. Actor, director and<br />
concept: Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>. Production: Kaaitheater, NTG. (unperformed). /<br />
Trots vlees (James Purdy, Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, Tom Jansen). Role. Director:<br />
Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> and Tom Jansen. Production: Laagland. Executive producer:<br />
Monty, Antwerp. Co-production: Needcompany. Monty. 14 June<br />
1995.<br />
1995-1996<br />
<strong>De</strong> Wijze van Zaal 7 (Hans Aarsman). Actor: Dirk Roofthooft.<br />
Dramaturge: Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>. Director: Tom Jansen. Production:<br />
Laagland. Co-production: Nationaal Fonds Amsterdam. Vooruit. 23<br />
February 1996.<br />
60 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001<br />
work / theatre history<br />
1997-1998<br />
Wolokolamsker Chaussee I-V (Heiner Müller). Role. Director: Peter<br />
Van Kraaij. Production: Theater Antigone and Kaaitheater. Kaaitheater.<br />
4 February 1998. / Weg (Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>). Role. Director: Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong><br />
and Peter Vermeersch. Music: Peter Vermeersch. Musicians: Peter<br />
Vermeersch and Pierre Vervloesem. Production: Kaaitheater. Kaaitheater.<br />
9 June 1998.<br />
1998-1999<br />
Weg (Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>). Role. Director: Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>. Music: Peter<br />
Vermeersch, Pierre Vervloesem. Production: Kaaitheater. Kaaitheaterstudio’s.<br />
9 juni 1998. / Zetelkat (Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>). Actors: Dimitri Leue,<br />
Tine Reymer and Wouter Hendrickx. Production: Arlette Van Overvelt.<br />
Dramaturge: Griet Op de Beeck. Production: luxemburg. CC Berchem.<br />
30 January 1999.<br />
1999-2000<br />
Larf (Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>). Actors: Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, Tom Jansen, Dirk<br />
Roofthooft. Director: Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>. Music: Peter Vermeersch and The<br />
Flat Earth Society. Production: Victoria. Vooruit, 4 May 2000.<br />
2000-2001<br />
Übung (Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>). Actors in film: Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> (Robert), Lies<br />
<strong>Pauw</strong>els (Ria), Dirk Roofthooft (Ivo), Bernard Van Eeghem (Olivier),<br />
George-Alexander van Dam (György), Carly Wijs (Rolande). Actors on<br />
stage: A.M. Bogaerts (Ivo), Romy Billion (Ria), Louise Carpentier<br />
(Rolande), Dimitri Dauwens (Olivier), Elke <strong>De</strong> Rijcke (György), Jasper<br />
Sturtewagen (Robert). Production: Victoria. <strong>De</strong> Balie (Amsterdam) 27<br />
April 2001.<br />
Kind (Tom Jansen), Actors: Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, Tom Jansen, Director: Jan<br />
Lauwers. Production: Het Net. Het Net, 21 June 2001.<br />
Film parts and films directed<br />
1982<br />
L’union fait la force (series of 10 short films). Role. Director: Radeis.<br />
1983<br />
<strong>De</strong> stille oceaan. Role. Director: Digna Sinke.<br />
1984<br />
Wildschut. Role. Director: Bobby Erhart.<br />
Un film. Role: Director: Erik <strong>Pauw</strong>els.<br />
61 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001
josse de pauw<br />
1985<br />
<strong>De</strong> wisselwachter. Role. Director: Jos Stelling.<br />
Un Ange Passe. Role. Director: Marie André.<br />
1986<br />
Skin. Role. Director: Guido Hendrickx.<br />
Abel. Extra. Director: Alex Van Warmerdam.<br />
1987<br />
Crazy Love. Role. Director: Dominique <strong>De</strong>ruddere.<br />
1988<br />
Sailors don’t cry. Role. Director: Marc Didden.<br />
1989<br />
L’Air de Rien. Role. Director: Mary Jiminez.<br />
Wait until Spring, Bandini. Role. Director: Dominique <strong>De</strong>ruddere.<br />
1991<br />
Toto le Héros. Role. Director: Jaco van Dormael.<br />
1992<br />
Vinaya. Role. Directors: Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> and Peter Van Kraaij.<br />
1993<br />
Just Friends. Role. Director: Marc-Henri Wajnberg.<br />
1995<br />
Hoogste tijd. Role. Director: Frans Weisz.<br />
<strong>De</strong> vliegende Hollander. Role. Director: Jos Stelling.<br />
1996<br />
Le regardeur. Role. Director: Erik <strong>Pauw</strong>els.<br />
1997<br />
Hombres Complicados. Role. Director: Dominique <strong>De</strong>ruddere.<br />
1998<br />
S. Role. Director: Guido Henderickx.<br />
1999<br />
Iedereen beroemd. Role. Director: Dominique <strong>De</strong>ruddere.<br />
62 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001<br />
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY<br />
Archive material<br />
Vlaams Theater Instituut. Schaamte and Kaaitheater archives. Laagland<br />
archives. Beursschouwburg archives. Archives and Museum van <strong>het</strong><br />
Vlaamse Cultuurleven Antwerp. Interviews with <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> by Anne-<br />
Marie Van Wijnsberghe (15 November 1996 and 21 February 1997).<br />
Plays by <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong><br />
<strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, Josse. Ward Comblez. He do the life in different voices.<br />
Leuven: Kritak, 1989.<br />
<strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, Josse and Peter Van Kraaij. Het Kind van de Smid. Leuven:<br />
Kritak, 1990.<br />
<strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, Josse. Ward Comblez. He do the life in different voices, in<br />
Theaterteksten: sieben Stücke aus Flandern end den Niederlanden<br />
(translation Petra Serwe), Frankfurt am Main: Verlag der Autoren,<br />
1993.<br />
<strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, Josse. <strong>De</strong> oplosbare vis, song texts in programme brochure by<br />
Ensemble Walpurgis, Antwerp, 1994.<br />
<strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, Josse. Ward Comblez/L’enfant du Forgeron (translation<br />
Monique Nagielkopf). Amsterdam: International Theatre & Film<br />
Books, 1998.<br />
Other writings by <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong><br />
‘1001 notities’, in <strong>De</strong> Standaard der letteren, published monthly from<br />
16 January, 1997.<br />
‘Auteur en acteur Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> duikt onder in de Chineze poëzie’, in:<br />
Knack, 29 April 1992.<br />
‘Een doodnormaal land, Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> in Japan’, in Nieuw Wereldtijdschrift,<br />
6, 1996: 28-37.<br />
‘Gas’, in Burengerucht. Het Vlaams verhaal doet weer de ronde (collection<br />
of short stories), Leuven: Kritak, 1990.<br />
‘Geen sprookje’ in Les Cuisiniers Dangereux (collection of comic strips<br />
with drawings by Eric Joris), Roularta Books, 1996.<br />
‘Het dagboek van Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>: Big in Japan’, in Humo, 27 May<br />
1992.<br />
‘Het dagboek van Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>: Love me tender, love me true’, in<br />
Humo, 2 June 1992.<br />
63 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001
josse de pauw<br />
<strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, Josse and Mark Schaevers. ‘John Berger: In de hemel is solidariteit<br />
niet belangrijk, Maar in de hel wel’, in Humo, 5 February 1991.<br />
‘Ik zag Jef een keer life en er was niks veranderd: 5 x denken aan Jef’, in<br />
Etcetera, 19, 1987: 66.<br />
‘Manifest. Van saters en eiknimfen’, in Etcetera, 13, 56-57, 1996: 36-37.<br />
Werk, Antwerp: Houtekiet, 2000.<br />
Articles on Radeis<br />
Alleene, Carlos. ‘Buitenlandse interesse <strong>voor</strong> de grappen en grollen van<br />
Radeis’, in <strong>De</strong> Spectator, 11 August 1979.<br />
Arteel, Roger. ‘Radeis is een manier van leven’, in Knack, 8 <strong>De</strong>cember<br />
1982.<br />
‘Au cloître des Célestins: “Echafaudages”, un pièce qui nous vient de<br />
Belgique’, in La Marseillaise, 2 August 1983.<br />
Brès, Martine. ‘“Echafaudages” par Radeis. Quand le quotidien bascule<br />
dans le délire’, in Le Dauphiné, 2 August 1983.<br />
Colgan, Gerry. ‘I Didn’t know The Continent was So Beautiful at TCD’,<br />
in The Irish Times, 28 September 1982.<br />
<strong>De</strong> Vos, Jozef. ‘Het cartoontheater van Radeis’, in Ons Erfdeel, 2, 1982,<br />
pp 295-197.<br />
Dowling, Noeleen. ‘<strong>De</strong>sert island magic’, in Evening Press, 28<br />
September 1982.<br />
Draka, Sylvie. ‘Flemish Clowns set up shop in fields of folly’, Los<br />
Angeles Times, 30 June 1989.<br />
Granger, Annie. ‘Un échafaudage de Rad(e)is, in Le Soleil de Colombie,<br />
8 June 1984.<br />
Levis, Jeff. ‘Brazil and Belgium are worlds apart’, in The Daily Journal,<br />
2 August 1981.<br />
Mallems, Alex. ‘Humor met de broek omhoog’, in Tmuzet, June 1984.<br />
Mn. ‘“Vogels”: de drôles d’oiseaux’, in Alsace, 4 <strong>De</strong>cember 1982.<br />
Myler, Thomas. ‘A pot pourri of fun, frolics and zaniness’, in Evening<br />
Herald, 28 September 1982.<br />
Pascal, Fabienne; ‘Echafaudages. Quatre Belges en folie’, in Avignon<br />
Festival, 1983.<br />
Paret, Pierre. ‘“Echaufaudages” par la compagnie Radeis’, in La<br />
Marseillaise, 2 August 1983.<br />
Post, Hans-Maarten. ‘<strong>De</strong> oogst van Radeis’, in Oor (Belgica issue), 19<br />
October 1985.<br />
Singerman, <strong>De</strong>borah. ‘Same play, new beach’, in TV and Entertainment<br />
Times, 16-22 February 1983.<br />
Siskind, Jacob. ‘Flemish trio, Radeis, goes far beyond mime’, in The<br />
Citizen, Ottawa, 1984.<br />
64 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001<br />
selected bibliography<br />
Siskind, Jacob. ‘Mime company unleashes flood of emotion in spectacular<br />
show’, in The Citizen, Ottawa, 2 June 1984.<br />
Tindemans, Carlos. ‘Exit Radeis’, in Etcetera, 8, 1984, pp. 59-60.<br />
Tindemans, Carlos. The Flemish Theatre and the work of Radeis.<br />
Brussels: The Flemish Community, General Commission for International<br />
Cultural Cooperation, 1984.<br />
Van der Wee, Anne. ‘Theatergroep Radeis: altijd goed <strong>voor</strong> een genereuze<br />
grabbel humor’, in Intermediair (weekend edition), 28 October 1983.<br />
‘Vlaamse Radeis gedijt in internationale teatertuin’, in <strong>De</strong> Standaard, 17<br />
June 1981.<br />
Walsch, Stephen. ‘Wish we were here’, in Irish Independant, 28<br />
September 1982.<br />
Wambacq, Johan. ‘Radeis rijdt zich vrolijk te pletter’, in Etcetera, 5,<br />
1984: 8-10.<br />
Weatherly, Nancy. ‘This is no ordinary radish’, in North Shore News, 17<br />
June 1984.<br />
Articles on <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong><br />
Aerts, Jef. ‘Het drama <strong>voor</strong>bij?’ Analyse van de theaterteksten van Josse<br />
<strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>. Toneelmatigheid in Ward Comblez. He do the life in different<br />
voices and Het Kind van de Smid (diss.). Leuven: KUL, 1995.<br />
Alkema, Hanny. ‘Fantasie als wapen: Acteur Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’, in Toneel<br />
Theatraal, 7, 1991: 30-35.<br />
Baeten, Marleen. ‘Een verlangen naar onsterfelijkheid. <strong>De</strong> oefeningen<br />
van Weg en Kung Fu’, in Etcetera, 65, 1998: 15-20.<br />
Eeckhout, Bart. ‘Exiles: een dubbele bespreking’, in Documenta, I,<br />
1994: 4-18.<br />
Franco, Judith. ‘Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, kunstenaar uit één stuk’, in Marie-<br />
Claire, <strong>De</strong>cember 1993.<br />
Huys, Jacky. ‘DUO: Peter Van Kraaij en Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’, in Knack, 3<br />
November 1993.<br />
Jans, Erwin. ‘Het wachten van Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’, in Etcetera, 37, 1992: 33.<br />
Laevaerts, Frieda. ‘Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>: ik neem de mensen zoals ze zijn’, in<br />
Exclusief, September-October, 1993.<br />
Oranje, Hans. ‘Treiterliefde in een verlichte linnenkast’, in Trouw, 26<br />
March 1985.<br />
Schaevers, Mark. ‘Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>: ‘Vroeger wou ik priester worden, nu<br />
God’, in Humo, 20 <strong>De</strong>cember 1990.<br />
Segers, Anton. ‘Wat Josse zegt over wat men over Josse zegt’, in <strong>De</strong><br />
Scène, 310, 1991: 4-5.<br />
Six, Fred. ‘Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, alias Ward Comblez’, in Ons Erfdeel, 4,<br />
1989: 613-615.<br />
65 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001
josse de pauw<br />
Van Kerkhoven, Marianne and Sigrid Bousset. ‘Het staat op de scène,<br />
dus noemen we <strong>het</strong> theater: een gesprek met Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong> en Peter<br />
Van Kraaij’, in Theaterschrift, I, 1991: 11-24.<br />
Van Kerkhoven, Marianne. ‘<strong>De</strong> reis naar de taal: Het werk van Josse <strong>De</strong><br />
<strong>Pauw</strong>’, in Ons Erfdeel, I, 1993: 32-39.<br />
Van Kerkhoven, Marianne. ‘Spelen met <strong>het</strong> risico om over de grens te<br />
gaan: een gesprek met Jansen & <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’, in Theaterschrift, 3, 1993:<br />
153-171.<br />
Van Kerkhoven, Marianne. ‘Tussen oog en oor. Een gesprek met Peter<br />
Van Kraaij’, in Theaterschrift, 4, 1993, pp 117-139.<br />
Van Wijnsberghe, Anne-Marie. Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>: een theaterbiografie<br />
(diss). Wilrijk: UIA, 1997.<br />
Vander Veken, Ingrid. ‘<strong>De</strong> poëtische epiek van Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>’, in Kunst<br />
en Cultuur, March 1992: 30-31.<br />
Verduyckt, Paul. ‘Evenals een kind van drie’, in Knack, 14 June 1995.<br />
Verstockt, Dirk. ‘Het Kind van de Smid’, in Etcetera, 33, 1991: 54-56.<br />
66 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001<br />
67 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001
This is a Vlaams Theater Instituut publication, in association with the Theatre<br />
Studies departments at the four Flemish universities: U.I.Antwerp, University of<br />
Ghent, K.U.Leuven, V.U.Brussels.<br />
Editor in chief<br />
Geert Opsomer<br />
Editorial board<br />
Pol Arias, Annie <strong>De</strong>clerck, Ronald Geerts, Erwin Jans, Rudi Laermans,<br />
Kristel Marcoen, Klaas Tindemans, Frank Peeters, Luk van den Dries,<br />
Marianne Van Kerkhoven, Jaak van Schoor<br />
<strong>De</strong>sign<br />
Inge Ketelers<br />
Photogravure and printing<br />
Cultura, Wetteren<br />
Print run<br />
500 copies.<br />
Kritisch Theater Lexicon 14 e, a portrait of Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong><br />
Written and researched by<br />
Jef Aerts and Anne-Marie Van Wijnsberghe<br />
Translation<br />
Gregory Ball<br />
Correction<br />
Gregory Ball, Katrien Darras<br />
Editor<br />
Geert Opsomer<br />
Reader<br />
Griet Vandewalle<br />
Photo-portrait of Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong><br />
Jérôme de Perlinghi (photo from the ‘20 jaar Kaaitheater’ series)<br />
Photos<br />
p. 29: Kaaitheater archives/ p. 30: Michiel Hendryckx, Kaaitheater archives /<br />
p. 30: Corneel Maria Ryckeboer, Lies Willaert / p. 32: Patrick <strong>De</strong> Spiegelaere<br />
Vlaams Theater Instituut v.z.w., Sainctelettesquare 19, 1000 Brussel,<br />
tel: +32.2/201.09.06, fax: +32.2/203.02.05<br />
e-mail: info@vti.be website: http://www.vti.be<br />
ISBN 90-74351-27-1 D/2001/4610/05<br />
No part of this book may be reproduced and/or published without the prior permission<br />
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The Vlaams Theater Instituut is a centre for research, documentation, advice and<br />
the promotion of the performing arts. It is subsidised by the Arts <strong>De</strong>partment of<br />
the Ministry of the Flemish Community and is sponsored by Océ Belgium.<br />
This publication was created with the support of The Theatre Festival.<br />
A translation of: Josse <strong>De</strong> <strong>Pauw</strong>, Vlaams Theater Instituut, Brussels, 1998.<br />
© 2001 / Registered publisher: Klaas Tindemans