De Pauw (Engels) - depot voor het VTi

josse de pauw
The wanderer in the landscape:
artistic context and reception
Josse De Pauw has never worked very much in the larger Flemish
companies. He always continued to hone his own approach,
which he was free to mark out in the so-called ‘secondary circuit’.
Nevertheless, in the Radeis performances he at one time
encountered, and supplied inspiration to, the innovative movements
of the eighties and the present generation of play-makers
have probably learnt something from him too – even though his
career has not always been seen as a continuous thread. The fact
that Josse De Pauw is usually understood to be a loner and not
as part of the shifting panoramic landscape of theatre is sustained
by several factors. There is for instance his loyalty to an artistic
family, the need to be able to work in peace and the somewhat
slow tempo at which new productions appear. In addition, the
need to play various fields, both in theatre and the other arts,
means that he is hard to force into one particular tradition or
development in theatre. Yet De Pauw is in this regard by no
means alone in Dutch-language theatre. In fact, by consciously
standing on the sidelines of the theatre establishment, he more
than once ended up at the heart of theatrical renewal.
The first extremely important event in this respect was the development
of Radeis. Not only did the group’s international reputation
have a great influence on the development of Kaaitheater
(festival and organisation), but in addition, in the early eighties
Radeis’ wordless theatre contributed to the emergence of the radically
renewed discourse on physical theatre and contemporary
dance in Flanders. Their unconventional handling of visuality
and the body, free from traditional theatres of movement and
objects, was a step in this direction. Furthermore, their frivolous,
disarticulating and often mildly destructive treatment of theatre
conventions undoubtedly had an influence on postmodern theatre
productions in subsequent years.
Against the background of what was later to be labelled the theatrical
renewal of the eighties, Radeis was very early in making an
impression: they were already working on their own house style
in 1977, one which was also enthusiastically received abroad
after 1980. The whole Radeis repertoire had already been (pro-
50 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001
structural and artistic context
visionally) shaped before 1981, whereas controversial productions
by Jan Decorte (Maria Magdalena), Ivo Van Hove (De
Geruchten), Herman Gilis (Het Laxeermiddel) and Jan Fabre
(Het is theater zoals te verwachten en te voorzien was) only
appeared as from that year. Even the other two resident Schaamte
companies, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker with Rosas and Jan
Lauwers’ Epigonentheater, only really started to operate fully in
the early eighties.
The influence (direct and indirect) of Radeis cannot be separated
from the interaction with the international theatre scene. For
Belgium, Radeis were a successful company abroad, which at the
same time opened up the borders in order both to bring in other
innovative companies (The Wooster Group, Pina Bausch, Jürgen
Gosch, Maatschappij Discordia, etc.) and to promote its own
groups abroad. The boundary-breaking nature of this new generation,
in terms of both geography and form and discipline, had
found a wordless messenger in Radeis. This group’s acutely
funny and, most importantly, unpretentious theatre was sufficient
to burst forever the petrified legacy of the late seventies.
Not by using the tough approach of what was later to be labelled
the ‘Flemish wave’, but with jollity, subtlety and, above all,
aware of the relative nature of every theatre tradition. Whereas
others, mainly because they were unhappy with dramatic arts
education in their own country, looked for new languages of
movement elsewhere, Radeis sought renewal within itself and in
the tradition of popular theatre, by upsetting the old theatrical
codes. Radeis was at the same time a very early exponent (e.g. in
their opposition to the increasingly slogan-based theatre of political
awareness) and stimulator of theatrical renewal, which was
accompanied by a changed attitude to the actor and the dramaturgical,
disciplinary and stage material used. Old dramatic
precepts were unremittingly attacked. It was, for example, no
longer necessary to play characters. Empathic-portrait acting and
pedantic acting were replaced by acting oriented very much to
the ‘here and now’, which consciously dealt with such notions as
the distance and proximity of the character and the person. The
use of the dialogue-based dramatic text gave way to an abundant
variety of materials and disciplines with which one entered into
a ‘dialogue’.
51 / Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001