De Pauw (Engels) - depot voor het VTi

josse de pauw
The 1998 season provided a major break in De Pauw’s career.
Weg was not only both a moment of coagulation and a new start
in his artistic work, as we shall show later, but after this production
De Pauw also brought his years of collaboration with the
Kaaitheater to an end. After the departure of Hugo De Greef,
who would later work in Bruges, De Pauw also decided it was
about time he looked around elsewhere. In 1999 he ended up at
Victoria, the theatre production company in Ghent, which was
headed by his former Radeis colleague Dirk Pauwels.
After a series of interim presentations in front of an audience,
in spring 2000 he completed the music-theatre production Larf.
With three actors (De Pauw, Tom Jansen and Dirk Roofthooft)
on stage, accompanied by the sculptor Koenraad Tinel and a
proper big band (including Peter Vermeersch and Roland Van
Campenhout), this was his largest-scale production to date. In
Larf, the achievements of Weg were further distilled and focused.
On 20 th November 2000 he was awarded the prestigious Océ
Podium Prize for the two productions.
After spending two years at Victoria, from autumn 2000 De
Pauw was granted the responsibility for a company of his own.
At the request of Hugo De Greef, he took over the artistic leadership
of Theater De Korre, which, after the departure of his predecessor
Bob De Moor, was renamed HetNet. In addition to
reruns of Weg and Larf, the first season included two youth productions
directed by De Pauw (Charlotte Mutsaers’ Cheese! and
his own piece Ubung) and a series of compilation evenings
(Sproken).
In directing these two pieces he clearly gave a little more shape
to the previously barely definable persona of Josse De Pauw the
stage director. At one point in the past he had coached the then
very new actors’ company Stan in Jan, scènes uit het leven op het
land (1989) and Brigitje (1991). He saw himself rather as a guide
or a privileged spectator than as a director. De vrouwen, a coproduction
by Kaaitheater and NTG, in which De Pauw was to have
ventured fully into directing, was cancelled.
To limit Josse De Pauw’s artistry to his stage work would do
less than justice to his artistic versatility; he is an actor, playmaker,
film-maker and writer. Over the years he has made a
name for himself as an actor in the film, television and video circuits.
Among the public at large, he is best known for his parts
in the feature films De Stille Oceaan (Digna Sinke, 1983), Skin
8/ Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001
the story of josse de pauw
(Guido Henderickx, 1986), Crazy Love (Dominique Deruddere,
1987), Sailors don’t cry (Marc Didden, 1988), Just Friends (Marc-
Henri Wajnberg, 1993), Hombres Complicados (Dominique
Deruddere, 1997), S (Guido Henderickx, 1998) and Iedereen
Beroemd (Dominique Deruddere, 2000). In addition, apart from
plays (including one play for young people, called Zetelkat, the
first performances of which were given by Luxemburg in 1999)
and film scenarios, he also writes songs (the libretto for De
Oplosbare Vis (1994) by the Walpurgis Ensemble and fragments
of text for Momentum (1994) by the Blindman Quartet), stories
and articles with a very personal approach for newspapers and
magazines (including De Standaard and Humo). In autumn 2000
Houtekiet published the hefty volume Werk, which gathers
together virtually all De Pauw’s writings over the last ten years.
9/ Kritisch Theater Lexicon - 14 e - August 2001