http://www.needcompany.org

Jan Lauwers founded Needcompany together with Grace Ellen Barkey. They together are responsible for Needcompany larger-scale productions. The group of performers Jan Lauwers and Grace Ellen Barkey have put together over the years is quite unique in its versatility. Their associated artists are MaisonDahlBonnema (Hans Petter Dahl & Anna Sophia Bonnema), Lemm&Barkey (Lot Lemm & Grace Ellen Barkey), OHNO Cooperation (Maarten Seghers & Jan Lauwers) and the NC ensemble, which includes the inimitable Viviane De Muynck. They create work of their own under Needcompany’s wing.

Jan Lauwers studied painting at the Academy of Art in Ghent. At the end of 1979 he gathered round him a number of people to form the Epigonenensemble. In 1981 this group was transformed into the Epigonentheater zlvcollective which took the theatre-world by surprise with its six stage productions. In this way Jan Lauwers took his place in the movement for radical change in Flanders in the early ‘80, and also made his international breakthrough. Epigonentheater zlv presented direct, concrete, highly visual theatre that used music and language as structuring elements. Their productions were Already Hurt and not yet War (1981), dE demonstratie (1983), Bulletbird (1983), Background of a Story (1984) and Incident (1985). Jan Lauwers disbanded this collective in 1985 and founded Needcompany.

Since Needcompany was founded in 1986, both its work and its performers have been markedly international.
Lauwers’ training as an artist is decisive in his handling of the theatre medium and leads to a highly individual and in many ways pioneering theatrical idiom that examines the theatre and its meaning. One of its most important characteristics is a transparent, ‘thinking’ acting and the paradox between ‘acting’ and ‘performing’.

Violence, love, death and eroticism are constantly recurring themes in the work of Jan Lauwers and Needcompany. They pervade the Shakespeare plays Lauwers staged in the 1990s and his major project, The Snakesong Trilogy: Snakesong/Le Voyeur (1994), Snakesong/Le Pouvoir (1995) and Snakesong/Le Désir (1996).
In September 1997 he was invited to take part in the theatre section of Documenta X (Kassel), for which he created Caligula, after Camus, the first part of a diptych called No beauty for me there, where human life is rare. With Morning Song (1999), the second part of the diptych No beauty…, Lauwers and Needcompany won an Obie Award in New York.
In 2000 William Forsythe commissioned Lauwers for the production DeaDDogsDon’tDance/DjamesDjoyceDeaD in collaboration with Ballett Frankfurt. In 2002 he created Images of Affection on the occasion of Needcompany’s 15th anniversary. In No Comment (2003), Lauwers presented three monologues and a dance solo. In 2004 he was for the first time invited to the Avignon Festival, where he staged Isabella’s Room, which has won several prizes.In 2006 Lauwers created two productions for the Avignon Festival: The Lobster Shop and All is Vanity, a monologue performed by Viviane De Muynck. 2008 was the year when, at the Salzburger Festspiele, Isabella’s Room and The Lobster Shop were joined by The Deer House, which then all toured together as Sad Face | Happy Face, three stories on human nature. In 2009 Needcompany entered into a joint venture with the Burgtheater in Vienna, where it is ‘artist in residence’.