Jan Lauwers
Jan Lauwers (born in 1957 in Antwerp, Belgium) works across virtually all artistic disciplines. Over the past thirty years, he has become particularly renowned for his pioneering stage work with Needcompany, founded in Brussels in 1986. Works created during this period have been presented, among others, at BOZAR (Brussels) and McaM (Shanghai, China).
From 2009 to 2014, Needcompany served as Artist-in-Residence at the Burgtheater in Vienna. In 2012, Jan Lauwers was awarded the “Golden Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria,” followed in 2014 by the “Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement” of the Venice Biennale – making him the first Belgian to receive this prize in the theatre category.
In 2018, he presented his first opera production at the Salzburg Festival with L’incoronazione di Poppea. Jan Lauwers studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, Belgium. At the end of 1979, together with a group of like-minded artists, he founded the Epigonenensemble, which in 1981 was transformed into the collective Epigonentheater zlv. With six stage productions, the group attracted considerable attention and marked Lauwers’ international breakthrough.
Epigonentheater zlv presented immediate, concrete, and highly visual theatre, in which music and language functioned as structuring elements. Together with Grace Ellen Barkey, Lauwers founded Needcompany, an international collective in which a wide range of artistic personalities collaborate in multifaceted ways.
Since 2001, Maarten Seghers has also been a member of Needcompany, contributing not only his distinctive presence as a performer but also his compositions, which play a significant role in the productions of Jan Lauwers and Grace Ellen Barkey. Since its foundation in 1986, both the collective and its performers have achieved international acclaim. The productions have regularly been performed in several languages; in the early works, the primary focus lay on visual elements, while later productions increasingly placed the narrative itself at the centre.
Through his work in recent years, Lauwers has redefined the concept of the postdramatic.
Performances with Jan Lauwers
with Georg Nigl, Sarah Aristidou, Xavier Sabata, Maria Nazarova, Isabel Signoret, Wolfgang Bankl, Marina Prudenskaya, Gerhard Siegel, Conductor: Pablo Heras-Casado
Le Grand Macabre
Cast on Wednesday 25. March 2026
Abo 10
Ticket information
Einen Wochentag und Lieblingsplätze wählen und fünf Vorstellungen in einer Saison genießen.
In diesem Abo sind folgende Vorstellungen enthalten:
| 17. September 2025 | Tannhäsuer |
| 22. Oktober 2025 | Kallirhoe (Ballett) |
| 12. November 2025 | Faust |
| 25. März 2026 | Le grand macabre |
| 20. Mai 2026 | Les Pêcheurs de perles |
with Katleho Mokhoabane, Hanna-Elisabeth Müller, Florina Ilie, Emily D'Angelo, Conductor: Pablo Heras-Casado
La clemenza di Tito
Cast on Friday 27. March 2026
Zyklus »Neuproduktionen«
Ticket information
Zu den für das Publikum zweifellos begehrtesten Aufführungen gehören die Vorstellungsserien der Premierenproduktionen. Die Aufmerksamkeit richtet sich gleichermaßen auf die szenischen wie musikalischen Neuinterpretationen von Schlüsselwerken der Musiktheaterliteratur.