'dieu& les esprits vivants'

Only the insane and children, it is said, have understood that other myths, good and evil and free-will will disappear with god. There is something akin to this happy knowledge in the work of Jan Decorte. His style of theatre is situated in that zone. The passage of time and the building up of a solid body of work have led this Belgian director to change his approach to creation and to go towards a non-sacred style of theatre with a simple taste." Heralding a renewal of the Flemish Belgian theatre scene in the 1980s, Jan Decorte, wrote and performed his own plays, directed a series of adaptations and more recently sorts of "condensed poetic works" based on classic texts. In particular, he has directed several Shakespeare plays, Macbeth being one of his favourites, as well as other tragical dramatic authors. Causing and repairing fractures, in life as in art, all Jan Decorte's works revolve around these issues and they lead his work into different styles. "Poetical Actional", situation comedy, re-writing textes like Woyzeck, King Lear or Titus Andronicus. Writer, director and actor, not least of all with Jan Fabre, he has also directed several films and documentaries and worked for television. He has even been elected to the Belgian parliament, and is co-founder of, as well as other original and committed projects, The Centre for Equal Opportunities and against Racism. Rudimentary, essential, with intuition as a starting point rather than ideas, for Jan Decorte, the theatre remains, a "fortuitous art to be seen and experienced."


Paintings, pieces, fragments. A text emerges. A flow of words pouring from a strange mood. He sketches a private, internal landscape. It is the mental space of a contemporary person, where bits of an epic or tragic tale are churning. The language of the play seems rootless. Syntax, extricated from its corset and slightly ironic, sometimes escapes into another language, has passages of English then goes back to French. Strange, ardent, it's a poem for the theatre. Written in one go by Jan Decorte, seamlessly and without any retouching, 'dieu& les esprits vivants' is the first text he has written in French, and he wrote it especially for the Festival. The playwright is also on stage as a performer with Sigrid Vinks, an actress who worked with him on the creation-side. The two actors share the text and the words change body, sometimes improvised, sometimes whispered, sometimes resounding, sometimes singsong. But between their two, mirrored, voices, there is one spirit traversed by the music of Arno, Belgian singer and rock star. Set in a basic decor, situated beyond time indicated by a huge, gleaming mediaeval sword, the play changes mood, brusque or light, in counterpoint to five short symphonies composed by Arno, as well as a song by Johnny Cash, Darkness.
Officiating in what is elementary, essential, Jan Decorte's play opens with a riddle. It gives a clue. As the author says, "According to what I know, it's a murder. But if it's actually happened or not, the play doesn't say. Or else, the clues are illegible, as if written in hieroglyphics."

Text, direction : Jan Decorte
Cast: Avec : Jan Decorte, Sigrid Vinks, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker
original music : Arno
Scenography : Jan Decorte, Johan Daenen
Costumes : Jan Decorte, Sigrid Vinks, Sofie D'Hoore

Production : BLOET
En coproduction avec : le Kaaitheater et le Festival d'Avignon
Avec la participation : du ministère de la Communauté flamande