Masterclass of Jan Lauwers with Maarten Seghers

Needcompany is an artists’ company set up by the artists Jan Lauwers and Grace Ellen Barkey in 1986. Together with Maarten Seghers, Lauwers and Barkey form the core of the company, and it embraces all their artistic work: theatre, dance, performance, visual art, writing, etc.

Since the very beginning, Needcompany has presented itself as an international, multilingual, innovative and multidisciplinary company. It revolves around the autonomous artist. Everything is founded on the artistic project, on authenticity, necessity, and meaning. The medium itself is continually questioned, and there is constant examination of the quality of the content to be conveyed in relation to the form it takes. Needcompany believes in quality, cooperation, and innovation. Needcompany is a leading voice in the social debate on the urgency and beauty of art at both a domestic and an international level.

Lauwers’ work has been labeled as post-dramatic. The main characteristics of his work are transparency, ‘productive’ acting, the paradox between ‘acting’ and ‘performing’, the ‘off-center’ strategy and the ‘white-canvas’ notion. Maarten Seghers’ work and more specifically his music nudge the narrative into a physical experience. Narrative slips into music and music becomes narrative in which language plays a central role.

Lauwers and Seghers make it part of their core values to tell a bigger story and to show the person behind the artist. They will debate all these topics and will place them in the perspective of the necessity of art nowadays.