http://www.troubleyn.be

Troubleyn/Jan Fabre is an Antwerp-based theatre company with an extensive international profile. Artist Jan Fabre has been the artistic director of the company since its founding in 1986. ‘Troubleyn’ means ‘staying faithful’ and expresses the company’s desire to cooperate in confidence with like-minded people on a long-term basis.

Troubelyn/Jan Fabre has set itself a task in two parts. Firstly, the creation/presentation of Jan Fabre’s stage work and, secondly, giving shape to the activities of the Troubleyn/Laboratory as a workshop, rehearsal space and place of research for young artists. In addition, Troubleyn/Jan Fabre also actively supports Jan Fabre in his work as a playwright. His theatre works have been published and performed internationally.

Jan Fabre has developed into a remarkably versatile and international artist. At the end of the 1970s, the then still very young Jan Fabre caused uproar as a performance artist: during his Money Performances he set fire to bundles of cash given by the audience and did drawings with the ash. In 1982, he shocked the theatre establishment with the eight-hour production Het is theater zoals te verwachten en te voorzien was. International recognition came two years later with De macht der theaterlijke dwaasheden, which was invited to the Venice Biennale.

Fabre breaks with the codes of existing theatre by introducing real-time performance and investigating radical choreographic possibilities as a way of reinvigorating traditional dance. Since the early 1980s, the body in all of its physical, spiritual and erotic guises has formed the central object of his artistic research and practice.

In 2005, Fabre was curator of the Avignon Festival. His radical choices provoked a great deal of controversy at the time. His work was and still is performed throughout the world, which therefore makes Troubleyn/Jan Fabre one of the most important international representatives of the Flemish performing arts.

Finally, since 2009 Troubleyn/Jan Fabre has been actively supporting research projects concerning so-called post-dramatic acting (Fabre calls it biological acting) whereby academics from various disciplines study his acting methods and exercises.