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Jan Fabre's plays are published by leading theatrical publishers in several European countries - L'Arche (France), Fischer Verlag (Germany), De Bezige Bij (Netherlands), Costa & Nolan (Italy) and Meulenhoff/Manteau (Belgium).
The plays that have been published were as a rule written with the aim of producing them on stage. In the early Seventies, Jan Fabre wrote to give shape to his then already intense imaginative world. These are plays which only came into the public domain many years later, when they were staged by the author himself. Other plays were created in the course of rehearsals on the basis of improvisation with the actors. In some cases they are a combination of the author writings and improvised scripts. Several of these plays are monologues, often written for Fabre's favourite actress Els Deceukelier. But the plays with several characters are striking for being like monologues too. One hardly ever finds realistic dialogues or anecdotes taken from life in Fabre's theatre work. The plays are more conceptual in nature, and are poetic and materialise ancient rituals and themes that fascinate the author, as well as philosophical questions that obsess him. But we are just as likely to find the violence and pleasure of a life fully lived, the exuberant and sometimes dark experience of beauty, eroticism and festivity - elements in which Fabre may on one occasion be absorbed only to withdraw from it again on another.
Jan Fabre's literary work at the same time illustrates his thinking on theatre: theatre as an all embracing work of art in which the word is given a well-considered functional place next to such parameters as dance, music, opera, performance elements and improvisation. The austerity with which Fabre uses the medium of the word forces him to make theatre in an innovative way. When other directors work on these plays, they too are unable to distil any kind of conventional theatre out of them. And in recent years Jan Fabre's plays have indeed been regularly performed by other companies.
(portrait: © Malou Swinnen)
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