The libretto 'Lee Miller in Hitlers Bathtub' is a portrait of a woman who at the end of her life said that she felt like a cow who had been milked dry. A woman in the shadow of many men. Famous men. Notorious men. Jan Lauwers wanted to make a portrait that was no longer that of Lee but of so many women in the history of art who have been gagged. And then there is this one photo: 'Lee in Hitler’s bathtub' What does it mean for Lee that she chose to
take a bath in the monster’s bathtub? What does it mean moreover to let her photo be
taken there? The text begins at the moment when Lee Miller stands in
front of Hitler’s bathtub in her stinking clothes, which still reek of the corpse smells from
Dachau.

After the success of Billy's Violence, the desire to continue this intense tale was so strong amongst the artistic team, cast and crew that it has led to a sequel: Billy’s Joy. Once again, Victor Lauwers turns his hand to reworking Shakespeare’s plays and see what they can still mean in our time - a time of great controversies, vulgar polemics, cancel culture, structural racism, climate change, war. What is there left to laugh at? Is humour the coward's weapon or a form of activism?

AMOPERA is the first part of a triptych around the idea of 'meta-opera', which aims to reflect on the medium of opera. This first instalment - the love part - is an intense collaboration between Klangforum Wien and Needcompany on opera and music theatre from the past hundred years.

Songs of Disconnection is a next step in Seghers’ research into the potentially tragic relationship between entertainer and spectator. This resides in the irresistible urge to share and connect and the essential impossibility of doing so.

For Billy's Violence, Victor Afung Lauwers researched the ten tragedies of Shakespeare and rewrote them into violently loving, intimate dialogues in which the woman is the central focus, stripped of any historical reference or anecdotal content.

The Band Facing the Wrong Way ignores the wall of the theatre against which it is bellowing. It sings past the wall. Or else it gets through it. Or else the wall moves aside. Or not, and everyone and everything crashes into it. What counts is the effort it takes.

Only the jester can express critical thoughts to the king without fear. OHNO COOPERATION (Maarten Seghers, Jan Lauwers and Elke Janssens) takes this privilege as a mission in its study of the place of art and the artist in society.

Statements as ‘an artist has to be nice, so you can understand’ and ‘if art is our lover, then who the f*** are you?’ are chanted all around, making the theatre hilarious, passionately and violently burst its seams.

A struggle between dogged rhythmicality and melodious syrup in the ritualization of the sale of truth. A truth which, like all truths, says it is the ‘real truth’, in contrast with the other truths: the amazement at almost nothing.

Being born and having to hold out. That’s Tough Shit. Tough Shit isn’t a cripple and isn’t blind. But there’s a plank stuck to his face. That’s Bad Luck.