The Night Writer is a visionary and disarming hymn to the subversive and intriguing artist Jan Fabre. His personal diaries feed into an intimate and provocative autobiography. Slobodan Beštić brings in The Night Writer Jan Fabre’s unique world of ideas to life and performs his texts on stage. It is an excellent opportunity to discover Fabre’s intriguing Night Diaries as well as his poetic (theatre) texts. Instead of introducing the audience to the visual artist or the theatre maker, The Night Writer concentrates on an aspect of Fabre that has remained in the shadows: his texts. Like his drawings, Fabre’s texts reflect his intimate experiences, his recurring desires, ideas and obsessions. They are frequently written in the night-time hours, when all is silent and solitude sets in, in his very own, original language. They open the door to a world full of fantasy and surprising insights. It’s a journey in strong colours, from the artist’s youth to today. The audience will be engulfed in a flow of thoughts connecting day-time activities, bubbling with irresistible ideas and ambitious projects, and night-time existence, when creativity merges with fury and reflections on life, love and sex speak of the visceral energy of the body.

“To read the diary is to discover the multiple, contradictory and intriguing sides of Jan Fabre, who reveals himself sometimes visionary, sometimes disarming and shrewd, sometimes prickly and moving, provocative and hesitant, subversive and proud of his Flemish figurative tradition. (…) And then an obvious and significant discrepancy emerges between the artist’s life during the day, rich in impressions, sensations, work, performances, exhibitions, projects and his life at night, possibly even more intense - intimate, lacerating, overwhelming, full of creative fury, now meditative, now “sanguine”. The affirmation of limitless curiosity and of inexhaustible energy, revolving in these pages around the role of the body, a body that is both spiritual and material, cultural and visceral, a place of thought but also of blood, urine, sperm, nucleus of the eternal flow of birth-death-rebirth. (…) A portrait deep red and engaging.” – Franco Paris

The staging is balanced, rhythmic and sober: A table on wooden trestles with a package of Belga on the glass top - designed by René Magritte, I find out - a carafe of water and a glass; the floor sprinkled with salt crystals. The soft and limited lighting of this functional whole - a shadow play through reflection in a glass table - creates an intimate atmosphere. The functional, subtle music of Stef Kamil Carlens also contributes to this. (...) The spectator, even without having seen anything of Fabre’s plays before, becomes part of a very strong theater experience. (...) Fabre’s lyrics are full of humor, they are funny without being frivolous or ironic, they are absurd without being meaningless, they are fun and at the same time very serious. That is the magic of the work of this Warrior of Beauty, he succeeds in bringing the necessity and the pleasure together. I sat around the mouth with a smile on my face, sometimes I even had to laugh out loud. (...) Fabre’s work and the conception of art that radiates from it, are contagious, inspire, ignite the fire in you…” – Liesbeth D’Hoker in Literature & Theater

Played by Slobodan Beštić

Text: Jan Fabre 
Translation: Jelica Novaković Lopušina
Dramaturge: Miet Martens
Music: Stef Kamil Carlens
Set designer: Jan Fabre
Troubleyn Stage Crew: Wout Janssens and Geert Van Der Auwera
Producer: Milorad Jovanović
Set realized by Jasna Saramandić
Costumes realised by Katarina Grčić Nikolić
The body of the Jan Fabre doll was done by Goran Belančević in the workshops of the Children’s Theater „Duško Radović“
Lighting: Srđan Mićević
Sound and video: Borivoje Andrijević
Stage crew chief: Bojan Penčić
Prompters, stage manager: Gordana Perovski

Photo: Guido DeVos

Duration: 01:20

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