Jan Fabre Teaching Group

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Jan Fabre Teaching Group

Physical Actors/ Dancers / Performers training following Jan Fabre's guidelines

06/09/2026

Exercise: Rice paper/Fire

"Rice paper/fire is an exercise aimed at turning imagination into physical energy. More specifically it probes the borders and the transition zone between two very extreme forms of physical energy: a very light and delicate state of being juxtaposed against a body under infernal pain…
The first part of the exploration consists of walking on imaginary rice paper. The performer imagines a floor of very thin and fragile rice paper, so delicate every step or abrupt move threatens to rupture or rumple the paper…
When the instructor gives a signal the fragile rice paper floor changes into a seething lake of fire. The performer imagines a singeing red-hot plate that stings his feet with every step. This image of fire is converted into physical action: with every contact with the floor the pain shoots upwards through the body. The reaction of the body on this fierce goad of pain should be made visible and tangible.” - Jan Fabre & Luk Van den Dries ('From Act to Acting: Jan Fabre’s Guidelines for the Performer of the 21st century')

In image performer: Ivana Jozic
Photographer: Lieven Herreman

26/08/2026

RECOMMENDED READING! | Erika Fischer-Lichte 'Tragedy's Endurance: Performances of Greek Tragedies and Cultural Identity in Germany since 1800'

Featuring numerous references to Troubleyn/Jan Fabre’s award-winning performance 'Mount Olympus. To glorify the cult of tragedy, a 24-hour performance' (an image from which appears on the cover), this volume explores performances of Greek tragedy in Germany since 1800. It examines these productions as responses to specific political, social, and cultural milestones, illuminating how, within a constantly shifting political and cultural landscape, they shaped the evolving cultural identity of the educated middle class over time.

"'Mount Olympus' provided quite another argument for tragedy's endurance, as we shall see when going deeper into that
production..."

Publisher: ‎OUP Oxford

14/08/2026

Exercise: The dying animal
Dedicated to Emio Greco

"Death is a driving force in Fabre’s theatre: death gives lustre to life, only when you can embrace death can you live life to the fullest. It is one of the most essential paradoxes in Fabre’s thinking about theatre and acting: by totally, integrally and without reserve experiencing death, only then the power and intensity of life can be discovered...The exercise explores the border area between life and death: the performer needs to be prepared to leave everything behind and confront the profound mystery of death fearlessly. The exercise is aimed at looking death square in the eye and experiencing the process of dying as a gateway to death...an unappeasable lust for life, the enormous feast of vitality, can only be apprehended when you include death as well."- Jan Fabre & Luk Van den Dries 'From Act to Acting: Jan Fabre’s Guidelines for the Performer of the 21st century'

In image performer: Cédric Charron
Photographer 📷: Lieven Herreman

25/07/2026

NOW AVAILABLE! | An inspiring summer read – THE CAMBRIDGE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF STAGE DIRECTORS, featuring an exceptional full-page detailing Jan’s remarkable theatre career.

“Fabre invented a unique theatre language based on a visual, physical approach. In the tradition of Wagner and Craig, he has immersed himself in an all-encompassing Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) gravitating around his own aesthetic universe.”

This encyclopedia offers a broader range of entries than any other reference work on the subject, showcasing the extraordinary diversity of theatre as a national and international art form. Spanning over 200 years, it highlights the most influential stage directors who have shaped how theatre is created and experienced across the globe. Among the few Belgians included is the renowned Franz Marijnen, further reflecting the country’s lasting contribution to the world stage.

An essential read for anyone passionate about theatre, directing, and the evolution of performance.

Grab a copy: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-encyclopedia-of-stage-directors/2F41CE5E5A61CB345F542AD9F26B3497?utm_id=97758_v0_s00_e0_tv4_a1demo0jqr9f0i&fbclid=IwY2xjawTRyIBleHRuA2FlbQIxMABzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeSKBbHDV8mbP3fzr_UHsA8iXoScNoUuDRdNH6u3dQJSSVNDSn-n-k0jP84SY_aem_2Re9WzF6OLK_KoyTjuMuhQ -information

22/07/2026

“These are images by diverse yet legendary photographers, united by the desire to highlight Fabre’s unmistakable sense of mark-making. Polished photographic surfaces that nevertheless scratch the viewer because, as Paul Valéry wrote, ‘the deepest thing is the skin.’” — Curator Giacinto Di Pietrantonio

Now on view at the Bernardini Library, Polo Biblio-Museale di Lecce, JAN FABRE. BORROWED TIME accompanies the opening of the JAN FABRE ARCHIVE AND TEACHING CENTRE in Lecce, curated by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio.

Featuring more than 200 works by Jan Fabre alongside photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe, Helmut Newton, Dirk Braeckman, and Jorge Molder, the exhibition invites visitors into a world of metamorphosis, memory, life, death, and renewal.

Pictured here is one of the remarkable photographs created by Dirk Braeckman for Jan Fabre’s Swan Lake (2002), produced for the Royal Ballet of Flanders. In Braeckman’s iconic images, as Di Pietrantonio writes, “time appears profoundly slowed down,” capturing the suspended, dreamlike quality that runs throughout Fabre’s theatrical universe.

JAN FABRE. BORROWED TIME
Curated by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio
📍 Bernardini Library, Polo Biblio-Museale di Lecce, Italy
📅 Open until 9 May 2027
Organized by the Polo Biblio-Museale di Lecce with the support of Mucciaccia Gallery, Rome, and Cortina d'Ampezzo.
In photo: Giuseppe Noce

17/07/2026

Exercise: Eros / Thanatos
Exercise dedicated to Annabelle Chambon

“In the exercise 'Eros / Thanatos' these extremes overlap: revulsion, pain and pleasure. It is unclear when one feeling ends and another feeling begins. The performer is hurled to and fro between extreme sensations and emotions and the whole exercise is about evoking a state of transgression in which revulsion, pain and pleasure overlap and in which you become possessed by the most extreme drifts... The exercise is about this duality and about being in between, being torn apart. As if the performer is lying on a torture table and is constantly dismembered by torment and ecstasy.” - Jan Fabre & Luk Van den Dries | 'From Act to Acting: Jan Fabre’s Guidelines for the Performer of the 21st century'

In image performer: Annabelle Chambon
Photographer: Lieven Herreman

15/07/2026

‘THE TITAN OF PARADOXES’ | “If you consider the enormous scope of his achievements as an artist and as a theatre director, if you let pass before the mind’s eye the aesthetic as well as intellectual claims that this oeuvre rightly substantiates and add the broad reception, the impact and influence of his work on the contemporary art of theatre since decades, then the obvious must be stated: Jan Fabre is a titan in the field of theatre and art.” – Hans Thies Lehmann ‘The titan of Paradoxes’ in ‘The Great European Stage Directors Volume 8: Bausch, Castellucci, Fabre’.

FROM STANISLAVSKI TO FABRE - The British publishing house Bloomsbury Publishing UK (Methuen Drama - Bloomsbury Publishing UK) launched an 8-volume series, ‘The Great European Stage Directors’. Jan Fabre has been featured in the prestigious final volume, alongside Pina Bausch and Romeo Castellucci.

More info: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/series/great-stage-directors/

09/07/2026

In Loving Memory of Peter Brook, Master of Theatre
Jan Fabre's exercise "Counting" is a homage to Peter Brook.

"Peter Brook stands alongside the many theatre masters celebrated throughout this book, From Act to Acting: Jan Fabre's Guidelines for the Performer of the 21st Century, through a dedicated exercise. Like the others, he redefined what theatre could become in a changing society: a theatre that does not necessarily seek to please or pursue commercial success, but one that is as essential as eating, drinking, or s*x. For Peter Brook, as for Jan Fabre, theatre is an energetic happening. This energy exists within everything—in bodies, the voice, colour and material, light and objects. Everything is energetically charged."
— Jan Fabre & Luk Van den Dries, From Act to Acting: Jan Fabre's Guidelines for the Performer of the 21st Century (forthcoming)

Troubleyn/Jan Fabre had the honour of hosting two memorable masterclasses by Peter Brook at the Troubleyn/Jan Fabre Laboratorium. His presence, generosity, and profound understanding of theatre continue to inspire generations of performers and makers.

His legacy lives on in the work, the exercises, and the living energy of the theatre.

05/07/2026

IN MILAN! | JAN FABRE TEACHING GROUP 5 DAY MASTERCLASS this September at Teatro OUT OFF , Italy. Led by incredible teacher Giorgia Paolillo
MASTERCLASS DATES: SATURDAY 26 - WEDNESDAY 30 SEPTEMBER 2026
Masterclass conducted in Italian & English.
Join now – spaces are limited!

MORE INFO: https://teatrooutoff.it/spettacoli/jan-fabre-teaching-group-3/

"The exploration of the evocative imagination of the ‘body as a whole’ is a leitmotif here. In exercises with titles such as ‘the old man’, ‘the tiger’, ‘the insect’, or ‘rice paper/fire’, it’s neither the imitation nor the psychological aspect which takes center stage, but the exploration of the physical potential of the transforming body” - Luk Van den Dries

Photo: Silvia Varrani | Teatro OUT OFF

03/07/2026

Exercise: Ecstasy | Exercise dedicated to Els Deceukelier, the incarnation of ecstasy, in many of Fabre’s productions.

'During the whole of his career Fabre has been interested in the ecstasy-body and in reaching out to a spiritual dimension; and ecstasy is pre-eminently the kind of model in which the body resigns and transcends itself. To Fabre, ecstasy is the superlative step of the performance, which he notes in his Nocturnal: “Pretending should become real (from theatre to performance). The real needs to be a necessity (from performance to ecstasy).' - Jan Fabre & Luk Van den Dries 'From Act to Acting: Jan Fabre’s Guidelines for the Performer of the 21st century'

In image performer: Stella Höttler
Photographer 📷 : Lieven Herreman

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