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THE KEYa production by

& JOSSE DE PAUW

after the original novel KAGI by

JUNICHIRO TANIZAKI

2016

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CREDITS

Based on the book of the same name by Junichiro Tanizaki* and fragments

from his essay In Praise of Shadows

Adaptation, concept and direction Josse de Pauw

Music Akira Miyoshi, Kuniko Kato

Percussion Kuniko Kato

With Frieda Pittoors, Fumiyo Ikeda, Taka Shamoto

Choreography Fumiyo Ikeda

Light and scenography Herman Sorgeloos

Costumes Ann-Catherine Kunz

Production LOD muziektheater

Coproduction KVS Brussels, La Rose des Vents Villeneuve d’Ascq

PRACTICAL INFORMATION

Premiere February 2016

Touring period February - April 2016 (other dates on request)

Venues/audience 300/400 people, depending on the venue

Language Performance in Dutch and Japanese (with subtitles)

*Based on the book KAGI by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki’ Copyright © 1956, The Heirs of Jun’ichiro Tanizaki/

Chuokoron-Shinsha, Inc. As translated by M. Coutinho, Copyright © 1962, De Bezige Bij. All rights reserved.

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PLANNING

THE KEY

201617.02 KVS Brussels

18.02 KVS Brussels

19.02 KVS Brussels

20.02 KVS Brussels

23.02 Stadsschouwburg Bruges

02.03 C-Mine Genk

03.03 Chassé Theater Breda

07.03 Theater aan het Spui The Hague

09.03 Brakke Grond Amsterdam

10.03 Brakke Grond Amsterdam

11.03 Brakke Grond Amsterdam

12.03 Brakke Grond Amsterdam

01.04 CC Gildhof Tielt

06.04 Vrijthof Maastricht

08.04 De Spil Roeselare

12.04 CC Berchem Berchem

14.04 De Grote Post Ostend

15.04 NTGent Ghent

16.04 NTGent Ghent

17.04 Schouwburg Courtrai

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THE KEY

A man and a woman read each other’s diaries and are both aware of it. They deliberately leave the keys lying around. They communicate with each other through their diaries on matters that must remain unspoken, and direct each other’s mutual secret desires. When a prospective husband for their daughter appears, he too gradually becomes involved in their sexual fantasies. In an ever tighter web of jealousy, sadomasochism and an obsession with infidelity, the man is in the end struck down by a heart attack and dies during one of the meticulously constructed sessions.

Josse De Pauw wants to stage Junichiro Tanizaki’s novel with four women: an actress, two dancers and a percussionist. The starting point is the feminine feel for this story, and the inevitably Western interpretation of this Japanese tale is a research topic. What and how much is lost in its adaptation to the stage? How differently do women comprehend the story? And how differently do men and women understand each other’s stories? How do we read each other’s diaries?

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Josse De Pauw (1952) needs little introduction. He has made numerous productions and has collaborated with just about every acclaimed player in theatreland. His productions with LOD include Die Siel van die Mier and De Gehangenen. He has passed the peak of one hundred per-formances with just one play, An Old Monk, which is now in its third year of touring. De Pauw likes to take inspiration from world literature. This time his attention was caught by a major work of Japanese literature.

Junichiro Tanizaki’s novel The Key was published in 1956. The story revolves round a rather washed-out married couple. The man, an aging professor of literature, feels his physical strength waning, leaving his wife, who is younger but with a very traditional upbringing, sexually unsa-tisfied. Using all manner of ruses he establishes a dangerous but sensually stimulating love triangle involving himself, his wife and the man who wants to marry their daughter. At the same time, the novel also spotlights the tension that had arisen – between traditional codes of behaviour and more licentious influences from America and Europe – in Japan after the Second World War. For this married couple, for example, it is impossible to speak openly of their sexual desires. It is only in their diaries that they are able to put their deepest wishes into words, though it’s true that they both know that their partner secretly reads what they write. As a result a psychological shadow play of love and lust unfolds. This shows that the truth only shows itself in the light and shade of decency and desire.

The number of books written on love, enough to fill countless libraries, demonstrates that it is a subject with a huge range of aspects. So why did you choose Tanizaki’s The Key?DE PAUW: That’s easy. I lived with the Japanese dancer and choreographer Fumiyo Ikeda for thirty years. She gave me the book as a gift at the start of our relationship. It turned out to be a gift with a punch to it. We often spoke about it at the time and it was as if we had read two dif-ferent books. I should tell you that at that time I knew hardly anything about Japanese culture. I had never been there. The interiors, the customs, the way of thinking… were all completely foreign to me. But anyway, our different interpretations made it exciting. We said to each other: ‘we have to put it on stage one day’. And here it is. It’s true that that ‘one day’ turned into thirty years, but good ideas need to wait for the right circumstances. And now they appear to have arrived.

Yes, it certainly was a gift with a punch! After all, The Key raises some very uncomfortable questions about marriage. Is there actually any future for that institution?DE PAUW: Oh dear, marriage… Both in the Japan of that time and in present-day Belgium mar-riage is traditionally enveloped in a rose-coloured mist. I think it has a lot to do with a deep human desire for purity. Love must at all costs remain inviolable. It’s almost unearthly. But when you see what goes on in reality you could hardly find anything more earthly. People leave each other more quickly than half a century ago, which among other things is a matter of finan-cial independence, though at the same time people are still getting married in large numbers. But in this play I want to deal more with the desire to be together so as not to be alone, to put it bluntly. To my mind this desire has lost none of its strength and I suspect that it will remain so. And along the way we set traps for each other, set up cunning obstacles and love each other a bit. In Tanizaki’s book the age difference also plays a major role. So the book is just as much about age and youth. He can no longer cope with her sexually and has to think up all sorts of

JOSSE DE PAUW ON THE KEYSHADOW PLAY IN LOVE AND LUST

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tricks, whereby jealousy turns out to be a powerful aphrodisiac. He creates the opportunity for his wife to commit adultery, and even encourages her, but at the same time he does not want her to take advantage of it. We soon see her as a shrew, but after his death she emphasises that, despite the fact that they were not compatible, she has never been able to love anyone else. It is in her that the tension of the shattered ideal is shown most emphatically. The notion of purity gets in our way quite often. Probably because it will of necessity remain no more than an idea, because purity simply doesn’t occur in nature. You only have to look through a microscope and see what’s swimming around in what’s called pure water.

What form will this fiction take in your play? The novel is composed of the diaries of a man and a woman. How are you staging that?DE PAUW: As far as I’m concerned, a text doesn’t necessarily have to be dramatic in the usual sense of the word. You can stage anything you like, as long as you aren’t tied to one or other specific, imposed form of theatre. I am of a generation that has not let itself be restrained in that respect. So the transfer of a book to the stage presents no problem, as it is sometimes presented, but an opportunity. As I said, an idea needs to wait for the right circumstances and in the mean-time it can quietly ripen. What’s very important to me is who I make what play. It is the people that help shape it. I had wanted to work with Frieda Pittoors again for a long time. She will play the part of the husband. It was an intuitive choice and it works marvellously well. An older man usually makes less effort to emphasise his masculinity, and even assumes a feminine air. But in the novel he is at the same time very concerned about the loss of his masculinity. By taking doses of hormone preparations he tries to settle to his advantage the conflict between his phy-sical decay and his wife’s intact libido. With Frieda playing his part, this dramatic conflict takes on a very touching interpretation. At the same time, I can thereby shift the play’s centre of gravity from the contrast between man and woman to that between youth and age. That suits me fine, because despite the fact that there are quite a few elements available, I don’t want it to be an autobiographical account (laughs).

When I think of Japan and theatre, it’s kabuki and noh that come to mind. How Japanese will the play be?DE PAUW: Frieda is not alone on stage. She is joined by the dancers Fumiyo Ikeda and Taka Shamoto, as well as the percussionist Kuniko Kato. Their presence naturally gives the piece a Japanese air. When they speak it’s in their native language. The musicality of Japanese under-pins the spirit of the play. (Hesitates) At times I did feel that there was something of noh theatre about it, but at the same time I find it dangerous to link this play too closely to it. There is a certain quietness about the piece, and a kimono does make an appearance, but that was not the basic idea. We want to guard against clichés. In that sense Kuniko has made an excellent musical choice. A number of the compositions are by the Japanese composer Akira Miyoshi, a contemporary of Tanizaki. You can observe the same cross-fertilisation between Japanese tradition and Western modernism in his work. He takes a very deliberate approach to Japanese clichés and exoticism, sometimes in an almost comical way. We also incorporate the tension between these two worlds into the dramaturgical intention. I have recorded the man’s diary

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myself – in Dutch! – and my voice is played very close to the audience through loudspeakers in the auditorium. Everything spoken on stage remains unamplified and when necessary is surtit-led. In this way the distance is expanded both acoustically and spatially. Despite the quietness of the play, this gives it a certain pace. The constant stream of information is intended to draw the audience into a state of collective concentration.

I can imagine that after thirty years’ ripening there is plenty to be told.DE PAUW: Well, sometimes I’m reminded of a story by David Foster Wallace I once read. An older fish swims past two younger fish and says: ‘Morning boys, what’s the water like today?’ The two younger fish swim on, until one of them turns to the other and says: ‘What on earth is water?’ His point is that insight is a difficult matter if you are in the midst of it all. After thirty years it’s simply time to make this play.

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“I have always kept my work very much in my own hands. It is not without reason that I work with LOD, because it is one of the few companies that fully accommodates the way I like to make theatre. It above all a matter of creating the right circumstances. At LOD I get all the free-dom I need, to make what I want to make and as far as possible with people I choose myself. I like to make international productions and at LOD there is a sound way of doing that.” - Josse De Pauw in DE MORGEN, 19 February 2016

“In a voice-over, De Pauw reads from the diaries, which are locked only for the sake of appea-rances. His voice speaks intimately into your ear. This contrasts with the other characters, who speak without amplification and often in Japanese. By keeping empathy and feelings at a dis-tance, they make the spectator work. What is sincere? Who is bluffing? What is serious, what ironic? … a fine, intriguing play.” - DE STANDAARD, 19 February 2016 ***

“It can be so appealing to look at love and all its aspects on stage. This is true in the case of the production the Flemish actor and theatre-maker Josse De Pauw has created by adapting a Japanese book. … The Key is more than a glimpse of Japanese culture, and offers a still, subtle insight into the layers of love, and of aging and dying. … The dances are erotically charged, but it is latent and implicit, as subtle and stylised as everything else in this production. The occasio-nally more ecstatic sounding marimba music contrasts with the words we hear. And then there are the silences and the refined, subdued acting. It is this stillness that makes the production so beautiful.” - THEATERKRANT.NL, 18 February 2016

“The Key (with surtitles) is a production by LOD staged at the KVS by the actor and director Josse De Pauw with the dancer Fumiyo Ikeda, and is ‘extremely Japanese’. The essence of a state of mind. …The finest moment (together with the music) in this somewhat abstract production is when the old professor slowly undresses his wife while thinking she is asleep. This scene is reminiscent of Kawabata’s ‘sleeping beauties’. … A play about the vanished key to our mutual desire, about the ambiguous sides of desire, about the aging that shows itself and requires all sorts of tricks related to desire. The combination of a rather cool minimalism and a high-spi-rited depiction of tenderness and subservience. This ambiguity is expressed in these words: ‘Extinguishing the light so as to see more clearly’.” - LA LIBRE BELGIQUE, 18 February 2016

“The mixture of Western and Japanese culture makes The Key a fascinating play. … The old man is touching, but it is his secret perverse side that makes the piece quite gripping. One day he decides to undress his sleeping wife, layer by layer. ‘The first time I shall see her naked,’ he says. The scene is breathtaking.” - DE TIJD, 19 February 2016

“De Pauw creates theatre out of silence, rustling fabrics, eloquent glances, gracious movements full of restrained emotion and, occasionally, an explosion of music or dance, when the emo-tions peak, the heart pounds and the bodies become landscapes that are explore tenderly and languorously. … Each scene unfolds out of the one before. This creates a tender portrait of an old, worn-out love that flares up as a result of jealousy and love for another. … The performance swings between silence and quivering, between trance and slowness and between involvement and detachment. … His choice of simplicity is not only an almost perfectly successful stylistic exercise, but also a statement about society. These hectic times need theatre that obstinately dares to be and to remain still and slow, from the first moment to the last. Still and slow and tauntingly sensual.” - FOCUS KNACK, 23 February 2016

THE PRESS ON THE KEYTHE KEY

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HUIS (2014)“A graveyard carnival. A cheerful farce, with a hint of dark comedy.”- Knack.be, 06/06/2014

“ This is De Pauws best direction in years.”– Cobra.be, 08/06/2014

“ Throughout the great, powerful music of Jan Kuijken, the nightmare of HOUSE is mixed up with the fear for the final judgment and turns into a vigorous danse macabre that is actually an ode to life. The beauty of the staging, the constant threat of the presence of Death, spied on from a certain height by one of the characters, the eagerness of the music and the almost ghost-like dancing by the old men, ... makes the first part of this play into an extraordinary magical moment.”- L’Express, 10/07/2014

“It’s like entering the paintings of the great Flemish masters, from Bosch to Van der Weyden, from Brueghel to Memling. HOUSE demonstrates us an imaginary landscape, rough, grinding and disturbing, in which we cannot do anything else but laugh at the face of death. ... The ima-gery reminds of the carnival as seen by Brueghel or Ensor, the beauty of the lit up faces of the women clearly refers to Van Eyck and Van der Weyden. There are a lot of references to be found in this HOUSE by Josse De Pauw.”- Le Monde, 10/07/2014

“It’s our compatriot Josse De Pauw who gives us goose bumps with the amazing HOUSE at the Festival d’Avignon. His interpretation of the two stories by Michel De Ghelderode results in a magical play, in which the text – in Flemish with French subtitles – is lifted to an even higher level through the music of Jan Kuijken, the singing led by Steve Dugardin and the staging, refer-ring to the universe of Ensor.”- Le Soir, 11/07/2014

“The macabre nestles itself in the beauty on stage ... The two parables, amazingly played by this group of actors, amateurs as well as professionals, found there perfect location in this old monastery in Avignon. ... This HOUSE is like a grand musical poem, a painting of flesh and word. Sinister and full of life.”- La Libre, 10/07/2014

“With HOUSE, after Michel De Ghelderode, we see this Flemish director at its best: with soft hands and lots of compassion, he creates a complete universe that balances on the fantastic boarder between life and death. ... A soft breeze blows throughout this entire play, and it is not only the wind in the plane trees. This is great art.”- lesinrocks.com, 12/07/2014

“The bright point at the Festival d’Avignon is Belgian director Josse De Pauw ... He makes the words resonate with a gusto and so much intensity. The texts make us relive the band between our historical western collective consciousness and the age of generic supermarkets. ... The music by Jan Kuijken rises like a cathedral between the trees of the Cloître du Célestins d’Avi-gnon, straight to the sky. So calm and quiet, between the vibrating leaves of the plane trees in the wind. Josse De Pauw only has one church and that is the church of beauty, of musical theatre inspired by the suffering of mankind and by a brutal vitality.”- Le Nouvel Observateur, 10/07/2014

THE PRESS ON OTHER PRODUCTIONS BY JOSSE DE PAUW

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THE KEY

AN OLD MONK (2012)“An Old Monk is undoubtedly one of the ten best performances of the season. ... Josse De Pauw tells the story and celebrates. Inventive, funny, true to life. The music likewise. ... All power and freedom, Thelonius Monk would have been mad about it.”– Le Temps, 18/6/2013

“ De Pauw is a masterly storyteller and actor, who fills the whole stage with his voice, language and body.”– **** Het Parool, 29/10/2013

“ An Old Monk is witty, moving, compelling and exceedingly musical. It is, in short, musical theatre the way it should be, and, what is more, extremely danceable.”- Robbert van Heuven, thea-terkrant.nl, 21 November 2012

“It is quite simply musical theatre at its best. What we have here is a performance that is as good as perfect.”- Johan Thielemans, Cobra.be, 8/11/2012

“The discovery of the evening was undoubtedly An Old Monk. ... After an incubation period of ten minutes you grasp the rules of the game and penetrate Josse De Pauw’s world. Your ears are treated to a well-balanced interaction between words and music and when this briefly fades away you enjoy the pure, funny, moving and even tragic confession of this ‘old monk’, who gets very close to our own lives with his fears and petty traits – and ultimately the absurdity of his narcissism.”- jazzmagazine.com, 13/11/2013

“[Josse De Pauw] moves, in perfect symbiosis with the amazing musicians ... A wonderful invi-tation to shed any kind of restraint and live freely.” – le dauphiné, 18/07/2014“A wise lesson in life, without getting pedantic and full of animo, supported by the presence of the jazz trio, perfectly in its place in this play, their music intertwining completely with the monologue of the actor.”- lesinrocks.com, 19/07/2014

“Two amazing talents, each in their domain! ... Why not just think of them as a quartet, since each and every one of them are an asset to the play, fusing equally into an elegant joint effort, sometimes improvising, sometimes introspecting. ... Why not just think of it as a whole, a per-formance that almost reaches perfection, amazingly played by four artists, playing, in the first place, out of their shared joy for life?”- infernomagazine.com, 19/07/2014

“ A great dancer arises on stage ... Josse De Pauw speaks as he dances, he lets his words and body interact with one another ... The actor scrolls through life, through its mediocrities and routines, lets everything pass by just as it pops into its head ... The man with the solid body, weighty on stage, turns into a gracious presence, airy and elegant.”- Robbert van Heuven, theater-krant.nl, 21 November 2012

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| JOSSE DE PAUW (1952) |The actor, author and director Josse de Pauw’s career started in 1976 with Radeis In-ternational, a highly successful theatre group that performed throughout Europe and overseas, from Vancouver to Los Angeles, from Caracas to Hong Kong, until 1984. As from 1985 he operated as an independent theatre-maker and collaborated with actors, directors, musicians, composers, writers and artists including Tom Jansen, Dirk Roofthooft, Luk Perceval, Guy Cassiers, Jan Decorte, Jürgen Gosh, Jan Ritsema, Jan Lauwers, Manu Riche, Peter Vermeersch and FES, Claire Chevallier, George van Dam, Jan Kuijken, Eric Thielemans, Rudy Trouvé, Roland Van Campenhout, Colle-gium Vocale, I Solisti del Vento, Corrie van Binsbergen, David Van Reybrouck, Mark Schaevers, Jeroen Brouwers, Koenraad Tinel, Gorik Lindemans, Benoît van Innis,

David Claerbout, Michaël Borremans and Herman Sorgeloos. He performed his first ma-jor film part in 1989, and since then has performed in more than fifty Belgian and foreign films. He has himself directed two: Vinaya and Übung. He has worked with directors including Dominique Deruddere, Marc Didden, Guido Hendrickx, Eric Pauwels, Jos Stel-ling, Franz Weisz, Orlow Seunke and Marc-Henri Wajnberg. In addition to plays, he also writes stories, observations, notes and travel stories. His writings have been collected in two books: Werk and Nog (published by Hautekiet). He has adapted Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano for the stage for the director Guy Cassiers, and J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace for Luk Perceval. But he is known above all as the author, actor and maker of such successful plays as Weg, Larf, Übung, die Siel van die Mier, Ruhe, Strange News, Liefde/zijn handen, Een Nieuw Requiem, De Versie Claus, Over de bergen, De Gehangenen, Boot & Berg and An Old Monk and HOUSE. The Festival d’Avi-gnon invited him in 2014 to play these last two productions. 2016 will see the premiere of his new production The Key, after the book by Japanese author Jun’ichiro Tanizaki.

| FUMIYO IKEDA (1962) |In 1979, she entered MUDRA, Maurice Béjart’s dance school, where she met Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. In 1983 she joined the newly-founded company rosas. Between 1983 and 2008 she contributed to the creation of and danced in almost all the productions: Rosas danst Rosas, Elena’s Aria, Bartók / Aantekeningen, Mikro-kosmos, Ottone,Ottone, Stella, Achterland, Toccata, Just Before, Drumming, I said I, In Real Time,Rain, April me, the Repertory Evening, Bitches Brew / Taco- ma Nar-

rows, Kassandra, Raga for the Rainy Season, D’un soir un jour, Zeitung and the revivals of Mozart / Concert Arias and Woud. Fumiyo also contributed to several of rosas’ films and videos: Repetitions, Hoppla!, Monoloog van Fumiyo Ikeda op het einde van Ottone Ottone, Ottone Ottone I & II, Achterland, CounterPhrases and Rosa directed by Peter Greenaway. Alongside her activity within rosas, Fumiyo Ikeda also worked with Steve Paxton, Need-company, Josse De Pauw and Tom Jansen. She has participated in several films and theatre plays. In 2007 she created Nine Finger with Benjamin Verdonck and Alain Platel. This performance was selected for the Festival d’Avignon 2007. She appeared in the produc-

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BIOGRAPHIES

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tion in pieces, a collaboration with the British playwright and director Tim Etchells that premiered in june 2009. She performed in Life and Times, Episode 2, a performance in collaboration with Nature Theater of Oklahoma (2010). Since last season, she performs in the play backs of Drumming and Elena’s Aria, and she is the rehearsal director of Rosas danst Rosas and Bartók / Mikrokosmos. In 2013 she created amness with the Japanese dancer Un Yamada.

| TAKA SHAMOTO (1975) |was born in 1975 in Sendai, Japan. She started dancing at the Sendai City Ballet School. In 1991 she entered the Balletschule der Hamburgischen Staatsoper John Neumeier in Germany, In 1995 she joined the contemporary dance school P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels Belgium. In 1997 she joined in Rosas and she danced in the revivals of Woud and Achterland and contributed to the creation of Just Before, Drumming, I said I, In Real Time, Rain, April me, Bitches Brew / Tacoma Narrows,Kassandra, D’un soir un jour and the revival of Mozart / Concert Arias and Bartok. In 2007 she

collaborated with Grace Ellen Barkey & Needcompany for The Porcelain Project and also she performed Isabella’s room by Jan Lauwers&Needcompany. In 2009 she performed The End by Joanne Leighton CCNFC Belfort. In 2010 she performed in Jan Decorte’s Tan-zung. In 2011 she collaborated with Field-works for Field Works-office, Borrowed Lands-cape and nothing’s for something. In 2012 she worked with Arno for his music video «The show of life». In 2013 she danced for visual art work by Norio Imai. She teaches Rosas repertoires to P.A.R.T.S. and she taught workshops at Japan women’s college of physical education in Japan.

| KUNIKO KATO (1987) |is one of the most gifted and significant percussionists of her generation. Her asto-nishing virtuosity, exquisite musical insight and expressive yet elegant performance style continues to attract not only audiences, but established conductors and com-posers too. She is renowned for her flawless technique when playing both keyboard and percussion instruments, which blends seamlessly with her profound musical intelligence.

Kuniko studied under the legendary marimba player Keiko Abe at Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo, Japan and advanced her studies under Robert Van Sice at Rotterdam Conservatorium in the Netherlands. She graduated with the highest honour (summa cum laude) as the first percussionist in the institution’s history. Whilst studying, Kuniko continued to develop her professional career, playing various concertos and solo recitals including the Concerto for Marimba and String Orchestra by Akira Miyoshi.

Kuniko’s critically acclaimed album ‘kuniko plays reich’ was released on Linn Records in 2011 and was their best-selling album of the year. ‘kuniko plays reich’ features unique

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multi-tracked arrangements of classic 1980s minimalist works by Steve Reich, officially endorsed by the composer. Kuniko performed her Reich arrangements live in Tokyo, New York, Modena, Reims and at the Cheltenham Festival in England in 2011. Her 2012 season conducted the world tour of Reich program in Japan, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona and Köln, a major residency in Armenia and a tour of Australia. In 2013 Kuniko globally released a new album titled CANTUS featuring Arvo Pärt’s signa-ture pieces in the first time percussion arrangements. The album and the arrangements are officially endorsed and supervised by the composer, and received the best recording award from 26th MPC Music Award.

Kuniko is strongly committed to music education through percussion workshops, master classes and open rehearsals whenever possible in conjunction with her solo recitals. She has been working with learning-disabled children in Japan since 2004, including a series of log drum (slit drum) workshops. Kuniko is endorsed globally by Adams and Pearl. She currently resides in U.S.A. She received the 12th Keizo Saji Prize from Suntory Arts Foundations in 2013. www.kuniko-kato.net

| FRIEDA PITTOORS (1947) |joined Toneelgroep Amsterdam in 2005. She played in several Romance Tragedies, for which she was nominated with the Colombina, Teorema, Ubu, Children of the sun (Kinderen van de Zon), Antonioni Project and de Russen! Before that, we could see Frieda Pittoors in Perfect Wedding, Maeterlinck and Naar Damascus, Tartuffe (dir. Dimiter Gotscheff). Pittoors is a professional actress in Belgium theater since she was only 8 years old. From ’70, she also performed in Dutch companies, as for example in Proloog, Sater, Het Zuidelijk Toneel and Discordia. Just before joining Toneelgroep

Amsterdam Pittoors played for ZT Hollandia, where she played in De Leenane trilogie (for which she was nominated with the Theo d’Or), Tim van Athene and Seemannslieder/Op hoop van zegen. In 2007 she played in the TV series Stellenbosch and in 2010 she played the main role in the TV series Oud België. In 2014 she played at the Festival d’Avignon in Fountainhead (Ivo van Hove).

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| LOD muziektheater |is a Ghent production company for opera and musical theatre, a creative base for perfor-ming artists. It undertakes to map out long-term trajectories; with such composers as Kris Defoort, Daan Janssens, Jan Kuijken, Vasco Mendonça, Dominique Pauwels and Thomas Smetryns, and with the directors Josse De Pauw and Inne Goris. In addition, we remain open to those who – always surprisingly, but never by chance – cross our artistic path: Patrick Corillon, Pieter De Buysser, Denis Marleau, Fabrice Murgia and François Sarhan. Our company is intended to be an overarching platform for these artists, and is meant to offer them the resources to develop their ideas.

It is now 25 years since we started creating productions that often turn out to set trends for the contemporary opera and musical theatre scene. The Woman who Walked into Doors and House of the Sleeping Beauties (Kris Defoort, Guy Cassiers), Die Siel van die Mier and De Gehangenen (Josse De Pauw & Jan Kuijken), Muur (Inne Goris, Dominique Pauwels), Ghost Road (Dominique Pauwels, Fabrice Murgia), The House Taken Over (Ka-tie Mitchell, Vasco Mendonça), An Old Monk (Josse De Pauw, Kris Defoort) are just a few of the productions that embody our breadth of view. The results of these artistic joint ventures are not easy to categorise, and make a lasting impression.

ABOUT USTHE KEY

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| Valérie Martino |Artistic and international coordinationvalerie@lod.beM + 32 484 59 61 78

| Marianne Cattoir |Press & communicationmarianne@lod.beT +32 9 266 11 39

| LOD muziektheater |Bijlokekaai 3B-9000, Gent+32 9 266 11 33www.lod.be

| Frans Brood Productions | Gie Baguet

gie@fransbrood.com

Tine Scharlaken

tine@fransbrood.com

+32 9 234 12 12

www.fransbrood.com

CONTACTTHE KEY