The Théâtre Royal Français, named after its resident theatre company, opened its doors in 1834 but would go down in history as the Bourla theatre. With 900 seats, it’s not Antwerp’s largest theatre, and it’s not even its oldest, but it is its most cherished due to the magnificent Neo-classical architecture. A circular front supported by columns, with statues of the nine muses on the rooftop, gives way to an interior with arched ceilings intricately decorated with beautiful mosaics and enormous chandeliers that exude all the grandeur and sophistication of the theatre’s 19th-century clientele.
 
In 1932, the Koninklijke Nederlandse Schouwburg (or Royal Dutch Theatre) took up residence in the Bourla. Not long after, the theatre became a protected monument. However, as the popularity of theatre in general went into decline, so did the building. In 1980, the Dutch Theatre moved out, and the building became abandoned.
 
Finally, the city of Antwerp decided to renovate, restoring Bourla’s original interior (which had been largely altered in the 1860s). The Bourla reopened in 1993, and the Dutch Theatre returned. In 1998, they merged with Blauwe Maandag Companie (Blue Monday Company) and became Het Toneelhuis.
 
Luk Perceval, founder of Blue Monday, became Het Toneelhuis’ first artistic director. Legendary Flemish actor Josse de Pauw took over in 2005 but passed on the torch to longtime theatre director Guy Cassiers the following year.
 
Born in Antwerp, Cassiers had left his directorial mark on a number of theatres in Flanders and the Netherlands, most notably winning awards for his productions with Rotterdam’s RO theatre. Drawn to the possibilities of crossmedia aspects, he is best known for his ingenious integration of music and film technologies on stage.
 
Cassiers steered Het Toneelhuis in an entirely new direction. He moved away from the classic municipal theatre model in which each theatre has its own troupe and permanent director, instead inviting six Flemish performance artists to take up residence with him in the Bourla. “What we’re aiming for is not only special for Belgium; people in foreign countries are also interested in the concept, in the rethinking of a city company,” he says.
 
Out of adversity
 
“We started three years ago at the same time as the Belgian elections, which is important,” says Cassiers, referring to Flanders’ shift to right-wing politics. “Things were changing rapidly in Antwerp, politically speaking, due to, for instance, the Vlaams Belang, which got a lot of votes. For us, it was important to take a stand.”
 
That they did. Cassiers’ first production at Toneelhuis was Mefisto For Ever, the first of the Triptiek van de macht (Trilogy of Power), which explores the complex relationship between art, politics and power. Adapted by Tom Lanoye, the story about a theatre director who collaborates with the Nazis was adapted from Klaus Mann’s novel Mephisto.
 
“I think we have a political responsibility as artists. We wanted to imprint that responsibility in the form of our company,” explains Cassiers.
 
Cassiers may be mayor of this small town called Het Toneelhuis, but he wouldn’t have got anywhere without his fellow citizens. The original six collaborators are: Renaissance man Benjamin Verdonck, long used to turning city of Antwerp into one large urban project; choreographer and dancer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui; playwright and filmmaker Wayn Traub; Lotte van den Berg, with her brilliant site-specific performances; De Filmfabriek, headed by Peter Missotten, which specialises in multi-media projects, and the entire company of Olympique Dramatique, four lads whose work is unabashedly physical, comic and, occasionally, violent.
 
Probably the best example of the power of collaborative influence is their first season’s A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, based on the novel by British author Julian Barnes in which he combines fact and fiction to create an alternate reality. This unique project became a true phenomenon, mainly due to the life-sized aquarium produced by Missotten, which took centre stage in a climatic drowning scene enacted by Olympique Dramatique. Cherkaoui, Traub and Van Den Berg assisted in making this performance about art and destruction a revolutionary spectacle.
 
Although the seven artists of the Toneelhuis continue to assist and influence each other, they mostly produce their own projects. This means that no Toneelhuis production is quite like the last.
 
“We focus on the importance of diversity,” says Cassiers. “Our seven artists all start from a different discipline. In that sense, you can say that we are a miniature city where we respect the differences of the others and try to see how, by living together, we can create something new.”
 
As with any other community, people move in and out. With the departure of Van den Berg, Cherkaoui and Traub, who are all startingtheir own companies, Toneelhuis is welcoming playwright and poet Bart Meuleman and writer/actor Abke Haring.
 
Selecting “inhabitants” can’t be easy; so how did Cassiers go about it? “The quality of their work is the most important thing,” he states.
 
The heart of Toneelhuis is the Bourla Theatre, but that doesn’t mean that every artist has to work inside it. “The big stage is for large-scale performances, but an artist like Benjamin Verdonck looks at the theatre from the point of view of an outsider, and it’s also important for us to have those kinds of artists who go into the city and create a direct dialogue with passers-by.”
 
Cassiers’ novel approach
 
Guy Cassiers’ own work, on the other hand, is also quite distinctive. He often bases his work on novels with solitary figures, and he regularly uses film and video installations, which creates a flowing mix between classical and contemporary. “It has to be relevant today; the theme is more important than the form,” he says of his plays. “I read a lot, and novels give me plenty to work with. The way we are influenced today by all kinds of other media creates more possibilities to develop Toneelhuis artistic director Guy Cassiers turned its formula inside-out a form of theatrethat is not only based on dialogue but also on monologues and on the thoughts of the characters.”
 
Cassiers integrates these influences, but he strives not to reproduce. Rather, he wants to “deconstruct the elements and use them in a completely different way. By deconstructing the form and the language, I hope the spectator can reconstruct the image in his own mind. Every work I develop is to stimulate the artist inside the spectator.”
 
Cassiers is also fond of taking on big projects and scaling them into pieces. Right now he’s working on a stage adaptation of The Man Without Qualities, the whopping 1930 three-volume book by Austrian writer Robert Musil. The first of the trilogy will premier next summer in the Bourla. “In a way, it is about re-creating Europe,” says Cassiers. “The book takes place at the beginning of the First World War, but there are so many similarities with today’s political situation that I think it’s important to review the content.
 
Het Toneelhuis also frequently hosts visiting companies; this season, KVS, NTGent, De Roovers and Music Theatre Transparant will all grace the stage. Most of Toneelhuis’ original works are in Dutch, but, depending on the company, you’ll also find English and French-language theatre.
 
Even though Het Toneelhuis takes all its productions on tour, both nationally and internationally, a lot of non-natives attend the performances in Antwerp due to the intoxicating location. Attending a performance in the Bourla satisfies a desire for the timeless glory of the theatre – mahogany, velvety seating, surrounded by statues of ancient muses – while providing extremely contemporary productions and modern adaptations.
 
The same can be said for the building’s bar, De Foyer, a majestic Antwerp landmark on its own. Eat and drink under its stained-glass dome, decorated with flowers and fruits. It’s the perfect ending to a stylish night out.
 

Click here for details of the forthcoming Toneelhuis season

 
 
www.toneelhuis.be