Friday evening

Now in his early seventies, Alain Platel looks back on his own career and the developments in the performing arts.

‘The ’80s generation.’ That is the name given to the Flemish artists who, from the 1980s onwards, radically reshaped the performing arts landscape far beyond its borders. One of these well-known ‘Eighties’ is director Alain Platel. Now that he is turning seventy, he reflects on how the landscape has evolved and looks back on his own career. How social shifts resonated in his work, how the outside world naturally drifted into the rehearsal studio and, in doing so, presented itself uninvited as a co-performer in his productions. Why has he become who he is – a successful director? He, the man with no formal training as a dancer, actor or theatre maker, the man who also had no ambition to pursue a career? He has set down his reflections in a book about his productions, about politics in the arts and about Gaza. But perhaps, above all, about the act of creation.