ABSTRACT
This chapter examines The Blind Poet, an important and highly successful spectacle which focuses on one of the structural foundations of democracy: the formation of a human identity through the mingling of ethnicity as the essential basis of equality. In The Blind Poet, seven performers give life in succession to seven portraits through monologues, movements and dance steps backed up by the other players in the troupe, who act variously as stage hands, extras and musicians, while Jan Lauwers moves about the stage with the microphone in his hand. Lauwers’s is a theatre of fantasy and sensitivity, of lightness and depth and of humour and seriousness, presented by versatile performers guided by a lucid, complete artist, involved both in understanding world, planning the future world and reflecting on existence. The noise of war turns into a rhythmic beating of rods manipulated by the performers, including Lauwers.
