Josse De Pauw

Actor, author and director JOSSE DE PAUW (° 1952) is part of the artistic core of LOD music theater. His career started in 1976 with Radeis International, a highly successful theatre group that performed throughout Europe and overseas, from Vancouver to Los Angeles, from Caracas to Hong Kong, until 1984. Since 2004 he has been developing his theater work at LOD.

As from 1985 he operated as an independent theatre-maker and collaborated with a lot of different actors, directors, musicians, composers, writers and artists. 

He performed his first major 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 Stelling, 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 die Siel van die Mier (with Jan Kuijken), De Gehangenen (with Jan Kuijken), Boot & Berg (with Peter Vermeersch), An Old Monk (with Kris Defoort Trio), HUIS (with Jan Kuijken), The Heroes (with Dominique Pauwels) & The Blind (with Jan Kuijken & Collegium Vocale), a concert called landscape (with Kris Defoort trio), The Memory of Trees (Fabrice Murgia & Dominique Pauwels), Leviathan (with Kris Defoort), Kroniek van het vuur (with Bert Dockx), Moby Dick (with Gorges Ocloo & Dominique Pauwels), The Butcher (with Gorges Ocloo, Toon Callier & Bertel Schollaert) & Rhapsody (with Frederik Neyrinck).

In 2023 for the AfrOpera The Golden Stool, or the story of Nana Yaa Asantewaa by LOD artist Gorges Ocloo, a co-production by LOD and Toneelhuis, Josse De Pauw provided the dramaturgy and co-wrote the libretto. Josse Jnr. premiered in August 2023, it is the first collaboration between Josse De Pauw, Ahilan Ratnamohan & Etuwe Bright Junior.