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4. Is there any such thing as 'extreme theatre'? And if so, what would it mean? 'More theatre than theatre', to formulate it à la Baudrillard? A theatre that sets itself up face à l'extrême, its gaze turned towards the Medusa's head of the unbearable reality and aware of the risk of turning to stone? A theatre with explicit political and social subjects and intentions? A theatre with and by the homeless and illegal immigrants? A theatre that goes onto the streets and into the neighbourhoods? A theatre in the name of democratic values? In short: a theatre that is'engaged', a theatre that'intervenesjthat addresses its audience directly? 5. Isabella tells the story of her life, but she does not tell it alone. All those who were important to her tell it with her; the many in her life who had died: Arthur and Anna, her lovers Alexander and Frank. And not only do they tell Isabella's story together, they also sing it. This is not the first time in a piece by Jan Lauwers that live music is played and that the actors sing, but it has never happened in such an open and inviting way as here. Unlike other cultures, Western culture has become alienated from group singing: here it now exists only as a professional activity. Song always points to a ritual aspect. It is another form of energy exchange than the spoken word and creates another type of communication with the audience, Lauwers:"Singing together is one of the finest things you can do. It was one of my dreams to put this on stage. And miraculously enough it succeeded very quickly. We decided to make the singing and the music a very informal presence. The music seems to be there only indirectly, but in fact it dominates everything. Your emotions are determined by what you hear. I want everyone to sing to the audience while smiling as much as possible. I myself join them on stage to put the whole thing into a little more perspective. I just sit there with them, sing along a bit, and explain a fewthings to the audience. As relaxed as possible. No solemn nonsense. I want the ritual of theatre to become something like people coming together to sing." 6. 'Watching and not intervening', is how Lauwers described his attitude at the time of Le Voyeur (1994): "I see voyeurism today as having two sides: on the one hand it is looking at what mankind does, from necessity taking part in it and adopting an indifferent attitude in orderto survive; on the other hand there is this sexually-tinted voyeurism: it has to do with AIDS." Isabella is not a voyeur, and certainly not when it comes to sex. In Isabella, Lauwers separates sex from the network of voyeurism and violence, disease and death, and guilt and perversion. Isabella is like Molly Bloom in James Joyce's Ulysses, a text that Jan Lauwers directed with Viviane De Muynck: both these women fundamentally say'yes'. 7. Is it a coincidence that Isabella is blind? Watching - in the voyeuristic (and thus male) sense and the frustration/castration it entails forms the heart of the dialectics of Lauwers'work for the