Jan Versweyveld

Scenographer and lighting designer Jan Versweyveld received his training at the Sint Lucas Institute in Brussels and at the Royal Academy in Antwerp. In the 1980s, he and Ivo van Hove were two of the founders of the Flemish theatre groups Akt/Vertikaal and Toneelproducties De Tijd. During this time they worked with some of the most remarkable theatre people in the Low Countries. Jan Versweyveld became the regular scenographer of Eindhoven’s Zuidelijk Toneel theatre group in 1990. In 2001 he made the switch to Toneelgroep Amsterdam, where he became the head of scenography and the group’s regular designer. He worked on productions of “Angels in America”, “Cries and whispers”, “Rocco and his brothers”, the “Antonioni project”, “La voix humaine”, “Teorema”, “Summer trilogy”, “Children of the Sun”, “And We'll Never Be Parted”, “The Miser”, “The Russians!”, “Husbands”, “Macbeth”, “Long Day’s Journey into Night”, “Danton’s Death”, “The Fountainhead” and “Mary Stuart”.

Jan Versweyveld has been a guest lecturer at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and is one of the co-founders of the scenography training programme in Antwerp. He has been responsible for designing the scenes and lighting for a wide variety of theatre productions, ranging from the classics (Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare and Marlowe), to modern plays (Williams, O’Neill, Camus, Mauriac, Genet and Sontag). His oeuvre includes theatre, dance (ROSAS) and opera: “Lulu” and the complete “Ring des Nibelungen” by the Flemish Opera, “I due Foscari” by the Munt Opera, “Fidelio” at L’Opéra Palais Garnier and “De zaak Makropulos”, “La clemenza di Tito” and “Iolanta” by the Netherlands Opera. In addition to his work with Ivo van Hove and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, he has also collaborated with many internationally renowned directors, including Johan Simons and Pierre Audi.

He won the Bessie Award in New York for his scenography for Drumming Live, and he received the OBIE Award for “Hedda Gabler”. In 2008, he received the Prosceniumprijs, a Dutch theatre prize, together with Ivo van Hove. In 2015 he received the Amsterdam Award for the Arts for proven quality (with Ivo van Hove) and in 2016 the Knight of Illumination Award for Song from Far Away.

As of November 2019