Lisaboa Houbrechts

Recount the life of Pierre Bruegel l'Ancien on stage: this is the aim of Bruegel. The performance takes us back to the sixteenth century, the time of the cosmographer Mercator and the printer Plantin, of celestial discoveries and the rise of translations, and of the considerable commercial development of Anvers. 

Through Margot La Folle, the central and ambiguous figure of one of the master's canvases, and brought to life here, we encounter publishers, painters, rhetoricians, thinkers and merchants, whose philosophical and poetic exchanges, rooted in their era, irrefutably resonate with ours: female representations, mass productions, globalisation, artists' status, economic models, and issues relating to traditions, myths and beliefs. A plural fresco combining theatre, dance, visual arts and music, Bruegel unveils the Flemish master's astonishing modernity and the infinite richness of his work.