Lucas Tavernier

We'll skip the platitude that "he was born to be an actor". You can hardly say Lucas was acting when causing mayhem around his cradle in hometown Gent (Belgium), though some would like to have called it overacting. His first performance was in a show staged by the expat community in Rwanda when he was 9 - don't ask, it would lead us too far astray - but he didn't get severely stung by the acting bug until, during one long magical weekend, he got to play the king's jester in the senior high play Puss In Boots. (Un)fortunately, his parents were so down-to-earth as to gently push him into getting a 'serious' degree before attending drama school, so he took up a master's in Roman philology, majoring in French and Italian, and graduated with flying colours. Only to get passionate about another frivolity: books, and French literature in particular. Denis Diderot's "Paradoxe sur le comédien" (the Actor's Paradox), in which the author claims that a director shouldn't be interested in how an actor feels, only in how he makes the public feel, left an indelible impression. He moved on to read Theatre Sciences at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris and practised reciting alexandrines and hiding behind Commedia dell' arte masks at the Ecole Regionale d'Acteurs de Cannes, after which an exhausting list of workshops followed. Foremost among them were the ones on Shakespeare at the Central School for Speech and Drama, with the Brussels Shakespeare Society with A. Visnevski from RADA and L. Hancock of the Original Shakespeare Company and A. Wade of the RSC, Nancy Bishop's "Advanced scene study and on-camera master class" and workshops led by M. Barnfather (Théâtre de Complicité), and P. Galbeau (Radio France). Impossible to keep track, as he won't stop sandpapering his professional knowledge in multiple tongues and countries. Guayaquil, the economic capital of Ecuador where he consequently played and directed in Spanish for over a year, will probably rank as the most exotic, up to now. Let's turn the globe a quarter and return to enchanting Paris. Directed by Marion Bierry at the Théâtre du Trianon, Lucas took on the longest part in verse of the French repertoire, l'Aiglon, a play based on the tragic life of Napoleon's son. He performed at the Edinburgh Fringe the largest arts festival in the world, in the first English translation of Le Visiteur by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, and for the Shakespeare Society in Brussels and continues to act and direct for several theatre companies in Belgium, like the Théâtre Royal des Galeries and the Théâtre Royal du Parc. When necessary, he puts his literary translator's hat on to translate the scripts himself, for the Dutch translations of "Pour un oui ou pour un non" (Nathalie Sarraute), "Contractions" (Mike Bartlett) or "Then what" (Andrew Payne) before acting or directing. Or his interpreter's hat to help out the director with local extras, like in the Belgian television series Crème de la Crème (2013), partly shot in Milan, in which he had a supporting role in Italian. Which seamlessly brings us to the 'moving pictures'. A Russian (criminal) truck driver in the long-running Flemish soap Thuis (1995), American businessman Winston von Burghart in the German TV-series for kids Hotel 13 (2012), a journalist in The Pink Panther (2006) (directed by Shawn Levy), a priest in The Monuments Men (2014) (directed by and starring George Clooney) and recently also casted for The Exception (2016) and La confession (2016), Lucas likes high professional standards for "the chance to excel yourself". Quilombo, his own production company, turned out Les choses en face (2017), a short written by Olivier Chauvel and directed by Douglas Boswell. Future dream roles include the impish character "Tijl Uilenspiegel" from Flemish folklore, typical of the bon vivant in him, and "De Rode Ridder" a knight, in the comics created by Willy Vandersteen, who lives an adventurous life in the middle ages. But maybe that's because he is attracted by Galaxa, the personification of the force of the Light, whose shape was inspired by the young Senta Berger. Commedia dell' arte, Italian improvisation theatre with masked archetypes, remains one of his many passions, along with tango-dancing, swimming, rowing and horseback riding. It could be considered a safe bet that he won't easily get bored to death, although he maintains a keen interest in challenging new projects, in which he can "gain through play". Come to think of it, don't we all?