Lisaboa Houbrechts (b. 1992) is an author and director of theatrical works that operate at the crossroads of visual art, opera, music theatre, and text-based theatre, with a distinctly international profile. She graduated with the highest honors from KASK Drama in Ghent in 2016. Four years earlier, she had founded the company Kuiperskaai together with Victor and Romy Louise Lauwers and Oscar van der Put. Her early productions were already marked by a large cast, a raw interplay of image and text, and an intelligent fusion of disciplines: performance, music, choreography, literature, and visual art.

Her flair for grand theatrical gestures did not go unnoticed. In 2017, Guy Cassiers invited Houbrechts to join the P.U.L.S. trajectory (Project for Upcoming Talent for the Large Stage) at Toneelhuis. She collaborated with Alain Platel, Ivo van Hove, and Jan Lauwers, and in 2018, she created a raw and idiosyncratic adaptation of Hamlet. In it, she opens new perspectives, focusing on the destructive relationship between Hamlet and his mother, Queen Gertrude. By portraying Gertrude’s innocence, Houbrechts places her at the center of the repertoire. At just twenty-seven, her unique take on Shakespeare’s world marked a powerful entrance into the small yet influential community of the European theatre scene.

In 2019, she created the whirling and musical Bruegel, a kaleidoscopic portrait of 16th-century painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder and the era in which he painted Dulle Griet: the woman scorned as a “virago” for allegedly looting hell. But what if she wasn’t looting, but rescuing? Like in Hamlet, Houbrechts explores female perspectives, though the play is not about feminism or women’s rights. Her entire oeuvre rejects binary thinking in all its forms, championing flexibility and fluidity. Her liquid aesthetic compels the viewer into a mental split.

Music is another consistent thread in Houbrechts’ work. In 2023, she created Vake Poes; or How God Disappeared with laGeste and Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, a self-written piece in which guided by the music of Bach she explores the limits of the divine while unearthing a dark trauma. The narrative spans three generations, reflecting on the era of her grandparents, her parents, and her own. With a cross-generational cast of children, singers, dancers, and adult actors, she examines how the personal intertwines with the political, the intimate with the monumental, and the past with the present. This family epic combines baroque chaos and theatrical intensity with stillness and elusive spirituality. Houbrechts fuses the essence of a classical Greek tragedy with a deeply personal, modern tale. Vake Poes was selected for the TheaterFestival 2023.

Also in spring 2023, Houbrechts adapted and directed Euripides’ Medea for the renowned Comédie-Française in Paris becoming the youngest director ever granted that honor.

In spring 2024, she directed Yerma, Lorca’s timeless drama about childlessness and revenge, at Dramaten in Stockholm. This was followed by Orfeo ed Euridice by Gluck at Staatsoper Hannover.

In the 2024–2025 season, Lisaboa Houbrechts will direct Mother Courage by Bertolt Brecht at KVS and Toneelhuis. Once again, she reimagines an iconic story about an enigmatic woman through a fresh dramaturgical lens.

Lisaboa Houbrechts’ work is supported by KVS and Toneelhuis. Since 2022, she has shared the artistic leadership of Toneelhuis with Gorges Ocloo, FC Bergman, Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe, and Olympique Dramatique.