Jan Fabre is creating his own Requiem. It will be a theatrical mass for the dead with life at its heart. Fabre is returning death to the midst of life, where we revel and dance, where death is venerated as part of a cycle that is always able to recommence. Death is a moment charged with mysterious silences. But also a deafening concert of memories, images, and bits and pieces of episodes from lost lives. In death, life returns as a mess: a puzzle comprising anecdotes, trivialities, private rooms and sublime mortality. Death is full of tears, but deep beneath this wailing, long afterwards and sometimes right at that very moment, there comes life's odd mocking laugh. Again and again. Death bedevils life. Life bedevils death. In our world we are not sure how to deal with death. Though in fact we know very well how: by keeping it as far away as possible. There is literally no longer any place for the dead. In this way we deny ourselves one of the deepest mysteries of life. Death is not a clinical event. It is a phase of transformation, when the soul moves on, the body withers, and the skin fades and disappears. The earth, that great heap of dead, sets its jaws into what remains, hungry and indefatigable. And a short while later life is once again crying in our faces. Maturing and rotting. It's not much more than that. But in its eternal unruliness it overflows with unbridled energy. Like the sea crashing on the sand. Without end, without beginning. Requiem is a mass for the dead. Fabre takes us into the burial chamber of the dead. He takes the pulse and temperature of the dead and taps his buttocks. The mass for the dead is a feast, a farewell, a new beginning.