Luk Perceval, how did you come up with the idea of bringing J. M. Coetzee’s novel “Disgrace” to the stage at Toneelgroep Amsterdam in 2011?
Naturally I knew him as a Nobel laureate, but to be honest I hadn’t read anything by him. Then Peter Van Kraaij, the dramaturge at Toneelgroep Amsterdam, suggested I try “Disgrace”. I read the novel in a trance, because it is more than moving. I immediately had an idea for a theatrical adaptation, because it is written in a very cinematic way. Not just the dramaturgy, but in the way it captures major conflicts through characters who are in fact quite ordinary. For me this novel is a sort of Faust in South Africa. So I decided on it very quickly, but Coetzee had never given his permission for a dramatisation before. We were not the first to come up with the idea and so, together with the actor Josse de Pauw, who was very committed to this project, we started writing a working version, with the primary aim of coming up with a stage language that transforms descriptive literature into language experienced by the characters. Coetzee then read this adaptation and very quickly gave...