10 Jun

20:00

Theater Kikker

Ganzenmarkt 14, Utrecht

You can choose your friends, but you have to make do with your family. This performance explores family dynamics, secrets, and the creation of a chosen family through the stories of five queer actors.

Family

More info & tickets

You can choose your friends. With your family, you just have to make do. The family you grow up in can be warm, but also suffocating.

For the performance Family, theater maker Louis Janssens invites four actors of different ages to join him on stage to talk about what it was like at home. How they talked, and especially what things were not talked about. What the actors say, you can immediately picture. The moments of real connection, the awkward conversations, the inaccessibility of a parent, the intimacy with a sister, brother, or grandmother. There are painful memories, but everything is made light and sometimes funny by the way the actors tell their stories. It's a delight to listen to. It's about fathers who weren't there, about missing a deceased mother, about the loneliness of children who want to tell their biggest secret but don't dare. The actors take turns speaking. And now they are listened to, by their fellow actors and by the audience.

What the five actors share is their queerness. They all tell how they broke this news, one very young, another much later. For no one was it easy. And without the actors constantly reacting to each other, the great feeling of being together is moving. In fact, they are creating a new family together, one they have chosen themselves.

For ten years, Louis Janssens made theater with the duo DeSnor. The decision to tell his personal stories led to overwhelmingly beautiful, intimate productions. The last three – his solo Serenade, his performance Analoog (with the company De Hoe), and his previous group creation Desire – were all selected for the Theater Festival, ranking among the best theater of that season.

Credits

Direction: Louis Janssens & Peter Seynaeve
Text & Performance: Louis Janssens, Peter Seynaeve, Maureen Teeuwen, Mourad Baaiz & Francis Geeraert
Lighting Design & Technology: Shane Van Laer & Fee Van Herck
Production: vzw Louis