Familie Flöz Staging & Masks

Familie Flöz is an international theatre company based in Berlin. Originating from the Folkwang-Universität der Künste in Essen, today it stands for the rediscovery of theatre with masks. The name of this constantly changing troupe also conceals a self-image. In mining jargon, 'seam' refers to the layers of soil in which valuable raw materials are stored. In a collective creative process, seemingly timeless characters emerge for each production, for which the company has created 15 pieces to date. These are difficult to assign to a usual genre, but are always understandable across language barriers. Spoken language usually plays no role. «We believe that masks are as universal as they are an ingenious invention of man and inseparable from theatre and our search for ourselves.» To date, Familie Flöz has performed in 45 countries and received numerous awards.

The great Familie Flöz does not illustrate current political problems; rather, this is a primal theatre that plays out the struggles of life - and in the way Jonathan Franzen recently said about his own art, literature: Its purpose, he said, is not to solve a problem, but to recognise it, to inhabit it fully, to make something beautiful out of it, and to create a connection between you and everyone else who has ever suffered from it.

Peter Kümmel, Die Zeit