Family

In 2007 in Calais, a whole family hanged themselves: the parents and their two children. Never a motive was found, the suicide note stated: »We messed up, sorry.« What reasons, what traumas underlie such a suicide? »Family« will be staged by a real family: actors An Miller and Filip Peeters will not only act together as a couple, but for the first time in their career they will be on stage with their two teenage daughters Leonce and Louisa — and their dogs. Based on the mysterious case of the Demeester family, the Peeters-Miller family follows the journey of their own family, questioning the construction of family as the cell of life and origin of our world today. »Family« is an experiment, an ethnological study of today’s private life, an exhibition of the everyday: on stage we see the house of Family Demeester — or is it the house of the Family Peeters/ Miller? Fiction and reality mix, as we see on stage an evening like many in families — just that it is the last one. We observe the members of a family eat, making phone calls, shower. They watch videos, listen to music, clean the apartment, talk to each other about everyday things and remember moments of their lives. And in this exhibition of the normal, the big questions arise: Why are we here? And wouldn’t it be better if we disappeared? After the international success of »Five Easy Pieces«, which brought the life of murderer and child rapist Marc Dutroux to the stage with children, and »La Reprise« — about the homophobic murder of Ihsane Jarfi in Liège — Milo Rau now completes his trilogy about modern crimes with a family drama.

You can browse through the digital version of the NTGent "Family" program booklet here:
https://issuu.com/ntgent/docs/programmaboekje_familie_issuu_en/s/10128098

Milo Rau (*1977, Bern) stages and writes theatre plays, films and performances which were invited to numerous international festivals, such as the Theatertreffen Berlin, the Festival d’Avignon and the Biennale Teatro di Venezia. In 2007, he founded the »International Institute of Political Murder (IIPM)«. In 2017 he was awarded the Peter-Weiss-Preis and the Saarbrücker Poetikdozentur für Dramatik, as well as the prize of the German Centre of the International Theatre Institute (ITI). Since the season 2018/19 Milo Rau is the artistic director of the NTGent.

Dramaturgy and Research: Carmen Hornbostel
Coach: Peter Seynaeve
Set Design: Anton Lukas
Costume Design: Louisa Peeters & Anton Lukas
Video: Moritz von Dungern
Assistant Director: Liesbeth Standaert
Assistant Dramaturg: Eline Banken
Light: Dennis Diels
Musical Arrangement: Saskia Venegas Aernouts
Sound & Video Technic: Raf Willems
Production Management: Els Jacxsens
Technical Production Management: Chris Vanneste

With: Leonce Peeters, Louisa Peeters, An Miller, Filip Peeters