Hajo Schüler wanted to do something with masks and without words and decided to tell the story of a family living in the subway – a story inspired by the coal mines that were there in Essen. "It was a kind of tribute to these workers, many of whom had been fired when some mines were shut down," he says. "We invented the story of a family who lived in hiding and who appeared for the first time: it was the Flöz family, and that's the name we decided to give to our company eight years later. in fact, a family. "
The mask is in charge
At first the masks were" very simple, "says Schüller." The mask was only an instrument for the actor and this gave a bit of humor to his interpretation. "But then the masks began to evolve.They became more refined.More delicate.But even sociological.It's amazing how a mask made especially with paper Maché can be so detailed and so expressive. "There are other things, but the base is paper Maché could be made by pre-primary children," says Schüle, " paper maché material because it is cheap, very formless, and allows corrections. "
The creation process always starts with the actors working without masks." The actors create the characters and make a rough draft, we collect information about these characters, their history, their body, their age, their sex, their animals company, their profession, everything. the actor who will use it, who creates the mask, "he explains
This means that in the first phase, it is the actor that defines the mask. "The mask is fed by the actor." But then, when the mask is introduced in the test, a new phase begins. And everything changes. "From this moment, it is the mask that commands, the actor must follow what the mask asks." This not only determines the work of the actor, but also changes the relationship with the audience – it stops being a one-to-one relationship and becomes triangular.
Hajo Schüler explains the complex process: "The mask does not lie.When we do not have the expression of the face or the voice to convey what we want to convey, the 39, attention is all about the body, and that's what the actor must control, the body language.It must be all there, in the way each character moves, for example, sitting on a chair Doing nothing – we must seek to know the story of this person by the way he sits in. You must be really there in the character. "
Dr. Nest five actors play 17 characters. They change constantly. "It's not complicated," says the director. "Once they put the mask, the actor between another character." The most difficult is logistics. There is no backstage nor support for the stage, the six actors must undress and dress alone, change the decor and accessories. "It's a big responsibility and a lot of things can go wrong, everything is planned in a minute, the costumes have to be ready, when they come out, they can not throw them away because they know that They will need it. "
Dr. Nest, Familie Flöz was inspired by the memories of Björn Leese, one of the company's actors, who grew up in a village where he was developing a pilot project to integrate patients with mental health problems. The families were in charge of a sick person who lived with healthy people. The story is born from these memories, by reading the books of Oliver Sacks, Michel Foucault and other authors, and even resorting to the imagery of films like Flying over a cuckoo's nest by Milos Forman. "It is not easy to work on this topic of mental illness because on the one hand we are working on what is human, but on the other hand we can fall into the trap of". to use his more exotic side – we did not want to circus like before monster show Because, in fact, there is a fascination for different people and that it was an idea that But the mask has allowed us to work this in a poetic and at the same time humorous way, as we like to do. "
On stage, we accompany Dr. Nest, a doctor who will work for a hospice and who, instead of using therapies like traditional electric shocks, seeks to approach his patients, to communicate with them, to establish a relationship. "In fact, it's a show about empathy," says the director. "It's a fascinating thing for me: everyone who lives a love or wants to have a relationship with each other is in danger, when we're really interested in perceiving each other – up to the end of the day. where can we go, in our quest for empathy, without losing ourselves? "
For Dr. Nest, it's hard to know where to stop, and gradually, so-called" abnormal "attitudes become more and more normal for him. It becomes impossible to say who is crazy and who is healthy in spirit.And this is another very present subject in the show: after all, what is normality? And who determines it? "We did not want to do anything very political, but the truth is we can not stop it, the white coat is a symbol, it's a decision we make, which has the power, who has the key and closes the door and why
The creations of Familie Flöz are so perfect that we gradually forget that the actors have masks. first, so absurd, become familiar, we know immediately who each character is and what their spirit is, they do not speak, they do not smile, they do not And yet, they tell us everything we need to know and even make us shudder and make us smile.
Dr. Nest
Familie Flöz (Germany)
Palco Grande – School D. António da Costa, Almada
Monday (day 16) to 22:00
* The journalist went to Berlin at the invitation of the Almada Theater Festival
