You suspect more than you know and think

It is often difficult to do justice with mere words to a play that is conceived for the stage; that is, that wants to be seen and heard. However, it is even more difficult to write about a play when the intention of the event is to portray something that lies beyond linguistic communicability. And that is perhaps already the most important statement that can be made about the new play by the Berlin group "Nico and the Navigators": you have to see it. "The Family Council" is the fourth production that director Nicola Hümpel and her Navigators are showing at the FFT Juta. Inspired by the Scandinavian Dogma film "The Feast," the group's new play deals with the complex roles and rituals within the family. It is about rules of the game and patterns of behavior that maintain the family system: They range from cleaning mania to sexual abuse, from falling in love to being an outsider. None of this is actually played out on the stage of the Wilhelm Marx House. Instead, the behavioral rituals and processes of everyday interaction are translated into a specific theatrical language. Nothing tangible is offered to the audience, nor is there a plot line to follow. The emphasis in the play is on each individual moment. And from each moment images, associations arise. The spectator suspects and feels more than he knows and thinks. Only the composition of all moments leads to a realization, namely, to have experienced something special. "He knows what he should want, but he doesn't want it at all"; "he was too thin to carry responsibility"; "sometimes they felt comfortable speechless" - again and again such statements of the actors echo through the theater space. They form the framework for the otherwise predominant play of facial expressions, gestures and movement, supported by different rhythms, yellow cups, rolls and a stage set of a special kind that can transform itself. For an inconspicuous red wall suddenly becomes stairs, hidden rooms and garage doors. This is the work of Oliver Proske, who together with Nicola Hümpel conceives the plays of the Navigators. He always supports and underlines the stage action with his unusual conceptions. And when all the secrets have been elicited from the red wall, the family council closes. In the background, sheep bleat "Silent night, holy night", and on the outsider of the flock the bun snow quietly trickles.

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