In the year in which it celebrates its 30th anniversary since its birth, in 1994, and now has international success behind it which has taken it around 34 countries, the German group Familie Floez is in Italy to show off its theater skills '' using an unconventional body language which through the use of masks reveals what is hidden in the soul of the human being, since these do not only have a form, but also a content, which is highlighted and developed with the same mask and the acting''.
The artistic directors are Michael Vogel and Hajo Schuler.
Until Sunday at the Teatro Verdi in Salerno the company is replicating Hotel Paradiso directed by Vogel, who then arrives in Rome from 6 to 11 February at the Sala Umberto, while he is taking his latest creation, Hokuspokus with directed by Schuler, which, after the Milanese performances in January, will be at the Puccini in Florence on 2 and 3 March, on the 5 and 6 at the Giordano in Foggia and from the 7 to the 10 at the Piccinni in Bari, then from the 23 to the 28 at the Bellini in Naples.
The Hotel Paradiso is a small mountain hotel managed by the elderly head of the family, proud of the four stars that dominate the entrance and the adjoining spring that promises healing from all types of illnesses.
But appearances are deceiving and, while his son and daughter clash harshly to take over the management of the hotel, the atmosphere, like the story, while maintaining its ironic note, becomes yellow and noir: there is a a waitress who has a kleptomania problem and a cook with a passion for butchering, but not only animals, so much so that soon a first corpse will surface and everyone will find themselves involved in a vortex of events that seem to leave no escape.
The work of Hokuspokus is very different and new (a distortion of the Latin phrase 'Hoc est enim corpus meum' - This is my body) in which for the first time we see the actors of Familie Floez with the usual masks but also acting without them.
The story develops from the moment of creation with a couple, the first, in a mysterious place, a garden or a cave where slowly with the first gestures, he becomes aware of himself, of his body, of his voice.
But in the end they are a couple like many others, looking for a home, starting a family, having their first child, second and third.
And while the children grow up, become adults and leave, the parents grow old alone, until a new couple arrives....
In the show, explains the director, we experience creation, the coming to life of masked beings, figures who then they find their way into the world and develop an existence of their own, perhaps coming face to face with their creators at some point.
Vogel says that Familie Floez is a language in which everyone is a specialist without knowing it, so ''the audience sometimes realizes and accepts only after a while that only the body is acting and there is no verbal communication, which a limitation appears, but in this limitation infinite possibilities are revealed.
Our people are actors first and foremost and the invitation is to think about how they move, rather than why they move and what moves them.
We have mime actors who are students of Lecoq, of the Die Etage mime school here in Berlin, but what we do is no longer traditional mime, it is acting without words, we have reached the point where we feel that words are no longer necessary''.
As for the working method, a project is often born after a conversation with Hajo - he says - but, as we have grown, in the latest productions we have involved more people and discussed new ideas: ''The fact is that we never work with all the same people and some change Always.
Together we create and we are the authors and I, up to a certain point, was the director while Hajo was better at making masks, but now he also signs a show, as is the case with Hokuspokus''.
Reproduction reserved © Copyright ANSA