For the performance Family, theatre maker Louis Janssens has invited four performers from different generations to join him on stage. Together, they share stories, ask questions, and seek comfort, support, and recognition in one another. The piece explores how family ties connect us and how they inevitably shape our lives — touching on both blood relatives and chosen families. It is about parents, children, growing up, and the fear of being left behind. The performers appear on stage as themselves, but over the course of the performance, they increasingly seem to become each other’s family.

Family is a poetic and relatable text-based performance about the universal concept of family. Starting from a queer perspective, they tell a broader human story about having — and searching for — a family. Not everyone has children, but in the end, we are all someone’s child.

Over the past few years, Louis Janssens created the solo performance Serenade (#newyoung, TheaterFestival 2021), the duet Analoog with Willem de Wolf (TheaterFestival and Nederlands Theaterfestival 2023), and Desire (TheaterFestival 2024). He now presents Family, a performance created together with an intergenerational queer cast featuring Peter Seynaeve (NTGent, Het Zuidelijk Toneel), Maureen Teeuwen (Maatschappij Discordia, mugmetdegoudentand), Mourad Baaiz (Artemis/hetpaleis/Het Zuidelijk Toneel, Schauspielhaus Bochum), and Francis Geeraert (Compagnie Barbarie).