Family
For Family, theatre-maker Louis Janssens has invited four performers from different generations to share the stage with him. They tell stories, ask questions and seek comfort, support and recognition in one another. The show is about how family bonds connect us and how they inevitably shape our lives. About blood family and chosen family. About parents, children, growing up and the fear of being left behind alone. The performers appear as themselves, yet as the show unfolds they seem to gradually become each other's family too.
Festival Nederlands Theater Festival
Duration 60 minutes
Genre Theatre
Language Dutch
Poetic and relatable
Family is a poetic and relatable text-based performance about the universal experience of family. Starting from a queer perspective, they tell a broader human story about having a family and searching for one. Not everyone has children — but in the end, we are all someone's child.
Louis Janssens
In recent years Louis Janssens made the solo performance Serenade (#nieuwjong, Het TheaterFestival 2021), the duet Analoog with Willem de Wolf (Het TheaterFestival and Nederlands Theaterfestival 2023) and Desire (Het TheaterFestival 2024). Now he makes Family together with an intergenerational queer cast consisting of 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).
Family was named one of the best productions of 2025 in the year-end lists of Knack Focus, Etcetera and NRC!
3-13 september 2026
Nederlands Theater Festival
The Nederlands Theater Festival (NTF) marks the official start of the new theatre season each year. For eleven days, starting on the first Thursday in September, the festival presents a selection of the finest and most impressive productions of the past year in Amsterdam.
Credits
direction: Louis Janssens & Peter Seynaeve
text & performance: Louis Janssens, Peter Seynaeve, Maureen Teeuwen, Mourad Baaiz & Francis Geeraert
lighting design: Shane Van Laer
technics: Fee Van Herck
production management: Lori Tuerlinckx
observer internship: Emma Claessens
production: vzw Louis
coproduction: Perpodium
with support of: Monty, CAMPO, c o r s o, kunstencentrum nona, De Grote Post, Het Nationale Theater, Theaterfestival Boulevard, De Brakke Grond, deAuteurs & De Vlaamse Overheid
with thanks to: Leonore Spee, Sara De Roo, Willemijn Zevenhuizen, Eva Dermul, Lies Van Loock, Simon Baetens, Elsemieke Scholte, Willem de Wolf & Tim Taveirne
With the support of the tax shelter of the Belgian Federal Government via Cronos Invest