Amman catches a glimpse of masked performance

AMMAN — The Berlin-based mask theatre company Familie Flöz performed three public shows on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and two additional shows for refugees at the American Comunity Theatre in Amman.

The mask theatre company, which originated from Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, Germany, creates “archetypal characters” for each of its productions “in an interplay of improvisation, masks and writing”, according to the company’s website.

Playing for the first time in Jordan, the company presented “Hotel Paradiso”, a non-verbal piece with music set at a mountain resort, where an elderly lady and her family struggle to stay alive and “strange and magical things” start to happen.

Since the characters in the play wear masks and do not talk, the actors have to rely on movement and dance to express their characters. Their family-friendly mask theatres “often cannot be assigned to any common genre, but are always comprehensible across language boundaries”, the company writes on its website.