Max Black

Hideout of a thought alchemist, Max Black’s den is an undescribable chaos reminiscent of Cagliostro’s workshop or a research laboratory, a cluttered space situated somewhere between the bedroom of an untidy child and a Faraday cage. A magnificent playground for the actor André Wilms who plays the philosopher « Max Black » in a playful succession of surrealist rituals put to music by the composer and German director Heiner Goebbels. After « Où bien le débarquement désastreux » in which Heiner Goebbels drew ideas from Francis Ponge and Heiner Müller, here is « Max Black » an unlikely sequel based on the writing of « Max Black », but which also presents itself as a collage of quotes from Paul Valéry, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg and Ludwig Wittgenstein. This performance is rooted in experimental science and, by way of practical demonstrations which afford us some pyrotechnical surprises, it entertains rather in the way of story theatre, presenting André Wilms in his solitary quest for a metaphysical grail.