Max Black, or, 62 Ways of Supporting the Head with a Hand

In this performance the actor, the sound, the lighting and pyrotechnic effects work as partners and co-authors of what happens on stage. Fire flashes and fragments from notebooks of great thinkers illustrate the inner life of a scientist, his manner of irradiations, his moments of despair. Director and composer Heiner Goebbels abandons traditional drama for a world in which mechanisms, fire and electricity, sounds and melodies tell us their stories in the same way that a human might – thus becoming tools for creating polyphony. 

The first version of this performance was created in French at the Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne (Switzerland) in 1998.

Warning: One of the characters, the smell of sulfur, might aggravate allergies.

The performance is accompanied by English-language supertitles.