Sam Max

Coop (2020)

Full Length
LGBTQ

“In their extraordinary debut piece, Sam Max succeeds in telling an exciting, atmospherically gripping story in a nonlinear fashion by fluidly interlacing two levels of reality: the choreographed, self-contained rhythms of everyday life with a para-real world of the subconscious. Here, memory, death and dreams come together in a poetic space that makes otherworldly encounters possible. With a non-binary or transmasculine main character in the center, Coop provides an account of social isolation, and the consequences of a person's mental and sexual development being defined solely by others.”
— Suhrkamp Theater Verlag

Available in Library

Production and Development History

Paradise Factory (2020) dir. Sam Max

Theatertreffen Stückemarkt, Berlin (2020/1), dir. Charlotte Sprenger (trans. Robin Detje)

Goethe Institut, Beijing (2021), dir. LI Zhengfang (trans. CHEN Si'an)

ETA Hoffmann Theater, Bavaria (2023) dir. Wilke Weermann (trans. Robin Detje)

Publisher

Suhrkamp Theater Verlag (DE: trans. Robin Detje)

Press

DIE DEUTSCHE BÜHNE: GUTS AND SNICKERS: “a remarkable debut piece, [...] captures the monstrosity of compulsively lived heteronormativity, as well as the vulnerability of the human psyche” [...] “the eruption of the terrible as salvation,” [...], “there are good reasons for any ensemble to re-enact this remarkable text, [...] the staging proves why we should see it today, here and now.”

REZENSÖHNCHEN: THE LITTLE FAMILY ON THE EDGE OF ETERNITY: “Stirring” [...] “deals with the abysses of humanity"

FRÄNKISCHERTAG: CARNAGE IN THE DOLLHOUSE: “With Sam Max and Wilke Weermann, a new generation is moving into the limelight. Not everyone will be happy about this. Like all expressions from representatives of a new generation, Max and Weermann bring their own language, their own concept of technology and their own cultural system of reference to the theater. They are about the desire of some to be free and about the others who prevent them from doing so.”

“[Sam’s] focused, well choreographed direction with its repetition of movement adds to the sense of Avery, and us as audience members, being trapped in a recurring nightmare, [and their] confident commitment to experimentation with theatrical form make for an exciting evening. Sam Max and their collaborators have created a powerful piece of theatre that sears itself into the mind like a bloodstained fever dream.”
— James Kleinmann, The Queer Review