Biography
Maxim Storms is an iconoclast who learned his profession at the KASK (School of Arts Ghent) and plays and performs on various stages for different audiences. There is Ballet Dommage, with Katrien Valckenaers, which always surprises with its specific design, language or staging. And the performance band Brik Tu-Tok – with Linde Carrijn – brings a wide arrangement of sounds to life through cassettes, household knick-knacks and self-made objects. In addition, there is Maxim’s dark and comic – solo or in duo with Lobke Leirens – theater work with his incongruous humor, mustachioed poker face, flawless sense of timing and in which the absurd prevails. Brutal chansons, jabber and dada monologues, cosmic collages and sponge sculptures are never far away.
De Standaard once called him ‘the Charlie Chaplin of his generation’ because of the slapstick that characterizes Storms’ playing style. In recent years, Maxim (and his co-creators) have made no fewer than 5 selections for the TheaterFestival or Circuit X. Tribunal (BRONKS & Ballet Dommage) was at the TheaterFestival 2021.
Photo: Fred Debrock
In residentie NUGGETS
16.01.2023 – 20.01.2023
In Storm’s new physical solo, he deconstructs the individual who survives in today’s ‘we-want-more’ society on speed. Maxim does this in his (famed) grotesque playing style and (characteristic and unique) rhythmic language constructions. He creates a crazy universe where a last soul stubbornly continues to model existence. Using dilapidated construction and fatal repairs, the character attempts to achieve the indeterminate goal.
In his previous solo Brother Blue Storms designed an unreliable landscape in which the protagonist loses his tail. In NUGGETS he goes one step further and the main character radically remodels the remains of his existence. In all his work, Maxim Storms gives voice to characters who test or defy ‘the impossibility’. NUGGETS will be a new stage in that quest for philosophical wounds.