Geert Vriend

Award-winning artist Wim Helsen proves in his fifth theater performance that he not only has deep, absurd thoughts, but is also a good listener.

This comedy/theatre show is the sequel to 'Micha Wertheim: Somewhere Else'. This second show starts exactly where the first show ended: in the same theatrical scenery, with the same robot. But this time Wertheim surprises his audience by showing up. He tells about how the first experimental comedy show was received and contemplates about the magic of theatre and art in a society about the right to exist of art in a society that allows less and less doubt and confusion. When Robot falls into a depression, the boundaries between theater and reality begin to blur.

The bigger the audiences for Dutch comedian Micha Wertheim’s shows became, the less he had to do to make them laugh. In one early show, he suggested that the audience would be better off without him. So in 2016, he acted upon this suggestion with an experiment that made theater history: he wasn't physically present onstage but somewhere else. The audience wasn't aware of this in advance, though they did get a hint in the form of a pre-recorded "live" radio interview from a remote studio. "I see my audience as my children," Wertheim says in this interview. "You have to educate them, and that’s what I’ve been doing for the past 15 years. At first you have to constantly be there watching them, but there comes a time when you have to trust them to get on with it without you." With some help from a robot, a printer, a stereo and a set of headphones, the members of his audience were able to make their own performance.

Stage registration of the sixth comedy special by the Dutch comedian Micha Wertheim. The comedian notices that he has found his own audience through the years. But Wertheim also notices that his audience projects their own biased opinion on the performance, and there's nothing that Wertheim can do to change that opinion.

Stage registration of the fifth comedy special by the Dutch comedian Micha Wertheim. At the start of the performance, the performance appears to be unfinished: Micha Wertheim is still writing and the comedian has a writer's block.

Stage registration of the fourth comedy special by Dutch comedian Micha Wertheim. A show about anger, repetition, change, and repetition.

Stage registration of the third comedy special by Dutch comedian Micha Wertheim. A show about the "news addiction" that dominates the current media landscape, and about the problematic functioning of rhetorical devices like irony and satire.

Stage registration of the second comedy special by the Dutch comedian Micha Wertheim. This performance takes place in a dream, a dream in which Micha Wertheim shares all kinds of confessions, for example about how he manages to cope with the knowledge that he is probably not a real genius.