Max Simonischek: Amplitudes

Mr Simonischek, who are you?

Who am I? I ask myself that every day. I believe the answer lies in the search for the answer. And I associate this with questions such as: What do I want from life? How do I want to live? What sort of people do I want to surround myself with? What is important to me? What do I want to stand up for? I have decided for myself never to give a definitive answer to these questions, but to keep asking them anew.

You’re involved in theatre, work in television, appear on the big screen and direct. Do all these activities help you develop a sense of who you are and find yourself?

Yes, that’s described quite beautifully, but I’d like to elaborate a little further: my profession offers me a playing field; it is a sheltered island, a biotope in which the emotional highs and lows of life can be played out, so to speak. Of course, one might ask at this point which came first, the chicken or the egg? In any case, my profession supports me in the way I want to live. I don’t want to linger in the perfumed middle ground and just bask in life; rather, I yearn for life’s extremes – if I’m being completely honest, extremes in both directions, that is, up and down. This helps in difficult times, when you doubt yourself, your career, society or life itself. That’s perhaps how I’d describe it.

Is it, in particular, the restless nature of your profession that appeals to you?

That’s right, it’s the lack of stability, the chance to work here one day and there the next. I get to get to know lots of people deeply, in a setting where the aim is to overcome feelings of shame, break down inhibitions and open up emotionally. Especially in theatre. The theatre is an extreme, which is why I’m so drawn to it, compared to film. It’s a longing I also have in life. – In my view, society is developing in the opposite direction.

What do you mean by that?

In the sense that, in our society, everything is economised and everything must have a purpose. You mustn’t fail; you have to succeed. In theatre, on the other hand, resources are used lavishly; you have to seek out failure if you want to be creative and innovative.

People often talk about what’s known as ‘flow’, both in the context of sport and creative work. Does that exist in acting too?

My father recommended a book to me for my profession. It’s called *The Inner Game*. It analyses the game of tennis from a psychological perspective, and there’s a great deal of similarity between acting and tennis; you just have to apply the book’s principles to my profession. In sport and in the acting profession, it’s all about being fully present in the moment, in the situation. That sounds a bit drier than ‘flow’, but it means the same thing. It is, so to speak, the ideal state that one aims to achieve on stage. That’s what I mean when I talk about ‘waste’. It’s about giving yourself over to it. Goethe wrote: ‘Moment, linger a while!’ It’s about living in the moment with all your senses, all your perception and concentration. I think that’s a task in life. I notice it with my children too – how much love comes back when you’re fully present with them in the moment. It’s much easier for children as well. They can throw themselves from one moment into the next, with all the disappointments and successes that entails. 

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→ You can read the full interview in rampstyle #33 ‘When You Know, You Know’.