Micha Wertheim Festival: Mark Thomas

Micha about Mark Thomas: 

“I’ve always maintained that theatre shouldn’t be used for activism. But every time I see Mark Thomas perform, I realise I’m wrong. I also first saw Mark at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

He’s known as a comedian, but the shows of his that I’ve seen could better be described as journalistic monologues. The closing image of his production on the NHS (a film of three women waiting by the coffee machine to get to work because in spite of all the cutbacks, they just want to help patients) really stayed with me. When he asked people from the audience to come up and join him at his table on stage while wearing a miner’s mask, this inspired me to use interplay with audience members in a similar way.

Mark is an old-school socialist who doesn’t shy away from carrying out in-depth research before creating a production. He explicitly plays with, as well as for, the audience he is looking to convince. He’s also done shows, for example, on the power of Coca-Cola and the infamous wall built by Israel.

This is a form of one-man theatre I’ve seldom seen in the Netherlands, and which I want more people to see – even if only to convince myself that I’ve been wrong the whole time with my views on theatre not being a vehicle for activism.”