news

Max Greyson as WiR in the Netherlands

7 February 2023

Poet, performer and theater maker Max Greyson is writer in February, upon invitation of the Dutch Foundation for Literature. During his stay, Greyson will be working on two projects: a new collection of poems and a musical theater piece.

Photo © Koen Broos

Max Greyson (Belgium, 1988) has been traveling throughout Europe for more than ten years for his spoken word and musical theater performances. In 2015 he became vice-champion Poetry Slam of the Netherlands. Publishing house De Arbeiderspers published his poetry collection Waanzin went niet (Madness doesn’t settle, 2016) and Et alors (What now?, 2019), a study of mother tongue, balancing between French and Dutch. His debut was nominated for the Jo Peters Poetry Prize, and he received the Melopee Poetry Prize for the poem ‘Onscherp’. In 2019-2020, Greyson worked as researcher at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp, where he set up an artistic research on the integration of audio descriptions within musical theatre. His first novel, Een waarschijnlijk toeval (A probable coincidence), was published in 2021, and is a story about a man who loses his desire for cigarettes as he has regained his faith in love.

During the residency, Greyson will put the finishing touches to his new collection of poems De dramaturgie van het loslaten (The dramaturgy of letting go). He is also working on the script of Portici: a contemporary theater piece that is loosely based on an opera by Daniel Auber. The performance of his La muette de Portici (known in English as The Mute Girl of Portici) commenced the Belgian Revolution in 1830. The contemporary Portici by Greyson, Silence Radio and Muziektheater Transparant will premiere in Antwerp in November 2023.

See also