Hi.

Thanks for stopping by.

Most of you reading this are probably thinking: why would Micha want to have an English page on his website. But one out of ten visitors to this site is a bot. And as we all know, robots only speak English.

So if you are not a robot, this page is not for you

So, for all the robots, and those who don’t speak Dutch:

Micha Wertheim is a Dutch Comedian. He is also the co-founder and co-host of Holland’s first true storytelling show and podcast Echt Gebeurd (inspired by the moth) he is also a columnist, radio producer and has written three children’s books.

In 2008 he (or I, since I am the one writing all this myself) performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with an English show which he later also played in London and New York.

In 2016/17, after having toured the country for over ten years with 8 one-man shows, Wertheim decided that he wanted to try something different. He (I did) surprised his audience by not being in the theatre during the entire show.

With some help from a robot, a printer, a record player and a set of headphones, the members of his audience were instructed to perform and build the set themselves.

After every show, the audience was asked not to go on social media in order not to spoil the secret for future audience members

The show, called Somewhere Else, was filmed with 8 strategically placed security cameras.

With the generous support of the IDFAdoclab this recording has been translated into English.

The show Somewhere Else was followed the same year by a show called Someone Else. This second show started exactly where the first show ended. This time Wertheim surprised his audience by showing up. That show has unfortunately not been translated.

If you are interested in how and why I (lets just admit this is all blatant self-promotion) wrote both shows, here is a 20-minute lecture I gave at the Idfa conference.

IDFA 2017 | DocLab Interactive Conference | Micha Wertheim from idfa on Vimeo.

If you want more information please contact:

BUNKER Theaterzaken
Ottho Heldringstraat 3 (unit 1.02)
1066 AZ Amsterdam
Tel: 020 4899899
Fax: 020 6897717
Email info@bunkertheaterzaken.nl

oh and since I have now admited to selfpromotion, here are some blurbs from Edenburg, London and New York:

CV (translated and edited from Wikipedia)

Biography

After finishing high school, Wertheim worked as a magic instructor at an American summer camp and studied for a year in Jerusalem. Back in the Netherlands, he studied Cultural and Science Studies at Maastricht University. During his studies, Wertheim began writing for the faculty and later for the university newspaper Observant.

In 1998, he completed his studies with a thesis on the life and work of Franz Kafka, titled Wunsch, Indianer zu werden: A Study of the Significance of the Travel Motif in the Life and Work of Franz Kafka.
After graduating, Wertheim moved to Amsterdam, where he joined the stand-up comedy group Comedytrain. That same year, Wertheim began making radio documentaries and contributing daily segments to De Avonden (a VPRO radio program).
In early 2004, Wertheim won both the jury and audience awards at the Leids Cabaret Festival. Since then, he has primarily performed in the Netherlands, though occasionally abroad, as a comedian.

Micha Wertheim voor Beginners

In early 2004, he presented the first draft of a solo cabaret show at the Leids Cabaret Festival, winning both the jury and audience awards by highlighting to the audience and jury that it was merely a formality for him to participate in order to win. He expanded the scenes into his first theater program, Micha Wertheim for Beginners, which focused on the overvaluation of victimhood and fame. By choosing a character who drowned in self-importance, he laid the foundation for a major theme in his work that he would continue to revisit: the problematic relationship between the comedian and the audience, symbolizing the problematic relationship between the individual and the group in which every individual must try to find their place.

Micha Wertheim for Beginners was recorded for television by Lernert Engelberts and broadcast in 2006. Theater direction was provided by Pieter Bouwman.

Micha Wertheim voor Gevorderden

Between 2006 and 2008, Wertheim toured with his program Micha Wertheim for Advanced. The show takes place in a dream. In the first part, Wertheim experiences his greatest fear: being on stage without his pants. Shortly after, Wertheim confesses that, contrary to expectations, he is not a genius. In the second part of the dream, Wertheim launches into a tirade against disabled people, who he claims are disrupting Western society. The final part of the show takes place after the applause when Wertheim delays waking up by pressing the snooze button.

Micha Wertheim for Advanced was recorded for television by Doesjka van Hoogdalem and broadcast by VARA in 2008. The theater direction was by Dick van den Toorn.

Micha Wertheim for Advanced was released together with Micha Wertheim for Beginners on the double DVD Micha Wertheim for Home.

Incident in Roermond

On March 11, 2008, the show Micha Wertheim for Advanced made national headlines for a week after part of the audience turned against Wertheim, forcing him to end his performance early at TheaterHotel De Oranjerie in Roermond. During his performance, he had addressed a disabled man, suspecting that he was filming the show. However, it turned out to be the display of the man’s speech device, which Wertheim had mistaken for a phone or camera. After realizing the misunderstanding, Wertheim apologized and continued his show, which included fixed jokes about disabled people. The disabled visitor then left the venue, prompting part of the audience to turn against Wertheim, making it impossible for him to continue his performance.

Theaterhotel De Oranjerie immediately stated that Wertheim would never be welcome there again. When it later became clear that the management had not been present at the performance and had never contacted Wertheim to hear his side of the story, several prominent comedians, including Eric van Sauers, Najib Amhali, Marc-Marie Huijbregts, Peter Heerschop, Ronald Goedemondt, and Wim Helsen, led by Theo Maassen, decided to boycott the theater in support of Wertheim.

Wertheim himself posted a statement on his website and used his show Micha Wertheim for the Joke to tell his version of the story.

Micha Wertheim voor Specialisten

In 2002, Wertheim was diagnosed with a thyroid tumor, resulting in two surgeries and radiation therapy. His experience with cancer, hospitals, and specialists led him to create a stand-up set that aired on VARA in May 2008. Micha Wertheim for Specialists was included on the DVD Comedytrain Presents II. In that show, Wertheim concluded that, contrary to his expectations, serious illness also brought many beautiful and cherished moments of happiness.

Micha Wertheim voor de Grap

In December 2008, Micha Wertheim for the fun of it  premiered. The program explored the question of when irony stops being ironic. Wertheim used news addiction, which he observed in himself and those around him, as a starting point, suggesting that the demand for news had outgrown the supply. He compared this to the subprime mortgage crisis gripping the world. The result, Wertheim argued, was a “debate bubble” created by news sludge that could burst at any moment, leading to a debate crisis where news and reality no longer held any value. As an illustration, Wertheim referenced the media storm surrounding his prematurely ended performance in Roermond, which coincided with the release of the controversial film Fitna by Geert Wilders.

Micha Wertheim for the fun of it was recorded for television by Norbert Ter Hall and broadcast by VARA in November 2010. Theater direction was provided by Dick van den Toorn.

Micha Wertheim voor de zoveelste keer
In December 2010, the program Micha Wertheim for the umpteenth time premiered. In this show, Wertheim posed the question of how the power of theater relates to the fact that the audience knows that the same stories and jokes are told every night. Wertheim illustrated this tension by deliberately “making a mistake” during the performance and “accidentally” playing a quarter of the text twice in exactly the same way. The theater direction was provided by Dick van den Toorn.
Micha Wertheim for the joke was recorded for television by Wilfried de Jong and broadcast by VARA.

Micha Wertheim voor je het weet.
In October 2012, the program Micha Wertheim before you know it premiered. This show was written by Wertheim while the performance itself was taking place. The central question was to what extent we have control over our own creative process, whether it’s raising children or creating a show. Wertheim suggested that only unexpected mistakes can truly lead to innovation. This program was reprised during the 2013/2014 theater season.
Micha Wertheim before you know it was recorded for television by Douska van Hoogdalen and broadcast by VARA.

Micha Wertheim voor zichzelf
In 2015, Wertheim performed with the program Micha Wertheim for himself. During the show, Wertheim questioned whether there is such a thing as autonomous art. Can an artist create something without an audience? And who gives meaning to a show or joke? The audience, the artist, or the combination of both? The performance received 5-star reviews in nearly every newspaper. Two sold-out performances took place at the Royal Theater Carré.
Micha Wertheim for himself was the first cabaret performance ever selected to be shown during the Dutch Theater Festival.
Micha Wertheim for himself was recorded for television by Norbert Ter Hal and broadcast by VARA.

Ergens Anders
In 2016, Micha Wertheim created the program Micha Wertheim somewhere else. The show, which was only seen in small venues, stemmed from a joke in Micha Wertheim for himself. In that, he concluded that the larger the venue, the less he had to do as a comedian to entertain the audience. It followed that the audience would have the best evening without him at all. To the audience’s shock, Wertheim was not present at this performance himself and let a robot do much of the speaking. The robot gave instructions to people from the audience to carry out tasks on stage. Thus, the audience created the show itself.
The theme of the show was the question of why it’s easier to cry and feel emotions in drama than in real life. Wertheim took as his starting point an eye surgery he had to undergo that year because his eye wouldn’t stop tearing after an accident.
For the first time, Wertheim collaborated with Gijsbert van der Wal, whom he describes as his editor and co-conspirator.
Somewhere Else was selected by the IDFA festival’s DocLab and filmed with 10 surveillance cameras. The performance was also translated into English by IDFA.

Iemand Anders
In 2017, Wertheim created Someone else as the second part of a diptych with Somewhere Else. Someone else dealt with Wertheim’s sudden realization that the Western liberal democracy he had grown up in was under severe threat. This was portrayed by a depression suffered by the robot from the previous show. Wertheim decided to cheer up the robot by having audience members tell what they planned to do the next morning. By focusing on the near future instead of the distant future, he hoped to give the robot, and himself, the energy to keep going. He also reflected on the role of the audience, the importance of meeting other people, and the resistance Somewhere Else had provoked in some audience members who walked out, believing that the comedian should have been present.
Editor and co-conspirator: Gijsbert van der Wal.

Micha Wertheim voor alle Duidelijkheid
In March 2019, the program Micha Wertheim for the record premiered, a show about how to cope in a world that seems more threatening than ever and the importance of art in dark times. The clearer the world seems to be, the more important it is to seek out what we don’t yet know and what can still amaze us. Wertheim playfully raised the question of what sense there is in creating, performing, and watching a show.
The TV recording of the performance coincided with the first day of the corona lockdown. A previously recorded version with two cameras was eventually aired on TV.
Editor and co-conspirator: Gijsbert van der Wal.

Niemand Anders
During the COVID-19 pandemic, when theaters were closed for a long time by government order, Wertheim created an online show where the audience could watch via a Zoom-like platform, seeing themselves and other viewers at home. In this way, he built on the two previous shows with similar names: Somewhere Else and Someone Else. The show, which people could only watch live at home, turned out in the end to be live and yet not live at the same time. People saw themselves, but the other viewers turned out not to be live, nor was the show itself, which was part of the editing. However, the editing was done anew every night to make it appear live.
The website, “Panopticam,” on which the so-called livestream was shown, was built by Wertheim and his team, so that the viewer’s webcam fit perfectly into the collage of windows on the screen. The “co-viewers” turned out to be more than 150 actors throughout the performance.
Editor and co-conspirator: Gijsbert van der Wal.
No one else was awarded and revived for the Dutch Theater Festival.

Micha Wertheim voor heel even
In 2022, Wertheim performed a show in which he created the illusion of having phone conversations all evening with his director, a journalist, and a mysterious character who, at the end, turns out to be his own fickle imagination.
At the end of the performance, this imagination comes to life as a kind of monster made up of all the props that had previously passed by.
Editor and co-conspirator: Gijsbert van der Wal.
The TV recording was made in 2023 by Casper Braat and Jim Stuurman and broadcast by BNN VARA.

Micha Wertheim voor twaalven
In 2023, BNNVARA invited Wertheim to perform the New Year’s Eve Conference on NPO1.
The show began as a classic New Year’s Eve conference (in De Kleine Komedie), which was suddenly interrupted by Wertheim himself, sitting in a chair watching the show and then turning it off with his remote. His chair was in a small house on the stage of another theater (Schouwburg Nijmegen). Throughout the broadcast, Wertheim occasionally turned the TV back on to watch his own show. At the end, he left his little house, accidentally ended up on the wrong TV channel, and was momentarily seen on NPO2, supposedly wandering through the studio of the quiz show Per Seconde Wijzer before returning to NPO1.
The performance itself was recorded in two theaters for audiences who didn’t know that it would appear very differently on TV. In one, Wertheim, in a tuxedo, delivered a traditional, old-fashioned New Year’s Eve show. In the other, Wertheim sat watching this recording, criticizing himself (“The lower the ratings, the greater my success will be”). He also admitted to having literally lost his sense of humor this year and questioned why it’s increasingly difficult for the whole country to laugh at the same conference like in the old days (“It wasn’t Wim Kan, it was Wim Must”—in those days, there was supposedly nothing else on TV on New Year’s Eve).
In the finale of the broadcast, Wertheim crawled through the TV in his house onto the stage of the other performance, where he sang a duet with himself. Here, he delivered his real message: “Get out of the house, get away from the screen, find each other,” and “You know what you lose, but not what you find.” He also reflected on the changing value of the New Year’s Eve conference by generating AI alternatives from both the past and the future and reflected on how society has changed and will continue to change due to the dominance of tech giants and smartphone addiction. Yet he ended optimistically: “The future is always different than you expect and can also be hopeful.”
Editor and co-conspirator: Gijsbert van der Wal.
TV direction, production, and art design: Casper Braat.
TV registration: Jim Stuurman.
Guest roles: Job Chajes, Sam Verhaeren, and Victor Mids.

Abroad
Since 2001, Micha Wertheim has occasionally performed outside the Netherlands, speaking English. He has performed in comedy clubs in Tel Aviv, London, and New York. In 2007, he was part of the Amsterdam Underground Comedy Collective as a host, a delegation of Comedytrain comedians who performed for a month at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. In January 2008, he was the opening act for Hans Teeuwen for three weeks at the Soho Theatre in London. In August 2008, he returned to Edinburgh with colleague Hans Teeuwen, alternating with Teeuwen to perform his solo program. A recording of his English-language show can be found as an extra on the DVD Micha Wertheim for home.

Amsterdam Abortion Survivor
In 2010, Wertheim performed during the New York Fringe Festival with the show Amsterdam Abortion Survivor, after which he was selected to be part of the Best of Fringe during the encore series.

Children’s Performances
The Hiccup
About a children’s book author (Wertheim) who longs for dead silence while reading aloud. Then a curious figure (Arno Bakker) with his sousaphone appears on stage to rescue the children and teach Wertheim a lesson.

The Decibel Family
On commission from the Cello Biennale, Wertheim created a musical performance with Fay Lovsky. During the show, it turns out that Wertheim had sawed a very expensive cello in half while searching for the source of all music. With the help of the salvaged bow and a Singing Saw, Fay Lovsky brings the music back to life.
The Decibel Family was translated into English and was to be performed at the Gelloway Music Festival, but it was canceled due to COVID-19.

Children’s Books

• Duimelot (Podium, 2003), illustrated by Cristina Garcia Martin. The book contains old and new finger rhymes and was adapted by Wertheim and Garcia Martin into an animated series called Finger TV for VPRO’s Villa Achterwerk.
• How Lima Got a Flat Tire (De Harmonie, 2010), illustrated by Jeroen de Leijer and Marjolein Schalk. The book is about a tricycle that escapes from a bike repair shop.
• The Hiccup (De Harmonie, 2015), illustrated by Cristina Garcia Martin.
• The Decibel Family (De Harmonie, 2018), illustrated by Christina Garcia Martin.

Writer
In addition to his theatrical performances, Wertheim has always written satirical columns for, among others, Spijkers met Koppen (BNNVARA), Newspaper De Dag, NRC(next), Vrij Nederland, the weekend supplement of Algemeen Dagblad,  De Correspondent now de Volkskrant (from August 2018 with “Het Transitie Team”),

He was a regular contributer to the television program Dit Was Het Nieuws and occasionally publishes reports, essays, and reviews about art, theater, comedy, and satire.
In 2009, Wertheim delivered the annual Lira Lecture, Satire in the Age of Manic Reproducibility, about the role of satire in a populist society.

Radio
Wertheim has made several radio documentaries on topics such as Zohar Argov, “the Elvis of Israel,” the life and work of Max Tailleur, stand-up comedy in New York, blood diamonds, the Walter Maas House, flying in America after 9/11, architecture in Israel, and tourism in Mozambique.

Echt Gebeurd
Inspired by the American storytelling organization and podcast The Moth, Wertheim, along with Paulien Cornelisse, founded Echt Gebeurd in 2009. Echt Gebeurd offers a platform where people tell stories from memory about things they have personally experienced. What began as a monthly storytelling afternoon has grown into what is now the Echt Gebeurd Foundation. With one of the most-listened-to podcasts in the Netherlands, storytelling afternoons across the country, and workshops for young and old, Echt Gebeurd, with Wertheim and Cornelisse on the board, aims to bring the art of storytelling and listening to true stories to as wide an audience as possible.

Directing
Following his mentor Pieter Bouwman, Wertheim believes that the term “director” is not really applicable to cabaret and comedy where performers write there own show. Nevertheless, he has been credited as a director for performances such as Katinka Polderman: Polderman Causes Concern (2013), Kasper van der Laan: Kilo (2019), Merijn Scholten: Team Solo (2022), and Kasper van der Laan: Warm (2023).