Coop (German: Zaun)

In “Coop”, Sam Max creates the story of a girl who lives on a farm, trapped in ritualised acts and isolated from the outside world. The absorption by her parents, the strict rhythm of everyday life and the extreme constriction and loneliness result in a murderous pact that frees the protagonist from her prison. “Coop” asks questions about the viability of coexistence, about a decline in values and the price of emancipation in an America where isolation has long since become a reality, even before the pandemic.

Stückemarkt-juror Linda Pöppel about the text
“This is a finger painting of my family” are the first words spoken. But by that time, we have already entered deep into this world and this atmosphere, described only by a few stage directions. With their help, Sam Max invites us – or rather, draws us in – with equal measures of familiarity and abstractness, disturbing and with powerful images. Highly musical, a delicate rhythmical web, a cyclical series of rituals, prayers, memories. A world that creeps into the spectator. Full of pain, darkness, fear, oppression, violence, desire and longing. A nightmare. The absence of love, empathy, touch. An external and, above all, internal captivity. With the power of destruction and, at the same time, a quiet call for intimacy and freedom, “Coop” is merciless in its coldness, its loneliness, its forsakenness and – most of all – in its imagery. A deep gaze into the soul – the soul of a child, a girl, a family, a society. And not least into our own.