Who Is Max Berry, Anyway?

I want to make art that is unapologetically silly and radically kind.

I am an inherently silly person. I was born into an inherently silly family and raised with silliness all around, so it’s only natural that I would take some of that with me. But silliness is serious business. It’s essential. It’s joy. It’s healing. I grew up in a family where being silly, making jokes, dancing, and making silly voices, is how we brought everyone together. It was how we cheered each other up. Showed love. It’s why when I think about burying my pet hedgehog, Sonic, I think about how he fell out of his box and plopped onto the ground with his tongue out like a cartoon and how hard we laughed as we piled the dirt onto my dead little friend. Silliness is my sister saying we need more salsa and my mom and dad responding with a salsa dance. You’ve heard it said about musicals that when it’s too much, they sing. Well, in my family, when it’s too much, we joke. I want my plays to provide that same sense of comfort from silliness that I’ve grown up holding so dear. If I can get you to laugh so hard you stop crying, I’ll have done my job.

I was raised to be silly but I was also raised to be kind. My dad used to quote a particular line from Captain America that I’ve held with me ever since: “Whatever happens tomorrow, you must promise me one thing, that you will stay who you are. Not a perfect soldier, but a good man.” If I had to choose between being remembered for the art that I made or the love that I gave, I would choose the love any day of the week. That’s why theatre appeals to me so much. At it’s best, it’s an expression of love. Someone shares their heart and soul and people sit in the audience and give them theirs. It’s a really beautiful exchange. I call my work “radically kind” because I try to put out what I want to see more of in the world. Every one of my characters is striving to love others or themselves the best that they can because I’m striving to love others and myself the best I can.

These aren’t the only things my work can be but they’re the things that stand out the most. Truthfully, I’m still learning what makes my work authentically me and I hope I never stop learning new things about it. I hope that my answer to this question will be a little different in ten, twenty, or even thirty years. But no matter what, I hope I’m still striving to be unapologetically silly and radically kind because if I could only be two things in life (which of course I can be more but let’s pretend here for a moment) those are two pretty great things to be.