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Senior Showcase

Hamletmachine

by Heiner Müller
In a new translation by
Katrin Dettmer and J.E. Macián
Directed by José Enrique Macián

February 21-24, 2008
Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8 PM and Sundays at 2 PM
Leeds Theatre

Review: Brown Daily Herald

“write into the void, learn to embrace isolation, in which we may commence undistractedly our dreadful but all-important dialogue with the dead. Forget about love and turn your face to history”
-- Tony Kushner in reference to Heiner Müller

East German playwright Heiner Müller once stated, "the only thing a work of art can do is awaken a longing for a different state of being. And this longing is revolutionary." Brown Theatre's production of Müller's Hamletmachine is an exploration into a young generation's attempt to stimulate social change while confronted by the conformity of consumerist culture. Written in 1977, Hamletmachine revisits the Western Canon's representation of the intellectual faced with revolutionary change. Here, Shakespeare's Hamlet is seen as a man at the threshold of two distinct eras: The movement between Ice Age and Heat Death, between the failure of real existing socialism and the accession of capitalism. In the year 2008, what marks our own transition as the Bush presidency comes to an end, when the ruins of Müller's Europe have become the ruins of the World Trade Center?

In Müller's fragmented eight-page text, Shakespeare's masterpiece struggles to survive amidst the mounting rubble of literary and political history. Failed ideals and human disillusionment give way in Hamletmachine to the youth clamoring in reaction against the past in order to change the present. To break free of the continual cycle of violence within history the past is questioned and deconstructed. Moving away from psychological narrative, Hamletmachine creates a landscape of the betrayed revolution. Brown's production challenges and provides resistance to this complicated text, inciting spectators to do the same. This performance is an exploration into the place of theatre as a sight of revolutionary change. In Müller's words, "the slogan of the Napoleonic era still applies: Theater is the Revolution on the march."

Learn more at thehamletmachine.blogspot.com.