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HAMLETMACHINE
ROBERT WILSON | HEINER MÜLLER
Conceived in 1977 after the author's first trip to America, Hamletmachine was originally born out of a meeting between Heiner Müller and Robert Wilson, coming to light almost nine years later.
The friendship between Robert Wilson and GDR writer Heiner Müller was not only legendary but also extremely productive: Müller wrote texts for the Cologne Section of The Civil warS (1984), The Forest (1988) and _La Mort de Molière _(1994), and some of these were used in Medea (1984), Alceste (1986) and Ocean Flight (1988).
Müller later declared that the version of Hamletmachine conceived from Wilson to be "the best show ever" in his entire career, celebratingopera for its incredible and innovative lighting and visual facilities and almost total absence of stage interpretation. Praised from Gordon Rogoff in his writings as "a triumph," it earned to Wilson an Obie Award for Best Director.
It was first staged on May 7, 1986 on the stage of the New York University theater with the participation of the students themselves; the German version, on the other hand, marks its debut on October 4 of the same year at the Kunsthalle in Hamburg. The play has not been revived from since, and thus returns to the stage after a full thirty-one years thanks to the commission of Festival di Spoleto 60 and the participation of the Accademia Nazionale d'Arte Drammatica Silvio d'Amico.
"When I wrote Hamletmaschine, after translating Shakespeare'sHamlet for an East Berlin theater, it came out as the most American of my works, quoting T.S. Eliot, Andy Warhol, Ezra Pound and Susan Atkins, among many others. It could be read as a pamphlet against the illusion that we can remain innocent in this world of ours. I am happy that Robert Wilson is staging my opera, his theater being a world to of its own." H. Müller, 4/30/1986
"[...] Wilson allows the spoken word to be heard and understood. Müller's text reaches the audience through an intense soundscape, so from make it difficult to understand what is actually happening on stage and what is part of a recorded sound track. Actors rarely perform freely without sound distortion. The 'opera does not manifest itself solely visually but rather acoustically, with extreme clarity and plasticity." H. Rischbieter, Theater heute, October 1986
texts by Heiner Müller
conception, direction, sets and lighting Robert Wilson
co-directed by Ann-Christin Rommen
lighting adaptation John Torres
stage collaborator Marie de Testa
costumes Micol Notarianni
from the original drawings of William Ivey Long
make-up Manu Halligan
with performers from
Silvio d'Amico National Academy of Dramatic Art
Liliana Bottone, Grazia Capraro, Irene Ciani, Gabriele Cicirello, Renato Civello, Francesco Cotroneo, Angelo Galdi, Alice Generali, Adalgisa Manfrida, Paolo Marconi, Eugenio Mastrandrea, Michele Ragno, Camilla Tagliaferri, Luca Vassos, Barbara Venturato
original dramaturgy Wolfgang Wiens
music **Jerry Leiber **and Mike Stoller
original sound design Scott Lehrer
assistant director Giovanni Firpo
sound design and phonics Antonio Neto with Dario Felli
lighting operator Aliberto Sagretti
stage director Camilla Piccioni
technical director** Giuliana Rienzi**
scenic staging** Ottorino Neri**
personal assistant to RW Owen Laub
internship Ilaria d'Agostino and Anita Ricci
production delegate Virginia Forlani
with the collaboration of Micaela Comasini and Elisa Crespi
New version based on the original production of May 7, 1986
at New York University, New York
Change Performing Arts project
commissioned from Spoleto Festival 60
For theSilvio d'Amico National Academy of Dramatic Art.
thanks Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia
Born to Waco, Texas, Robert Wilson is among the world's leading visual and theatrical artists. His work uses a variety of artistic techniques, masterfully integrating movement, dance, painting, light, design, sculpture, music and dramaturgy. After studying at the University of Texas and the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, in the mid-1960s, Wilson founded to New York the art collective "The Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds" with which he developed his first original shows, Deafman Glance - The Gaze of the Deaf (1970) and _A Letter for Queen Victoria _(1974 -1975). In 1976 he signed with Philip Glass Einstein on the Beach, a performance that changed the conventional conception ofopera as an artistic form. Over the years he has forged collaborations with such authors and musicians as Heiner Müller, Tom Waits, Susan Sontag, Laurie Anderson, William Burroughs, Lou Reed, and Jessye Norman. Wilson's drawings, paintings and sculptures have been shown in hundreds of group and solo exhibitions, and are part of private collections and museums worldwide. He has received numerous awards and honors, including a Pulitzer Prize nomination, two Ubu Prizes, the Golden Lion for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale, and the Laurence Olivier Award. He has been appointed to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and Commandeur des arts et des lettres in France. Wilson is the founder and artistic director of the Watermill Center, a creative laboratory dedicated to the arts, based at to Watermill, Long Island.
Born in Eppendorf, Saxony, in 1929, Heiner Müller is considered the most important German author since Bertolt Brecht. His art has distinguished itself in theater and poetry, making him also a writer and essayist of merit. Müller's work, with its enigmatic and fragmentary texts, is a significant contribution to postmodern theater. The author addressed the problems of the concrete realization of the new society, while highlighting its persistent contradictions and emerging obstacles, generated to to the individual's own detriment. His works, which have also included retranscriptions of Greek and Shakespearean tragedies(Philoktet, 1965; Ödipus Tyrann, 1967; Prometheus, 1969; Macbeth, 1972) include Germania Tod in Berlin (1971), _Die Schlacht and Traktor _(1975), _Leben Gundlings. Friedrich von Preussen. Lessings Schlaf Traum Schrei _(1976), aggressively parodying bourgeois ideals. However, it is the phase of the 1980s in which he arrives at a new dramaturgical language, in which the reduction of the plot is combined with a sorrowful pessimism. Texts from this period include Hamletmachine (1986) and Quartett (1987), both of which he entrusted to the direction of Robert Wilson, with whom he had long before welded a strong friendship and intense collaboration. Thanks to his fervent activity, Müller was admitted to the East German Academy of Arts (1984) and the West Berlin Academy of Arts (1986). He joined the directorate of the Berliner Ensemble in 1992 and became artistic director in 1995, shortly before his death.