Hamlet-machine

Hamlet-machine is a Play written by Heiner Müller in 1979.

The part is a rewriting of the Hamlet of Shakespeare. Short text (nine pages), Hamlet-machine seems a compression of the original text. The manuscript of more than 200 pages left by the author (published in the editions of Midnight) gives to see the colossal work of Heiner Müller as well on the level of the research as of the synthesis. Hamlet-machine is an extraordinarily dense text where the myth of Hamlet is questioned.

The text was translated into French by Jean Jourdheuil and Heinz Scharzinger into 1985 with the editions of Midnight.

Composition

The text is cut out in five parts:

Album of family
Europe of the woman
Scherzo
Peste with BUDA battles for Greenland
Furieuse waiting/In the terrible armor/Of the millenia

Setting in question of the scene

The part begins as follows:

" I was Hamlet. I was held on the shore and I spoke with the undertow BLAH, in the back the ruins of Europe "

Throughout the part the role of Hamlet is constantly dissociated from the actor who plays it. " the interpreter of Hamlet " is mentioned in all letters. The theatrical machine and all that it comprises find then in the middle of the interrogation of Müller. The role is hustled, it appears factitious and interchangeable (Hamlet is disguised as a whore). The traditional report/ratio with the public is called in question.

" My drama did not take place. The manuscript was lost. The actors hung their faces with the nail in the cloakroom. The corpses the pestiferous ones empaillés in the room do not stir up hands. "

The reference to Antonin Artaud and its text the theater and the plague is obvious here. Heiner Müller thus seeks to fight against the part " didactique" inherited Brecht and its disciples.

Setting in question of the myth

From the point of view of sound " dialog with the morts" , Müller questions the significance of the myth of Hamlet today. " My drama, if it still took place, would take place in the time of rising ". The part takes a political dimension then. It evokes the revolution and meditates on its failure. Three nude women appear in the fourth part: Marx, Lénine and Mao which say each one in their language " IT IS NECESSARY TO UPSET ALL THE REPORTS/RATIOS IN WHICH MEN… "

The myths seem interchangeable in Hamlet-machine . The interpreter of Hamlet known as " I WAS MACBETH " and the character of Ophélie called at the end of the part " It is Electra who speaks ". The character of Raskolnikov of the Crime and Châtiment of Dostoïevski is also mentioned.

Settings in scene

Creation by Jean Jourdheuil in 1979
Put in scene of Gilles Maheu in 1987
Put in scene of Robert Wilson in 1987
Put in scene of Heiner Müller in 1990
Put in scene of Dominik Barber and Heiner Müller into 1994/1995
Put in scene of Philippe Vincent in 1995
Put in scene of Brigitte Haentjens in 2001
Put in scene of Michel Deutsch in 2003
Put in scene of Clyde Chub in 2004
Put in scene of Juliette Mézergues and Mathieu Dufourg in 2005

academic works

Hamlet-machine appeared in the program of the contest 2007 of the National university letters and social sciences for the test of speciality " studies théâtrales".

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