HAMLETMACHINE BY HEINER MÜLLER
PREPARED BY ÖZENAY ŞEREF
POSTDRAMATIC THEATRE
Postdramatic theatre was established by Hans Theis Lehmann in his book Postdramatic Theatre
and have emerged as a new theatrical form from the 1960s and onward.
It can be defined as an ‘’inventive response to the emergence of new technologies and a historical
shift from a text-based culture to a new media age of image and sound’’ (Lehmann).
Postdramatic theatre removes the written text from the center of the theatrical event and it focuses
on the relationship between the play and the audience rather than the relationship between the
characters in the play.
In postdramatic theatre ‘’the political is explored through theatre as a mode of representation’’
(Lehmann 178).
HEINER MÜLLER (1929-1995)
‘’East German playwright Heiner Müller was a forerunner in the
development of a nonlinear, intellectually demanding form of theatre
during the second half of the twentieth-century. As Mü̈ller lived through
the Second World War and wrote throughout the Cold War, his plays
reflect the instability of the German Democratic Republic and Europe
over the course of the twentieth-century. Although in his later life,
Mü̈ller was lauded in both East and West Germany, during the Cold War
he had a turbulent relationship with the German Democratic Republic.
Most seminal of Mü̈ller’s works is Hamletmachine (1977), which fuses
characters from Hamlet with Müller’s bleak worldview. During Mü̈ller’s
lifetime, he frequently directed his own works. One of his most famous
directing projects was his massive Hamlet/Machine (1990), an eight-
hour performance that incorporated both Shakespeare’s Hamlet and
Hamletmachine for Berlin’s Deutsches Theater ’’ (McLeod 14-15).
HAMLETMACHINE (1977)
Heiner Müller's famous work Hamletmachine, which made a significant impact and change in the fields of
authorship, dramaturgy and performance in European theatre, is among the prime examples of post-
dramatic theatre. The play is based on Shakespeare's Hamlet and is based on an effort to come to terms with
the past. It bears the remnants of the bloody history of Europe, which has gone through the two world
wars. This past looms over Hamlet like a specter, including a critique of the communist system. The system,
which feeds on the past and surrounds the individual from all sides, has besieged all men and women who
realize that they have been captured as their awareness increases, traps them and forces them to
mechanization. The play, which brings the pain of souls trapped in mechanized bodies to the stage with the
emphasis of play within the play emphasized by post-modernity, with an ironic style from time to time,
exhibits a post-dramatic structure by including the audience with its layered structure. One of the main
ideas of post-dramatic theatre that can be seen in the structure of the play is shown by the disconnecting of
the fragments. The text is seen like words on a page rather than an intellectual interpretation of Hamlet, and
leaving audience room to interpret the play.
QUOTES FROM
HAMLETMACHINE
1
Family Album
I was Hamlet. I stood at the coast and spoke with the
surf BLABLA, behind me the ruins of Europe. The bells
rang in the state funeral, murderer and widow a pair, the
council in goose-step behind the coffin of the High
Cadaver, howling in poorly paid grief WHOSE IS THE
CORPSE IN THE CORPSE TRAIN/ FOR WHOM IS
HEARD THIS LAMENTING STRAIN/ THE CORPSE
IS OF A GREAT/ GIVER OF ESTATE the framework of
the people, work of his statecraft HE WAS A MAN TOOK
THEM ALL FOR ALL.
SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN THIS AGE OF HOPE*
LET’S DELVE IN EARTH AND BLOW HER AT THE
MOON*
Enter Horatio. Confidant of my thoughts so full of blood
since morning is curtained by the empty sky. YOU
COME TOO LATE MY FRIEND FOR YOUR
PAYCHECK/ NO SPACE FOR YOU IN MY TRAGEDY
PLAY
HoratioPolonius. I knew you were an actor. I am too, I
play Hamlet. Denmark is a prison, between us grows a
wall. Look at what’s growing out of the wall. Exit
Polonius. My mother the bride. Her breasts a bed of
roses, her womb a nest of snakes. Have you forgotten
your text, Mama? I’ll prompt…
2
THE EUROPE OF WOMAN
Enormous room.* Ophelia. Her heart is a clock.
OPHELIA [CHORUS/HAMLET]
I am Ophelia. The one the river didn’t keep. The woman
at the gallows The woman with sliced arteries The woman
with the overdose SNOW ON HER LIPS The woman
with her head in the gas oven. Yesterday I stopped killing
myself. I am alone with my breasts my thighs my womb. I
smash the instruments of my imprisonment the chair the
table the bed.
3
SCHERZO
University of the dead. Whispers and murmurs. From out
of their gravestones (lecterns) the dead philosophers throw
their books at Hamlet. Gallery (ballet) of dead women.
The woman at the rope The woman with the sliced
arteries, etc. Hamlet regards them with the attitude of a
museum (theater) visitor. The dead women rip the clothing
from his body. From an upright coffin with the inscription
HAMLET 1 step Claudius and, dressed and painted like a
whore, Ophelia. Striptease by Ophelia….
Hamlet puts on Ophelia’s clothes. Ophelia paints a
whore’s mask for him
4
PEST IN BUDA BATTLE FOR GREENLAND
Room 2, destroyed by Ophelia. Empty armor, axe in the
helmet.
Takes off mask and costume.
HAMLET ACTOR
I am not Hamlet. I don’t play a role anymore. My words
have nothing more to tell me. My thoughts suck the
blood out of the images. My drama is cancelled. Behind
me the set is being built. By people my drama doesn’t
interest, for people it doesn’t concern. It doesn’t interest
me anymore either. I won’t play along anymore.
Photograph of the author.
I don’t want to eat drink breathe love a woman a man a child an animal
anymore.
I don’t want to die anymore. I don’t want to kill anymore.
Tearing of the author’s photograph.
I want to be a machine. Arms to grab legs to go no pain no
thoughts.
Three naked women. Marx Lenin Mao. Speaking at the same time, each
in their own language, the text THE MAINPOINT IS TO
OVERTHROW ALL EXISTING CONDITIONS... Hamlet Actor puts on
costume and mask.
.
.
.
Steps into the armor, splits the heads of Marx Lenin Mao with the axe. Snow. Ice
Age.
5
FIERCELY AWAITING/ MILLENIA/ IN THE
FEARFUL ARMOR Deep sea. Ophelia in a wheelchair.
Fish debris corpses and corpse pieces go by.
Here speaks Electra. In the heart of darkness. Under the
sun of torture. To the cities of the world. In the name of
the victims. I reject all of the semen that I received. I
turn the milk of my breasts into deadly poison. I take
back the world that I bore. I suffocate the world that I
bore between my thighs. I bury it in my shame. Down
with the joy of submission. Long live hate, contempt,
rebellion, death. When she walks through your
bedrooms carrying butcher knives you’ll know the
truth.
Exit men. Ophelia remains on stage motionless in the
white wrapping.
In Hamletmachine, Mü̈ller toys with language by using synthetic fragments from many authors including Walter
Benjamin, William Shakespeare, E.E. Cummings, T.S. Eliot, Andy Warhol and even himself (Kalb 50)
‘’Because of the intentional ambiguity and lack of linear narrative in Hamletmachine, as well as the multiple
interpretations by Hamletmachine’s critics, it is difficult to synthesize this work for discussion. Within the structure of
constantly changing identities, Mü̈ller challenges the role of western intellectuals in society and comments on the ongoing
and oppressive presence of history in the present. A constant cycle of history, and resulting cycle of violence, proves
inescapable for the characters who are caught between a desire for action and the inability to act’’ (McLeod 18-19).
According to Lehmann postdramatic theatre is not ‘’simply a new kind of text of staging – and even less a new type of
theatre text, but rather a type of sign usage in the theatre that turns both of these levels of theatre upside down through the
structurally changed quality of the performance text: it becomes more presence than representation, more shared than
communicated experience, more process than product, more manifestation than signification, more energetic impulse than
information… rather, through techniques such as fragmentation, simultaneity and a density of signs, it demands active
spectatorship in which the viewer has the opportunity “to process the simultaneous by means of their own selection and
structuring (85-88).
HAMLETMACHINE AS A POSTDRAMATIC THEATRE
‘’While Müller uses the return to the old narratives, which are the characteristics of postdramatic theatre,
he also shows that those old great narratives cannot be repeated or have the same meaning in his age.
Choosing to be elusive and even meaningless, especially during the spectator experience, is also a feature
of the movement’s plays.
In addition, it can be mentioned that while Müller uses post-dramatic theater elements (such as montage,
collage, etc.), he applies the alienation effect technique that emerged with Brecht's epic theatre. In this
text, whose original language is German (even when translated into different languages), the narrative
continues/divides with English montages. However, this structure, in which the actors communicate in the
sense of action but (not) verbally, was established, among other features, to ensure that the audience does
not forget the fact that they are watching a play, as well as the situation of the age regarding the individual,
society, men and women, and the (lack of) communication between them’’ (Karadağ 32).
‘’Müller presents Hamletmachine by blending hundreds of years of literary criticism and especially the
interpretations of Hamlet and Ophelia, benefiting from the fragmented and complex structure of post-
dramatic theatre’’ (Karadağ 36).
‘’With all the choices in the text, it is seen that Müller not only creates a transitional structure between
history, previous literary texts and theories and his own text, but also rewrites each of them. Since it has
the principle of being written as a text, it can be mentioned that it is an interdisciplinary transition state’’
(Karadağ 41).
Ophelia in the last scene: When she walks
through your bedroom with butcher’s knives,
you’ll know the truth
Ophelia and Hamlet Hamlet and Polonius
HAMLETMACHINE DIRECTED BY WANG
CHONG AT THE BEE HIVE THEATRE IN
BEIJING, 2010
HAMLETMACHINE DIRECTED BY MAX TRUAX
AT TRAP DOOR THEATRE IN CHICAGO, 2011
‘’The plays by Heiner Muller are as dense as
they are brief - shell fragments fired into our
collective psyche. This East German
playwright subscribes to the theory that
''theater is a laboratory for the social
imagination,'' and, in ''Hamletmachine,'' he
deconstructs Shakespeare in order to
contemplate and comprehend the
disintegration of civilization’’ (Gussow).
Trailer for the play Hamletmachine by Heiner Müller from Iași National Theatre, 2013.
WORKS-CITED
Gussow, Mel. ‘’Stage View; Cranking up a Powerful 'Hamletmachine.'’ The New York Times, Section 2, Page 3,
1986.
Kalb, Jonathan. “On Hamletmachine: Müller and the Shadow of Artaud.” New German Critique, no. 73, 1998.
Karadağ, Özlem. “Disiplinlerarası ve Medyalararası bir Yeniden Yazma Eylemi Olarak Metin ve Performans:
Hamlet Makinesi (1977) & “Ophelia’ya Ölüm Yakışır” (2005).” Alman Dili ve Edebiyatı Dergisi, no. 11, 2017.
Lehmann, Hans-Thies. Postdramatic Theatre. Translated by Karen Jürs- Munby, Routledge, 2006.
McLeod, Kimberley J. K. Adaptation and the Postdramatic: A Study of Heiner Müller in Non-European
Performance. 2009. University of Alberta. MA Thesis.
Müller, Heiner. Hamletmachine. Translated by Dennis Redmond, 2001, https://theater.augent.be/file/13. Accessed
28 Dec. 2021.
