SHOWTIME: TRIAL & TERROR

In a self-experiment Heiner Müller’s “Hamletmaschine” becomes a game, where the text is at stake: “end of drama, begin of game”. A wheel of fortune stands on the stage, the playgrounds correspond to the five acts, hazard determines the plot of the evening, as well as a host, who examines how true the players stay to the text. The performance is a concert and a collective reading at the same time, a walk through the text and a ghost ride through history: Hamlet, torn between melancholy and revolt in East-Berlin in 1953, Budapest 1956, Stuttgart-Stammheim 1977: “My drama, if it were still to take place, would take place in times of revolt.” Ghostlike, Ophelia wanders through the bourgeois living room, where the things slowly get out of hand: Walls move, couches are attacking, the wardrobe becomes a den of thieves, a lonely heart bleeds and sings a quiet farewell-song. “Denmark is a prison, a wall is growing between us. Look what is growing out of the wall. Exit Polonius.”