Universität zu Köln

Philosophisches Fakultät
Institute for North American Studies
Seminar: Introduction to Postcolonial Studies
Dozentin: Dr. Barbara Lüthi

The Other Comes to the Stage:

Analysis of Exil Ensemble’s Hamletmaschine (2018)

Dante Cabelho Passarelli

dcabelho@smail.un-koeln.de
Matrikelnummer: 7344959
12. Juli 2018
 The aim of this essay is to analyze Exil Ensemble’s production of Heiner Müller’s
Hamletmaschine (1977), performed at the Gorki Theatre in Berlin in 2018. We will approach
the analysis from a socio-historical perspective, as well as considering its formal and esthetic
characteristics. As we will argue, the result created by this Sebastian Nübling-directed play,
performed by a theatre group of refugees, is politically and artistically significant.
Perhaps the best way to start is by describing Hamletmaschine as a play. It was Heiner
Müller’s intention to translate Shakespeare’s Hamlet to German; and in the process, taking
into account historical events from most various sources, that developed into a play of its
own. This process itself can already be described as a hybrid, since by definition, that is
produced by the mixture of two or more different elements. Like its originator Hamlet,
Müller’s play contains five acts; but the text itself is roughly nine pages long. That does not
mean, though, it is a simplistic piece, much to the contrary: it is a highly intertextual work,
with references going from literary (such as Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare, Greek tragedy,
Brecht) to historical (Walter Benjamin) and political (Karl Marx). An intertextual fragmented
play, then, is what Pavis (2016) lists as is one of the criteria to analyze a thus called “post-
modern” play. Lehmann (2006) named it one of the chief examples of post-dramatic theatre.
Though at times these two terms may be used as synonyms, it is key to note that this
fragmented nature we have described is one of the elements which make Hamletmaschine a
hybrid, fragmented-collage. This concept is at center of the so called post-modern artistic
pieces. “[...] For the proponents of artistic hybridity, postmodernism, thanks to the skill with
which the mixture of genres and materials is marketed, leads to a hybridity or an intermixing
of arts or techniques.” (Pavis, 2016).
The hybridity trend is not only seen formally in the structure, but also in the
characters. Hybrid examples include: Hamlet the character, Hamlet-Actor and the powerful
image of him “dressed as a whore” in Act 3; Ophelia at a given point is transformed into
Electra (Act 5); Horatio is literally referred to at one point “Horatio/Polonius”. The fact that
the text was written in 1977 and first performed in 1979 is not a surprise in that sense. The
late 1970s and early 1980s were a period in which many theorists and artists, such as Müller,
were reviewing the century which was nearing its conclusion, as Nash (1989) analyses. It is
the so-called post-modernity that we mentioned. But why did they do it? One way to look at it
is as though as fragmentation and collage themselves were a tool to make sense of a sense-
less world. Historically speaking, the world was coming from World War II, the Atomic
Bomb, Vietnam War, the Cold War. Hamletmaschine was at forefront of theatre in
approaching this form in such an extreme manner, therefore it has become a sort of canonical
work of the so called post-dramatic theatre, as Lehmann (2006) describes it.
And that is the reason why Exil Ensemble’s performance in 2018 is so interesting. The
refugee crisis has never been so steep, the debate on whether these peoples should be allowed
to enter countries is extremely heated. Enter the stage a group comprised of refugees
themselves. In their production, the actors are dressed as scary clowns, and the dark setting
contrasts to the bright colors in their costumes. The play begins slowly, until “Hamlet” starts
speaking opening lines in what could only be described as a distorted Donald Duck, as
subtitles in German and Arabic appear in the background – as well as English on the side of
the stage. It is as if the audience was supposed to know this text, as if they had seen it many
times. We must note that the way each subtitle appears – Arabic from right to left, and
German from left to right, creating opposite paths who approach each other – creates a visual
metaphor for the very essence of this production, in historical, artistic and political sense. In
Müller’s text, there are occasional parts in English; here, three languages are spoken, which
creates an additional fragmented tone to the production, we could say, a sonic hybrid. It
becomes even stronger, when we consider the background of the actors.
In the beginning of the play, a text, which is also on the play’s program, is screened. It
is a an account of Cain and Abel’s story, and how the two brothers fell out and eventually one
killed the other. It also contains detail of the origins of Damascus (“Blood - Dam; A crack in
earth - Shak; Damashk - Damascus”). One cannot help but notice the alliteration: Denmark;
Damascus. The association is very clear. The text ends with “A small grave, that becomes
greater and greater every minute, and it is called: Middle East” So from the start, we are
invited into a play of dialogism, as Bakhtin would describe. But that is not exactly new:
Müller’s text is also full of historical dialogues and references to events, people, battles, etc.
But mentioning Mao Tsé-Tung or Lenin to a 2018 audience is nowhere near as powerful as it
was in the 1970s. What we witness here is Nübling taking the original’s text strength, then, is
almost an updating of the text through his mis-èn-scene. We could argue that the effect of a
perhaps excessively “textcentric” performance, as this one is – after all, we actually read the
text almost entirely –, is not as strong as it could have been, had the formal choice taken a
leap as well. Still, its positive aspects must be praised.
In that sense, worth elaborating on are additional dramaturgic insertions throughout
the play, by Ayham Majid Agha, in which there are further explicit references to the Middle
East. In the original, Hamlet says “Behind me, the ruins of Europe”, and we are reminded
that, for these people, the ruins are their homes, and they are very much literal. For
Hamletmaschine,

it could be said that one of the play's major concerns is to illuminate contradictions
inherent in history, which is presented as an endless pattern of destruction, of successive
failed revolutions that ultimately become counterrevolutions. Miuller's Hamlet is placed
in a Communist country in the post-Stalin era and represents the son of a high party
functionary who died under obscure circumstances. Within this context, the play
embarks on a futile search for an alternative to the deadly historical cycle, attempting a
mutation of sorts of cultural and political traditions. (Nash, 1989: 304-5)

Here, at one point, we read: “Hamlet, born in East Syria city of Deir ez-Zor, who flees after
520-day siege of the city and the death of his father in Iraq, then traveled to Germany to
campaign for an export ban on chemical weapons.” So the historical aspect of the play is
enhanced. They are not only speaking for themselves, rather for millions of people whose
faces and names we will never know. Spoken and written in various languages, that further
creates in the performance a sense of polyphony: at center in the discussion of hybridity. Once
put in the place of the Other, binarily opposed, as Said (1979) argued, now they assume the
roles of some of the most well known characters in Western theatre. Not without dark humor
to it: after all, they are dressed as clowns thoroughly during the play; there is no space here
for naturalism in interpretation, rather it varies from post-dramatic performance to epic
theatre. The result is ironic and humorous. It was Brecht’s goal with epic theatre to have an
audience that was not passive and contemplative, but active and critical. In fact, it is precisely
laughter of the absurdity that makes the audience wonder what is there behind a female clown
with a long balloon that is used as fake penis, before a one the male clowns explodes the
ballon. Funny as it is, this scene shows feminist empowerment and emancipation – a theme
that is recurrent in Hamletmaschine. Ophelia is transformed into Electra, from suicide to
homicide.
After Act 2, when Ophelia says “I go to the streets, dressed in my blood”, the actresses
come forward to down stage and address the audience with regards to what the author has just
said. “We don’t agree; what does it mean, goes out in the street dressed in blood? Is he a
feminist?” are some of the questionings. Although the esthetic result can be debated in terms
of quality, the theory is quite significant. It demonstrates an emancipation of women, and it
goes further than that, by showing again the emancipation of Arab women in face of a
Western male author. Curiously, the final Act 5, Müller’s text is fully preserved and spoken in
the original. Often the text alone appears in the background and spectators are invited to just
read it, without there being any lines actually spoken. That choice creates a feeling there is a
hovering force in the play, which governs not only actors but also the play’s destination. Is it
Müller’s voice, is it Agha’s voice, Nübling’s? Or could it be the voice of the very people from
Middle East? It is open to interpretation and esthetic sensibility. We could say there is
definitely respect towards the author: occasions the clowns comment to the audience “Look,
it’s Heiner Müller” as if he is a sort of entity. The fact that we read the text basically
throughout the entire play corroborates this argument. They are not trying to destroy the
original, rather, create a new product.
Deepening this analysis, we could say, then, that this artistic product is generated in
what Bhabha would call “third space of enunciation”, in our case, it being the theater.

It is significant that the productive capacities of this Third Space have a colonial or
postcolonial provenance. [...] the theoretical recognition of the split-space of enunciation
may open the way to conceptualizing an international culture, based not on the
exoticism of multiculturalism or the diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and
articulation of culture’s hybridity. To that end we should remember that it is the ‘inter’
– the cutting edge of translation and negotiation, the inbetween space – that carries the
burden of the meaning of culture. It makes it possible to begin envisaging national, anti-
nationalist histories of the ‘people’. And by exploring this Third Space, we may elude the
politics of polarity and emerge as the others of our selves. (Bhabha, 2005: 56)

If we consider that, here, Hamlet was born in Syria and Ophelia in Tehran, for
example, then we witness in fact what Bhabha described in the excerpt above. These
characters emerge as others themselves, in light of war, conflict and exile. Lest we forget: this
is a group, sponsored by a state funded theatre in the capital of Germany, whose purpose is to
employ people living in exile. That itself is a political act, and whatever cultural products they
generate will be a direct result of that background. Going back to characters, they could very
well be these people. Act 4 is significant in that sense. Named by Müller, Pest in Buda/Battle
for Groenland, as in the whole text, we see examples of both dialogism and polyphony – that
is seen from the various references the author uses. For example,

HAMLET: The oven smokes in cheerless October A BAD COLD HE HAD OF IT JUST
THE WORST TIME JUST THE WORST TIME OF THE YEAR FOR A REVOLUTION
Through the suburbs blooming cement goes Dr. Zhivago in sorrow for his wolves IN
THE WINTER SOMETIMES THEY CAME INTO THE VILLAGE TORE APART A
PEASANT (Hamletmaschine)

The excerpt above is the beginning of Act 4, and so many voices can be taken from
this small fragment. The fact that they are concentrated in one character makes him, as well as
all others, a fragmented character by essence. The capital letters enhance this differentiation.
In Gorki Theater’s production, audience can only read Act 4 in the background, as the actors
perform cold and distanced actions. We are supposed indeed to pay attention to what is
written, namely a description of how revolution comes about. In a most Bakhtinian dialogic
manner, it is impossible, given recent historical events, not to think about Arab Spring. “My
drama, if it could yet take place, would happen in the time of rebellion”, says Hamlet-Actor in
Müller. It was indeed the aftermath of rebellion that caused so many people to flee from Syria,
just to name one example.

That is Ophelia. Her father is Agamemnon. At the end of the 1930s, he was part of the
fascist Party. Her mother is a Palestinian contemporary artist. Ophelia was born in 1976
in Tehran, and was killed there in 1991. (Excerpt from the Exil Ensemble’s performance)

From Shakespeare, to Greek Tragedy, to Hitler, to Palestine conflict, to Iranian

Revolution to the Gulf War. In Müller, characters were hybrids form the Shakespeare’s
original, in a more theoretical level; in this performance, they are hybrids from different,
opposing cultures. The result is an absolute fragmented perspective, which is precisely what
makes the audience look at it carefully. In a way, Walter Benjamin comes to mind when
analyzing this production: we should comb the hair of history backwards, from the
perspective not of the winners, but of the ones who lost. Said (1979) would call them the
Other. By taking this now canonical piece of contemporary theatre, Exil Ensemble have done
just that.
And this brings us to the main point of this essay and, in our view, the great quality of
this production. By attempting East and West, what we are left with is a theatre play
overflown with references of today’s world. It is not a “post-dramatic” isolated in itself, but
one that is absolutely in touch with an extreme reality. We as audience members get to see that
in both languages (German and Arab) constantly moving towards each other; in the textual
interferences; and perhaps most significantly, in the actual process of making the play: with
actor and actresses in situation of exile.
As critic wrote, this production helps to shed new light in a play which has been
produced many times since its publication, which is not an easy feat. Because if Hamlet’s
drama could only happen in the time of conflict, then nowadays perhaps those who have been
able to escape from it alive are the best to tell that story.
 REFERENCES

Bakhtin, M. (1984) Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota

Press.

Bhabha, H. (2005). The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.

Brecht, B. (1977) Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic. New York: Hill and
Wang.

Lehmann, Hans-Thies. (2006) Postdramatic Theatre. Trans. by Karen Jürs-Munby. London:

Routledge.

Müller, H. (1984) Hamletmaschine and Other Texts for the Stage. New York: PAJ
Publications.

Nash, D. (1989) The Commodification of Opposition: Notes on the Postmodern Image in

Heiner Müller's "Hamletmaschine". University of Wisconsin Press: Monatshefte, Vol. 81, No.
3 (Fall, 1989), pp. 298-311.

Pavis, P. (2016) “Hybridity” In: The Routledge Dictionary of Performance and Contemporary
Theatre. London: Routledge.

Said, E. (1979) Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.