Notes on Hamletmachine
The dramaturgy of Hamletmachine
Philip Thorne, March 2007
Hamletmachine is a work that addresses, poetically, a particular mindset and mental state. It strives to address this mindset, this attitude, in a total sense. That is to say, the issues are not ‘spoken about’ but evoked, in both form and content. Our intent was to make this state ‘manifest’ within the moment of performance, even (at points) to provoke it in the spectator.
Just as Beckett’s dramatic structures ‘speak’ of the same fragility, futility and vacuum as the content of his work, so the structure of Müller’s Hamletmachine speaks of fragmentariness, multiplicity, rupture and relativity. To speak of such issues within a clear, linear (and ‘digestible’) structure would be hypocritical, and would serve to undermine the work as a whole (much as the pre-Beckett/Ionesco (etc) ‘existentialist’ theatre rendered it’s own arguments redundant by formally asserting the structures which it strove to question and overthrow).
The production is intended as a formal exploration of the possibility of ‘revolution’, of evolution from form to form, idea to idea. In order to make such a form-al enquiry, we felt it necessary to work, playfully, with what might be considered (by ourselves and by our audience) ‘established forms’ in order to make manifest this ‘revolutionary’ process, or movement.
The work utilises certain expectations that the spectators bring with them to the theatre in order to achieve various dramatic effects. The resulting playful overturning of expectations and assumed conditions is intended to place the performance in a state of physical doubt, uncertainty, flux, and to address – as Müller’s original text does – questions regarding the machinery and affect of presentation, construction and mediation. Once again, effort has been made to engage formally with these issues, in relation to those issues already present within the content of the text.
That we have selected Müller’s Hamletmachine as our vehicle for this exploration – a text who’s conclusions are for the most part resoundingly negative – is in order to avoid simplifying the issue (and risking empty polemic); to (necessarily) embrace contradiction in all it’s glory, to create critical dialogue within it, to allow the spectator to draw their own conclusions, and, finally, to create work that is able to express optimism in an honest sense. That the conclusion of the piece (and of Müller’s text) is ultimately pessimistic – the willing replacement of man with machine (“I want to be a machine. Arms for grabbing legs for walking, no pain no thought”) should not, we hope, overwhelm or supercede the formal optimism – fundamentally, that revolution is possible (as naïve and romantic as this idea may be). On the contrary, we would hope that such contradiction will lend balance and integrity to this enquiry.
In this sense it may be fair to consider, in simple terms, the ‘content’ of the work (i.e. what is said within it) as the piece’s true and only ‘character’, to whom we (the artists) respond and critique through form.
Nausea/MACHINA/de-authorization
Ĝystein Ulsberg Brager, March 2007
The machine descends (EX MACHINA) as the actor becomes a machine. God has landed. We are relieved of our responsibility.
No pain. No thoughts. No authority.
Who wrote the event of Hiroshima? The author is dead. The event is read and interpreted. Responsibility is problematic: The a-bomb inventor? The politician? The general? The pilot? The reader? (The reader is dead. Reading killed him.)
The machine as God =
The machine instead of us (humans) =
The atomic bomb as solution
Tearing of the author’s photograph =
The renouncement of authority =
Humanity refusing authority and thus responsibility for their actions =
Machine carries responsibility (but is not human, and is thus ultimately relieved of responsibility) =
No responsibility =
Atomic bomb dropped innocently =
No one to blame for the apocalypse
humanBECOMINGmachine
and the
machineBECOMINGdeity
->
DEUS EX MACHINA
->
God, as GodMachine, powers the shell of the fled Hamlet to overthrow the conditions. The Godforce creates Ice Age and apocalypse.
The main aim by any means necessary?
A-bomb = overthrow = main aim?
MAI N AIM
The author is dead =
The author notates what history cumulating in him dictates =
The author becomes a writing-machine =
The actor as author of a destiny becomes a machine repeating a destiny =
The actor playing Hamlet becomes a machine playing Hamlet =
Hamlet becomes the actor playing Hamlet =
Hamletmachine
The death of the author =
The birth of the reader =
Any interpretation is valid =
No truth =
Simultaneous truths coexist =
Total relativity =
Moral relativity =
Hiroshima was bad and good =
No Super-Narratives =
No narratives matter/all narratives matter/no matter for narratives
Existing conditions overthrown =
The world before and after the a-bomb =
Never the same world again
A machineMan =
No control/choice =
Repetition/limited task =
Instinct without thought or reason =
A bloodhound =
In armour =
A warrior =
Will drop a-bomb
Sun of torture = radiation?
Heat of darkness = cloud after a-bomb?
Ejecting sperm = act of mercy, mutated children stay unborn?
ENDURING MILLENIUMS as machines, not being ourselves =
Having no God having become God
(we descended from the MACHINA)
Man becomes machine =
The ghost in the machine =
God in the machine =
God in machineMan =
machineMan acts as God
