 You have friends over there. So, welcome everybody to the Marpney Seagal Theatre Center here at the Graduate Center CUNY. My name is Frank Henschka, I'm the director of the Seagal Center. We are still in the beginning of our season after the film festival and tonight, at least in my book, we have a very significant and important event and I think it's really worse at the start of our presentations. As you know, we all have the highest respect of the work of Heiner Müller, who I also personally knew and encountered in my days at the Gießen Theater School in Germany and it's the year of his 90th birthday and we had many talks on how to celebrate that well and Anche Uegel, who is a collaborator of the Seagal, actually worked here also as an assistant for the director of the program, was instrumental in creating the idea of which we did to really celebrate it in a way as a close family connection. So we have with us Brigitte Maria Meyer, his wife and Anna Müller, the daughter of Anna Müller and Brigitte and if this would be in Berlin, there would be like a thousand people, it would be at the Volksbühne, people couldn't get in. But I think we want to thank you to come to New York and to really share also your experiences, your work, your life with Heiner and to give us an insight in his work and how you see it also now at the moment, many years later after his death. So we are presenting this evening in the following way, it will be a reading, short reading of Heiner Müller's speech at the Müllhammer Theater Tage in 79 and Anna will read that. She is a young publisher in Berlin but also acted in films by Brigitte and is of course close to the world of this. At the moment there is a play by Fritz Carter at the Berlin Ensemble called Heiner 124, it's a very successful work, it's a dialogue, a work, a collage, I think very much close also to the work of Heiner Müller, in a sense how he worked and we're going to hear a little excerpt of it, I was supposed to see it on Saturday, I was there for the funeral of the great Ange Wirt, who was my professor of theater, I just also want to mention him, he was the one who invited Heiner Müller to come to Gießen and change I think a lot also so that work, what he did there at the Gießen University and both Anna and Brigitte will read from the work. After that Brigitte will give a presentation on the universe, a little presentation on the universe of Heiner Müller, the way she sees his work would have been significant and I think this is a very significant and important talk which we're going to experience after that and I'm so honored to have them with us here. We have Bonnie Moranka from PHA Magazine and Jonathan Kalb, our colleague from Hunter College who booked the first books also in America about Heiner Müller and Bonnie who is his publisher and also knew him and his, The Hamlet Machine within her work of publications and so they will join us and we will just talk about the presentations, what we did and then open up to a Q&A where we have a lot of time for an inch followed by a little discussion, a little drink afterwards so I think again as thank you really for coming this is a very significant event, here's the work of Heiner Müller is central to modern theater and of post-modern theater and post-traumatic theater as one could say in the sense of Hansi's name and their works by Wilson Heiner Müller and the Muster Group and who are really changed the way theater was done before and after especially with The Hamlet Machine so this is a truly significant evening and we want to get it inside we really would normally not get so again thank you all for coming and taking time out on the Monday evening here in New York one of the first warm days and if you have a cell phone so just take it out for the moment and make sure it is off, I'm getting a call this moment but I think it is off and the evening will also be live streamed so for the Q&A we will give you also a microphone so we can hear better again thank you all for coming and Anna Thank you for inviting us to the MUNAM special I regret that I cannot be present at this event the more so since one of my works is the occasion for this year's gallery the rehearsals for the premiere of an older play are at a point where my participation is needed more than usual and besides that I have started work on a new play in this situation my appearance in MUNAM would cost me more than just two days of work I therefore ask for understanding from my decision to forego this the wish to hear something from me about the theater of today causes me some embarrassment the reality of the drama of theater is always the present and in the present situation to name examples of more or less equal value Hamlet is more relevant to me than Godot, Weinstein more important than Mother Courage, I am talking about I am still and repeatedly more interested in the Rechtsfazer fragment than in Shakespeare's Winchester home that the classical text still work has to do with there as a realm of utopia that they cannot be written anymore or once again cannot be written with the engagement or disappearance of utopia the subject of more recent drama is a human race that is whether already or still is a question of one's political standpoint reduced many of the best minds and huge industries are now working to make humanity disappear consumerism is training of the masses in this process every consumer product a weapon every supermarket a training camp this sheds light on the necessity of art as a means to make reality impossible the gravitational mass of the people and the capitalism requirement for politics is it's corrective in the social society the blindness of experience the passion of its authenticity the media that shakes about dissidents and or dogmatism miss the reality reality does not live in the extremes what is history for the elites has always still been work for the masses the cliches serve the appetite for signals of betrayal sent to capitalism from the opposing camp they guarantee that the conscience of consumption the freedom of corruption only the increasing pressure of authentic experience develops the capacity to look history in the wide of its eye the space time of art is between the time of the subject and the time of history the difference of potential theater of war my difficulty in dealing with dramatic productions in your other German state lies in a post-war dry experience with another subject and another history the black drama in the u.s. is less foreign to me than the capitalist place of warning of photo straws in which history appears only in its absence as a boy or as the movement of capital which is invisible to the eye anxiety about the standard of living as religious experience two must ban us black humor which in recent times is handled by dynamite by sensitive critics who filled them with their private sadness remain a series of friendly affirmative jokes as long as theatrical market forces spread all the morning out of the text my solidarity belongs to france sava cuts and his heroic attempt to uphold communism as the middle way in the political vacuum that's the center of your world although my experience shows to be more like its other in both German states drama is a wider field than the theaters of repair work in a position to explore an institution like the moon and theater days is all the more to be welcomed since it at least makes possible the illusion that in the federal republic to there is a broader interest in the production of contemporary drama and German language on the whole writing places once more become a lonely business idle discussions have turned the theories gray which can only be changed by politics and not without the political contribution of art since fuzzers walk around the city of mule which reflects an angry sentences on the connection between war and business it is likely the property relations have changed much to this extent the playwriting price is something like an indulgence my home is a wall done which works like your money at death in Berlin can no longer be written because reality no longer provides the material in this sense I think the city of so there is that piece of it's color to play I know one to four and so there's under title and he's like angels flying and so inspirated by angel so and that piece I think is so I mean Peter which is Chris Carter so he was looking for the biography of China and also looking for his own biography I guess in when he wrote that play so we have to play has three parts and the first part is a young couple watching a photo book and that photo book is a book which I did 10 years after Heinrich's death and it's Polaroid which we did from each other so from day one we started to take pictures of each other it just happened so so when I died so I had like hundreds of even more they were all in that cigar boxes he's not from then we put them all in that wooden boxes and for 10 years I just put them off so then I don't know one day it just came by chance that I opened it and I met that book so and that was that book was the inspiration for I mean to do like that first part so it's a young couple watching that book and so they tried to feel in the person they see so the second one is kind of a fictive interview with China but is a collage of all the interviews quotes of his interviews he did so we have to say that the interviews for him was a kind of an expression so maybe he would Twitter today so but in that time he gave interviews nearly every day it was just a way also to keep his voice in the new German so and the third part is like is like the melting of the author with his object so and and really so he tries to go into into the body into the soul of so what we read now is from part two from the interview part so mr. Muller how was see a trip created well it hadn't rained in a long time and so God has went into the cave and its triptease and the other God saw this and started to laugh to laugh loudly and then it started to rain again yeah so that's how that story and then another story was added at some point so that you can memorize the feelings better you are directing and by avoid and at the Deutsches Theater and recently you became president of the Academy of Arts when do you write your next play no idea Sheila didn't write a play for seven years so in your work it is often said that life is a slaughterhouse and only the biggest slaughterers and schemas are successful in the battle for survival that can only change if the model on which the world is built is changed nice summary at some point I noticed that I'm writing something for which there's no stage or not yet for me what happens right now started a study about it is way more interesting for me to write about studying about them about the fall of the wall but looks so spectacular right now is in the end only a result of erosions and changes that happened underground a long time ago and once by the black man from California was in Berlin on a scholarship and was about to write a novel and he said the fact that history is always moving in mysterious ways you never know what the outcome is the immediate result is usually not the final result there's no dramatic subject on the surface you have to dig deeper I am bored by democracy as a writer one is affected by a basic experience and that happened for the most part before puberty my basic experience was the fascist dictatorship the state as a violent force I have often reflected upon it later when I went from East Berlin to Salowish I got my privileged passport that was like an emerging from a deep water with high pressure to shallow water the pressure was released and then you get down with parallel paralysis and you start getting dizzy I always had the feeling when I was in the Western countries that what was happening there is actually not my problem when I came back to finish I felt this other body this knot that's dark the hard work that's ineffective that made the spot the heaters the steel workers the washing woman the soldiers and their fellow goals of course this was a productive situation for a planet the core of it is of course Jenny's view to be happy about every lack about every broken in a harmonical world one doesn't art has something cannibalistic art is necessarily something good humane perhaps at some point there will be a society that doesn't need art anymore a humane society but at the moment it is still me I still why are that's not a question I can get by well with what there is right now I'm not dependent on anyone having anything against me right now it is all about writing what I always wanted to write in the time that I thought what is going on with some growth is this an obsession of yours that was a purgatory of capitalism together with the Auschwitz since then they can do whatever they want there are no limits anymore the limits is over the purgatory is a carwash everything that's coming doesn't look so bad it's somewhat cute you can put it in the opera and sell it again that's why the opera is a crowd the daily grind and the band can't be so bad in the night with Mozart is so pretty so it's the fall of the war the liquidation of the victory of Stalingrad for you I don't believe in victories anymore the victory is always the end nothing is harder than to come to terms with the victory everything remains in status quo for a short time only then it keeps turning the closure of Stalingrad was the model for the Eastern block confinement from the outside destruction on the inside perhaps Stalingrad was already the end of the Soviet dream or better his icebox at the moment it is about preventing future that's the principle of capitalism that is based on competition and not on the social relations that have grown the social and capitalism they'd only come about because of communism the fear of Stalingrad gave the unions their strength now the enemy is gone and capitalism can be shaped more in social that will happen on the map you can't stop the war immigration except with walls but they won't have one why are there are so many angels in your story you need angels when all those bleak and there's no more yeah thanks again for having us here and so that is my first power point presentation in 54 years so Okay, so let's start The skid bet spart and he'll be in trouble near is the Sheep to buy one the verschmettend jagd mean Besummen had kundes in a hot not tritzen Bauern durch den jagdlerb aufgeschreckt von ihren flügen weg Platz gewesen war in So this impressive Macbeth production in the adoption from Heiner is directed by Michael Thalheimer and we can currently see it at the Berliner Ensemble. Our foils geplügt is part of an interview with Alexander Kluge, recorded 1992, one day before Anna's birth, you see me there. And if you're interested, I think most of you will know it, that all these interviews you can have on the Cornell University website. So it's really always nice to look them. So why those two works? So what I really like is that Heiner is rewriting historic and mythological material by adding an unseen class, an undescribed class. So and there's also something which like my work and Heiner's work or what we had in common that was kind of work on myth and so that was something that was a common room we had which we could live in together and also the painting of Renaissance, so we traveled a lot in Italy. That was also a big inspiration for us. Heiner and I we met at the Frankfurt Book Fair 1990, so nearly one year after the fall of the wall and he gave me that little note in Frankfurt just to find his home in Berlin, so which became also my new home. And like I already said, we were from the beginning, we took photos of each other, sometimes also like selfies, what we call it today. And also the Polaroid camera and I already told you it came out a book which is called Der Tod ist ein Irtum, so death is an error, it succumbed for a lot. So that was the first poem I became from him and more and more I learned more about him. I mean so what country he came from and what he had lost, so what he first lost is his writer's room, so the historic condition for his dramatic work and the end of his country and the end of his writer's room he had already foreseen in his place. So what we see is Heiner on 1989 on Alexanderplatz, so where it was like an euphoric atmosphere so and people really disgusted what he said so all people said like boo and don't say that now so and I like that collage with Hamlet Maschine and so Hamlet Maschine was then the first play for me to see from him and directed by him in Deutsches Theater and so I came there and I've never seen something like that so there was such a crowd of people running into the theater that evening that the staff lost control and hundreds of people swarmed into the theater hall taking over every square meter they could get so the atmosphere was highly charged and the first time Hamlet's line the time was out of joint made sense to me so never again I expect a moment like that later in theater or in art that like is like a theater play and the historic situation is going in one in one thing so that the time the historic time breaks in into the play that was really a thankful experience for me so and so the 1989 revolution is a revolution is a revolution that ended prima prima prima truly as the Western system took over very fast so the revolution in the east never made it beyond the round tables and there's a quote by Heiner which explains exactly that it's not a problem of content it's a problem of velocity Heiner tried to save what he could he became head of the Academy of Arts East and prevented its liquidation he established an early form of social media by giving interviews commenting on the political situation every day and he became head of the Berlin ensemble trying to preserve room for non-commercial art and trying to transfer to express the new political situation so unfortunately there's no video material as the Berlin ensemble was not able to provide it I'm sorry so but I have some photos only for you so that is the first production he did their duel tractor of futzer it was like a collage and so and it was all about a failing revolution so and the critics were not at all amused as to a tractor futzer put disillusionment with the flowering landscape of united Germany on stage so and then already like the best time in the Berlin ensemble from the atmosphere was finished so then he did quartet later on with a Marjane hopper and later on a tour we but that were already calculated successes and yeah what I already said like that euphoric atmosphere from the beginning was very soon gone so but there were let's say other things happening so and yeah heiner got father so and and he started to write again so and mainly poems then in that time and but awaiting the new play so that was always like every day when can I write my new play but it still took a bit time so and that is a poem he wrote for Anna which is also part of the play of it's Carter so you can see it here in a manuscript of him and along the way he revolutionized opera with a century staging of Tristan and his older which became iconic and ran for eight years in Byward and was resumed last year at opera Leon he transformed Tristan and his old into a bright perfect abstraction where maybe the romance between Tristan and his sold is the least important relationship of the play so we see now part three a little piece of part three of the opera and which in a in a destroyed room of the war things we did every year so every summer we went to Byward because like a workshop like a working work on progress and so the directors come every year to their staging and change little things or like go on with the work so and that was really always an important time so 1994 Heiner was diagnosed with cancer and in a serious operation which saved his life but it saved it only for one more year so to recover we spent three months in California at the Villa Aurora where he finally was able to write a new play called Gamania 3 Ghosts at Dead Man a rough ride through German history so we see us here like in an adoption of Las Meninas the family and with Betty Freeman with little Anna and with Peter Sellers mean the mirror and Heiner and yeah so and so before he was then supposed to premiere the play himself at the Bellino ensemble Heiner died 30th of December 1995 so the under house man premiered the play in Boerum as a childlike German comic surely one option but for me the real premiere of Gamania 3 I experienced last year in Lyon the opera composed by Alexander Raskatov from which I'll show you the Hitler monologue now cement at Munich which is still in the repertoire there and we watch a rehearsal scene where Demeter himself cheers on the actors to build the new cement factory it's smaller houses and if it's the big house it's mostly a Shakespeare adoption and so but three days ago there was a premiere in Deutsches Theater with one of this early plays which are rarely played and the um seeded in and so as the critics I got sent that morning it was successful but we haven't seen it yet but I'm looking forward to see it and so what else do we do at the moment so we plan so we plan a new edition now it will circum and it's an edition with the place and the manuscripts a kind of manuscript edition because so the manuscripts of Heiner are highly interesting because so very often they really look like paintings are pieces so he was writing a lot and designing a lot of it and for this we bring together in May or from Müller experts from all over Germany so and to start that new edition that is supposed then hopefully to be ready for his 100th birthday 2029 so what is else on the stages so it's it's not that it's more or less it's mostly so in the last year it was like 뭔가 frequently so but what I see at the moment there's like a bigger interest also on the actor schools and the director schools so and we have we have contact with some young actors and directors from ernsbush for example and they have a little group now where they just play or just staging plays of Heiner and and it's for me it's nice to have that contact like with people who I can say never met him and but just live in his works so and and we really enjoy and appreciate that contacts and sometimes we give them the chance in my studio to make a little staging there and bring people together so that's what's running at the moment and and last but not least I show you art piece of mine a video installation and where Anna is is a video installation is after Anna to me Tito's follow from and as I don't have the trailer in English so I just so you the intro and the intro is a piece also of Gamania 3 is a cream hit monologue and it's spoken by Anna and then it starts and I told me to Tito's follow from so so first of all again thank you for coming all the way over from Berlin they joined us as they came to New York on Tuesday everything had some meetings and walk they met Tony Kushner and to see and many others first how does it feel to be in New York it feels very good so because it's such a long time that I have been here and yeah it's about like 12 years or something and and I really enjoy New York and it's so I forgot how how I loved it in a way and but it changed a lot for sure in that years and I really love a lot the hood where we live in Chinatown which is really nice it reminds me on Kreuzberg 20 years ago in Berlin so and yeah I mean it's the next gentrification I guess so but yeah it's I mean it's such a different feeling so it's so in a way it's for sure it's more rough here but in a way it's also bigger space it's more opened yeah they have like people from all nations here and so and I really miss that in in Berlin sometimes yeah I would wish like to see more people like that like here in Berlin that the situation is open like here so and so preparing for the evening the 90s birthday of Hanamala which would have been what the 9th and so how do you look at the his work now with some distance also from it has it changed is it the same okay I think that is so he's a kind of a chronist of the ideological systems of the 20th century so and and he and just also if you see the language so the language is like Bob Robert Wilson once that is like the plays or the his language is like like a stone so and you can put it everywhere it works everywhere so and yeah I like that picture so and but I think so there's it's very strong and and and people give attention to it in Germany but on the other way you see for sure that very young people so in school so they do not learn anymore a language with is in the segment in the rhyming in rhymes so and and for sure it needs education to understand the place so there's a reason for sure but it needs education and education is not at the moment what people really get somewhere in so it's getting less in Germany too and so dumb that makes me sometimes thinking what with what there will be in the future on the other side is like so many people who then are really interested in the work and they really live in it and they see like they see an option out of capitalistic system in the text which is really important and yeah so so it lives on and I'm happy that it lives on and I think it's it's it it will get more important the next years even also with the situation in Germany so I can imagine that because that what we had now what I said that retained revolution so now we have the process going on it's the same people who were demonstrating 89 we are one full yeah and now it's all right wing people so it's but it's the same people so and there will be some big conflicts I guess in the next years and a question to you how well how does it feel for you to read the text of your father in New York and how do you how do you relate to them well it was my first reading in English so very different I'm not that used to his texts in English of course it's a little more difficult because the rhythm is very different and I'm kind of used to the rhythm already we do a lot of readings now and no but still I think for me myself I was for a long time I was kind of scared to read his plays and to read his texts because I was scared I wouldn't understand them and I guess at some point I just thought maybe understanding is not the most important part also and what actually really helped me is to read all of the interviews with him because it's a very different way to get to know him and to also understand his plays and I do think that they're in in our time now more do you say actual not really current more current than ever maybe a question to both Jonathan and Bonnie maybe with you first what comes to your mind when you heard a pretty good talk about Hannah's work I was thinking how so many of the themes the political themes the concept of history and also utopia and and the opposite dystopia seems so current today especially the way that people are having a lack of confidence in democracy and talking even this country about socialism and it seems like the certain political dynamic it's very it's very current now very true but I was thinking of something else too it seemed to me and I know that I either mentioned this to Heiner or else I wrote about it somewhere that that there's a strong dimension in Heiner's Heiner Miller's work about the future belonging to women but the problem for me always with the staging and I recall you know the Hammett machine very well in going to rehearsals and actually you know telling Bob this Bob Wilson that there was a strength of characters and Heiner wrote extremely strong women some of the strongest since Greek drama or the Duchess of Malthy but they didn't have the they did they refused to stage them with that strength they remained strong in the text but often the existential part like say with Hamlet I'll give you an example with Hamlet machine Hamlet's existential crisis was staged downstage in the front but Ophelia's speeches and they are some of the so strong her speeches and that has to do with the future of women they were staged further upstage and I remember going to rehearsal and Bob Wilson asked me what I thought and I said I told him exactly that and that's what I feel that the strength of the women didn't always come out in the performances but they were there in the text and I feel that Heiner thought about the future of the world being attached to women I don't know did you feel definitely I'm actually planning a book on that Jonas the same question to you hearing from both and especially from Brigitte's talks the I love that you brought in clips from productions because Heiner's work doesn't just live on the page you have to kind of see it living in the theater when you think about the presence of Heiner Muller you think about the way that he kind of took the German theater by storm in the 1980s and 90s it's hard to explain to people today what his presence was he was just everywhere in the German landscape I'm trying to think if there even could be a figure in the American culture who would be equivalent I don't think so because what you see in these clips is how much the theater itself means to the German people Ange Viert our common friend who just died once he enjoyed saying that good or bad the Germans take their theater seriously they just go it's one of their means to talk to themselves about themselves and they go it's not that they always love it or like it it's that someone like Heiner Muller appears on their landscape and he is so wonderfully self-taught and he's reinventing the theater through texts that challenge the theater to go beyond what it has done before and they just they just go they go because they enjoy talking to themselves about hating it or loving it and and it continues to this day with a few dips but now it's coming back who would that be in the American landscape you know it would be would never be a playwright first of all because we don't think about the theater that way but it would be someone who was able to speak to us about what is going on in our culture deeply in a very pithy aphoristic way to be quoted all the time on public issues and then to have premieres every couple of years about important new plays I don't know that we have that here and so it's something that we watch and sort of envy about the German landscape if Susan Sontag would have written plays that had the same reception perhaps she might have been someone like this but what will be the future I mean we all think about what this will be his legacy be in a way as you also said people do not think anymore in structure of Greek dramas they might not even know the names they don't understand that special situation of East Germany and West Germany being a writer in the east of tragedy where the audience was able to read between the lines which has been gone and even I was that I can't write anymore so what do you all think where where where lies the significance what is the point of entry for new audiences I do want to say interviews again or the interviews is one thing because not that many people also know them or the big part of it nobody did a big part of what we did is like we one year ago we edited a book at circumvent two years ago now two years ago now already it's not enough for everyone and it's let's say Heiner Müller for beginners yeah so is some interviews some pieces of important plays prose lyrics so just to to meet him yeah and that is already so it's already printed the third time now it works good so and the thing is you can think a lot but I think so my my thing I'm more practical woman so and what I plan also with Anna we want to make a school book for Hannah and so we're just still thinking how we can do it I mean we've already worked on three plays yeah we already worked with three plays and the idea was that so we have some so we know a lot of actors who are always like we call them and they come and read for us so and we were thinking to make a tour with schools just to bring that kind of text to the people so and where should where should you start then at the school so that's one of our ideas just to keep the work alive and for sure I mean for sure now what we plan is more to bring him more in the digital century so and so there is now a new website on and it's done by mdr it's kind of a tv and and radio thing German state thing the Müller Baukast the Müller Baukast and and it's really like you can get lost in this it's like you made one point you have one quote and they go you dance and then see your dad and that's you really can lose yourself it's like a big mind map maybe it's a big mind map of Müller and I mean it's still a good country people producing things like that because it's a lot of work and it does not bring money in the first time and so things like that happen and so and we want to do more like so we do more readings now which is very important we kind of forgot about that so which is which we we enjoy it now I do at least very much I do at least very much readings of his plays or readings of the interviews or both everything excerpts of people ask and and we come and then we make a program so with actors without actors yeah mixed I mean just the um um Silvath London just opened there's this play is there are there more plays out in German landscapes at the moment in theater again about Hannah Müller or his plays or is it the same or more or less so yeah I mean it's it's what I what I already said it's like always the same level it could be more but should not be less so but what what there is new that that people make they don't make any more one play so people make collage so they take like a bit Shakespeare a bit Müller or a bit I don't know and first we were not thinking that this is so good but I mean if someone is really intelligent and is really good in his work it comes back to Heiner's idea of material so and so and especially for sure Kastor for example he makes like the seven eight hours stagings and mostly one hour is Müller so and so you have a lot of that things that to be a play in the play and yeah and what I said it's the Shakespeare adaptions but what very often is coming is Philoctate which is interesting for me so because it's not the easiest one and then we have like Quartet, Auftrag so on but also people make collage of the prose Momsen's block or so things like that yeah Jonathan what do you think what it will be in the US also what is his or could it be actually I wrote an essay on Heiner Müller in the American stage for a handbook whose publication has been delayed these Heiner Müller scholars Janine Ludwig and Florian Becker you probably know them so I did some research on this and I discovered things that were surprised me I with with Janine I tried to track down some statistics on Heiner Müller in the United States and I found 162 productions of Müller between 1975 and 2017 that's more than three times as many productions as we had of Brecht in this country that's remarkable it's a vast majority of them were in New York but that doesn't matter what it showed me is that there was a real significant wave of Heiner Müller devotion here in the States too and I'm I'm quite sure that most of these productions did not apply for the rights either because I asked the publishers how many contracts they had and so this was this was real sleuthing trying to look into that yeah yeah but I mean you have the same thing in China for example yeah but but still you know most of these theaters they have taken Heiner and done what they want with him which is what he would have wanted there's a theater in LA called City Garage which did not Lessing's Dream of Sleep but this was during George Bush's it was George W's Dream of Sleep you know they did Landscape with Argonauts and it was all about LA and that's exactly what he would have wanted for them to take it and make it into something of their own so I think although we're in a kind of an ice age right now with Heiner not very many productions I'm 100% sure that there will come a time I don't know when when people will need him again and they will reach for him and it will come back I don't know how much it will come back or whether we could call it a vogue but he's just too significant and important a writer to just stay buried for a long time but in the United States almost everything is neglected everything of value in the dramatic canon is neglected so it's not like he has a special status here one of the things I would say though is that we've had a PHA publications Hamlin Machine and other texts for the stage in print since the 80s and it continues to sell hundreds of copies of year so it means that it's very steadily in the curriculum that plays also anthologize in a lot of contemporary drama books so there are there are three volumes of plays four volumes of Heiner realist works in print there had been a Heiner realist reader which sold out I'm hoping to do something I'm not sure exactly what in the fall issue and one of the things I was curious that you mentioned Tintoretto because I have an essay by Etel Adnan with whom he works on the the French part of the Civil War's Wilson's production and she wrote about Heiner Merler and Tintoretto an essay which I just have to have translated into French and I thought that would be very interesting because of Heiner's the anniversary of his death in Tintoretto's 500 years in 2019 so I want to do something unusual I don't know what material is around in English and I and we don't handle the performance rights so I don't know what what rights might be coming up but you know to go back to your point Jonathan I think it would take almost something like a Yvonne Hover you know to do a Heiner Merler play or something to get a really big production and a lot of attention again so some really yeah I think it should be said that the back-to-back events of your publication of the Hamlin Machine volume and Bob Wilson's Hamlin Machine production in 84 and 86 this is what launched that sort of Heiner Merler wave in the States it came you know from those two initial so we need another big big commercial but not commercial I mean a big production on a big scale that a lot of people see and wake up to that and he's one director who would come to mind because of the you know his politics but it would take something like that we really sorely need you know more Heiner Merler productions or even just one one really important staging our hope is to engage the Worcester group you know we have been in contact with so hopefully you're going to meet with the member in they engage with Kranta's work with Forsyte I think also Kortalski's all that I think would be a significant contribution and everybody Westing would come and go but Brigitte or Anna I know there was the Gorky production of I think the Hamlin Machine I haven't seen but I heard a lot about it but can you tell us a little bit about I think the exile ensemble did it what what was he about that ensemble what they do but also what that what did you think of that production but describe it a little bit what they did okay we didn't love it we didn't love it okay no the thing is the thing is successful it was successful it's very successful it's not about you know it's it's it's not all about success you know the thing is that there's the in in theoretical that was a big thing the theory like to to have Hamlin Machine and to put it as a transition paper on on migration it's absolutely works and a friend of and one I have a good friend who was the leader of the exile ensemble who left it after that production that's I am and I am Madrid Agda so Syrian guy and so the thing was that it was just aesthetically not good done it was like a theater a school theater it was like just it was the big idea but it's a big idea had no had no expression in art you know the exile ensemble is like refugees and and people yeah yeah it's like I think it's enough it's a refugee theme so it's good but it's not what I am wanted and and also not what we see so it's gorky is is a I mean is a high class theater so they can't do like that they can't act like that so but I mean that bad so what do you think what do you think about it no I mean it it was a fun evening yeah so I mean the thing is with gorky always I do think that it's important that it's a fun evening for everyone and people are coming and and they like it you know in the end it doesn't really matter if I like it or not you know so I'm always grateful for every production at gorky even if I don't a hundred percent completely agree with it because I know that they have a lot of young people coming there people are very interested and it's a very different vibe than for example that Billy no somber or the fox winner now digest isn't it led by a woman and it's also led by a woman which is definitely part of that yeah it's even it's even a Turkish woman so I mean she came like when she was small to Germany and that is really so she's the first Turkish woman to lead a theater ever in Germany so yeah no she does an amazing great job yeah we have reached she's there actually coming she's coming out of the world voices we're gonna show six plays no no she's gorky and she's going to Scottish fighter yeah I read it out for her will the Arturo Hui production remain in the Berliner ensemble under the new leadership yeah it's still there that's a great production yeah it's I have problems with that production is a great art she loves it so but I knew the story and I knew that Hina did not want to do it she was like forced to do it because it needed to have a success and for sure and then the financial director said oh let's do something about Hitler the most loved statesman of the 20th century so yeah let's do Arturo Hui people will come and it was like that so and people are still coming so am I sure I mean sold out every time and it's been so I think 300 shows no it's more I see even 500 no I mean it's it's a it's a big it's a good production also from from from the form and everything but for me it's always the thing that I knew how hard for him it was to do it because he wanted to do his own place so and can I just say that Hina said something similar about his quartet with Mariana Hopper to me he he I which I loved and I tell I tell him that I love this production and he says you know because it's a hit you know that means to him it was meant to him it was evidence that it was you know it was popular they just couldn't stand it and I so what am I supposed to say that I didn't like it I liked it but he I probably would have liked it no I mean if I wouldn't have been like so near to Hina I would have liked all three products not not the thing but I know that also it already started with quartet and you know Mariana Hopper she was not that easy so every morning every morning at seven o'clock in the morning she called so and and I was on the phone and I said oh Hina I want to talk to Hina so and that was really like she made us all crazy crazy so but what I have to say about the Atua Uido is that for me it's a play where I can take people that are not familiar with theater or even people that say I never do theater I don't like theater and I can take them there and they're going to love it and they're going to rethink their perception of theater which I like what about the international reception beyond the US let's say Brazil South Africa or you did mention China I'm sure you hear of the request so how how is it and how are translation is the entire catalog of it translated how is that how what's happening okay so there's there's some let's say kind of control for South America there's a lot of things which are also with contract everything but in China I someone sends me a photo oh there's a production of Hina and I thought oh maybe you can ask for a translation I would be interested so there is not an official thing in China so people translate play mostly we don't know it so and but there's a lot of things in France in France going on and yeah so but mostly South America is strong yeah in what country in South America it's mostly Brazil yeah good maybe we open it up Michael if you could put a bit of light to the audience and so if we have some questions or just remarks or a statement maybe shortly say who you are and um you have a chance to ask Brigitte or Anna Jonathan Albani so is it on is it clicked off no we can we can do very good so we're streaming it okay now we got it need to reset my name is Nicholas and I'm a student here at the Graduate Center um I was wondering you know I heard and came across in my research about this production that Heiner directed as the Berlin Wall was coming down of Hamlet and Hamlet machine together and the the references that I came across were vague but in this ongoing conversation of of mixing together the classics and and his own interpretations I wondered if any of you had insights about what that was like or the motivations for for doing it okay I think that Heiner was so he always said I'm not interested like only in the current time capsules so for him it was always important to have like a yesterday a today and a tomorrow so and that what I said is one thing is rewriting mythological pieces historic pieces like rewriting in in adding for example at Macbeth the peasants peasants peasants so and peasants and so and also like so some Heiner was someone who was like we can say connected to a kind of destiny to a kind of mythology to a kind of I don't know but he was connected to something so and I think he took that connection very serious so and so he also wrote himself and his time in a bigger context into a bigger context so I think that was one of the motivation and he lived in a very big room so that was like the feeling when when when he died I had a feeling that the sky is coming on my head down you know because that room was lost in that moment and I had really too hard to work to get it for myself a bigger room again so because you lived in that temple of him of his head so and he had a tremendous remembering of everything you know so you ask something and he knew it everything he was reading he kept so and he knew so much things which was for me like yeah universe so and I think that that he lived in that big universe and that meant that he is to live with other dead persons with dead persons so he had like one of the last notes he left in his working room before he died is um you have to you will have to learn to live without me alone with the other dead people in the library so can I just say that that was an extraordinary event Hamlet Hamlet machine it was a rehearsal when all of the sudden events of the fall of 1989 you know were were in play and it changed because the rehearsals were going on while the politics were suddenly budging that had been frozen for so long and it just is this extraordinary coincidence that that that this this author who had uh done this extraordinary adaptation you could say of what we call our greatest play Hamlet Hamlet machine happened to be working on this at that time and thinking of it as a drama of the absolute impasse for the intellectual in the face of frozen history and and so there's a film there's a wonderful film about that it's it's by Christoph Rutter it's called the time is out of joint it's all about the way that rehearsals were infused with the politics of the moment and how everything got colored with reality it was eight hours long and it was just an extraordinary experience as I'm sure absolutely yeah it was great I saw that I just want to say something about what you said about history um have I recall Heiner's thought that we hadn't yet come to history that this was all prehistory and he always said that there are many more dead than living but I believe that he felt we did not attain history I don't remember exactly his the reasoning for that but he felt we were still living in prehistory um yeah that just came to to mind when you when you talked about that um I also just wanted to tell you that I've run a little poem which was one of his last poems it's in the Heiner Moeller reader it's called empty time he wrote a few poems of things the last few years um and this says my shadow of yesterday has been burned by the sun in a tiresome April dust on the books at night the clocks run faster no wind from the sea waiting for nothing it's called empty time thank you and I think he was in New York right on the wall he was in New York when the wall actually came down it was some kind of an interview with a late night local cable station we showed I think um um that clipped the film also from Kristoff no no you know what what it was because I was with him that time he came to New York with Heiner Goebbels they were doing at the kitchen the man in the elevator which is a part of um of the off track the what was it the the task the task of the mission yeah he was here for the question but actually the moment when he heard it he was in a strange tv show and I think Kristoff had it in his in his documentary yeah you see I think he came like two nights after I forget I have to look up the date but this show this piece was at the kitchen and I remember him sitting at the table and he said I'm in shock I never thought this would happen but there were very famous jazz musicians who were playing with him Don Cherry um I think it was the subject of the green book right that film now that that was him Arto Lindsey and and Heiner Goebbels and um yeah they came to New York like a day or two after uh the wall had fell at four so Goebbels put a Heiner Goebbels production Heiner Goebbels uh it was a kind of and he was reading that he was Heiner was reading at the table reading the text and it was a kind of a music piece yeah it was an extraordinary time for him um as I'm sure Brigitte knows better than anybody he he uh he responded to the fall of the wall with a combination of fascination and panic and uh and and analysis um and um uh he gave these interviews at the time that were published as books that were so penetrating one was called uh Zoolaga de Nazion the other was called Jens Zeitz de Nazion they were never published in English but they were the most extraordinary um uh just um uh just penetrating uh analyses of what was going on in the world what was really moving suddenly like a glacier falling off uh the edge of a coast and um and then he looked inside himself and asked about why why am I not writing plays anymore and he he was writing poetry and his poetry was more personal than it had been in a long time uh he there's one uh line I remember of his uh when the GDR uh the Germans voted the GDR out of existence you know his his his home country he said um gone is the power against which my verse broke like waves rainbow colored do you remember that yeah I know I can I can tell you the whole one in general yeah no say say come here yeah okay yeah let's know I have to because I was reading it in the last thing from here so instead of walls mirrors stand around me and I try to find my face but the mirror stays empty so that's how it ends yeah he he did say if I remember that tragedies you know are for kind of dictatorships that's where these tragedies work in capitalism you can only write comedy and he said I'm not a comedy writer he said you can't you know it's not the form um he was um and attuned to but another uh the thought or yeah right now first of all thank you for the the speech and what's amazing to hear you and uh and I will point out that a question that you uh uh rose about the the Heinemiller how how he is important I remember that when I was a student in Brazil and we didn't uh learn so much about Miller because my teacher wow it's so German we need to find a way the Brazil to express our theater that that kind of things but right now we are dealing in Brazil with a political situation the the stream right rising right now and I and and I saw a play of Heinemiller two years ago in a huge festival in Brazil at the mission they called the mission and 12 fragments and the cast were uh there was there were all black people and they are dealing with decolonization in the body of the the black black actors and and they use uh the the words of uh of Heinemiller as a stone but not to put somewhere but to throw and to throw it in the ground and it's a metaphor of course but they use Heinemiller as a as a political subject to deal with the rise of the extreme uh right in Brazil and I think it's a kind of uh appearance of Miller in another culture because it's Brazil it's I think Heinemiller some somewhere told it's a kind of Brazil and South America it's an island of uh I don't know I I forgot the metaphor it is a kind of island of a disorder that the new could come and some I I just I don't I'm not sure but but uh I would like to to do to to make this comment because of course he is he is important of course he he could brought something to deal with this situation and I think it's not just in Brazil but maybe in the US or somewhere else and and then I would just like to to bring this comment and that's it thank you so much something else um a thought or a question uh maybe then we come close to the evening but maybe tell us both of you what are your projects you're working on at the moment and what oh perhaps if you someone would give you a million dollar whatever what would you do to uh have another million and do more uh so I would do a movie yeah so we're different things so she has her projects I have mine so and some things we do together but so one thing what I already told is like a new edition of his works with manuscripts so and for this we meet like 18 18th of May we meet 18 Miller experts in Kreuzberg to start that edition like just like a kickoff for that idea so and that's one thing but we need to make the money and bring the money and all those things and uh yeah that's one thing and then um so we have like that readings which is like going on and uh so then there's books with so come is like Muller in America from Frank Radatz which should be finished I hope next year so and uh so Anna is I'm planning the book about the strong women figures actually yes and um also I'm planning a documentary yeah I mean interviews mostly it's it's really at the total beginning but I've met with some production companies and I'm kind of trying to um me for myself I call it kind of having a having a hobby with my father I'm kind of getting to know him because I was three when he died so it would be interesting for me to to really have it as me exploring who my father is to his friends and colleagues and people that lived with him yeah I mean that the time testimonies yeah that's what it is so we have to do it now or she has to do it now because people just are very old and dying so and it's the time now to catch up the people who knew him and worked with him so that's one thing in the end I would love to have a real movie I mean like a next step like about his life not a documentary yeah no I mean maybe even a mini series that would be actually my favorite version yeah mini series yeah yeah like yeah like a hundred years of Germany a hundred years of enamola three systems you know you could do it chronologically it would work yeah and so if you find that million let me know yeah okay you never know you never know so maybe I like we could ask you to read an excerpt of the humble machine I think you selected a piece and this will be then the end of the evening we're going to have a little reception here in the room but wait a second I'm looking for one page I mean it's fun I can do this part too oh good okay helmet machine 1977 television the daily disgust disgust at prepared nonsense at official cheerfulness how do you spell gemütlichkeit give us this day our daily murder for yours is devoid disgust at the lies that are believed by the liars and no one else disgust at the lies that are believed disgust at the faces of the muckers lined by the struggle for positions votes daughters disgust a scythe chariot with flashing points I pass through the streets moths faces scarred by the battle for consumption poverty without dignity poverty without the dignity of the knife the brass knuckers the fist the humiliated bodies of the women hope of the generation suffocated in blood cowardized stupidity laughter from dead bellies high coca cola a kingdom for murder I was Macbeth the king has offered me his third concubine I knew every word on her hips was colnicoff in my heart under my only jacket the hatchet for the only scowl of the pawnbroker in the loneliness of the airports I take a deep breath I am privileged my disgust is a privilege screened by the wall barbed wire prison photograph of the author I no longer want to eat drink breathe love a woman a man a child an animal I no longer want to die I no longer want to kill the photograph of the author is torn up I break open my sealed flesh I want to live in my veins in the mirror of my bones in the labyrinth of my skull I withdraw into my intestines I sit down in my shit my blood somewhere bodies are being broken so I can live in my shit somewhere bodies are being opened up so I can be alone with my blood thank you they're leaving tomorrow so they really came in for us here yeah