Hamlet Theatre

by William Shakespeare
Translated from English by Heiner Müller, with the assistance of Matthias Langhoff
using Heiner Müller’s “Hamlet Machine”
Director: Frank Castorf

Premiere on 3/10/2025 at the SchauSpielHaus

In Europe in 1601, two years before the death of Queen Elizabeth, signs of the impending end of a happy era are mounting. Shakespeare's patron, a lover of the queen, is executed; his father dies, as does his son, Hamnet. A watershed moment, a epochal threshold, William Shakespeare writes "Hamlet" and enters a new dimension, beyond all familiar genres.

No play has provoked so many contradictory interpretations. The author places his hero and the audience in a special kind of ignorance: an ultimate unknowing, not a weakness or hesitancy, but rather an indecisiveness in the crucial questions, a non-knowledge that cannot be escaped, that calls everything into question. Thus, "Hamlet" has irritated and fascinated readers and audiences throughout the centuries. A "ghost" appears, can it be trusted? The depravity of the current ruler is obvious – but what are the consequences? The dark spots in the history of the fathers remain obscure. Where is truth stored if there is no "ghost"?

In his magnificent short drama "Hamletmaschine," Heiner Müller follows the character of Hamlet through the devastating history of the 20th century. Shakespeare's play itself, he writes, "is an attempt to describe an experience that has no reality in the time of description. An endgame at the dawn of an unknown day."

With: Paul Behren, Daniel Hoevels, Jonathan Kempf, Matti Krause, Josef Ostendorf, Alberta von Poelnitz, Linn Reusse, Angelika Richter and Lilith Stangenberg
Director: Frank Castorf
Stage: Aleksandar Deni
Costumes: Adriana Braga Peretzki
Light: Lothar Baumgarte
Artistic Production Director: Sebastian Klink
Sound design: William Minke
Video design: Andreas Deinert
Live camera: Andreas Deinert and Severin Renke
Live editing: Jens Crull and Maryvonne Riedelsheimer
Live Cueing: Rebecca Dantas
Live boom operators: Michael Gentner and Jochen Laube
Dramaturgy: Ralf Fiedler