TNS, organizer of Festival Premières (photo: Tamas Kiraly)

Last year, after we’d performed Hamletmachine at the ITS Festival in Amsterdam, we thought: That’s it. The show’s been going for a year and a half since its first performance at BAC, this is a worthy end.

But no!  A year later, the machine is back again (no killing the machine!) and it looks like it might keep going for some time still. On 5th and 6th of June we performed at the lovely Festival Premières in Strasbourg, France. The festival was organised by Le-Maillon Theatre de Strasbourg and Theatre National Strasbourg, and the beautiful Theatre Jeune Publique hosted our show. With incredibly helpful theatre and festival staff, it was a joy to revive the show.

Theatre Jeune Publique, our riverside venue!

The festival hosted 10 shows by young directors from all over Europe. A show which made a particularly strong impression on us was Sanja Mitrovic’s Will You Ever Be Happy Again, a “docu-tale” comparing the experiences of a young Serbian, with German experiences of WW2. This was done with humour, insight and lots of energy. If you get a chance to see it, do! (It’s currently touring Europe…)

We performed Hamletmachine three times to sold out houses, participated in a platform discussion event with the other directors and were interviewed for the German/Frech TV channel ARTE. We look forward to performing in France again in the near future…

The auditorium of the TJP with some of the helpful staff

For more info on Festival s Premières see:

http://www.le-maillon.com/

- Oystein

And other important questions raised in Imploding Fiction’s Hamletmachine

Written by Alexandra Mueller

One of the hardest things is to get people working in theatre excited by a performance. Especially with a text predicted to be “undirectable” like Heiner Muellers Hamletmachine. And especially when two just graduating young directors from London do such a piece.
But in Mondays performance at the Frascati Theatre of Muellers piece directed by Imploding Fictions (Philip Thorne and Øystein Ulsberg Brager) it just happened: nearly one hall of largely young directors, actors, dramaturges, producers etc. got caught by a complex, non-narrating one hour performance. How could that happen?

How could that happen?

Imploding Fiction’s Hamletmachine is built out of two Mueller pieces: Hamletmachine and Man in the elevator. It starts with the elevator piece: The two actors (Hannah Boyde, Samuel Metcalfe) dressed in formal black suits building their own cage: an easy square of white tape. Captured in it and bound by an extralong tie they start an exhausting auditive journey through the text. It tells the story of a man on his way to his chief. He has given up every individuality to work in a system where only “work is hope”. Really working is the artwork of the two actors, the hypnotizing choreography of their voices turns into the metaphoric machine, the man in the elevator is only one small part. The tie becomes a metaphor: the bounding of the man and the woman is a gallows, a blindfold, it holds and it chains at the same time. This directly leads to the first break in the whole performance: the bounded pair rips their band and is divided into “Hamlet” and “Ophelia”. The cold world of business is loosened, the cage of the elevator is destroyed, the suits were changed into Hamlet’s scrubby look and Ophelia’s white skirt and her old-fashioned underwear.

Mueller’s Hamlet is transmuted into an animal. A mixture of an ape and a parrot, struggling with Muellers text, a lonely explorer in a child’s sandbox. Hamletmachine is only 8 pages long, but it deals with nearly everything: Not only Shakespearean drama but also European history, communism and Mueller’s predicted helplessness of the intellectual individual in the 20th century.

Deconstruction in a sandbox

Imploding Fiction’s Hamlet follows this deconstructing path. He finds some relics in his sandbox. For example an old transistor radio. It talks to him in different voices: those of old Shakespeare interprets whose pathetic voices are quite amusing in contrast to the listening apish boy in the sandbox: “I’m your father’s spirit!”. In contrary to them a comedian jokes about what Hamlet’s family relations can teach us for real life. The Hamlet in the sandbox comes back again to Mueller”s text: asking, screaming, suffering – and also laughing about what pathetic inquiry this Hamlet is longing for. Can any living today just stand stuff like that? The question culminates in an unbearable tinnitus-alike bleep. What also cannot be missing: the skull. There are two covered by sand: a realistic one and one of plastic, blinking blue in Hamlets hand, while Ophelia finishes changing her clothes.

Ophelia is full of little tragic moments, her quiet dark voice fills the whole room, while she plays with nothing but a glass of water. She moves between being a woman, a child and a puppet when she burns a letter with some Shakespearian Hamlet lyrics and when she drips some blood into her glass of water, thinking about herself, “the woman at the gallows”.

And then the turning starts again, the whole performance transforms into a metaplay. The actors step out of their roles drinking some water to refresh themselves, Ex-Hamlet tells with Mueller “I’m not Hamlet.” And just checks if he has any messages. From now on the deconstruction continues until the show ends with two little robots standing in a little elevator made of tape and two actors dusting some glittering snow on them.

Metametametametameta

Muellers Hamletmachine is a secret, it reflects on its own cryptical style, its protagonist talks about being Hamlet and being an actor, he tears up a picture of the author and the author himself seems to talk about all that is going on in his head. This metametameta postmodern style of questioning and being is transferred into a one hour play which is not only analyzing this meta-thinking existence but also funny, emotional and beautiful at the same time. Like the text itself it tries to reveal the layers of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, of its own existence and of theatre itself.

From one “act” of Imploding Fiction’s Hamletmachine to the next one layer after the other is taken off, like the costumes of the actors. First there is the elevator piece, this well directed artistic voice challenge, then everything is transformed into Hamletmachine’s two broken figures – invented by Heiner Mueller and in their great individual ways interpreted by the actors. Third the former characters become actors/directors by themselves, talking about playing Shakespeare, being authentic etc. Then the media (used in a theatrical way) start to be instruments of exploring how more or less modern techniques conquer the stage: Former Hamlet talking in his mobile phone, former Ophelia listening, former Hamlet going out, coming back without a phone, but his voice still sounds through the phone, which is placed next to a microphone. Former Hamlet having a Dictaphone, recording himself, placing it beside the mobile phone beside the microphone. His voice doubled, tripled and overlayed by another radio and so on.

Some answers to find

If one distillates the essence of the whole performance to answer the question in the title, he’ll come to some points. First: Have the courage to do a difficult, challenging text. Unreadable, undirectable when it comes to questions of narrative, of understandability.
Second: Take two pretty good actors, who seem to like the text, like their “roles”, the play with roles and themselves.
Third: Have again the courage to invent your own magical, ironical, beautiful pictures and to use ambiguous metaphors – while knowing what they mean to you and knowing they are ambiguous. (Although if the furthered theatre around you – as it was discussed in the following talk – is quite narrative and often kind of conservative.)

One can like it or hate this piece – but he or she has to confess, that this Hamletmachine is a work of two directors who really know what their question was to the text, to their actors and to the medium itself. An aesthetic and intellectual statement and at the same time a personal answer to the question: How to do theatre today. And what more can one expect from two young directors at the beginning of their careers?
HAMLETMACHINE
TEXT: Heiner Mueller
DIRECTORS: Philip Thorne, Øystein Ulsberg Brager
ACTORS: Hannah Boyde, Samuel Metcalfe
LIGHTING DESIGN AMSTERDAM: Thomas Wheildon

Oystein is in the midst of preparing two shows; Beauty in Stone at Camden People’s Theatre with the new integrated performance company Preface Morn (http://www.perform.tv/thescenepool/beautyinstone.html) and his solo performance Imitating Eloquence which will be performed in Kristiansand, Norway on 1st February. 

Pip is currently in rehearsal for Peter Handke’s silent piece The Hour We Knew Nothing Of Each Other at the National Theatre (opens 6^th Feb).

On the Imploding Fictions front we have our new show Norway.Today coming up on the 22^nd January at the Junction in Cambridge (book tickets under  http:/www.junction.co.uk).

But the biggest Imploding Fictions news is that Hamletmachine was awarded the Premio Internazionale Claudio Gora at its guest performance in Rome! The Jury selected the production with the following statement: 

For the ability to express through the poetry of the body, the power of imagery and strength of silences and the rigorous research conducted.

Øystein, Pip, Sergio Sivori and Cristina Giordana (the organizers of Premio Internazionale Claudio Gora)

We are really honoured to have been chosen for this award and would like to thank everyone at Laboratorium Teatro in Rome for their support and encouragement. Especially Sergio Sivori for laboriously sieving sand for us ; )

(Wherever we travel with this production, the 200 kilos of sand are a nightmare…)

We hope to perform in Italy again soon!

Hannah Boyde and Sammy Metcalfe rehearsing before the Rome performance. In the background 200 kilos of wet sand spread out on the floor to dry… 

To read more about the Hamletmachine in Rome or Associazione Claudio Gora, check out these links:

http://www.assclaudiogora.it

http://www.laboratoriumteatro.it

http://www.groruddalen.no/spiller-hamlet-for-italienere.4443126-19208.html

http://www.teatroviviani.it/home/leggi.asp?id=921 

http://www.dramma.it/drammaturgie/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1441&Itemid=54 

During our relatively short existence Imploding Fictions has been submitted to a sort of crash-course to the joys and trials of international touring…From fragile props being balanced on the roof a Cairo taxi and sped off into the battleground of Egyptian traffic to Oystein being arrested at the airport for the possession of (prop) guns. We have developed a thick skin.But the last weeks have brought on a challenge of a different kind: The translation of Hamletmachine’s press material from English into Italian as well as the deciphering of contracts for its guest performance in Rome. Between the two of us we have four and a half or so languages at our disposal, but Italian not being one of them meant we had to seek exterior help. So here we humbly offer a piece of advice to anyone who is put into the position of having to make an on the spot translation into an alien language: DON’T USE BABELFISH. Babelfish is as useless as a glass eye at a keyhole. After rendering our press materials through it and submitting it to our Italian friends we got the polite reply: …yes could you send this in Italian? Idea for a postmodern performance: take Hamlet. Babelfish the entire play into Chinese. Then Babelfish the result back into English. Perform it. May cryptic analyses and academic praise be showered upon you. Although you could find that Heiner Müller has been there before you.

In a double pronged mission I was given the contract, Ø the publicity stuff and our quest for the day was to get a decent translation.Rather than tearing your hair out over babelfish, I found it an infinitely better strategy to have a relaxed breakfast at an Italian Café. I sought out my local Panini-place in Bexley armed with the relevant documents and strode bravely towards the counter. The guy behind it turns around (arms covered in pizza dough and emitting a gruff: Buongiorno ) and I figure this isn’t the right context in which to bring up translation and legal documents (I do have some sense of tact) so instead I take my place at a table and on receiving my Latte Macchiato took the charming waiter’s: “Is there anything else I can do for you sir?” at face value by responding: “Well, actually yes, I’ve got three pages of tightly written, Italian legalistic prose here which I’d like you to translate for me.” The response was: “I’ll send out my wife.” And that was that.

Øystein (in true directorial fashion) got others to work for him. His flatmate, an irish costume mistress got her Italian colleague roped in whilst all around them the french revolution was in full blaze: Dressing and undressing the late and annoyed cast of “Les Mis”as prostitutes and violent students, already two bars late (“Can you hear the people sing?”, “Nope. Can you?”), whilst at the same time reconstructing in Italian our dense outpourings about Hamletmachine and Imploding Fictions…Anyway: the organizational groundwork has now been done: documents translated, lighting plans drawn up and posters printed… and in just over a week we’re off to Rome!

TheHamletmachine is being performed at the Festival Premio Claudio Gora at Laboratorium Teatro in Rome on the 13th December at 9pm. You can read more under the following links:

http://www.assclaudiogora.it/IIIedizione_premio_claudio_gora.html

http://www.laboratoriumteatro.it/III_Ed_premio_gora2006.html

www.implodingfictions.com

- Philip

Still quite giddy from a chaotic and gloriously surreal week at the Cairo International Festival of Experimental Theatre. Our first glimpses of Cairo were caught on a breakneck minibus ride from the airport to the Hotel (we were racing the van with the luggage – we won!) It was around 2 am and about as busy as London in mid afternoon. The vibrancy and heat were incredible and we started doubting whether our show was mad enough to suit the intense theatricality of this city.
We were put up in a surprisingly lavish hotel which featured an assortment of oddities – most notably a mechanical piano with a restricted repertoire of only Elton John ballads… Set about exploring the unfamiliar comforts of a five star hotel room (feeling somewhat fraudulent). Once the novelty of these unfamiliar luxuries had worn off we settled down to get a few hours of sleep.

First day was spent getting to grips with the festival organisation. The whole enterprise is really a staggering feat of coordination featuring approx eighty shows from forty-six different countries. In light of this knowing what is happening and where to be when is sometimes (put diplomatically) ‘quite difficult’. Fortunately since everybody was so genuinely welcoming and friendly the enthusiasm and dedication of our team outweighed the chaos. We finally found out the venue we were to perform in and were taken there – the Artistic Creativity Centre in the beautiful Opera House Complex in El Zamalek. We were blessed with a translator, Atef, who had the knack of keeping an incredible calm in the face of our outlandish requests (the sand we require for the show had not arrived at the venue, necessitating the technical crew to cart sack loads of it in for us). The other props and scenic elements (including the specially blown, 100 pound hour glass, which during the original production had been guarded by our ASM Steff with her life) were balanced (no, not tied) on top of the roof of a taxi which hurtled to El Zamalek weaving in and out of the tumultuous Cairo traffic at an insane speed.

The most lethal experience though was walking through the Cairo traffic. Why would you ever even attempt to be a pedestrian in that lawless, horn-honking chaos? I hear you ask. But our theatre was in walking distance from the hotel. Just over the bridge and across the motorway. That we all have the same number of limbs as when we left England is a miracle. Egyptian drivers have substituted moving the steering wheel and braking for just honking the horn wildly. Honk – here I am! Honk! F**k that was close! Honk – RUN!

We didn’t realise what an important event the festival is until turning up at the opening ceremony, with our backpacks and in sweaty clothes, finding ourselves amongst about two thousand guests in tuxedos and ball dresses, several national TV channels, newspaper journalists and photographers… We got politely ushered to the upper circle with everybody else who was inappropriately clothed, where no one could see us. The opera house was massive, a bit odd therefore that they chose a Georgian finger puppet show as the opening nights’ entertainment. How much of it we could actually see from the distance we were at, and how much we imagined, I don’t know, but it must have been good, ending up winning one of the festival prizes.

Our first performance was on the Sunday, and we were quite surprised by the phenomenal turnout. We had a full house, people sitting in the aisles and standing along the walls; we even had to turn people away! We had the most diverse audience anyone of us has ever performed for; festival participants from all over the world, Arab audience members both from different theatre companies and the festival administration, festival jury members and the general public; including several fully veiled Muslim women (who seemed very captivated by the production; interesting performing Müller’s feminist Ophelia speech in this context!).

Our second performance was equally packed, and amongst the audience was a national Egyptian TV crew making a news report on us! We’d like to get hold of that clip somehow… They only filmed the first twenty minutes before they left, but more or less the entire show has been caught on tape, or to be precise: On an Egyptian phone. A guy in the front row must have decided this was the most exciting thing he could possibly show his friends, and despite several reprimands from the ushers continuously filmed our entire show with his mobile. (Or he might have been making a bootleg DVD version of it – it’ll probably hit the streets shortly…)

To follow up on our former blog: Yes – the sand was from the Sahara. And Ophelia’s water? Disinfected, bottled chlorine-tasting water; from the Nile, of course!

We didn’t get to see that many other performances whilst we were down there, the schedule was to tight and our stay too short, but we did see the other Müller production which was on: An Italian company was doing Quartet. It was bloody amazing. Laboratorium Teatro from Rome really made Müller’s erotically problematic text come alive physically, with ingenious stage imagery, lines spat like machine gun fire and fervour like only the Italians can do it.

We met some fascinating other companies, including a group from Mauritius and an Iraqi Director/Performer we hope to collaborate with in the future…. We hope to perform in Egypt again soon!

- Øystein and Philip

- Øystein

If you want to know more about Imploding Fictions, check out www.implodingfictions.com.

- Philip

If you want to know more about Imploding Fictions, check out www.implodingfictions.com.

- Øystein

If you want to know more about Imploding Fictions, check out www.implodingfictions.com.