News Release BAM Presents El Periferico De Objetos' Maquina Hamlet, an Inventive Rendering of Heiner Muller's Hamlet Machine
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press~v barn .org News Release BAM Presents El Periferico de Objetos' Maquina Hamlet, an Inventive Rendering of Heiner Muller's Hamlet Machine
Next Wave Festival presents U.S. premiere of the production created by the renowned Argentinean theater company
Written by Heiner Muller Directed by Daniel Veronese, Emilio Garcfa Wehbi, and Ana Alvarado Translation by Gabriela Massuh and Dieter Welke Co-produced by El Periferico de Objetos and Teatro General San Martin (Buenos Aires) under the auspices of Goethe Institut (Buenos Aires)
BAM Harvey Theater Oct 18-21 at 7:30pm Tickets: $17, 33,45 Performed in Spanish with English surtitles
BAMdialogue with directors Daniel Veronese, Emilio Garcfa Wehbi, and Ana Alvarado Oct 19 at 6pm Richard Alan Hillman Attic Studio (30 Lafayette Avenue) Tickets: $8 ($4 for Friends of BAM)
BROOKLYN, September 12, 2000-As part of its 2000 Next Wave Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) presents Maquina Hamlet, an in ventive rendering of Heiner Muller's seminal 1977 play, Ham.let Machine, created by the adventurous Buenos Aires theater company El Periferico de Objetos. This engagement marks the U.S. premiere of the production, are-imagining of the poetic eight-page play penned by 0 renowned German playwright and Bertold Brecht-disciple Heiner Muller. Muller transported Shakespeare's hapless prince from sixteenth-century Denrnark into a 0 contemporary setting that is nihilistic, brutal, and macabre. Maquina Hamlet feature a series of startling photo-projections, jarring, disembodied voices, and actors 0 manipulating ghoulish puppets and dolls of myriad shapes and sizes. In onl y its second appearance in the U.S., the company will give four performances of Maquina Hmnlet at C\J the BAM Harvey Theater (65 1 Fulton Street), October 18-21 at 7:30pnl. • more ... ave Mdquina Hamlet 2
BAM's Next Wave Festival, now in its eighteenth year, presents thirteen dance, 1nusic, and theater events through December 10, sponsored by Philip Morris Cmnpanies Inc. For tickets, call BAM Ticket Services at 718.636.4100, Ticketmaster at 212.307.4100, or visit BAM's web site at www.bam.org.
Mdquina Hamlet was immediately hailed as a "national treasure" following the world premiere in Buenos Aires in 1995, affirming the company's status as Argentina's foremost independent theater company. El Periferico de Objetos and German dramaturg Dieter Welke, a Muller specialist, adapted the work. In this dark, brutal production, Hamlet is a bewildered witness to apocalyptic events such as the crumbling of the Berlin Wall, the dissolution of Eastern European borders, and the end of Socialism. Omnipresent, both veiled and revealed in the work, is the turbulent past and present of dictator-ruled Argentina.
The nation's leading daily, Clarin, described Maquina Hamlet as "an intelligent, dread filled meditation about the end of the millennium." Calling it "one of the most important theatre events of the year. .. a play of extraordinary poetic force," Cabal magazine observed, "This is an enterprise with an unusual creativity and precision, with a conceptual density, a dramatic complexity and a scenic wealth, that a simple journalistic commentary cannot totally hold."
Production credits include dramaturgy by Dieter Welke, lighting design by Jorge Doliszniak, lighting by Alejandro LeRoux and Mariano Dobrysz, marionettes and objects design by Norberta Laino, and scenic photographs by Magdelena Viggiani. Original music and sound treatment are by Cecilia Candia, with costume design and construction by Rosana Barcena. Mdquina Hamlet is a co-production of El Periferico de Objetos and Teatro General San Martin (Buenos Aires) under the auspices of Goethe Institut (Buenos Aires).
About El Periferico de Objetos
El Periferico de Objetos, under the direction of founding members Daniel Veronese, Emilio Garcfa Wehbi, and Ana Alvarado, creates work as an ensemble. Since its establishment in 1989, the company has performed at major venues and festivals in South America and Europe, receiving numerous awards in its native country; its production of Daniel Veronese's Camara Gesell (Gesell Chamber) was performed during the 1996 Henson International Puppet Festival in New York. Renowned for its puppetry, imaginative settings, and physical theatricality, the company's repertoire also includes El Hombre de Arena ( 1991 ), Circonegro ( 1996), and Zooedipous ( 1998).
About Heiner Muller's play
Though completed in 1977, Heiner Muller penned the first scenes for this inscrutable play in the 1950s. Following earlier, unsuccessful attempts to stage the play, the work was first performed in 1979. Initially conceived as a 200-page play, in its final form Hamlet Machine numbered only eight pages, unfolding in five acts (the playwright called it "the shrunken head of the Hamlet tragedy").
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The International Directory of Theatre, Volume 2, stated that Hamlet Machine "reduced Hamlet to a background of allusion, while in the foreground [Muller] articulates the barriers that personal experience and historical necessity have erected between him and the play, which he sees as a prophetic, if optimistic picture of 20t11 -century politics. The piece is ... a dense, bleak, allusive prose poe1n which combines the anguish of a Marxist intellectual and the predicament of Shakespeare' s Hamlet."
Muller (1929- 1995) was the most prominent dramatist of the former East Germany. During his prolific career as playwright, journalist, and editor, he often encountered censorship problems. In 1961, his subversive, experimental works were banned by the East German regime, which objected to his harsh dramatizations of political oppression and human suffering (found not only in history, but also under communist rule). Following a period of "rehabilitation" in the 1970s, however, in the mid-1980s the government proclaimed him as the heir to Bertold Brecht and granted hi1n the State Prize for Literature.
Credits
BAM's 2000 Next Wave Festival is sponsored by Philip Morris Companies Inc. Programming in the BAM Harvey Theater is supported and endowed by the Doris Duke Foundation. BAM' s new media partner is Lucent Technologies. Official Broadcast Sponsor is Bloomberg Radio AM 1130. BAMdial ogues are sponsored by AT&T. Support for Mdquina Hamlet is provided by the Buenos Aires Secretary of Culture.
General information
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, BAM Rose Cinemas, BAMcafe, and Shakespeare & Co. BAMshop are located in the main building at 30 Lafayette A venue (Lafayette and Ashland) in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn. BAM Harvey Theater is located at 651 Fulton Street in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. BAM Rose Cinemas is Brooklyn's only movie house dedicated to first-run independent and foreign film and repertory programming. Award-winning Tentation Catering provides food and beverages at BAMcafe, which features an eclectic mix of spoken word and li ve music on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights as well as Sounds of Praise (gospel music with a soul-food buffet) on selected Sunday afternoons. A package including dinner in BAMcafe and a movie ticket to BAM Rose Cinemas is available for only $30 (at the box office only).
Subway: 2, 3, 4 , 5, D, Q to Atlantic Avenue B, M , N, R to Pacific Street; G to Ful ton Street, C to Lafayette Avenue Train : Long Island Railroad to Flatbush Avenue BAMbus: Departs from Whitney Museum at Philip Morris, 120 Park A venue at 42nd Street, one hour prior to most perfo rmances. Car: Commercial parking lots are located adj acent to BAM.
For ticket and BAMbus information, call BAM Ticket Services at 718.636.4100, or visit www .bam.org. Tickets are also avai! able through Tickellnastcr at 2 12.307.4100.
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