HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

DISSERTATION ACCEPTANCE CERTIFICATE

The undersigned, appointed by the

Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
have examined a dissertation entitled

"Locating the Image: Heiner Muller and the Acoustic"

presented by Andrea Christin Deeker

candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and hereby

certify that it is worthy of acceptance.

Signature
Typed name: ?idi. Judith Ryan

Signature
Typed name: Prof. Peter I ^ g a r d

Signature A UJMA ^Tl "fU^f^r

Typed name: Prof. David Bathrick

Date
-'Ha.of^\;^yj'
1?
 Locating the Image: Heiner Miiller and the Acoustic

A dissertation presented

by

Andrea Christin Deeker

to

The Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures

in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in the subject of
Germanic Languages and Literatures

Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts

April 2009
 UMI Number: 3365240

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Professor Judith Ryan Andrea Christin Deeker

Locating the Image: Heiner Miiller and the Acoustic

Abstract

This dissertation uses performances of Heiner Miiller's plays as a vector to

approach the functioning of word and image in his works. Drawing from a range of

concepts of the image, from literary theory to philosophy of mind, the dissertation

analyzes how productions of Miiller's plays have dealt with the difficulty of the images

in his texts, focusing especially on those instances where the production has chosen not

to create the image onstage. It devotes particular attention to the aural possibilities and

potentialities in the plays: the use of sound to create what some critics have called

"audial images" of elements in the text. Further, the dissertation compares how entirely

non-visual media such as radio adaptations of those plays deal with these same difficult

elements in the play texts. The dissertation balances literary interpretation of theater

texts with consideration of their performance possibilities, "reading" performances of a

play as one would read critical essays: as interpretations of a text that can provide new

perspectives, insights, amd emphases.

The first chapter considers concepts of image in relation to theater and to reading,

synthesizing various philosophical and literary theoretical arguments to arrive at a

linguistic understanding of the image. This chapter also locates Miiller's work in the

iii
recently theorized "postdramatic theater." Chapter Two reads the play Bildbeschreibung

as a meditation on ekphrasis and the nature of representation in theater, arguing

through analysis of two stage productions and two radio productions that the text

invokes and sets into opposition the representational and the creative functions of

language. The third chapter examines the stage directions of Die Hamletmaschine in light

of the flattened textual hierarchies of postdramatic theater, considering the status of

their verbal images when the text is treated as an "audial track" in various media. The

final chapter considers productions of Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit

Argonauten, arguing that their shifting focus on the material characteristics and the

signifying capabilities of language produce "audial images" as theorized by Heiner

Goebbels, which function in manner compatible with a descriptionalist account of

images.

IV
Table of contents

Abstract I Hi

Table of contents I v

Acknowledgments I vi

Explanation of the citation of Miiller primary works I vii

Prelude
The image and the acoustic 12

Chapter one
The intractable image I 4

Chapter two
Bildbeschreibung: The performance of interpretation I 39

Chapter three
Die Hamletmaschine: Text as audial track I 97

Chapter four
Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten: Text in theater,
text as theater I 173

Postlude
The encounter with Text im Theater I 206

Works Cited I 220

v
Acknowledgments

I would like to thank first of all my dissertation committee, Professors Judith Ryan, Peter
Burgard, and David Bathrick.

My research in Berlin was made possible by the German-American Fulbright

Commission, with enthusiastic support from Reiner Rohr of the American Program Unit
in Berlin. I am also grateful to Professor Elmar Engels of the Technische Universitat
Berlin.

Thank you to Dominique Bluher, John Hamilton, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Alina Opreanu,
Julia Faisst, and all the members of the Word and Image Workshop at Harvard
University.

And most of all, thanks to Kris Wilton, Danny Bowles, Jonah Johnson, Ben Levy, Darren
Tanner, Alexis Huffman, Darrel and Juanita Deeker, and Sam Anthony for their
encouragement and their expressions of support in a hundred different ways.

VI
Citation of Heiner Miiller primary works

All primary works by Heiner Miiller, including plays, prose works, and his

autobiography, will be cited parenthetically, in-text, with the volume number of his

collected works followed by the page number. Other sources, including interviews,

letters, manuscripts, audiovisual materials, and archival materials, will be cited in

footnotes.

vii
Introduction
The image and the acoustic

The title of this dissertation may at first seem paradoxical: the "location" of an

image - already an abstract concept - does not intuitively lie in the acoustic, in the realm

of sound. When considering the mid-period, imagistic works of Heiner Miiller, however,

it is difficult to ignore the many fruitful adaptations of his plays for radio. Following this

thread, I found that greater attention to the use of sound in performances of plays by

Miiller proves productive in the exploration of Miiller's imagery.

The attempt to pinpoint the "location" of an image asks the questions where and in

what form the image is generated, how and by whom it is received, and in what way

representation takes place between those two poles. That this process of image

generation and reception can take place entirely without instantiated, physical pictures

is not remarkable; scholars of literature routinely discuss the "images" and "imagery" in

texts. The question of images in drama becomes more complicated, however, because of

the multiple modes that can be used in performance: visual, audial, and verbal. Images

arise not only in the visual elements of performance (that is, what is shown on stage),

but also through words and through the particular ways those words are presented

audially.

This dissertation explicitly considers how productions of Miiller's plays have dealt

with the difficulty of the images in his texts, and especially those instances where the

production has chosen not to create the image on stage. I am particularly interested in

the aural possibilities and potentialities in the plays: how stage productions have used

1
sound to create what Heiner Goebbels calls "audial images" 1 of elements in the text too

ponderous, complex, abstract, or violent to display onstage visually. In comparison, I

consider how entirely non-visual media such radio adaptations of the same plays use

these audial images. Some of the same strategies used by these adaptations in non-visual

media have been employed in stage productions as well, with a resulting turn toward

visually spare performances. Highly descriptive passages take the place of action

executed on stage, bringing the verbal image into a central position for stage

productions. Scientific studies on the functioning of listeners' visualization during radio

plays corroborate Miiller's own characterizations of audience members' visualization of

his plays in the theater, particularly in passages that he claims to have written

specifically to function as Kopftheater or Traumtheater. This shift, deliberately

internalizing the theatrical image, brings us to a central question of what theater is—

what balance is to be struck between telling and showing, and where, between the stage

and the minds of the audience members, does the theater actually take place?

While an increased focus on text and verbal imagery is one hallmark of the recently

theorized "postdramatic theater," Miiller's plays, in their persistent interrogation of the

image, stand out among the work of postdramatic playwrights. His theater texts

provoke a sustained engagement with the very concept of the image that is integral to

1
Heiner Goebbels, "Expeditionen in die Textlandschaft. Erweiterte Fassung eines
Beitrages zur Heiner Miiller-Tagung der Dramaturgischen Gesellschaft, Berlin 1986,"
Explosion of a Memory. Heiner Miiller DDR: Ein Arbeitsbuch, ed. Wolfgang Storch (Berlin:
Hentrich, 1988) 80.
Mitchell calls this the "acoustic image", and gives it special consideration as a type of
image that spans the divide between sight and sound. W.J.T. Mitchell, What Do Pictures
Want? The Lives and Loves of Images, (Chicago: Chicago UP, 2005) 2.

2
their understanding. Miiller also stands as a knowing heir to older discourses

surrounding images, narration, and representation in theater, putting him in a lineage

with Aeschylus, Diderot, Lessing, and Kleist.

The introductory chapter of this dissertation considers concepts of image in relation

to theater and to reading. In it, I synthesize various philosophical and literary theoretical

arguments to arrive at a linguistic understanding of the image. This chapter also

discusses the history of images in theater and locates Miiller's work within postdramatic

theater. Chapter Two reads the play Bildbeschreibung as a meditation on ekphrasis and

the nature of representation in theater. Through analysis of two stage productions and

two radio productions, I argue that the text invokes and sets into opposition the

representational and the creative functions of language. The third chapter examines the

stage directions of Die Hamletmaschine in light of the flattened textual hierarchies of

postdramatic theater. I consider the status of verbal images in these stage directions

when the text is treated as an "audial track" in various media, including stage

productions, radio plays, and an opera adaptation. The final chapter considers

productions of Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten, arguing that

their shifting focus on the material characteristics and the signifying capabilities of

language produce "audial images" as theorized by Heiner Goebbels, which function in

manner compatible with a descriptionalist account of images.

3
Chapter O n e -
The intractable image

Dasist absolut lacherlich, das aufder Biihne zeigen zu wollen.

—Heiner Miiller, on the stage directions in Die Hamletmaschine2

At the end of the penultimate section of Heiner Miiller's Die Hamletmaschine, the

HAMLETDARSTELLER - who emerges after the figure identified as Hamlet "Legt Maske und

Kostum ab" - receives the stage direction "Tritt in die Riistung, spaltet mit dem Beil die Kopfe

von Marx Lenin Mao. Schnee. Eiszeit" (IV 553). This snowy ice age does not last for long,

however, for the first directions of the fifth and final section specify "Tiefsee. Ophelia im

Rollstuhl. Fische Trummer Leichen und Leichenteile treiben vorbei" (IV 553). The figure

identified by the character attribution as Ophelia then declares, in the first sentence of

her speech, "Hier spricht Elektra." She delivers a short monologue of revenge, quoting

or reference to Joseph Conrad, Antonin Artaud, and Squeaky Fromme of the Charles

Manson gang, during which two men in white coats are to pack her and the wheelchair

in bandages. The play ends in a tableau of transfixed terror, provided by the direction

"Manner ab. Ophelia bleibt aufder Biihne, reglos in der weiflen Verpackung." (IV 554).

With such density of images, landscapes, climates, geologic ages, history, literary

references, and identity changes, it can be difficult to visualize a play by Heiner Miiller,

let alone to bring that vision to the stage. Since the first productions of Die

2
Heiner Miiller, "Kopftheater," Regie: Heiner Miiller. Material zu DER LOHNDRUCKER
(1988) HAMLET/MASCHINE (1990) MAUSER (1991) am Deutschen Theater Berlin, eds.
Martin Linzer and Peter Ullrich (Berlin: Zentrum fur Theaterdokumentation und -
information, 1993) 108.

4
Hamletmaschine in the late 1970s, much has been written about the images in Heiner

Muller's plays. Striking in their impenetrability and oftentimes literal impossibility, his

plays' images provide poetic interest at the same time as constituting a challenge to their

performers. In this way, the nature of Muller's images is both a literature question and a

theater question: on the one hand, taking his plays as dramatic literature, we confront the

complicated poetics of his images, while on the other hand we question what one might

do with those images on the stage, their meaning in a performance context.

There can be no one simple way to address the images in Muller's plays, because

not only do they function on different levels and as different kinds of images, they

appear in both the didascalia 3 and the dialogue (inasmuch as the two remain discrete

elements). Some of the greatest difficulties of staging arise in the question of what to do

with Muller's vivid yet obscure stage directions, which by turns call for elaborately

surreal scenes, make literary references, or relate entire narratives, often displaying little

connection to the dialogue at all. For example, continuing with our illustrations from Die

Hamletmaschine, the direction that begins part 2 prescribes "Enormous room. Ophelia. Ihr

Herz ist eine Uhr" (IV 547) .4 The end of part 3, the "Scherzo" section consisting almost

3
1 use the term didascalia throughout the dissertation because it encompasses not only
stage directions, but also directions such as titles of scenes and character attributions.
The term was brought into wide usage by theater semioticians in the 1980s; Anne
Ubersfeld identifies didascalia and dialogue as the two discrete yet dependent elements
in the dramatic text. Regardless of whether one considers Muller's theater texts to be
dramatic or postdramatic, the term didascalia provess useful for their discussion.
"Semiotics," The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism, 2005 ed.

4
While these elements are present throughout Muller's theater texts, Die Hamletmaschine
provides perhaps the most varied and impenetrable occurrences of them in a single

5
entirely of stage directions, introduces a heretofore unseen Madonna, whose bizarre

appearance brackets the actions of Hamlet and Horatio, who have been present for the

entire scene: "Aufeiner Schaukel die Madonna mit dent Brustkrebs. Horatio spannt einen

Regenshirm auf, umarmt Hamlet. Erstarren in der Umarmung unter dem Regenshirm. Der

Brustkrebs strahlt wie eine Sonne" (IV 548-9).

At the same time, the dialogue often contains third-person present-tense

descriptions of action, rendering it much like traditional stage directions. Continuing

with part 4 of Die Hamletmaschine, we find "Der Auf stand beginnt als Spaziergang. Gegen

die Verkehrsordnung wahrend der Arbeitszeit. Die Strafie gehort den Fufigangern. Hier und da

wird ein Auto umgeworfen" (IV 550). In other instances, Muller gives no stage directions at

all, providing only a text for which differentiated speakers may or may not be specified.5

Even where the 'dialogue' - i f it can be called such - looks like conventional dialogue,

with a series of lines attributed to different figures, Muller often complicates the clear

connection of the attributed speaker to the content of the lines, as in the Ophelia/Elektra

example above, or at the beginning of the monologue that comprises part 2, attributed to

"OPHELIA [CHOR/HAMLET]". Lines exchanged between speakers do not necessarily

respond to one another, functioning as disconnected speeches or as apparent non-

sequitors. Such provocations problematize or even eliminate core elements of

work. I draw exclusively on Hamletmaschine examples in these opening paragraphs due

to the incredible density of such elements in this one compact text, rather than to the
absence of such elements in other Muller texts.

5
1 further explore the role of stage directions, including their history and development
in western theater, in my discussion of Die Hamletmaschine in Chapter 3. See p. 107.

6
traditionally defined drama, such as character and dialogue. 6

To stage a play by Miiller is to confront such dramaturgical challenges head-

on—and confronting them onstage can mean something very different than confronting

them as a literary scholar. While literary critics offer interpretations of the texts, they

have often strayed far from the basic question of how one is to interpret these

Theaterstucke in the actual theater. 7 Writing about images and imagery, in particular,

remains simpler when everything remains at the level of language, without the necessity

of that language encountering the material bodies of the stage. The theater, with its both

verbal and visual components, forces the confrontation of the immaterial verbal image

with actual visual elements of production, and thereby the exploration of the

relationship of language and the image.

Given the many registers in which images function, their dominance and diversity

in the later plays of Heiner Miiller open a plethora of interpretive possibilities. David

6
Peter Szondi calls dialogue the "Trager des Dramas". Peter Szondi, Theoriedes modernen
Dramas, (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1956) 19. In 1967, Peter Handke, in his seminal rant
against the theater establishment published in the letters section of Theater heute,
identified character and dialogue as the "Fixdefinitionen" that once repelled him from
theater. Peter Handke, "Briefe uber Theater (1)," Theater heute 8.2 (1967): 37.

7
With the concept of postdramatic theater came a renewed attention in the 1990s to how
playwrights' works have been labeled. Miiller's works for the theater have been
identified as Theaterstucke, Produktionsstucke, Lehrstucke, and Geschichten, but
significantly, have almost never been called Dramen. The volumes of Miiller's collected
works devoted to his theater texts are labeled Die Stucke. Gerda Poschmann argues for
the replacement of the genre-naming term Drama with the more descriptive term
Theatertext. This change would be more inclusive of contemporary works, and has the
advantage of highlighting the genre's dual theatrical and textual nature. Gerda
Poschmann, Der nicht mehr dramatische Theatertext. Aktuelle Buhnenstucke und ihre
dramaturgische Analyse, (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1997) 40-1.

7
Bathrick calls this "potential for an explosion of variegated meaning" Miiller's greatest

provocation. 8 Performers of Miiller's works have always had to deal with this

provocation in the course of routine production decisions, but criticism has remained

less concerned with such difficulties. While reviews and analyses of performances

describe what the audience actually sees on stage, only rarely do they address the

interplay of that which is shown and that which remains unshown, but is rather

described, invoked, or suggested by other means.

Theatrical context

Though Miiller's works as drama - that is, as literature - have been treated in a

profusion of scholarly literature, many such attempts have excluded questions of staging

and theater, despite Miiller's active involvement in theater practice as a director and

dramaturg, and indeed, ignoring his explicit characterizations of his later plays as a

challenge to the theater. 9 In the 1998 book Literature versus Theatre: Textual Problems and

Theatrical Realization in the Later Plays ofHeiner Muller, David Barnett takes stock of the

secondary literature on Miiller's texts at that time, maintaining that while literary

scholars often target the interesting and difficult features of Miiller's texts quite

accurately, they then fail to develop or analyze them in relation to the theater. By

8
David Bathrick, "The Provocation of his Images," New German Critique 25.1 (1998): 33.

9
One of Miiller's most often-quoted statements, made in 1975, supports this point: "Ich
glaube grundsatzlich, dafi Literatur dazu da ist, dem Theater Widerstand zu leisten. Nur
wenn ein Text nicht zu machen ist, so wie das Theater beschaffen ist, ist er fur das
Theater produktiv, oder interessant" (X 57).

8
offering purely literary, thematically based readings, and taking little account of the

texts' difficulty for the theater, such interpretations miss the kernel of what is interesting

in the texts as "dramas". The critical literature, Barnett writes, "is prepared to treat the

very basis of Muller's dramas, the form, as a subordinate to the content."10 Miiller

himself remarked multiple times on this tendency to see his works as

"Transportunternehmen," delivery systems for a message superior to and separate from

the form.

Criticism that does address performance, Barnett finds, still tends not to address the

relationship between that performance and the text from which it arose, gravitating

instead more toward documentation than analysis. When analysis is present, it tends

toward explication and assessment of the director's vision, with a focus on the

individual interpretation that did come about in a particular performance, and not on the

incipient possibilities of the text. The performance is presented as a finished and fixed

entity, rather than as a series of choices made in response to specific points in the text.

Productions by well-known directors fall most often into this category, such as Robert

Wilson's interpretation of Hamletmaschine in 1986 and his use of Bildbeschreibung in his

Alcestis production the same year. Both productions received copious attention, both in

popular and academic press - an entire issue of Performing Arts Journal was devoted to

the latter - but Muller's texts play a subordinate role to Wilson's dominant aesthetic

vision.

10
David Barnett, Literature versus Theatre: Textual Problems and Theatrical Realization in the
Later Plays ofHeiner Miiller, Britische und Irische Studien zur deutschen Sprache und
Literatur, eds. H.S. Reiss and W.E. Yates (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1998) 20.

9
 Though several new books in the past decade have documented Miiller's works in

performance, Barnett's appraisal of the secondary literature still stands for the most part.

In the 2003 publication Muller macht Theater. Zehn Inszenierungen und ein Epilog, Miiller's

longtime directoral assistant Stephan Suschke collects materials documenting Miiller's

work as a director. Productions of his own works and of works by Shakespeare, Wagner,

and Brecht are represented through photographs, letters, interviews with Muller, and

facsimiles of his manuscripts and production notes, as well as other texts presented as

Material influential to the productions. With its inclusion of rehearsal timelines and

actors' reminscences, the book does show some of the processes that shaped the

productions; however, it still remains chiefly documentary, with no analysis drawing

together the wealth of information presented. " The "Recherchen" series published by

Theater der Zeit provides a notable exception, with its several volumes devoted to

individual Muller plays or productions. Recherchen 29, Heiner Muller - Bildbeschreibung.

Ende der Vorstellung includes both general essays about Bildbeschreibung and criticism

and analyses of several productions of the play and one musical adaptation. Each of the

four sections of the book - J Schrift, II Bild, III Politik, and TV Enden - contains both

theoretical discussions and analysis of a performance that highlights that section's

11
Stephan Suschke, Muller macht Theater. Zehn Inszenierungen und ein Epilog, (Berlin:
Theater der Zeit, 2003). Given the transitory nature of any particular performance,
documentation is a necessary task of theater studies if the discipline is to reach outside
of theory and possibility to the discussion of specific instances of theater. Though
lacking a broader analysis of Miiller's texts qua performance texts, such documentary
texts do provide necessary tools for the establishment of a performance history of
Miiller's work.

10
theme.12 Volume 42 of the series, Sire das war ich - Heiner Muller Werkbuch, uses the same

combination of documentation and analysis, grouped in thematic sections, to present the

multi-part installation "Heiner Muller. Werkstatt Leben Gundlings Friedrich von

Preufien Lessings Schlaf Traum Schrei" that took place over several months of 2006 in a

Plattenbau in Lichtenberg, Berlin.13

Barnett's book still provides us with the most extensive study of Miiller's texts in

performance to the date of its publication. He proceeds from the thesis that Miiller's

theater works problematize and draw attention to the relationship between text and

performance, exploiting their divide as a location of productivity. (He does not go so far

as to claim this productive tension as a conscious and sustained objective on Miiller's

part, though Muller did speak to it explicitly on many occasions.) Barnett analyzes and

evaluates productions of Miiller's plays under the watchword of engagement with this

divide, seeking out productions that actively took on as many of the difficulties and

indeterminacies of the texts as possible. As such, one of Barnett's main questions is

whether Miiller's works can continue to function in their problematizing capacity, or

whether the radically changed notions or complete absence of elements such as

character and plot will, at some point, no longer pose such unusual dramaturgical

12
Ulrike Hafi, ed., Heiner Muller - Bildbeschreibung - Ende der Vorstellung (Berlin: Theater
der Zeit, 2005).

13
Wolfgang Storch and Claudia Ruschkowski, eds., Sire, das war ich - Leben Gundlings
Friedrich von Preufien Lessings Schlaf Traum Schrei - Heiner Muller Werkbuch (Berlin:
Theater der Zeit, 2007).

11
challenges.

At the time Barnett asked this question, its answers were already beginning to be

discussed on a broader level in German theater studies. In her 1997 book Der nicht mehr

dramatische Theatertext. Aktuelle Buhnenstucke und ihredramaturgische Analyse, Gerda

Poschmann diagnoses drama theory and analysis as largely outmoded in their

dependence on categories such as plot, character, and dialogue—categories that may be

completely absent from contemporary drama, or so differently conceived as to render

the traditional models irrelevant. Theater practitioners such as Beckett and Brecht

continue to be seen as outliers, Poschmann claims, despite their pervasive influence, and

elements that have grown standard in theater over the past century persist in being seen

as exceptional: as resistance or anti-theater.14 A new kind of drama analysis must take

into account the kinds of texts that are currently being written, the "no longer dramatic"

texts of Poschmann's title, which "[verabschieden] die traditionelle Auffassung des

Dramas als szenische Representation von Lebenswelt." 15 These contemporary texts grow

out of a shift in dramatic production - the same shift that set off Szondi's "crisis of the

drama" - that reaches back to the Sprachkrise of the Lord Chandos Brief. Over the course

of the twentieth century, a more general crisis of representation manifested itself in

theater as the disappearance of mimetic illusion and the separation of theater from any

necessary grounding in literature. Elements of theater such as light, space, and even

language became ever more abstracted, with a greater focus on their materiality than on

14
Poschmann, Der nicht mehr dramatische Theatertext, 5.

15
Poschmann, Der nicht mehr dramatische Theatertext, 7.

12
their potential semiotic value, and already-abstract elements such as music and dance

took on greater roles.16

The seminal book Postdramatisches Theater, published by Hans-Thiess Lehmann in

1999, two years after Poschmann's study, identifies the abandonment of representation

as perhaps the single most definitive element in the new theater it analyzes:

Ganzheit, Illusion, Representation von Welt sind dem Modell 'Drama' unterlegt,

umgekehrt behauptet dramatisches Theater durch seine Form Ganzheit als

Modell des Realen. Dramatisches Theater endet, wenn diese Elemente nicht mehr

das regulierende Prinzip, sondern nurmehr eine mogliche Variante der

Theaterkunst darstellen.17

Though consistent in its renunciation of necessary mimesis, 'postdramatic theater'

resists further definitive characterization. Lehmann delineates a "negative boundary"

between dramatic theater's representation of a fictive world model 18 and postdramatic

16
The most apparent and present material element in theater, the actor's body, is also
subject to this process of abstraction, but the range of issues surrounding this abstraction
is obviously different and more fraught with questions than the abstraction of inanimate
objects. Lehmann writes that the body "ist im postdramatischen Theater eine
Eigenrealitat, die nicht diese oder jene Regung gestisch 'erzahlt', sondern durch seine
Prasenz sich als Einschreibungsort kollektiver Geschichte manifestiert" (Lehmann,
#139@166-7). In Miiller's oeuvre, we find many examples of the body as a politicized
location (Ophelia, Medea), a politicization sometimes literally inscribed upon it, as in the
'Zwei Briider' section of Germania Tod in Berlin.

17
Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatisches Theater, (Frankfurt: Verlag der Autoren, 1999)
22.

18
Lehmann goes to great pains to specify that most avant-garde theaters maintained a
world model, even if their portrayed world was not meant to portray the single, real
world.

13
theater's abandonment of such comprehensive representational structures. The oft-

resulting focus on states, atmospheres, and moments, and its concomitant narrative

fragmentation yield the 'typical' postdramatic theater aesthetic. Given that all of these

elements can also be found to varying degrees in certain dramatic theater, however,

Lehmann is at pains to point out that only the "constellation of elements" gives rise to a

clearly postdramatic aesthetic.19

To clarify the relationship between the dramatic and the postdramatic: dramatic

theater does still exist, and is widely practiced; it is not as if it has disappeared in a

supposedly 'postdramatic' era. When Lehmann locates the beginning of his study with

certain strands of scenic practice in the 1970s, this does not mean that all theater before

that point was 'dramatic' and all that followed was 'postdramatic'. Rather, Lehmann

describes trends that began to intensify around thirty years ago, which concentrated

already-existing impulses (as can be found, for instance, in Brecht, in absurdist theater,

or in the Sprechstiick) into an aesthetic that, at its most elemental, problematizes the very

idea of theatrical representation of reality.20 It is unsurprising that Miiller's works have

been compared to all of these forerunners of postdramatic theater, and that his

production of imagistic and theatrically difficult began in the 1970s, where Lehmann

19
Lehmann, Vostdramaiisch.es Theater, 26.

20
The extent to which postdramatic theater grew out of earlier theater movements can
hardly be overemphasized. Even Miiller's Bildbeschreibung, usually held to be the most
influentially postdramatic of his theater texts, was characterized upon its premiere as
"das Gespenst des alten Experimentaltheaters, irgendwo zwischen Handkes „Kaspar"
und fruhem Tabori." Helmut Schodel, "Wenn doch die Sterne Ohren hatten," rev. of
Bildbeschreibung, dir. Ginka Tscholokawa, Steirischer Herbst, Die Zeit 11 October 1985.

14
locates the beginnings of postrdramatic theater as such.

Postdramatic theater versus no-longer-dramatic theater texts

Though Lehmann's book has much in common with and owes much to

Poschmann's earlier text, their orientations vary in a slight but significant way. While

Poschmann takes theater texts as her starting point, as the originating source of the

theatrality of their performances, Lehmann concentrates on the practice of theater and

everything that it encompasses—of which theater texts are a part, but not necessarily the

most dominant or significant part. As a condition for postdramatic theater, in fact,

Lehmann stipulates that "erst wenn die Theatermittel jenseits der Sprache in

Gleichberechtigung mit dem Text stehen und sysematisch auch ohne ihn denkbar

werden, ist der Schritt zum postdramatischen Theater getan." 21 Poschmann, on the other

hand, classifes this parity of text and other elements as the Regietheater variant of

postdramatic theater, a variant which she further characterizes as "Theater gegen den

Text" or "Theater ohne Text."22 In her own focus on the Texttheater variant, she identifies

21
Lehmann, Postdramatisches Theater, 89. Despite this radical view of the text in
postdramatic theater, Lehmann, too, acknowledges the impetus provided to
postdramatic theater by certain texts, as well as the anticipation of postdramatic theater
in texts by authors such as Gertrude Stein and Antonin Artaud.

22
Gunther Heeg argues that Regietheater functions by creating new images, especially by
making texts operate in new tableaux on the stage. Regietheater does not work well for
texts by Miiller, Heeg claims, because the images and tableaux are already in the text,
thus rendering this particular kind of creative work on the part of the director
superfluous. Gunther Heeg, "Das Theater der Auferstehung. Vom Ende der Bilder und
von ihrer Notwendigkeit im Theater Heiner Miillers," TheaterZeitSchrift: Beitrage zu
Theater, Medien, Kulturpolitik 20.2 (1987): 63.

15
contemporary theater texts whose analysis, she claims, properly falls somewhere

between literary studies and theater studies. Even with the now widely held

acknowledgment that texts for the theater require the direction and staging of an actual

performance to come into their first full existence, we find that text has not disappeared

from the theater/but rather that these contemporary works present a new kind of

textuality on stage: not the Literaturtheater of traditional drama, but rather "Text im

Theater":

Seine Behandlung als Material wird im Fragment- und (Zitat-) Collagecharakter

der Texte selbst ebenso vorweggenommen wie seine Nutzung als 'sound pattern'

und 'rhythmische Signifikantenstruktur' [Pavis] in der Riickkehr gebundener

und rhythmisierter Verssprache; die Verdrangung des Wortes durch das Bild

wird schliefilich provokativ aufgenommen von Autorlnnen, die das traditionelle

Verhaltnis von Haupt- und Nebentext umkehren oder nur noch eine einzige

Textschicht anbieten.23

While the traditional elements of plot, character, and dialogue are rendered unstable

either by a self-reflectiveness approaching meta-drama or by their absence in any

recognizable form, the text, freed from its role as dialogue or narration, moves into a

more central and autonomous position. As Rainer Nagele points out, what is said

becomes much more important than who says it.24 The resulting fluidity between first

23
Poschmann, Der nicht mehr dramatische Theatertext, 35.

24
Rainer Nagele, "Heiner Miiller: Theater als Bild- und Leibraum," MLN 120.3 (2005):
618.

16
and third person speech blurs the lines between what would in a conventional text be

called didascalia and dialogue. Contemporary authors whose works take part in this

highly selfconscious textuality in theater include, among others, Friederike Roth,

Elfriede Jelinek, Thomas Brasch, and Rainald Goetz.

It is no coincidence that this description of textuality in contemporary theater takes

account of some of the most characteristic and challenging elements of Heiner Miiller's

mid- to late oeuvre. Miiller's dramaturgy in general and his text Bildbeschreibung in

specific serve as explicit touchstones for many of the authors Poschman analyzes, who

hold him up in interviews as a forerunner and inspiration.25 Poschmann takes the

publication and world premiere of Bildbeschreibung in 1986 as the beginning of her study

of this new Texttheater, "denn mit diesem Text vollzieht sich ein wichtiger und

vieldiskutierter Schritt des Theatertextes fort vom Drama." 26 Looking backward rather

than forward in time, Miiller's artistic debt to both Brecht and Beckett also makes him

the exemplary postdramatic theater author, bringing together its forerunners in epic and

absurd theater into a new, postdramatic theater aesthetic. While Poschmann's focus does

address the explicit and distinctive textuality of Miiller's work, this is not to say that

Lehmann's delineation and analysis of postdramatic theater will be of no use to this

study of Miiller's texts and their translation to performance. On the contrary, Lehmann

provides the theatrical context in which these texts are being read, interpreted, and

25
Poschmann, Der nicht mehr dramatische Theatertext, 259. Elfriede Jelinek and Gisela von
Wysocki are specifically quoted by Poschmann.

26
Poschmann, Der nicht mehr dramatische Theatertext, 58.

17
staged, as well as approaches to some of the themes and elements that recur in Miiller's

texts, such as landscape, collage, and self-reflectivity.

Developments in Miiller's work

Though Bildbeschreibung stands at the beginning of Poschmann's account of

postdramatic theater, in the timeline of Miiller's own work, as well as in this study,

Bildbeschreibung provides the culmination of a marked turn toward the image in his

theatrical works, begun fifteen years previously. Periodization of Miiller's works is

notoriously difficult, with drafts begun years before their finished versions and themes

from earlier works recurring decades later. Nevertheless, rough groupings can be made.

Following the Lehrstiick cycle of Philoktet, Der Horatier, and Mauser in the late 1960s, plays

such as Germania Tod in Berlin (1971, published 1977) and Leben Gundlings Friedrich von

Preufien Lessings SchlafTraum Schrei (1976) created a succession of images both surreal

and humorous in their vignettes of scenes in German history. With Die Hamletmaschine

began the series of densely image-laden plays that would conclude with

Bildbeschreibung, including Der Auftrag (1979), Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft

mit Argonauten (1982), and the first installment of Wolokolamsker Chaussee (1984). Die

Hamletmaschine also inaugurated a period of extreme formal experimentation that also

found its culmination in Bildbeschreibung, the block of text that gives no indication of its

status as a play.27

27
For dicussion of the status of Bildbeschreibung as a theater text, see Chapter 2, pp. 41
and 74.

18
 It was around this time that Miiller first met the American director Robert Wilson,

beginning a relationship of mutual influence that would last until Miiller's death. After

first meeting in California, during Miiller's second trip to America in 1977, the two first

worked together in 1983, on the German portion of the international theater project the

CIVIL warS: a tree is best measured when it is down, with Miiller preparing texts to

accompany Wilson's vision for the design of the scenes. The meeting of the two came at

a time of change in the work of both men. Wilson, famous as a director and

theatermaker of giant spectacles such as The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin (1973) and

Einstein on the Beach (1976), had begun to take an increasing interest in using texts as the

basis and inspiration for his theater. Wilson scholar Arthur Holmberg calls Miiller

Wilson's "muse" of this period/an influence who "changed Wilson's relationship to

language. [...] It is clear that the metaphors, suggestiveness, and ripe ambiguity of

Miiller's work elbowed Wilson into the world of semantics." 28 Wilson had found a

playwright whose concern with the image matched his own. Describing working with

Miiller, Wilson said, "For the first time I had a collaboration with someone who dealt

with language in terms of picture." 29 Wilson's 1986 production of Alcestis, which

incorporated the text of Miiller's Bildbeschreibung, was both the first Wilson production

to work from a pre-written text (rather than first working out the blocking and

movements on stage) and the first to work from pre-existing material (the Alcestis

28
Arthur Holmberg, The Theatre of Robert Wilson, (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996) 22.

29
Qtd. in Florian VaSen, "Images become Texts become Images: Heiner Miiller's
Bildbeschreibung (Description of a Picture)," Heiner Miiller. Contexts and History, ed.
Gerhard Fischer (Tubingen: Stauffenburg, 1995) 185.

19
myth). Later the same year saw the New York premiere of the Wilson-directed

Hamletmaschine, probably the most famous collaboration between the two artists.

At the same time, Miiller was drawn by the rich Bilderphantasie of Wilson's work, as

his own plays explored the boundaries of theatrical representation through his tangles of

unrealizable images. Christel Weiler characterizes Muller's animating questions during

this period as "grundsatzliche Fragen der Representation" and "Fragen nach der

Moglichkeit, wie ein dramatischer Text iiberhaupt noch zu verfassen sei."30 Both

theatermakers were working with and questioning the basic elements of theater, largely

through engagement with its visual aspects: Miiller with the creation of images through

the text, and Wilson with the creation of images in the mise en scene. While richly

imagistic theater was common to both, the mise en scene—what the stage looks

like—always remained paramount for Wilson. Muller's images, on the other hand, arise

from the text and always retain a relationship to words, creating a tension between the

visual and the verbal. While both were changing the structures of the theater, Miiller

always approached this project first through literature.31

30
Christel Weiler, "Zusammenarbeit mit Robert Wilson," Heiner Miiller Handbuch. Leben
- Werk - Wirkung, eds. Hans-Thies Lehmann and Patrick Primavesi (Stuttgart: Metzler,
2003)338.

31
Some critics saw a negative influence of Wilson on Muller's directing style as well,
especially when Miiller staged his own works. For example, Eva Brenner characterized
Muller's 1991 production of Mauser, Quartett, Hydra, and Der Findling as "heavy and
static, a calculated kind of 'Wilsonian' statuary . . . a doubling of heavy text and heavy-
handed mise-en-scene." Eva Brenner, "Heiner Miiller directs Heiner Miiller," TDR: The
Drama Review: A Journal of Performance Studies 36.1 (1992): 165,167.

20
"Image" broadly considered

Before going further, it is necessary consider what is meant by the word 'image',

and by extension, the related term 'imagery'. The meaning of the term varies widely,

depending on the discipline and context in which it is used. What, then, do we take to

mean by 'image', what constitutes an image? Is there a difference between image in

literature and an image in theater? Are there structural and functional similarities

between a picture of something, a mental image of that same thing, and a description or

'verbal image' of it? The concept of the image in Miiller's work proves to be rather

intractable, given the multiple instantiations it takes across his oeuvre, and even within

the same work. Given Miiller's position "between literature and theater," we must look

at least at both literary and theatrical conceptions of 'image'.

The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Peotics defines literary imagery as

"images produced in the mind by language." 32 While this definition offers no help in

defining the term 'image' itself, we can begin to approach it through a closer look at how

it is used in the terms of the literary devices collected under the term 'imagery'. In the

above definition, literary imagery names both the mental images themselves as well as

the poetic figures of speech used to evoke them. 33 These various figures of speech share

the function of establishing a relationship between two things, by saying one (the

'analogue' or 'vehicle') and meaning the other (the 'subject' or 'tenor'). Either or both of

32
Norman Friedman, "Imagery," The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, eds.
Alex Preminger and T.V.F. Brogan (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993) 560.

33
Synecdoche, metonymy, simile, metaphor, personification, allegory, and symbol.
Friedman, "Imagery," 560.

21
the things put into relationship may be an emotion or a concept, or either or both of the

related things may be images, here meaning the representation of sense-impressions.

Imagery has the capacity to yield not only visual mental images, but also mental images

evoking hearing, smell, taste, and touch, as well as organic (consciousness of bodily

processes) and kinesthetic (consciousness of bodily position and motion) mental images.

This expansiveness of sensual reference is important to the discussion, for in everyday

language, the word 'image' often tends to refer to visual representation only, as it does

also in some philosophical and psychological discourses, to which we will come

presently. Under this broader definition, however, imagery has the potential not only to

link concepts to a variety of sense impressions, but also to put impressions from

different senses into relationship with each other.

Of course, "images produced in the mind by language" need not come about only

through the relationships forged by poetic devices: simple description, too can conjure

the imagination or recollection of experiences. In the Princeton Encyclopedia entry for

'image', W.J.T. Mitchell points out that the divide between poetic or figurative language

and simple description is tenuous at best.34 Given that there will always be a gap

between words and their referents, all language is already a representation, with 'plain'

or 'simple' language as much an approximation as poetic language. 35 Neither guarantees

a specific, particular image in the mind of the reader or listener. Indeed, there are only

34
"Image," The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 1993 ed.

35
Murray Krieger argues that ekphrasis is the attempt to remove this gap, for words to
function as natural signs. I examine the implications of this argument in the discussion
of Bildbeschreibung in Chapter 2. (See p. 65.)

22
even limited ways to compare readers' images, for the most direct access to them,

introspection, relies on re-verbalization in order to externalize the images.

Here the discussion approaches discourses of phenomenology and reader response

theory, with the interrogation of the mental processes that occur when

reading—including the formation of mental images. Both Roman Ingarden and

Wolfgang Iser advocate visualization while reading, though of the two, Ingarden pushes

the importance of visualizing further, emphasizing the necessity of using mental

picturing to "concretize" (konkretisieren) a text and thereby bring it into full presence.36

Iser, on the other hand, works with a more complex concept of the imaging yielded by

visualization while reading. He distinguishes between seeing a thing (directly through

the senses, picturing it) and having an abstract (semantic) concept of that thing; image

(Bild) serves as the "mediational term" (to speak with Mikel Dufrenne) between these

two experiences.37 The image, then/continually synthesizes the pictorial and the

conceptual, making "Beziehungen und Verknupfungen gegenwartig" in such a way that

the pictorial and the semantic can no longer be teased apart.38 Iser's mental images can

remain incomplete, as Ellen Esrock points out, because the appearance of the mental

image remains secondary to its signifying function: the important property of imaging

36
Roman Ingarden, Vom Erkenen des literarischen Kunstwerks, (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1968)
49.

37
Wolfgang Iser, DerAkt des Lesens, 4th ed. (Munich: Fink, 1994) 220.

38
Iser, Der Akt des Lesens, 226. Part of this fused nature comes about because of the serial
nature of reading: the reader gathers pieces of information over the course of time, in
contrast to the relatively instantaneous perception of a picture. One could interpret the
play Bildbeschreibung on one level as a meditation on and literalization of this process.

23
"has nothing to do with the optical quality of the image but with its semiotic capability -

what the image signifies and how this signification functions."39 The image is not a

physical object, but rather a carrier of meaning.

In this way, Iser's thought on the nature of mental imagery aligns with the linguistic

account of mental images put forth by philosopher Michael Tye. In his 1991 book The

Imagery Debate, Tye explores the competing theories of the way mental images function,

and concludes that images in our heads represent in the same way that language

represents. This theory, known as descriptionalism, asserts that "mental images

represent objects in the manner of linguistic descriptions. [...] [MJental images are

neural entities that represent objects in some neural code that is, in important respects,

language-like." 40 Like Iser's concept of the image, Tye's mental images are essentially

representational, while also remaining pictorial in a phenomenologically significant

way, in that the subject intuits them as such. Whether or not there exist actual pictures in

our heads remains unimportant to the descriptionalist's account, which holds equal

explanatory power in either case.

Literary theorists have long argued that visualization will constrain or distort the

literary, and make concrete what is intentionally ambiguous. The Russian Formalists, for

example, call for a focus on the linguistic structures that establish poetic language as

literature, arguing that what seem to be images or symbols are not in fact visual, but

39
Ellen J. Esrock, The Reader's Eye: Visual Imaging as Reader Response, (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins UP, 1994) 30.

40
Michael Tye, The Imagery Debate, (Cambridge: MIT, 1991) 27.

24
rather fictional. Yet this argument falls apart when images themselves are understood to

function as linguistic structures. Others, including LA. Richards and William H. Gass,

claim that mental images are inherently more specific than linguistic descriptions, and

that visualization makes concrete what is intentionally, literarily, left ambiguous. Yet

descriptionalism allows that mental images and verbal descriptions can be incomplete in

analogous ways.

Philosopher of mind Daniel Dennett lists four categories of imagining mental

images:

X with visual property P

X without P

X with the portion relevant to P obscured

X without going into the presence or absence of P.41

The last two categories are of the most interest, for they speak to the imaginer's

consciousness of ambiguity: Is the imaginer aware that P is indeterminate, or does she

simply not imagine P at all? The imaginer could be more or less aware of the ambiguity

or indeterminacy of elements of the image, just as the reader can be more or less aware

of the play of words in a text. The claim that mental images are inherently more specific

and complete than the literature that evokes them is simply false, and the distrust of

visualization while reading derived from this claim is therefore unfounded.

41
Daniel Dennett, "The Nature of Images and the Introspective Trap," The Philosophy of
Mind: Classical Problems/Contemporary Issues, eds. Brian Beakley and Peter Ludlow
(Cambridge: MIT, 1992) 213.

25
Turning to theater

For readers, then, visualization may range in its completeness, dependent on the

suggestivity of the text and the propensity of the reader. The shift from texts to be read

to texts for the theater, however, brings different questions to the receptions of their

imagery, and to decisions about the translation of that imagery into stage pictures. While

mental images need not be determinate in every aspect, the presence of physical

instantiations of those images on stage will, in most cases, entail the concretization of

every visual property related to them (X either determinately with or determinately

without each property P). Some parts of this concretization are accepted as a matter of

course. Casting an actor to play a role, for instance, attaches a specific physical

instantiation to that figure. While some aspects of the figure's physical being can still be

stylized - from hairstyle and clothing, to types of movement and speech - the actor

remains, in the end, a physical being with her or his own particular extension in space.

When it comes to concretizing aspects of the text, however, a considered decision

must be reached about what has been left out because it is simply unimportant (and may

therefore be interpreted at will), and what has been purposely left indeterminate— and

should somehow be portrayed as such. This question arises most immediately with

relation to stage directions. Among didascalia, the role of stage directions is particularly

unclear, even in theater texts more traditional than those of Heiner Miiller.42 More so

than the attribution of dialogue and the division of plays into acts and scenes, stage

directions are often seen as dispensable or ignorable. Pavis writes, "[Stage directions']

42
For a more extensive discussion of the status of stage directions, see Chapter 3, p. 107.

26
textual status is uncertain. Do they constitute an optional extratext? A metatext that

determines the dramatic text? Or a pretext that suggests one solution before the director

decides on another?" 43 Some stage directions remain eminently practical, such as the

indications of figures' entrances and exits, while others shade more into the realm of the

interpretation of the actor, such as directions of the emotion or attitude with which lines

are to be delivered. Still others, especially ones that have to do with the visual

appearance of the stage and the things on it, have perhaps the most contestable necessity

to the performance as a whole.

This ambiguous status of stage directions is often explicitly underlined and

exploited in postdramatic theater, as part of a thoroughgoing rejection of the traditional

hierarchy of dialogue over didascalia. Pavis's questions may be answered differently,

then, when entire portions of a play consist only of stage directions (such as the third

part of Hamletmaschine), when stage directions provide wide-ranging intertextual

references, or when a direction clearly cannot be performed as written ("Ophelia. Ihr Herz

ist eine Uhr."). New theatrical strategies are called for in such cases. Miiller, moreover,

pushes the would-be performers of his plays to make decisions not only about the status

of traditional stage directions, but also about typically less problematic didascalia.

Blocks of text unassigned to any speaker, or text ambiguously assigned to one or more

speakers (who may or may not be separate figures in the play, such as "Ophelia

[Chor/Hamlet]") require some sort of engagement—after all, the lines must be divided

43
Patrice Pavis, "From Text to Performance," Performing Texts, eds. Michael Issacharoff
and Robin F. Jones (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania UP, 1988) 89.

27
up among speakers somehow. (Or, alternatively, the decision m u s t be made to present

the lines in some other way.) Titles of text divisions can also prove complex in Miiller's

plays, with their often unclear relationships to the text thats follow.

Barnett argues that part of engaging with the theatrical text is dealing with its

indeterminacies as such, and finding a way to exploit them in performance, rather than

simply ignoring them. Yet it could also be argued that taking it upon oneself to decide

them is simply a part of the interpretive act of bringing a theater text to the stage. If one

fixes the indeterminacies, though, is the audience denied something inherent to the

Miillerian text, something that makes his work different from others' work one might

see performed? Or is the explicitly wide range of possibilities built in to Miiller's work

merely a question of degree? While there can be no clear answer to these questions, the

way a production addresses them will certainly shape the relationship it forges between

the text and the performance.

Stage images

Turning to the image in theater, we are hard pressed to find discussions of theatrical

images that are adequate to Miiller's theater, and to postdramatic theater in

general—although theater has/of course, always been concerned with the visual, and

with what is and is not shown on stage. Ancient Greek drama had its conventions

regarding the portrayal of violence and death, with such scenes most often taking place

28
offstage, only to be reported onstage and not portrayed. 44 Devices for such narration of

events later became codified, including Botenbericht, in which news of offstage events is

delivered by a messenger or in a letter (the narrative device employed by Aeschylus in

The Persians), and lAauerschau, in which a figure onstage narrates events happening

offstage that are visible to him or her but not to the audience. Schiller and Kleist - iconic

figures for Miiller in the history of German drama, who appear as figures in his plays 45 -

both make extensive use of Mauerschau and Botenbericht in particular.46 Schiller's work

44
In some instances the eccyclema (also ekkyklema), a low platform on wheels, was used
to present tableaux of things that had happened offstage or in an interior, especially
slain bodies. While the name literally refers to something "rolled out," scholars now
think the device could also refer to a static tableau behind doors that would be opened
to display it. Phyllis Hartnoll, ed., The Oxford Companion to the Theatre (Oxford: Oxford
UP, 1983).
The avoidance of stage violence in Greek tragedy was not a hard and fast rule, and there
is little agreement why this strategy was so prevalent. Explanations such as ritualistic
custom and the sacredness of the theater are refuted by the existence of exceptions to the
convention, such as occur espcially in Sophocles (Ajax, Niobe, Polyxena). See Philip W.
Harsh, "Deeds of Violence in Greek Tragedy," Stanford Studies in Language and Literature,
ed. Hardin Craig (Palo Alto: Stanford UP, 1941).

45
The presence of Kleist throughout Miiller's oeuvre is especially prominent. One
section of Leben Gundlings Friedrichvon Preufien Lessings SchlafTraum Schrei bears the title
or heading "Heinrich von Kleist spielt Michael Kohlhaas." Germania 3 Gespenster am toten
Mann uses direct quotations from Prinz Friedrich von Homburg, the influence of which
can also be seen in Mauser and, more directly Wolokolamsker Chaussee. Part V of the latter
play, titled Der Findling, stands in explicit dialogue with Kleist's novella of the same
name.

46
Some examples of Botenbericht in Schiller include the delivery of the news of Max's
death in Wallensteins Tod (IV, 10), the false report of Karl's death in Die Rauber (II, 5), and
Bertrand's tale of the acquisition of the helmet that Johanna will claim for herself
(Prologue, 3). Kleist's play Penthisilea uses both Botenbericht and Mauerschau to narrate
the bloody battle between Achilles and the title character. Another famous example of
Mauerschau occurs in Goethe's G'dtz von Berlichingen, Act III Scene 13, with the setting

29
also creates stage images more directly, his scenes often ending with constellations of

figures and actions that create dramatic stage tableaux.47

In France in the mid-eighteenth century, the influence of Denis Diderot had already

caused a turn toward a directing styles more focused on the image. Diderot believed

that French actors of his age were concerned with speaking to the exclusion of the rest of

their performance. In the attempt to redress this unevenness, he prescribed the actions

and stage movements for his plays at great length, a trait seen most evidently in Le Pere

defamille, published in 1758 and premiered in 1761. The Critical Survey of Drama

describes this play as arising from Diderot's dramatic concern with the tableau:

"Believing that the theater should present a series of 'living pictures', Diderot provided

numerous examples in this piece. His stage directions are so extensive as to remind the

reader of George Bernard Shaw's lengthy instructions." 48 Diderot's concern with the

tableau, Garreau suggests, may have been the result of the prolonged contemplation of

"Eine Hohe mit einem Wartturm," from which Selbitz has a servant report the battle
below.

47
Consider, for example, Act 2 Scene 3 of Wallensteins Tod. After Max Piccolomini
delivers his last lines in the play, declaring his intention to go into battle for the emperor,
the act ends thus: "Indent ersich nach dem Hintergrund wendet, entsteht eine rasche
Bewegung unter den Kurassieren, sie umgeben und begleiten ihn in wildem Tumult. Wallenstein
bleibt unbeweglich, Thekla sinkt in ihrer Mutter Arme. Der Vorhang fdllt" (stage direction
follows line 2427).

48
"Denis Diderot," Critical Survey of Drama, 1987 ed.
Shaw serves as the standard example for the use of extensive stage directions. In the
German tradition, Arthur Schnitzler and (to a somewhat lesser extent) Frank Wedekind
stand out in this realm for their descriptions of interiors. See for example, Schnitzler's
Das Bacchusfest, or the directions at the begininng of Act I of Wedekind's Erdgeist.

30
paintings in his capacity as art critic.49

The early 1980s saw the flowering of theater semiotics, with prolific scholars such as

Patrice Pa vis and Erika Fischer-Lichte laying the groundwork for the interpretation of

performance, rather than of dramatic texts only. While their theater semiotics explore in

depth the nature of the stage image, or what they would call the theatrical sign -

including words spoken on stage, the actors' facial expressions, gestures, and

appearance, props, scenery, lighting, music, other sounds 5 0 -theater semiotics remains

inadequate to Miiller's theater, and indeed, to most theater that could be classified as

"postdramatic". With its claims to the abandonment of mimesis and its assertion that

objects and events on stage can be those things themselves, rather than a reference to or

representation of another world, postdramatic theater created the need for a different

kind of reception, even as the interpretation of dramatic theater was being codified by

theater semiotics.

To interpret Miiller's images, in particular, the concept needed must be expansive

enough to apply to the range of their presentations. W.J.T. Mitchell defines image rather

broadly as "any likeness, figure, motif, or form that appears in some medium or

49
Joseph E. Garreau, "Denis Diderot," McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama, ed.
Stanley Hochman, vol. 2 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972) 36.
Diderot conceived of the theater as a screen on which different pictures would replace
one another in succession, quite a proto-cinematic conception.

50
An entire section is devoted to each of these types of signs in Erika Fischer-Lichte's
seminal Semiotik des Theaters. Erika Fischer-Lichte, Semiotik des Theaters, vol. 2 (1983;
Tubingen: Narr, 1988) Inhaltsverzeichnis.

31
another." 51 The term image, then, can designate something abstract, something not (or

not yet) physically instantiated: it can have visual content without necessarily being

embodied. In this way we can speak of verbal images, as well as of mental, graphical,

optical, and perceptual images, all of which may be representations of physical things

already existing in the world, or may constitute new ideas or products of the

imagination.

The profusion of possible instantiations of Miiller's images in the theater finds

reflection in Mitchell's assertion that the image can manifest not only as a physical

object, but also as "a mental, imaginary entity, a psychological imago, the visual content

of dreams, memories, and perception." 52 The verbal image of the play text can then be

transferred, adapted, translated into a material image that is seen on the stage, with or

without the words of its verbal instantiation accompanying the now-embodied stage

image. Likewise, the imagistic text can be delivered audially, becoming a mental image

in the minds of the audience. Important here, however, is that Mitchell speaks of image

as an explicitly visual concept.

Though periodization of Miiller's works may highlight the "Bilderphantasie" of his

late 1970s and early 1980s output, literary critics have most often discussed his images in

terms of individual instances or within the thematics of a particular play - usually in

terms of literary imagery, outside the context of performance possibilities. Those who

have discussed Miiller's images in a general way agree only about the difficulty those

51
Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want?, xiii-xiv.

52
Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want?, 2.

32
images provide, while proffering differing explanations of their function and of the

source of that difficulty. Gunther Heeg points out that "Muller's Sprache [quillt] von

Bildern iiber, darunter nicht wenige, die stark nach Allegorie klingen (Engel der

Verzweiflung, Erste Liebe),"53 while allowing that so transparent an interpretation

remains inadequate. The flat, one-to-one representation of allegory is exactly not the way

Muller's images function, and their surface appearance of doing so lends part of their

confusing complexity. Matthew Griffin points out that Muller's words refuse a "false

concretization of the image," 54 referring to nothing that can be solidly pinned down, and

therein provide a Utopian holdout against reification. Muller's unrealizable, and even

unimaginable images are to counter and break up the endless stream of clicheed images

that accompanies modern life, and in doing so attempt to reach true Erfahrung. This type

of indeterminacy leads Griffin to link Miiller back to Rilke, whom he regards as having

introduced abstraction of the image into lyric poetry.55 Though not an altogether

intuitive move—nothing in a surface reading of Miiller immediately strikes one as

particularly comparable to Rilke—the claim echoes Genia Schulz's invocation of Rilke in

her comments on the "unsettledness" of Muller's imagery.56

53
Heeg, "Theater der Auferstehung," 69.

54
Matthew Griffin, "Image and Ideology in the Work of Heiner Miiller," Monatshefte: fur
Deutschen Unterricht, Deutsche Sprache und Literatur 93.4 (2001): 433.

55
Griffin, "Image and Ideology in the Work of Heiner Miiller," 433.

56
Genia Schulz, "Der zersetzte Blick. Sehzwang und Blendung bei Heiner Miiller.,"
Heiner Miiller Material. Text und Kommentare, ed. Frank Hornigk (Gottingen: Steidl, 1989)
172.

33
 In responses to Miiller there recurs a sense that the images in the plays are

multivalent, and to translate them into concrete stage images somehow "settles" things

and takes away the movement of the text. This movement constitutes for many critics

the dialectical moment of Miiller's writing. While not putting her characterization in

terms of the dialectic, Schulz seems to approach the same concept when she writes of the

tension inherent in Miiller's concept of Zustand,57 describing a concept reminiscent of

Walter Benjamin's 'dialectics on a standstill'. In another characterization suggestive of

Benjamin, Anke Gleber describes Miiller, in both his autobiography and his theater texts,

as "a latter-day flaneur, gathering images, collecting shocks and experiences." 58 These

images are to build a new language, as Miiller himself describes in Traktor:

Uneinholbarkeit des Vorgangs durch die Beschreibung [...] Das Bediirfnis nach

einer Sprache, die niemand lesen kann, nimmt zu. [...] Eine Sprache ohne

Worter. Oder das Verschwinden der Welt in den Wortern. Stattdessen der

lebenslange Sehzwang, das Bombardement der Bilder (Baum Haus Frau), die

Augenlider weggesprengt. Das Gegeniiber aus Zahneknirschen Branden und

Gesang. Die Schutthalde der Literatur im Riicken.

Das Verloschen der Welt in den Bildern. (IV 491-2)

This inversion of blindness, the eyes with their lids blown off which have no choice but

57
Schulz, "Der zersetzte Blick," 168.

58
Anke Gleber, "Drama and War without Battle: Space and History in Heiner Miiller's
Works," Heiner Miiller. Contexts and History, ed. Gerhard Fischer (Tubingen:
Stauffenburg, 1995) 131.

34
to see, posits images as an alternative to a language of words— though not an

unambiguously positive one. The "Schutthalde der Literature im Riicken" again recalls

Benjamin, this time of his angel of history, forced to look backward at the ever growing

wreckage of history.59 Like the angel pushed along by the storm, we are swept along by

the storm of words, staring helplessly behind us at the "Schutthalde" of literature, and

of language itself, useless in its inability to bring us any closer to actual, non-verbal, non-

mediated world.

Yet again, these images are to remain imagistic in a way that does not demand their

visual portrayal on stage, in fact, in a way that contravenes such stage images.

Paradoxically, the evocation of these images from the stage does not involve creating

them visually—though many productions have attempted to do so, to much criticism.

Heinrich Vormweg muses that "Wenn [die Bilder] im Theater konkretisiert werden soil,

hat sich bei fast alien bisherigen Anlaufen die Spannung verschoben und ist erschlafft,"60

while Gunther Heeg, writing five years after Vormweg and after that many more Miiller

productions, writes that the "Bebilderungen, unter denen die Inszenierungen von

Miillers Stiicken oft leiden, sind zu zunachst nicht deshalb schlimm, weil sie den Text

verdoppeln, sie werden vielmehr erst moglich durch seine partielle Ausloschung." 61

59
Walter Benjamin, "Uber den Begriff der Geschichte," Illuminationen. Ausgewahlte
Schriften, ed. Siegfried Unseld (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977) 255.

60
Heinrich Vormweg, "Sprache — die Heimat der Bilder. Vorschlage zur Annaherung
an Heiner Miiller," Text + Kritik 73 (1982): 21.

61
Heeg, "Theater der Auferstehung," 62.

35
Performance venues

If Miiller's work is so based in literary imagery, with stage images insufficient to its

expansive visuality, why stage it at all? If Texttheater as Poschmann describes it merely

presents a text in a theatrical setting, but perhaps devoid of the sensual stimuli

associated with the theater, then why not simply read the text oneself? In early reactions

to Die Hamletmaschine, the distinction can be made between those who question the

play's stageability and those who question the desirability of staging it. Have so many

productions of Miiller plays been unsatisfying, considered partial or full failures,

because they fail to live up to the works' tantalizing challenges, or is there something

inherent to the the work that necessitates a loss in its transition to the stage? Or do such

questions embody a conception of theater too narrow for its present existence—as

Lehmann would suggest, an idea of 'playability' or 'success' mired in the expectations of

dramatic theater?

Already in 1982, Heinrich Vormweg questioned whether the traditional stage is the

most suitable venue for Miiller's words, characterizing him as an author who "wegen

seines rigorosen Sprechens derzeit vielleicht allein das Horspiel als das schon auf die

Bxihne bringen kann, was er ist."62 Miiller had, in fact, already been connected to the

radio since his early days as a writer, with his work for the Horspiel Abteilung des

Rundfunks der DDR from 1956 to 1964. His Heinrich Mann prize-winning collaboration

with his wife Inge, Die Korrektur, was produced as a radio play before the stage premiere

in 1958. This level of involvement with the radio medium, however, would not have

62
Vormweg, "Sprache — die Heimat der Bilder," 23.

36
been particularly remarkable for an author or playwright in those years, as the genre

was popular and was identified with its offerings by famed literary giants such as

Bertolt Brecht and Anna Seghers. Between 1960 and 1963, an average pf twenty to thirty

new radio plays per year were premiered in the GDR, along with ten to twelve new

adaptations (from plays, novels, or foreign-language radio plays) a year were adapated

for radio broadcast. 63 Miiller's stage plays were also adapted by many radio directors,

with Die Hamletmaschine, Philoktet, Der Auftrag, Quartett, Bildbeschreibung, and

Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten all receiving radio treatments

in the 1970s and early 1980s, in both the East and the West.64 Miiller served as consultant

and collaborator for some of these adaptations, such as Harun Farocki's 1978

Hamletmaschine and Einstiirzende Neubauten's 1990 version of the same play, both to

which Miiller lent his distinctive reading voice. Miiller also participated in projects by

Italian serialist, electronic, and aleatoric composer Luigi Nono. After Nono's death,

63
Hbrspiele. (Berlin: Henschel, 1962-1965) 208. These figures do not include radio
productions for youth and children, which numbered around 80-100 per year. In
contrast, Schwitzke estimates that the FRG had 350 new radio productions per year in
the early 1960s, with 100 to 120 of those being world premieres (that is, productions
from new material rather than adaptations). Stefan Bodo Wiirffel, Das deutsche Horspiel,
(Stuttgart: Metzler, 1978) 76.
The reception of East German radio plays has been largely overshadowed given this
greater number of West German productions, leading to the idea that the Horspiel as a
genre is, as Schwitzke put it, "extrem 'westlich'." Heinz Schwitzke, Das Horspiel.
Dramaturgie und Ceschichte, (Koln: Kiepenheuer und Witsch, 1963) 107.

64
Die Hamletmaschine (SDR 1978), Philoktet (ORF 1979), Der Auftrag (SDR/BR/WDR1980
and Rundfunk der DDR 1980), Quartett (SWF 1981 and RDRS 1982), Verkommenes Ufer
Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten (ORF 1983 and BR 1984), Bildbeschreibung (DRS
1987 and Rundfunk der DDR 1988). I include in this list only productions by state radio
networks, and not sound adaptations by independent artists that were broadcast on the
radio/such as the Einstiirzende Neubauten version of Die Hamletmaschine.

37
Muller dedicated his sound installation in Groningen, Netherlands to the composer,

done as a part of Daniel Liebskind's "Books of Groningen" series of installations.65

Yet aside from Miiller's involvement with the radio play and experimental music,

there exists a greater complexity in the relationship of Miiller's imagistic plays to the

Horspiel. In some apsects they continue the geneaology of the Sprechstiick, bringing with

them all the questions that kind of play levels at the theater and the status of language

and representation in it. Yet the rich imagery and overdetermined references of Miiller's

language bring a sensuous quality beyond that of the words themselves, forcing a

confrontation between word and image, even as the musical qualities of the language

calls for a focus on the words' materiality. The lack of 'characters' in the traditional sense

also opens Miiller's texts to interpretations focused on the audial. Lehmann maintains

that Muller "gibt die Figurendramaturgie auf zugunsten eines Theaters von Stimmen, in

dem die Figuren Trager des Diskurses werden." 66 In the interplay of monologue and

dialogue these voices support a discourse, yet each remains unattached to any necessary

subjectivity. As we shall see, it is not a far leap to unchain the voices from the immediate

presence of an actor, and to hear them divorced from their flesh-and-blood sources, as

voices on a recording.

65
See Barbara Schoning, "The Books of Groningen: Heiner Miiller's Contribution to
Daniel Libeskind's Groningen Project," New German Critique 25.1 (1998): 99.

66
Hans-Thies Lehmann, "Zwischen Monolog und Chor. Zur Dramaturgie Heiner
Miillers," Heiner Muller: Probleme und Perspektiven. Bath-Symposion 1998, eds. Ian Wallace,
Dennis Tate and Gerd Labroisse, Amsterdamer Beitrage zur neueren Germanistik, 48
(Amsterdam: Rodopoi, 2000) 13.

38
Chapter Two -Bildbeschreibung:
The performance of interpretation

Ich [wtifite] nicht, wie das sinnliche Erlebnis, das

in meinem Kopf stattgefunden hatte, sinnlich auf dem
Theater umzusetzen ware. Und auch wenn ich den Schlussel
fande, es bliebe ein Versuch, denn mein Bild ware immer besser.
—Wolfgang Engel, on Bildbeschreibung67

In his reflections on Heiner Muller's Bildbeschreibung, the director Wolfgang Engel

wonders how the "sinnliche Erlebnis" that took place in his head while reading the text

could possibly be transplanted "sinnlich auf dem Theater"—and concludes that the

theatrical experience would always suffer in comparison to an imagined one. Engel's

thoughts on Bildbeschreibung echo the larger uncertainties surrounding Muller's

imagistic plays, namely, how Muller's self-described Autodrama or Theater im Kopf is to

function in the concrete, material world of actors and stage. In the case of

Bildbeschreibung, the preponderance of static, confusing, poorly received stagings has

caused critics and scholars alike to question whether this text might not be better left

unstaged, regardless of its importance to later writers for the theater.

Engel's skepticism and many of the disappointing stagings make the mistake of

obscuring the actual topic of the Muller's theater text, which is not "about" a single

picture, but rather about the act of describing itself. Given the unreachability of a stable

image through the text, Bildbeschreibung cannot stand merely as an individual instance of

67
Wolfgang Engel, interview with Martin Linzer, "Auf die Reise gehen," Dramaturgic in
der DDR (1945-1990), eds. Helmut Kreuzer and Karl-Wilhelm Schmidt, vol. 2,
(Heidelberg: Winter, 1998): 521.

39
picture description, but rather invokes the general act of picture-description, and

thereby ultimately the functioning of representation itself, particularly verbal

representation. This reading of Bildbeschreibung was given early expression by Norbert

Otto Eke, who called the text "der wohl konsequenteste Versuch Miillers, Theater zum

Vorstellungsraum eines ort- und zeitlosen Sprechens zu machen." 68 The extent to which a

performance of such a text will be a "sinnliche[s] Erlebnis" may depend not on the

concrete transformation of a verbal image into a stage image, but on the nature of the

production's engagement with conceptions of language and representation. Of the four

performances of Bildbeschreibung I discuss in the latter half of this chapter, three present

multiple readings of the text—'readings' both in the sense of interpretations and in the

sense of reading or declaiming the text aloud in different ways. These performances

engage with the functioning of the descriptive language, highlighting the way that

language both represents and creates concepts.

In this study of the image in performances of Heiner Miiller plays, we begin in some

ways at the end, for the 1985 text Bildbeschreibung stands as the culmination of a strand

of Miiller's imagistic theater texts. After the vivid imagery in parts of Germania Tod in

Berlin, Die Hamletmaschine, Der Auftrag, Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaftm.it

Argonauten, and Leben Gundlings Friedrich von Preufien Lessings SchlafTraum Schrei, the

play Bildbeschreibung - as is already suggested in its name - brings the portrayal of

image to the very center of the text, indeed, makes the image depiction at once its form

68
Norbert Otto Eke, Heiner Miiller: Apokalypse und Utopie, (Paderborn: Schoningh, 1989)
227.

40
and content. Miiller himself said, "Und mit Bildbeschreibung ist eine bestimmte Phase fur

mich auf einen Punkt gebracht, auf einen Endpunkt oder Nullpunkt" (X 457). On the

other hand, as discussed in the introduction, Bildbeschreibung stands as an inspirational

touchpoint at the beginning of contemporary production of non-dramatic theater texts,

with many theater authors naming Miiller's play as a direct influence or as an example

to which they aspire.

Bildbeschreibung as text

Outside of this theatrical-historical context, however, the printed text of

Bildbeschreibung gives no indication of its status as a work for the theater: it consists of an

eight-page sentence, printed as an unbroken block of text, followed by a three-sentence

note or epilogue. No recognizable dialogue or stage directions give the reader any hint

of its theatricality, yet as a text it is manifestly overdetermined, providing myriad

interpretive pathways in every line. The scene is set in the beginning, with words

unattributed to any speaker:

Eine Landschaft zwischen Steppe und Savanne, der Himmel preufiisch blau,

zwei riesige Wolken schwimmen darin, wie von Drahtskeletten

zusammengehalten, jedenfalls von unbekannter Bauart, die linke grofiere konnte

ein Gummitier aus einem Vergnugungspark sein, [...] (II112)

The barrage of uncertainty begins with the first words, with "Eine Landschaft zwischen

Steppe und Savanne" spatializing a state of in-between-ness. The "preufiisch blau"

descriptor functions as a playful, throwaway reference to Miiller's obsession with

41
Germany's Prussian inheritance while also alluding to a specific color of artists' paint,

and the "Drahtskeletten" suggest a self-consciousness about structure. One of the clouds

in this picture—this landscape, classic genre of high art—is compared to a "Gummitier

aus einem Vergniigungspark," an icon of culinary entertainment and kitsch. Figurative

language - "swimming" clouds - pairs with analogies that represent the natural world

as man-made objects.

Words in all capital letters appear scattered throughout the text, with no clear

function or apparent relationship to each other:

.[...] vielleicht steht DIE SONNE dort immer und IN EWIGKEIT: dafi sie sich

bewegt, ist aus dem Bild nicht zu beweisen, auch die Wolken, wenn es Wolken

sind, schwimmen vielleicht auf der Stelle, [...] (II1112)

The opening goes on to describe the landscape further, portraying its natural,

geographic features, as well as the manmade house and furniture found there.

Eventually, a bird/a female figure, and a male figure enter the description, and thereby

the picture:

[...] auf einem Baumast sitzt ein Vogel, [...] Blick und Schnabel gegen eine Frau

gerichtet, •[...] oder wachst sie aus dem Boden wie der Mann aus dem Haus tritt

und verschwindet wie der Mann im Haus, [...] (II112-3)

The text moves forward through speculation about these figures' past and future

actions, their relations to the objects in the landscape/and their possible relationships to

each other, as the repeated words vielleicht and oder link ever more violent scenarios into

the monstrous sentence that constitutes the play text:

42
 [...] Lachen der Frau, das einen Blick lang den Wiirgegriff lockert, die Hand mit

dem Messer zittern macht, Sturzflug des Vogels, vom Blinken der Schneide

angelockt, Landung auf dem Schadeldach des Mannes, zwei Schnabelhiebe

rechts und links, Taumel und Gebriill des Blinden, Blut spriihend im Wirbel des

Sturms[...](II119)

Though the language of the action varies throughout the play, it does follow a general

arc from discursive narration early in the text toward a barrage of nouns (as in the

passage above), bringing a density and terseness that intensifies the ever-increasing

violence.

The text describes a picture, yet at the same time is also a meditation on the practice

of describing a picture—a practice which includes interpretation, narratization, and

putting oneself in relation to the picture, yielding constantly shifting and newly arising

images rather than a single, monolithic one. Taking Lehmann's definition of dramatic

theater as one that attempts to represent an unfragmented world in its wholeness,

Bildbeschreibung fundamentally refutes the demands of dramatic theater. It offers no

reflection on a world outside of the picture, and within that described picture it denies

the possibility of its wholeness and stability through a constant barrage of possibilities,

none given more weight than any other.

Even the note at the end situates Bildbeschreibung not in a delimitable, inhabitable

world, but beyond human life ("eine Landschaft jenseits des Todes"), on the border

between past life and a defunct art form ("Explosion einer Erinnerung in einer

abgestorbenen dramatischen Struktur"), and among the shifting signs of other art (the

43
Alcestis myth, Noh theater, the Odyssey, the film The Birds, the play The Tempest) (II

119). This note is the only element approximating any kind of didascalia, and as such, in

dramatic theater would be given different ontological status than the rest of the text. In

the flattened internal textual hierarchies of non- or post-dramatic theater, however, the

note has the same status as the rest of the text, and as such, turns the play to comment

on itself. Insofar as a description of a picture is already an interpretation, this note takes

Bildbeschreibung to the meta-level of interpreting the interpretation.

To speak in David Barnett's terms, Bildbeschreibung provides Muller's most overt

challenge to the traditional theater as such. The printed text gives no indication of being

meant for the theater, consisting as it does only of a title, a note at the end, and between

them, an eight-page sentence forming a continuous block of text, with various words

and phrases appearing in capital letters. Its status as a theater text comes from

statements by Miiller himself69 and from its genesis as a commission by the Steierischer

Herbst theater festival in 1985, where its world premiere was directed by Ginka

Tscholakowa, Muller's wife at the time. Despite - or perhaps as a result of - the piece's

atypicality as a theater text, it has become one of the most often-staged Miiller plays,

with its performances increasing in number even as those of other Miiller plays have

declined since Muller's death in 1995. It has been used, too, as an element in other

69
Miiller discusses Bildbeschreibung as a theater text in numerous interviews. In one,
Austrian director Eva Brenner asks whether the difficulty of the text's form means that it
was not actually written to be performed for an audience. Miiller exasperatedly replies,
"Ich verstehe [die Form] ja selbst nicht. Ich kann sie nur produzieren. Wenn ich heute
Bildbeschreibung inszenieren miifite, wiifite ich so wenig iiber die Form wie Ihre Leute
dort druben. Ich miifite es herausfinden" (XI106).

44
productions - most famously in English translation as the prologue to Robert Wilson's

Alcestis - as well as in fragmentary form as a radio play, as a background for

contemporary dance pieces, and as the text for a song cycle for piano. 70 For some, the

text's impenetrability is perhaps the attraction: the material is chosen by

"theorieambitionierter Off-Gruppen" to demonstrate that nothing else is possible any

more, claims Thomas Irmer in a 1999 review.71 Indeed, some performances seem to have

little to do with the text itself, presenting it in its entirety at the beginning of the

performance - by reading it, playing a recording of it being read, or printing it in the

program - and then continuing with all other happenings, often seemingly unrelated to

the text: Some productions have chosen to perform Bildbeschreibung as an exercise in

proving its non-performability, or an assertion of the independence of performance from

text.

The literary equivalent of such extreme theatrical interpretations (or non-

interpretations) is argued by Douglas Nash in his book The Politics of Space: Architecture,

Painting, and Theater in Postmodern Germany. Nash proposes an extreme postmodern

reading of Bildbeschreibung, applying the terms of postmodernism as generally defined

by Fredric Jameson. Nash finds the play not only an exemplary instance of the

postmodern, but also a indication of the failure of interpretation that necessarily follows,

70
Bildbeschreibung, dir. Stephan Heilmann, perf. by Schweizer Radio DRS Studio Basel, 1987
(discussed later in this chapter, see page 89); Bildbeschreibung, Junges Theater Gottingen,
October 1999; Paul-Heinz Dittrich, Kammermusik XIII: journal d'images (Bildfragmente nach
Heiner Miiller): fur Oboe, Violincello und Klavier.

71
Thomas Irmer, "Gottingen: Totentrio konsequent," rev. of Bildbeschreibung, dir.
Sebastian Hartmann, Junges Theater Gottingen, Theater der Zeit 54.11 (1999): 66.

45
calling Bildbeschreibung "a paradigmatic example of the disintegration of hermeneutics in

the face of the flattened images of postmodern space."72 In the play, he claims, "the

spatial dissolution of the interpreting subject marks the final end of hermeneutics, the

absence of any interpretive possibility, any clear message or meaning in a foundational

sense—and their negation within the flattened image." 73 This "final end of

hermeneutics," however, is not to be limited to the play: Nash extends his diagnosis to

all of the contemporary western world. He links the "postmodern image" as he

conceives of it - the kind of image in Miiller's play, he specifies - to an even larger-scale

collapse, claiming that "the current proliferation of images in all areas of life...has led,

like the conclusion of Miiller's image-concentrated Bildbeschreibung, to a general

breakdown of the hermeneutic project."74 Though Nash does not write explicitly about

performance, his argument bears striking similarities to criticisms of postdramatic

productions, as well as to certain demonstratively dismissive stagings of

Bildbeschreibung. Given those similarities, I consider his argument at greater length in the

attempt to differentiate more clearly between "productive" stagings that understand and

take account of the particular provocations of Miiller's text and that engage with this

beginning of postdramatic theater as such, and stagings that are, as some critics would

claim, gratuitous, self-indulgent, or purposeless.

72
Douglas Nash, The Politics of Space: Architecture, Painting, and Theater in Postmodern
Germany, (New York: Lang, 1996) 161.

73
Nash, The Politics of Space, 162-3.

74
Nash, The Politics of Space, 164.

46
 Concerned primarily with "postmodern space/' Nash takes Fredric Jameson's

concept of "new depthlessness" as the central touchstone of his analysis. In explaining

the spatial emphasis of contemporary, postmodern culture (as opposed to modernity's

emphasis on time), Nash describes a "contemporary obsession in cultural and social life"

with flatness and surface, image and simulacrum, text and intertextuality.75 Marketing

and packaging, the commodification of aesthetic production, and the omnipresence of

television all contribute to the depthlessness, which, though not qualitatively different

from tendencies that had already existed, is new in its contemporary pervasiveness.

As Jameson himself describes it, this lack of depth is not limited to the visual realm,

but is also affects "interpretive depth . . . philosophic notions of depth, that is, various

hermeneutics in which one interprets an appearance in terms of some underlying

reality.76 With no depth, there no longer exists anything to uncover; in such an

environment the work of interpretation is rendered obsolete. The disappearance also

extends, Jameson asserts, to "historical depth, what used to be called historical

consciousness or the sense of the past." 77 The relationship to the past, or more accurately,

this lack of such a relationship, now collapses everything - past, present, and future -

into one surface level, far removed from the presumed authenticity of past eras.

With "'real' historical time" now undifferentiatedly "dissolved in postmodern

75
Nash, The Politics of Space, 13.

76
Fredric Jameson, "Regarding Postmodernism—A Conversation with Fredric
Jameson," Social Text 17 (1987): 44.

77
Jameson, "Regarding Postmodernism," 44.

47
space," as Nash puts it, the death of the subject is all but inevitable. As a depthless,

superficial entity, the subject now "lacks the internal memory that would otherwise

provide the monadic unity connecting past, present, and future," and, analogously,

"history, as a collection of historicist images, loses the linearity or teleology of historical

time; art, as pastiche, is flattened into codes and citations with no sense of an earlier, past

style as traditional norm." 78 Meaningful art as it has been known in the past becomes

impossible, its flatness and its lack of historical consciousness linked back to the

superficiality of the subject: an entity incapable of the depth required for expression.

Long-established themes such as alienation or anxiety lose their grounding experience of

a self versus the world. Expression would assume an individual, internal state within the

artist, something inner that manifests itself outwardly in the artistic expression—i.e., a

depth that, it is claimed, no longer exists anywhere.

In turning to Heiner Miiller's plays, Nash maps his concept of postmodern space

directly onto the playwright's later work, beginning with Germania Tod in Berlin from the

early 1970s. He writes, "Just as the image, for Jameson, is a prime tendency in a world

dominated by flatness in all cultural realms . . . so too is Miiller's theater occupied and

subsumed by enigmatic, at-times-apocalyptic, pastiche-generated imagery." 79 That

Miiller's theater is dominated by the image is indisputable, as is the puzzling, even

hermetic nature of his imagery; however, the association of this imagery with flatness

overall does not give credit to the wide variance of kinds of images in Miiller's dramas.

78
Nash, The Politics of Space, 19.

79
Nash, The Politics of Space, 160.

48
The mere presence, even the predominance of imagery does not necessarily mean that it

is the kind of flat, surface, Jamesonian image central to Nash's conception of postmodern

space. In generalizing over Miiller's oeuvre, it seems that Nash falls into the camp of

Miiller critics that David Bathrick characterizes by their "unwillingness to struggle with

his images" and by their disregard of the potential those images contain.80 Nor does

Nash acknowledge the existence a body of literature discussing Miiller's imagery in

terms of the Benjaminian 'dialectical image'.

Bildbeschreibung does take this obsession with the image one step further than usual,

not creating a barrage of images in Miiller's typical manner, but rather making the image

the play's explicit theme: what is visible in the painting and what is not, the things that

can be known about the scene depicted and the many things that cannot be known,

about which can only be speculated. In its post-dramatic world, action takes place only

in speculation about what might have happened before the moment depicted, in other

words, how the elements in the picture might have ended up in their present

constellation. The text does not merely evoke a pictorial world, but does so by

portraying attempts to approach that world, revealing those attempts to reach the

subject as the very things that construct it.

Nash argues that the text is actually about "the failure of such descriptive efforts,

and thus the failure on the part of the interpreting subject to read into the picture a

logical, dramatic p l o t . . . the failure to inject the image with any sort of hermeneutic

^Bathrick, "Provocation," 31.

49
meaning." 81 Nash is correct that Bildbeschreibung is itself a text about interpretation. Why

he thinks it is a necessarily failed interpretation, however, is less clear. With emphasis on

the note in the epilogue "Die Handlung ist beliebig," he points to the inability of the

speaker to find a coherent narrative in the painting as an indication of the overall futility

of interpretation, and the painting's ultimate meaninglessness. The fact that this note is

in the epilogue, however - the three sentences at the end, set apart from the rest of the

text, that tell how Bildbeschreibung "gelesen werden kann" (II119) - indicates that the

'Handlung' meant is not only that depicted in the painting itself, but also that action

simultaneously carried out by the verbal depicting: the act of interpretation. The painting

whose description constitutes the text exists one ontological level removed from the

describer, who provides a narrative of sorts, the narrative of someone attempting to

interpret - to take in, register, and ultimately understand - a picture.

To say, then, that "Die Handlung ist beliebig" need not mean that the act of this

interpretation is arbitrary, but rather that many interpretations are acceptable. The plot -

that is, the performance of the interpretation - is dependent on the desires of the

interpreter. As Richard Palmer, an early theorist of postmodern hermeneutics, has

pointed out, hermeneutics is not only a tool used to interpret, but also reflects about

interpretation; it "takes as its subject the conditions under which understanding takes

place."82 Palmer calls also for a new awareness of interpretation as the understanding of

81
Nash, The Politics of Space, 161.

82
Richard Palmer, "Postmodernity and Hermeneutics," Boundary 2: An International
Journal of Literature and Culture 5.2 (1977): 386.

50
performance, not the understanding of a text "in external and analytical terms" distinct

from the interpreter. 83 The describer in Miiller's text performs an interpretation. That this

text found its fame in the theater, despite its unlikely form for a play, begins to make

more sense: as the narrator performs an interpretation of the painting, so too the actor

can perform an interpretation of Bildbeschreibung, serving as the mediator between text

and audience. The interpreter stands as the only true figure in the play; the man and

woman described remain, in Heeg's words, "vollends in der Textlandschaft

untergetaucht." 84

The standstill at the end of the picture description is, for Nash, not just the end of

this particular interpretation, but marks of the end of all interpretation. The ending "ICH

der gefrorene Sturm," he writes, is a "total stasis" that "leads to the dismantling of the

last hermeneutic resort, the interpreting subject itself, which is fully subsumed by the

picture." 85 Nash attributes this stasis to the lack of temporality in the picture - his

reference, again, to the postmodern shift from temporal to spatial emphasis - which

reflects back to the subject his own inability to build a history for himself, to exist outside

of the frozen ever-present moment. Again though, I argue against Nash, that rather than

an ending of all interpretation, the interpreter's identification with the picture actually

increases the possibility for interpretations, by freeing the interpreter from his perceived

83
Richard Palmer, "Toward a Postmodern Hermeneutics of Performance," Performance in
Postmodern Culture, eds. Michael Benamou and Charles Carmello (Madison: Coda, 1977)
30.

84
Heeg, "Theater der Auferstehung," 66.

85
Nash, The Politics of Space, 162.

51
central, fixed perspective, and providing instead multiple loci of identification. Such

multiplication of perspectives and the resulting new interpretations are one of the chief

ways that postmodernity influences hermeneutics, as Palmer identified in the late

1970s.86 This loss of a fixed perspective is mirrored in postdramatic theater's rejection of

unified fictive world models onstage.

The stasis at the end of the Bildbeschreibung is also by no means final. While the

change in perspective effected by the entry of the "ICH" into the picture marks the end

of this act of interpretation for the describer/narrator, the reader (or other receiver of the

text, such as a theater-goer87) continues in the epilogue, where further interpretive

options unfold. The three sentences of the epilogue offer differing insights, the first

giving a possibility for how the text can be read, the second telling what the text does,

and the third framing the text within the context of drama. The epilogue, dynamic in its

possibility, stands in contrast to the stasis at the end of the description, embodying a

metaphor that Genia Schulz identifies as central throughout Muller's work: the

opposition of condition or position to process (Zustand and Prozefi).88 Here, the two parts

of the text stand in this opposition, as do the describer of the picture and the reader—the

describing narrator now stationary, fixed in the frozen condition of the last perspective

86
Palmer is quite insistent that it is postmodernity - the period of time following the
"modern era", and the range of activities occurring in that time - that has changed the
way we go about interpretation, rather than a coherent movement of "postmodernism."
Palmer, "Postmodernity and Hermeneutics," 385.

87
Most performances of Bildbeschreibung seem to have in some way presented the note
along with the rest of the text.

88
Schulz, "Der zersetzte Blick," 168.

52
he takes on in the painting, while the reader is inundated with further information about

text, spurred to his own further interpretations and to new perspectives on the text.

The epilogue's first prompt - "BILDBESCHREIBUNG kann als eine Ubermalung

der ALKESTIS gelesen werden" - was taken up by Robert Wilson in his 1986 production

of Euripides' Alcestis at the A.R.T. in Cambridge, for which he used Mtiller's text as a

prologue to his own adaptation of the fragmented classical drama. Wilson's Alcestis was

the first major production for which the director used an already existing text, and his

production, like Mtiller's text, thematized the difficulty of the encounter with and

interpretation of an artwork. 89 Following Jameson, Nash would doubtless read Wilson's

use of Mtiller's text in a performance of a play by Euripides as yet another example of

the multiplication of surfaces rather than as an indication of depth. In the case of play

between texts, Jameson writes, "here too depth is replaced by surface, or by multiple

surfaces (what is often called intertextuality is in that sense no longer a matter of

depth)." 90 In intertextuality and other such structures Jameson reads "the end for

example of style, in the sense of the unique and the personal, the end of the distinctive

individual brushstroke." 91 Muller's text contests Jameson's assertion with the first line of

its epilogue: "BILDBESCHREIBUNG kann als eine Ubermalung der ALKESTIS gelesen

89
A longer discussion of Wilson's use of Bildbeschreibung follows below. See page 77.

90
Fredric Jameson, "Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism," New Left
Review 146 (1984): 62.

91
Jameson, "Postmodernism," 64.

53
werden" (II119, emphasis added). 92 With Miiller's words as ouerpainting, the

intertextual relationship is figured as a hierarchical one, with depth, rather than simply

glancing, surface-level citation. The metaphor of overpainting also gives the impression

that Miiller's own application on top of the base text remains very much an assertion of

his own style. In his autobiography, Miiller writes of Bildbeschreibung:

Ein Bild beschreiben heifit auch, es mit Schrift iibermalen. Die Beschreibung

iibersetzt es in ein anderes Medium. [...] Die Struktur des Textes ist, ein Bild

stellt das andre in Frage. Eine Schicht loscht jeweils die vorige aus, und die

Optiken wechseln. (IX 269)93

In the meeting of the two texts, the more contemporary author obviously feels no threat

from the ancient; Miiller finds his own "individual brushstroke" in no way endangered.

Images translate fluidly from one medium to another in this world, from words to

painting to words - and perhaps again to stage image - but this is no mere gratuitous

multiplication of images, as Nash would have it. The images stand in relation to one

another (be they in a hierarchy or a web), and each bears witness to an individual

interpretation by its "translator" and to the specificity of its medium.

Further, Miiller's Bildbeschreibung, far from a mere outpost in the postmodern

92
The use of 'BILDBESCHREIBUNG' in this first sentence of the epilogue would seem to
apply to the entire text, epilogue included, while "Der Text" in the second sentence of
the epilogue seems to refer more specifically to the single-sentence text block that
precedes the epilogue.

93
A contrast to Gerard Genette's conception of the palimpsest suggests itself here.
Miiller's association of 'iibermalen' with 'iibersetzen' is quite different from the more
familiar trope of the palimpsest.

54
wilderness, actually takes its place not only among its intertexts, but also in a rich and

continuous tradition of texts devoted to the description of images. While functionally

different from many of these texts, Bildbeschreibung grapples with the same issues of

verbal and pictorial representation that lie at their foundations/That the form of

Bildbeschreibung also places it squarely in the theater category of the 'postdramatic' does

not cancel out its simultaneous position in a lineage of older, mostly non-theater texts.94

In connecting Bildbeschreibung to earlier texts, Florian VaSen characterizes it as

having "a clear tendency towards 'meditation' and thereby to the lyric,"95 while Frauke

Berndt traces a lineage of texts used to organize knowledge mnemonically through the

description of art, images, or buildings. Thus, Berndt argues, far from being a text about

the effacement of memory - and with that the loss of a deep historical past, and of the

subject - Bildbeschreibung is actually one of "einer Textsorte [...], die seit alters her die

94
That the postmodern as a category is inadequately distinguished from the modern has
been argued since the inception of the term. Shumway addresses Jameson directly on
this point, claiming that Jameson provides a description of contemporary culture -
including the depthlessness that is the "cultural dominant" - but fails to define
postmodernism as a style in its own right, as a clear break from what preceded it. In this
way, Shumway's analysis of postmodernism compares with Lehmann's caveat about
postdramatic theater: that it does not break from dramatic theater in any of its individual
elements. (See p. 13.) The collection of tendencies that characterize the postdramatic
theater aesthetic provides no bright line separating it from dramatic theater. Its defining
element - the abandonment of mimesis and refusal to depict a fictive world model -
does answer to Jameson's claim that interpretation can no longer proceed on the
assumption that an underlying reality. Yet a postdramatic theater text can renounce
mimesis while still standing as a development within a lineage of texts, with a
consciousness of history and of art forms of the past that is decidedly non-Jamesonian.
David Shumway, "Jameson / Hermeneutics / Postmodernism," Postmodernism I Jameson I
Critique (Washington: Maisonnueve, 1989) 189.

95
Vafien, "Images become Texts become Images," 168.

55
Aufgabe hat, vom Vergessen Bedrohtes zu bewahren und anschaulich zu

vergegenwartigen." 96 Categorizing the text as a member of the distinct genre

"Beschreibung," in the subcategory ekphrasis, she grounds Miiller's narrative strategy in

this ancient device for the sake of complicating the "hermeneutischen Schnell- und

Kurzschlusse" that have turned the text into a "postmodern[es] Paradepferd." 97 While

not denying the validity of the disintegration of the subject, or the end of history, or the

impossibility of interpretation as relevant readings of Bildbeschreibung, Berndt's

argument makes the totalizing claims of those readings impossible. The text not only

takes its place in a lineage of other texts, but in a tradition that is about memory, no

less—running counter to readings that emphasize the temporal groundlessness of the

play and its human subject (the interpreting viewer of a painting).

Theater and ekphrasis

As a theater text, Bildbeschreibung provides complexity not primarily on a theatrical

level, as do many of Miiller's other plays, but just as much on a literary level, in its

relationship to other genres of literature and art criticism—including ekphrasis. In

exploring the role of images in theater, the text declares its connection to the word-

96
Frauke Berndt, "oder alles ist anders: Zur Gattungstradition der Ekphrasis in Heiner
Miiller's Bildbeschreibung," Behext von Bildern? Ursachen, Funktionen und Perspektiven der
textuellen Faszination durch Bilder, eds. Heinz J. Driigh and Maria Moog-Griinewald
(Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 2001) 287.

97
Berndt, "oder alles ist anders," 289.

56
image question in its very title, connecting itself to pedagogical exercise,98 narrative,

rhetorical device, and art criticism. The text occupies several different spaces between art

forms, and just as much as its' unconventional dramatic form, this intermediate position

makes Bildbeschreibung a challenge to stage. Muller recognized the particular difficulty of

its position, acknowledging that "Bildbeschreibung [...] steht in einem relativ schwierigen

literatur- und kunsthistorischen Kontext. Der Umgang mit Texten dieser Art hat die

Kenntnis des Kontextes zur Bedingung" (X 463). Bringing the text to the stage requires

not only consideration of the inter-genre position of the text, but also exploration of the

relationship of theater to these other genres as well.

Though Bildbeschreibung can be read in numerous literary and art historical contexts

(among them the tableau vivant, mentioned in the note at the end of the text), ekphrasis

stands as perhaps the most obvious tradition in which it takes part - a connection

suggested by the very name of the play, which could serve as a succinct definition for

the device. Ekphrasis - broadly defined as the description in words of a picture, an

image, or any other sort of visual art - has, since ancient times, served the dual purpose

of making that which is absent present to the mind's eye and of preserving the memory

of such absent physical objects. The connection between space and memory is well-

established and well-covered territory; one thinks of the mnemonic device of connecting

the structure of that which is to be remembered to the rooms in a house, mapping

98
Florian Vafien connects the practice and teaching of picture description in schools in
Germany with the systematic denigration of interpretation and subjectivity, a political
and ideological issue he sees as separate from the aesthetic issue of word and image
relationships. Vafien, "Images become Texts become Images," 165-6.

57
memory onto a physical space and thereby making that memory stronger and more

easily navigable." On an abstract level then, as Berndt points out, Bildbeschreibung is

about exactly those two things: physical space - in this case, a landscape - and its

connection to memory.

More recently, Murray Krieger has offered three definitions of ekphrasis, which,

while differing in scope, all pertain to the relationship of space and the visual to

language and time. The most narrow of the three defines ekphrasis as "the attempted

imitation in words of an object of the plastic arts."100 Such a device, however, has limited

application in comparison to Krieger's second, broader definition of ekphrasis as "any

sought-for equivalent in words of any visual image, inside or outside art."101 This

definition would bring ekphrasis closer to common "literary imagery" as defined in the

introduction to this dissertation, as the evocation of sense impressions, with the

distinction that ekphrasis describes only the sense of vision rather than ranging over all

the senses.102

99
Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory, (1966; London: Routledge, 1972) 3. Jeanette R.
Malkin writes about classical mnemonics of Simonides of Ceos in explicitly theatrical
terms, calling it "a vivid inward seeing into the theater of the mind that performed the
mental act o f staging' unforgettable images as an aid to pragmatic recall." Jeanette R.
Malkin, Memory-Theater and Postmodern Drama, (Ann Arbor: Michigan UP, 1999) 5.

ioo Murray Krieger, "The Problem of Ekphrasis: Image and Words, Space and Time - and
the Literary Work," Pictures into Words: Theoretical and Descriptive Approaches to Ekphrasis,
eds. Valerie Robillard and Els Jongeneel (Amsterdam: VU UP, 1998) 3.

101
Krieger, "The Problem of Ekphrasis," 3.

102
See p. 21. In his canonical study The Sister Arts, Jean H. Hagstrum is at pains to
distinguish ekphrasis as a purely poetic device, distinct from enargeia, the use of pictorial

58
 In Krieger's final and most complex definition, ekphrasis aims to make a literary

work "the verbal equivalent of a plastic art object."103 This equivalence is central, for in

seeking as perfect a correspondence between language and object as possible, ekphrastic

language attempts to achieve the status of the 'natural sign', or, as Krieger puts it, "[the

words] try to take part in that which they refer to."104 In a perfectly natural sign, the

word would be an inherent property of the thing it names. The thing could not be

named by any other word, and the word could name only that thing. The aim toward

the natural sign, then, expresses a deeper desire to span the chasm between word and

image. This aspirational quality of ekphrasis leads Mitchell to write of "ekphrastic

hope," the hope of overcoming not only the gap between word and image, but more

generally, between words and the things they refer to.105 As ekphrastic texts seek a

likeness close to identity with the visual art they describe, they echo the broader desire

that language seek to achieve as close to a one-to-one relationship with its subject as

vividness for the power of its rhetorical effect in any kind of speech or writing. In
classical ekphrastic poetry, the poet describes or responds to a work of visual art, real or
imaginary, revealing in the course of the description "why he admires [the work of art],
what posture he assumes before it, and how he interprets the role of language in relation
to it." Jean H. Hagstrum, The Sister Arts: The Tradition of Literary Pictorialism and English
Poetry from Dryden to Gray, (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1958) 18.
Krieger avoids discussion of the rhetorical usage of ekphrasis, thereby also avoiding any
discussion of reception, and focuses instead on the structural characteristics of the
device.

103
Krieger, "The Problem of Ekphrasis," 3.

104
Krieger, "The Problem of Ekphrasis," 3.

105 VV.J.T. Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation, (Chicago:
Chicago UP, 1994) 152.

59
possible—an impossible task/of course, should one agree with Saussure on the arbitrary

connection of words to that which they signify.

Symbol and allegory

The desire that a word "take part" in that to which it refers brings the discourse of

ekphrasis toward the same ground as that of symbol and allegory. Ekphrastic hope finds

its counterpart in the supposed transparency and identity of the symbol, and its contrast

in the abstract and merely illustrative nature of allegory. Symbol, according to Goethe, is

that which "direct bezeichnet"(as opposed to the indirect signification of allegory),

wherein symbolically portrayed subjects "scheinen blofi fur sich selbst zu stehen und

sind doch wieder im Tiefsten bedeutend." 106 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, showing the

influence of Goethe almost twenty years later, claims that symbol "always partakes of

the Reality which it renders intelligible."107 For Coleridge, the symbol acts as a natural

sign, perfectly representing the world and expressing the "flux of the Senses," at the

same time as it structures the world, through the system of language arising out of

reason. The system of symbolic language is "consubstantial with the truths, of which

[symbols] are the conductors."108 Symbols represent, while also being of the same essence

as that being represented.

106
Johann Wolfgang Goethe, "Gegenstande der bildenden Kunst," Werke, vol. 47
(Weimar: 1896) 95, 94.

107
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Statesman's Manual, Complete Works, ed. Professor Shedd,
vol. 1, 7 vols. (1816; New York: Harper and Brothers, 1853) 437.

108
Coleridge, Statesman's Manual, 436.

60
 Allegorical language, on the other hand, comes from the "mechanical

understanding" of reason, multiplying the "empty echoes" of language. Coleridge

devalues allegory not on the traditional grounds of its limited range of representation

(its "thinness", as Paul deMan calls it), but rather on the basis of its origin in the mind.

Whereas in Coleridge's account symbols arise organically in the attempt to order the

world, allegory originates in the mind alone. Without the impetus of "Images of the

Sense" from the world, the allegorical source is already "shapeless", "worthless", and

"shadowy", and the connection between words and their referents outside the mind is

unclear - and therefore, the efficacy of language and its relationship to knowledge is

called into question.

Exactly this question, however, leads the German Romantics to embrace both

allegory and symbol to convey a different conception of the expressive capabilities of

language and the relationship of language to knowledge. Goethean strict separation

between allegory and symbol is lost, as some authors make no distinction between the

two at all, and others, such as Novalis, seem to use the terms interchangeably at some

times and as distinctive concepts at others. Paul de Man points out a famous example of

the use of "allegory" by Friedrich Schlegel from the Rede iiber die Mythologie section of

Gesprach iiber die Poesie:

Lothario: Alle heiligen Spiele der Kunst sind nur feme Nachbildungen von dem

unendlichen Spiele der Welt, dem ewig sich selbst bildenden Kunstwerk.

Ludoviko: Mit anderen Worten: alle Schonheit ist Allegorie. Das Hochste kann

61
 man eben, weil es unausprechlich ist nur allegorisch sagen.109

By introducing the concept of the unutterable nature of das Hochste, Schlegel rules out

the use of symbol in the strict Goethean sense of the term. That which the allegory

references or gestures toward — the inexpressible - is by its very nature not something

the symbol could take part in. Were symbolization possible, it would no longer be the

inexpressible. De Man argues that the word "allegory" is appropriate to Schlegel's text

"precisely because it suggests a disjunction between the way in which the world appears

in reality and the way it appears in language." 110 Because true expression of the

"unendlichen Spiele der Welt" is defined from the start as impossible - as remote, or far

from us - this disjunction or gap between the world and our representation of it (our

language) lies at the center of language as a representational form.

This gap need not constitute language as an inevitable failure in Schlegel's

world view, however. Language, rather than merely being doomed to fail at representing

an already fully conceived notion of das Hochste, may, in its inevitable failure, play a part

in the conceptual process of getting at das Hochste. Humans somehow reach or at least

gesture toward the unreachable in the consciousness of their very failure to reach it.

Rather than direct expression, language is an imperfect means to convey a sense of that

which cannot be directly grasped.

Schlegel's model is not necessarily incompatible with the idea that one can have

109
Friedrich Schlegel, Kritische Schriften, (Munich: Hanser, 1960) 314-5.

110
Paul De Man, Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism, 2nd
ed. (Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 1983) 191.

62
intuitive knowledge of higher things, but only if one allows a conception of intuited

understanding that is pre-linguistic, as Novalis does. Once understanding is expressed

in the world beyond one's deepest intuitions, however, the form of that knowledge may

already be allegorical, as Novalis reflects:

Mystische, allegorische Worte mogen der Anfang dieser Popularisierung

der fruhsten Theoreme gewesen seyn—wenn nicht die Erkenntnifi

iiberhaupt gleich in dieser popularen Form zur Welt kam.111

Knowledge, once expressed, is already representational, no longer pure or immediate.

Both allegory and symbol demonstrate relations of varying degrees of correspondence

or "harmony", while at the same time always making clear the gaps inherent to

representation. Meaning itself is "repraesentativ - symbolisch - ein Medium." 112 As the

perceiver of the symbol, one does not simply receive a direct meaning, but rather is

thrown back upon oneself: "Das Symbolische afficirt nicht unmittelbar, es veranlafit

Selbstthatigkeit."113

This turning back to the self prompted by the symbolic of the Romantics recalls

Goethe's criticism of the effects of allegory, since its elements "gleichfalls das Interesse

an der Darstellung selbst zerstoren und den Geist gleichsam in sich selbst zuriicktreiben

111
Novalis, Schriften, ed. Richard Samuel, vol. 2 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1981) 572.

112
Novalis, Schriften, 550.

113
Novalis, Werke, ed. Richard Samuel, vol. 3 (Munich: Hanser, 1978) 693.

63
und seinen Augen das, was wirklich dargestellt ist, entziehen."114 In contrast, the natural

sign (like the Goethean symbol), with its aspirations toward transparency and identity,

would draw no attention to itself or to the process of representation. As Paul de Man

points out, the end result of symbol is always reference to a transcendental source, be it

Goethe's concept of "das Tiefste" or Coleridge's "Reality" and "the truths". 115 Ekphrastic

hope, too, expresses the desire for an ultimate ground for language, on which the play of

representation comes to rest.

Ekphrasis, the natural sign, and the apparently natural sign

Much of the historical discussion of ekphrasis and its drive toward the natural sign

has occurred in tandem with discussions of drama and its use of "apparently" natural

signs in performance, that is, the real and concrete presence of represented objects on

stage. These apparently natural signs lead to a special semiotic status of objects in the

theater, which Patrice Pa vis has called "referential illusion." On stage, real-world objects

function both as themselves and as signifiers; that is, they remain the objects they are in

the non-theatrical world, at the same time as they refer to the presence of those same

objects in a fictive, theatrical world. This dual nature of the theatrical sign leads Erika

Fischer-Lichte to write of the "furs Theater spezifischen Oszillation zwischen Objekt-

und Zeichencharakter des theatralen Signifikanten," somewhere between being and

Goethe, "Gegenstande der bildenden Kunst," 95.

De Man, Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism, 192.

64
signifying.116 A chair onstage is, in fact, a chair, and can be sat upon by the human actor.

Yet it also refers to the presence of a chair in the fictive world of the play, which can be

sat upon by the character that actor is playing.

If drama, as Krieger argues, is the only verbal art to aspire to the natural sign, then

its history is bound in unique ways to the history of the philosophical discourse

surrounding the natural sign.117 Much of the discussion of ekphrasis and the natural

sign, however, is relevant only if illusion is sought, and in postdramatic theater illusion

is explicitly not sought. A further characterization of postdramatic theater might be the

attempt to remove the apparently natural sign from the theater and replace it with only

natural signs, or at least the tendency to draw attention to stage objects' status as only

apparently natural—both of which again come down to the avoidance of illusion or

mimesis.118

Nevertheless, by itself engaging in ekphrasis, Bildbeschreibung invokes the attempt

to reach the natural sign, even as it blocks drama's usual path toward apparently natural

signs by giving no indication whatsoever of what might be represented on stage in a

116
Fischer-Lichte, Semiotik des Theaters, 196.

117
See the history of image in theater in Chapter 1, p. 28, particularly the discussion of
classical French theater.

118
This latter tendency, the drawing attention to the sign-nature of stage objects, is by no
means a new invention of postdramatic theater, but rather can be seen in almost all
theater texts that play with notions of illusion and self-reflexivity. In Tieck's Der
gestiefelte Kater, for example, the critic Botticher's obsession with the realism of the cat
dressing as a human underlines the decided non-realism of a human actor playing a cat
to begin with. Brechtian epic theater, too, takes as its founding tenet the constant
consciousness of the representational nature of everything that happens on stage.

65
performance. While some productions have emphasized the 'picture' or 'framing' aspect

of the text by placing a frame around the stage or by having the speaker hold a frame in

his hand,119 the unrelenting verbality and textuality of this "description of a picture"

does not call for the picture to be created or recreated physically on stage. Indeed, it

remains unclear what there is to show at all to accompany this consummate example of

Text im Theater, which makes its subject the action of describing rather than the object

described. Language, with its representational and creative capacities, remains central.

The ever changing verbal image of Mullet's Bildbeschreibung, with its shifting

description slipping from one possibility to the next, undermines any ekphrastic hope of

reaching the single subject of this text. Rather than coming closer to a tangible, external

image as the text progresses, the images, narratives, and references multiply and

culminate in the last lines with the entrance of the narrative voice into the text as a figure

in the first person:

.. .ist der Mann mit dem Tanzschritt ICH, mein Grab sein Gesicht, ICH die

Frau mit der Wunde am Hals, rechts und links in Handen den geteilten

Vogel, Blut am Mund, ICH der Vogel, der mit der Schrift seines Schnabels

dem Morder den Weg in die Nacht zeigt, ICH der gefrorene Sturm. (II119)

119
The 2001 production at the Berliner Ensemble directed by Philip Tiedemann placed its
actors in a giant picture frame on stage, looking out at the audience. Jens Bienioschek,
"Mutmafiungen uber eine Katastrophe und Auftritt der Lemuren," rev. of
Bildbeschreibung, dir. Philip Tiedemann, Berliner Ensemble, Allgemeiner Deutscher
Nachrichtendienst 22 April 2001. David Bennent's reading tour in 2000 included
Bildbeschreibung among its texts, recited while the actor held an empty picture frame in
his hand. Andreas Klaeui, "Das Andere in der Wiederkehr des Gleichen," rev. of Heinz
und David Bennent sprechen Holderlin und Midler, Theaterfestival Basel, Busier Zeitung 11
September 2000.

66
The description of a picture ends with the narrative thrown back upon its own

subjectivity, the narrative voice identifying with each of the animal and human figures,

all movement for that narrative voice, at least, ultimately ending in a cold and violent

stasis ("ICH der gefrorene Sturm"). For the reader of Miiller's text, however, the play

goes on: to the epilogue, and the play of the reader's own interpretation.

Bildbeschreibung on the stage: "Ein Tonband reicht"?

As a theater text for performance, Bildbeschreibung would appear to require radical

interpretation at the levels of plot and character: what will happen and who will portray

that happening. 120 The question of what will actually appear on stage remains open, and

the pronounced overdeterminacy of the text, with its surfeit of possibilities, provides no

clear direction, perhaps even confusing the matter.121 Yet through analyses of

Bildbeschreibung in performance, we shall see that the relationship (or lack thereof) of the

Bildbeschreibung text to the stage images in a performance does not necessarily establish

the tenor of the interpretation. Rather, the approach to the text as text defines the

performance, with stagings exploring different aspects of language: how speech relates

120
In some performances it might be more accurate to ask who will effect that happening
rather than who will portray it, depending on the extent to which the actor takes on a
role or delivers the text as text, without entering into a character (a variant of the "Text
im Theater" described by Poschmann).

121
A reviewer of the West German premiere of Bildbeschreibung complained about this
aspect of the text, lamenting that the viewer "[mufi] eine Dechiffriermaschine mit sich
herumschleppen, in der zweitausend Jahre abendlandische Kulturgeschichte gespeichert
sind." Ajott, "Bildstorungen," rev. of Bildbeschreibung, dir. Hans Peter Cloos,
Stadttheater, Krefeld, die tageszeitung 21 October 1985.

67
to written text, the relationship of text to other elements of theater, and the shifting

construction of epistemologies within a single text. Two of the four performances which

I will analyze were created for the radio and use sound only, eliminating the question of

stage images entirely. Rather than Text im Theater, these radio productions take text as

theater, foregrounding the materiality of the text and harnessing a theatricality internal

to the text in the way that phrases are given meaning in relationship to one another.

Looking at a broad selection of performances, some choices about text treatment

present themselves repeatedly. The first question is whether the text is to be presented

complete and in order or in some way taken apart. Examples of ways to present the text

intact would include the declamation of the text in its entirety by one or more

actors/voices, as well as printing the text in the program or projecting it on a wall.

Conversely, the text can be broken up, with words and phrases presented out of order,

repeated, or omitted completely. A second question/related to the first, concerns the

status of the speakers presenting the text.122 What status do the speakers have, and what

is their relationship to the text? Do words from different speakers have different

valences? Do the words seem to come from the speakers, or do the speakers merely act

as mouthpieces for the words—that is, do the words express a subjectivity? How does

the treatment of the repeated "ICH" from the end of the text confront the question of

subjectivity? Such questions will determine the production's construal of the text's status

as expression and interpretation.

122 T^jg question raises different issues when the text is presented in other media, with
the potential to emphasize the relationship of the written word to speech and
movement.

68
 Another element that sets apart some performances is their treatment of the

materiality of the Bildbeschreibung text. In the aural realm, the duration of reading the

text aloud, the sounds of individual words and the rhythms of phrases, and the silence

or length of pauses between words may all become sites of exploration. The physical

structure of the text and its appearance on the page provide other avenues for

interpretation, underscoring the textuality of the play and bringing the semiotics of

reading into intercourse with the semiotics of the theater. By drawing attention to the

text's physical attributes - its visual presence on the page - performances can short-

circuit the play of the apparently natural sign by emphasizing the material

characteristics of the linguistic sign itself. Performances of this sort explore the "Text im

Theater" variant of postdramatic theater, pushing toward a theatricality inherent to text,

reading, and sign production itself, rather than the representational power held therein.

A production need not be definitively theatrical or representational, however,

clearly or focused on either the material nature of the sign or its semiotic content.

Strategies that mix the two, in fact, can yield a production that emphasizes both, taking

advantage of the dual nature of the sign. A staging that accentuated and linked the

words in capital letters, for instance, could also play off their meanings, linking them to

each other in the suggestion of a narrative. A staging that accentuated the textuality of

the play could also highlight lines such as "das Gesicht der Frau wird lesbar, wenn die

zweite Annahme stimmt" or "versbrgt den Planeten mit Treibstoff, Blut die Tinte, die

sein papiernes Leben mit Farben beschreibt" (II113,118). Likewise, a staging that

emphasized the structure of the text could also emphasize those passages that invoke

69
structure, such as the repeated reference to the Drahtskeletten (II112) and its role in

construction of the picture, or the discussion of the framing (II113).

In addition to using literal frames to draw attention to setting and structure in

Bildbeschreibung (see page 66), the play has also often been staged away from theaters'

main stages or in entirely non-theater spaces, "framing" the text in environments not

usually employed for performance. In 1985, the Krefeld Stadttheater set the play inside a

glass-enclosed smoking foyer, with the words of a lone woman inside the pavilion piped

to the audience sitting outside.123 A 1988 production at the Landesbiihne Nord in

Wilhelmshaven took place on the mainstage of the theater, but seated the audience near

the back of the stage looking out, while the actors played downstage. 124 The iron curtain

was lifted halfway, forming a more conspicuous—and impermanent—frame than

typically provided by the stage. The empty house formed the background for the actors,

with the audience on stage looking out at their usual site of observation and

interpretation, now unoccupied. The 1990 Experimenta theater festival in Frankfurt,

devoted that year entirely to Miiller, saw a Bildbeschreibung in a former slaughterhouse,

and a 1994 production in Bozen took place at a gallery.125 With audience members

123
Hans Martin Frese, "Ein Doppel-Ereignis," rev. of Bildbeschreibung, dir. Hans Peter
Cloos, Stadttheater, Krefeld, RP-KR 17 October 1985. This production was the West
German premiere.

124
Barbara Schwarz, "Darf ich Hinen mein Herz zu Fiifien legen," rev. of Herzstuck und
Bildbeschreibung, dir. Wolfgang Siuda, Landesbiihne Nord, Studio, Wilhelmshaven,
Wilhelmshavener Zeitung 5 March 1988.

125
Georg Mair, "Mann, Frau, Vogel," rev. of Bildbeschreibung, dir. Reinhard Auer, Freies
Theater, Bozen, FF Die Sudtiroler Illustrierte 15/36, 3 September 1994.

70
drinking champagne and looking at art as at the opening of an exhibit, the discussion of

a man and two women looking at one painting became heated and loud: the beginning

of the Bildbeschreibung text. As the audience gathered to watch the performance, they

formed the backdrop to the three actors, framed for passersby on the street by a large

picture window. 126

Other presentations of Bildbeschreibung have taken more the format of a reading or

installation. The Berlin Literaturhaus advertised their 1988 public reading of the play as

a "Textinstallation:"127 the path into the seating area was filled with film clips, objects,

texts, and sounds related to the note at the end of the text.128 Critics also characterized

the Bildbeschreibung at the Kunstfest Weimar in 1996 as an installation, with its text-

covered pathway to the quarry in which the performance was held. Though actors did

declaim the text before the audience, almost all reviewers of the performance focused on

the experience of reading the text on the way into the performance space, and then

arriving in the quarry to find the objects just described suddenly before their eyes: the

table and chairs, the fruit and the glass.129

126
Frank M. Raddatz, "Theater in Tirol," rev. of Bildbeschreibung, dir. Reinhard Auer,
Freies Theater, Bozen, Theater der Zeit 47.11 (1994): 64.

127
SG, "Tote ohne Schleifspur," rev. of Bildbeschreibung, Literaturhaus, Berlin, die
tageszeitung 25 January 1988.

128
Cornelia Staudacher, "Vom Tiefflug der Engel," rev. of Bildbeschreibung,
Literaturhaus, Berlin, BP 24 January 1988.

129
Christine Gerberding, "Durch den matschigen Steinbruch zur 'Bildbeschreibung',"
rev. of Bildbeschreibung, dir. Michael Simons, Kunstfest Weimar, Berliner Morgenpost 14
July 1996. Klaus Dermutz, "Freiheitskampf und Naturtheater," rev. of Bildbeschreibung,

71
 Yet while each of these productions has used the Bildbeschreibung text as an

opportunity to provide some sort of unique performance experience, the question

remains of how specifically this text has to do with theater. Critics have often reacted

with confusion to stagings of Bildbeschreibung, asking how the text is related to the other

performance elements. While some instances have been recognized as the attempt to

provide counterpoint between words and action, such attempts have often fallen short,

with no deeper motivation recognized for the particular conjunction of text and

movement.130 In other cases, the text was delivered by one or more actors, but never

developed or brought to any higher level that would justify the performance.131 A 1986

production by the Freies Theater Miinchen seems to have been particularly confusing,

with one critic asking "Was treiben die da?"132 and another concluding "Bei alien

dir. Michael Simons, Kunstfest Weimar, Frankfurter Rundschau 17 July 1996. Ernst
Schumacher, "Hartetest fur Heiner Muller," rev. of Bildbeschreibung, dir. Michael Simons,
Kunstfest Weimar, Berliner Zeitung 15 July 1996. Andreas Hillger, "Von Gespenstern und
Ahnen," rev. of Bildbeschreibung, dir. Michael Simons, Kunstfest Weimar, Mitteldeutsche
Zeitung Halle 15 July 1996.

130
One such instance was the staging at the Landesbiihne Wilhelmshaven, considered
unconvincing by the Theater heute reviewer: "[Der Text] wird von einem auf hohen
Boxen sitzenden Paar lange und langweirig memoriert, wahrend das andere Paar ihn
pantomimisch ungekonnt zu konterkarieren strebt." Ludwig Zerull, "Herzstuck mit
Fleisch..." Theater heute 29.5 (1988): 57.

131
Instances of this scenario include the Junges Theater Gottingen staging in 1999 (Irmer,
"Gottingen: Totentrio konsequent"), and the performance portion of the Kunstfest
Weimar staging in the quarry.

132
Rolf May, "Was treiben die da?," rev. of Bildbeschreibung, dir. George Froscher and
Kurt Bildstein, Freies Theater Miinchen, Klausur-Probenraum, die tageszeitung 19/20 July
1986.

72
Heiligen, wir haben nichts kapiert."133 Even when the text is appreciated and recognized

as worthy of presentation, the question remains whether stage performance provides the

most suitable arena for the analysis and interpretation called for by this complex text.

Do stage productions of Bildbeschreibung add theatrical value beyond the textual

interest provided by the written word? Of the Krefeld production in the glass smoking

foyer, a critic writes that the text "benotigt kein Szenario mehr—ist nur noch fur den

Kopf. Ein Tonband reicht."134 Is there a clear line to be drawn between "productive"

stagings that understand and take account of the particular provocations of Miiller's

text, that engage with this beginning of postdramatic theater as such, and stagings that

are, as some critics would claim, purposeless? The four performances discussed below

each present an approach to the process of making meaning from a textual source. Each

thematizes the contrast between the text as a whole and as a collection of component

parts, thus showing—even performing—the hermeneutic interest that lies in the

Bildbeschreibung text. Of the four, two would certainly agree that "ein Tonband reicht,"

for they are both adaptations for radio, with no visual component whatsoever. The two

stage interpretations discussed also make use of audio recordings of the text, and as

with less well-received productions, theater critics puzzled over the combination of the

text and its accompanying stage images.

133 Michael Skasa, "Dies ganze Zeug halt," rev. of Bildbeschreibung, dir. George Froscher
and Kurt Bildstein, Freies Theater Miinchen, Klausur-Probenraum, Suddeutsche Zeitung
19/20 July 1986.

134
Heinz-J. Ingenpahs, "Theater nur noch fur den Kopf," rev. of Bildbeschreibung, dir.
Hans Peter Cloos, Stadttheater, Krefeld, WZ KR 17 October 1985.

73
The whole and its parts: world premiere in Graz

The world premiere of Bildbeschreibung took place at the Steierischer Herbst theater

festival in October 1985, under the direction of Ginka Tscholakowa. Given the piece had

been commissioned from Muller, expectations were high, and the staging was widely

reviewed. The performance took place in the foyer of the Grazer Schauspielhaus, with

the audience in three rows of chairs along the length of the room. This arrangement

yielded an unusually wide stage area, which was further set apart from the audience by

a curtain of clear netting. The entire stage could be seen all at once only from the corners

of the room.135 At the beginning, a recording was played of Muller himself reading the

entire text in a slow, level tone, with as little inflection and coloring as possible, taking

about twenty minutes.136 Thereafter, the text was divided among thirteen actors, each of

whom delivered selections of their choosing - some entire sections, some phrases, some

only nouns with their descriptors. With its repetitions and re-ordering of the text, this

portion lasted the better part of an hour. The program book echoed this structure,

containing first the text printed in its entirety, followed by the actors' selections printed

135
Henning Rischbieter, "Das Verloschen der Welt," Theater heute 26.12 (1985): 39.

136 uirich Weinzierl, "Muller in der Unterwelt," rev. of Bildbeschreibung, dir. Ginka
Tscholokawa, Steirischer Herbst, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 8 October 1985. For
comparison, the Einstiirzende Neubauten adaptation of this text (discussed on page 82),
built around a real-time reading of the text, lasts only 9'20". It seems that Miiller's
reading was rather deliberate.
Though Muller lent his voice to this recording, and he and Tscholakowa did correspond
about the text, any further contribution by Muller to this first staging was almost
certainly minimal.

74
alone, under the title "Explosion einer Erinnerung - der Zugang der Darsteller zum

Text."137 Each selection was clearly identified in the program with the actor who

delivered it.

In both the audial and textual presentations, then, the text was put forward first as a

finished object and appeared after that only in fragmentary form, taken apart and

partially reassembled. By connecting the second, broken-down forms in both

presentations with the actors who ordered - or disordered - them in this way,

individual interpretation is figured as an act of picking and choosing, as the

rearrangement and reappropriation of resonances. This process of interpretation

inevitably brings uncertainty and loss, even as its futile attempt to translate the original

sensory experience give rise to new experiences. In a note in the program, Tscholakowa

described the process thus: "Das bekannte Bild lost sich auf, es entsteht eine

Verunsicherung. Der Mensch versucht, den leeren Raum mit Sprache zu fiillen, das Bild

durch sie festzuhalten. Und doch lost sich alles wieder auf, um sich neu

zusammenzusetzen." 138 In the attempt to recover the original experience of the described

picture, the actors instead create new experiences.

A structurally similar phenomenon occurs in theater critics' attempts to summarize

the performance. The mise en scene of the production had no apparent connection to the

text, consisting of a large mirrored setpiece in the middle of the stage with which the

137
Bildbeschreibung. Text undMaterialien, dir. Ginka Tscholokawa, Program to accompany
the performance, (Graz: Droschl. 1985) unnumbered page.

138
Bildbeschreibung. Text und Materialien, Program to accompany the performance, 30.

75
performers interacted when they were not forming static tableaux around the edges of

the performance space. Reviews of the production describe the constellations of

performers and their gestures without being able to meaningfully interpret the staging:

the performance in fact seems to act as a motor for further text production, inciting the

critics to create their own "descriptions of a picture."139 Just as the actors' fragmentary

restatements of the original picture description served as translations of a moment that

is now gone, the critics' descriptions re-animate the now-silent stage with their own

verbal evocations of the event. While praise for Miiller's new text was nearly universal,

most critics, able to respond to the play as theater only by this continuation of the title

action, expressed mixed feelings about the staging. One speculated that the production

might well be true to the text, but pronounced it irritating to the audience.140 Another

pithily suggested that the play would be better performed by a man in a dark suit at a

table with a reading lamp.141

The notion of limiting the performance to little more than a 'reading' goes to the

very core of questions posed by Miiller's text. When the text is read or declaimed

139
No photographs of this production exist in available archives, so these descriptions
and Tscholakowa's master gesture catalog are all that remain for reconstruction of the
mise en scene.
This outcome is consistent with a poststructural view of meaning, in that meaning
resides in the reader/viewer.

140
Harry Herzog, "Fortschritt nur als erlosender Fehler?," rev. of Bildbeschreibung, dir.
Ginka Tscholokawa, Steirischer Herbst. Clipping from unknown source in production
documentation, Akademie der Kiinste, Berlin, Heiner-Muller-Archiv, Nr. 8153.

141
W. Arnold, "Monolog auf Breitwand fur fiinf Schauspieler," rev. of Bildbeschreibung,
dir. Ginka Tscholokawa, Steirischer Herbst, Sud-Ost Tagespost 8 October 1985.

76
without any attempt to create or enter into theatrical illusion, dialogue is replaced by

citation or quotation, and action and onstage settings are replaced by description. The

referential illusion of dramatic theater, created through "apparently" natural signs, can

no longer hold, as the signs either present themselves as signs, in all their arbitrary

glory, or else as material entities in and of themselves, with no referential function. It is

this latter alternative that Elfriede Jelinek sees at work in Bildbeschreibung when she

praises the text for being "kein Transportunternehmen." 142 The words of the text do not

refer to a picture, to a pre-existing object independent of them, but rather the words

themselves are the object. The absence of the physical picture in this instance brings the

play of reference to its most extreme conclusion, in which the words, rather than

referring to the picture, themselves constitute it.

Tscholakowa's explanation of what happens in her Bildbeschreibung production can

even be read as an allegory of the transition from dramatic theater to postdramatic

theater. The "bekannte Bild" provided by dramatic theater, based on unity and illusion,

dissolves in the face of multiple variations and individual interpretations, none of which

claims to provide a comprehensive world model. Translation, evocation, and

interpretation replace representation, yielding the fragmented and citation-heavy

aesthetic of postdramatic theater.

The text as a rock: Bildbeschreibung as prologue to Robert Wilson's Alcestis

Closely following the world premiere, the second performance of Bildbeschreibung

142
Quoted in Brigitte Landes, "Kunst aus Kakanien," Theater heute 27.1 (1986): 7.

77
took place in the United States, under the direction of Robert Wilson. This second, high-

profile performance of Miiller's text was not a production of Bildbeschreibung per se, but

rather a part of Wilson's adaptation of Euripides' Alcestis. In the rich sonic environment

of Wilson's theater, the text was delivered by many voices and constituted by multiple

readings from the beginning. The production opened in March 1986 at the American

Repertory Theater in Cambridge,143 and was Wilson's first production drawn from a

classical text - albeit a heavily adapted one, with the happy ending of King Admetus'

reunion with his once-dead wife Alcestis excised in favor of a more uncertain ending, in

which the identity of the figure who returns from the underworld remains unclear.

Wilson also cut most of the lines of the text, eliminated the speaking parts of the chorus

almost completely, and added Miiller's text as a prologue and the Japanese kyogen144

The Birdcatcher in Hell as an epilogue.

Like the world premiere in Graz, this production began with an audial presentation

of Miiller's Bildbeschreibung text in its entirety. The text was fragmented from the

beginning, however, presented by multiple voices on- and off-stage, live and recorded.

The single on-stage voice came from a man wrapped, mummy-like, and harnessed to the

143
A translation of Bildbeschreibung into English by Carl Weber was used. Wilson
brought a slightly modified German version of the entire Alcestis production to Stuttgart
in September 1987.

144
Kyogen is a traditional form of Japanese theater, usually performed in between acts or
at the intermission of noh plays. In contrast to the formal and symbolic noh theater,
kyogen is a comedic form. Its choice as the epilogue for the production plays with one of
the options offered by the note at the end of Bildbeschreibung: "BILDBESCHREIBUNG
kann als eine Ubermalung der ALKESTIS gelesen werden, die das No-Spiel
KUMASAKA [...] zitiert" (II119). James R. Brandon, "Kyogen," Cambridge Guide to
Theatre, ed. Martin Banham (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995).

78
midsection of a nineteen-foot statue at the back right corner of the stage. Wilson explains

the multiple voices:

So the Prologue sets up these different ways of speaking, of thinking about

language, of presenting ideas through words that anticipate the situation that is

to follow. [...] It's like a silver line that's being drawn. Never pushing, never

forcing. You have all these different ways of reading the text.145

These multiple voices stand in contrast to the Tscholakowa production's presentation of

a single recorded voice - recognizably that of the author, the 'authoritative' voice if there

is to be one. Only after this complete delivery of the text is it then taken apart and

reassembled by individual actors, each in turn. While Miiller's audial recording of the

text can be read as an attempt to remain as neutral as possible, with its flat intonation

and deliberate delivery, the multiple voices and varying delivery styles of Wilson's

production splinter the text immediately, offering it as a site of multiple interpretations

simultaneously and from the beginning. Though the voice of the wrapped man on the

statue speaks simply and neutrally, it-is preceded by the recording of a man formally

declaiming the text, and layered among other voices: a voice with a reporter-like tone, a

voice that omits words from the text, a child's voice, and a faint voice evocative of a

spirit or ghost. The uncolored, monotone reading stands as one expression among many,

and not as an "uninterpreted" presentation of material that is then interpreted by others.

With this multivocal presentation, the Bildbeschreibung text is shown to be not only

the site of multiple interpretations, but also an overdetermined object. Among the

145
Robert Wilson, "The PAJ Casebook: Alcestis," Performing Arts Journal 10.1 (1986): 97.

79
shifting and overlapping voices, the text functions as a evocation of an absent picture,

but also as an evidently constructed entity. Its words coalesce at some moments into

description or even narrative, but at other moments they devolve into a stream of words,

with certain repeated words standing out. Roger Downey, of Theater heute, describes his

impression, of the play's opening:

Die Stimmen der Sichtbaren und der Unsichtbaren erreichen eine solche Dichte,

daS die Bedeutung der Aussagen verlorengeht: wir konnen nur noch Worter

horen—Baum; Vogel; Haus; Frau; Messer. Dann Stille, Dunkel, Nichts.146

Through the play of different voices, the words stand both as a part of the text, and also

as independent entities. They are wrested apart from each other by the pressure of their

concentration into this dense text, a density that is multiplied by the layering of multiple

voices.

Robert Wilson speaks of the density of the Bildbeschreibung text in a similar way,

figuring it as a physical object with the qualities of a chemical element. "This rock of a

text can be fragmented like molecules breaking apart, but even in the end it can't be

destroyed."147 Even when broken down into individual words, Wilson claims that

Miiller's text still retains something of its own particular quality. In speaking of the text

as a body, Wilson treats it as something that can be manipulated, moved around on

stage, taken apart and put back together at will. The comparison to a rock highlights

146
Roger Downey, "Baum, Vogel, Frau, Messer - Stille, Dunkel, Nichts," Theater heute
27.6 (1986): 25.

147
Wilson, "The PAJ Casebook: Alcestis," 97.

80
most fundamentally the text's existence as a thing for Wilson, an inanimate and

impassive object. That characterization can also be applied to textual qualities and

subject matter specific to Miiller's play as well, however. The unemotional, disinterested

(at least until the entry of the ICH) narration of scenes of ever-increasing violence

requires a flinty, rock-like hardness on the part of the speaker. The appearance of the

text on the page, too, in its unbroken block, has a monolithic quality.

The PAJ reviewer Elinor Fuchs takes up the use of both text and visible stage

objects, describing Wilson's leveling of theatrical elements. In Alcestis, she writes,

"Objects are used for their specific weight and gravity, their "rock-like" irreducibility, as

[Wilson] says of Miiller's texts."148 Fuchs draws an equivalency between Wilson's use of

tangible material props and set pieces and his use of the Bildbeschreibung text. The text

itself becomes one prop among all the others on stage: not a privileged carrier of

meaning, but merely one of the many sensuous elements that make up the theatrical

experience.

As such, it works in tandem with the other elements as "context." Fuchs continues,

"Instead of transforming images or sounds in advance Wilson allows the eclectic context

to work as a transforming or distancing agent."149 The visual and audial/verbal elements

add to the collection of impressions that yield the aesthetic "moments" identified with

postdramatic theater, none of the elements functioning as a key or an origin upon which

148
Elinor Fuchs, "The PAJ Casebook: Alcestis. An Introduction," Performing Arts Journal
10.1 (1986): 82.

149
Fuchs, "The PAJ Casebook: Alcestis. An Introduction," 82.

81
to base interpretation. Rather, all of these elements combine to create an atmosphere in

the present, located in the moment of performance and without reference to an outside

world or time. The program for Wilson's Alcestis identifies the Bildbeschreibung text as

the production's prologue, yet the Theater heute reviewer claims, "Doch.es ist weit mehr,

es ist der Kontext, das Bindegewebe des Ganzen." 150 Although unlike Fuchs, this

reviewer privileges the text as the creator of context over other elements, the self-

generated, non-referential nature of this theatrical "context" remains similar.151 The

Bildbeschreibung text functions both as a collection of words, which retain their referential

function, and at the same time as a material entity, made of sounds and of discrete,

separable elements. The idea of the text as a 'context' allows for both functions. The text

stands as itself, independent within the production, challenging the idea of natural-sign-

art by creating rather than referring.

Structure and sound: The Einsturzende Neubauten adaptation for Rundfunk der

DDR

In 1988, the West German band Einsturzende Neubauten produced an adaptation of

Bildbeschreibung for Rundfunk der DDR, later released on the second volume of their

150
Downey, "Baum, Vogel, Frau, Messer - Stille, Dunkel, Nichts," 26.

151
Some of Miiller's stage directions in Die Hamletmaschine have been said to provide
"context" for the acts they precede, especially those directions containing intertextual
references. For further discussion of using text as "context" for a performance, see p. 118.

82
greatest hits and rarities collection, Strategies Against Architecture.152 The following year,

the band reworked the arrangement (without vocals) for use as a score to Miiller's

production of Hamlet/Maschine at the Deutsches Theater. The radio adaptation highlights

the materiality and structure of the text, but with a different focus than Wilson's,

stressing rhythm and structure, and in particular, how both of those elements unfold

overtime.

Einstiirzende Neubauten's Bildbeschreibung, along with their adaptation of Die

Hamletmaschine for Rundfunk der DDR in 1990, was seen as a turning point for the

experimental industrial band. Founded in 1980 and a prominent presence in the West

Berlin experimental music scene, Einstiirzende Neubauten had already mutated over the

course of a decade from punk-inspired industrial music to more musically structured

and lyrically driven compositions. Their adaptations of and collaborations with Miiller153

mark a turn toward a style more openly informed by works of art and literature,154

which was accompanied by a growing interest in electronic sounds.

Their Bildbeschreibung adaptation seems to fall somewhere between a radio play,

152
Blixa Bargeld, Strategies Against Architecture II, CD, performed by Einstiirzende
Neubauten, Mute Records, 1988.

153
The band worked with Miiller on the adaptation of their Bildbeschreibung recording
for his Hamlet/Maschine production, and the author also appeared in their
Hamletmaschine adaptation. (See p. 146.) In 1992 at the 300th anniversary of the Academy
of Visual Arts in Vienna, the band played in the show Das Auge des Typhun, a
collaboration between Miiller and stage designer Erich Wonder.

154
The band had always been marked by an intellectually esoteric style often reminiscent
- in theory at least - of John Cage, inluding the use of found sounds and an interest in
aleatory music, as can be seen in their 1984 song "Vanadium I Ching."

83
music, and sound art/with its use of parts of the Miiller text, its rhythmic and

reverberating though amelodic tones, and its creation of an unidentifiable field of sound.

The sound field, which persists through all nine minutes and twenty seconds of the

recording, is typical of the band. It consists of a mixture of industrial noises generated

using traditional instruments (here, a prominent one-note bass line), electronic sounds,

and driving and punctuative percussion, in addition to homemade instruments from

scrap metal, building tools, or other everyday objects. In this track, a "miked u p "

shopping cart is plucked, strummed, and struck with another metal object. The incessant

throbbing of the bass line at an almost subaudible level evokes the throbbing of blood in

the veins, while the sounds from the shopping cart clang at a higher pitch, jarring in

their unpredictable cascades. Menace looms at both the low and the high end of the

frequency spectrum, as both a constant, internal bodily function and a banally everyday

object are rendered ominous and unfamiliar.

After a minute and half of this sound landscape one hears the first words - "die

Sonne" - muttered by Einstiirzende Neubauten frontman Blixa Bargeld. Words and

phrases then come layered over the rest of the soundscape at varied intervals, starting

slowly, but occurring with greater frequency as the piece progresses:

die Sonne . . . in Ewigkeit... H i m m e l . . . alles gesehen . . . Sonne . . .

Sonnen . . . Mata Hari boser Finger . . . Windsbraut... das Ganze . . .

H i m m e l . . . Himmel

The words are those written in all capital letters in Mxiller's text of Bildbeschreibung.

Stripped of the observations and speculations that make u p the bulk of Miiller's play,

84
the adaptation presents a mere skeleton of the text in those capitalized words. Though

the adaptation does not vocalize the entire body of the text, it lasts nine minutes and

twenty seconds: the approximate length of time it would take to read the entire work

aloud. The capitalized words are declaimed at approximately the same points over that

time span where they would occur if the entire text were delivered. In some ways, then,

this audial version closely mirrors the structure of the text, retaining a correspondence

between the appearance and physical structure of the text and the tempo of its delivery.

Even when most of the words are not read, they still remain present in the

adaptation, determining the amount of time between the words that are uttered. By

retaining the words' temporal framework, even in the absence of the words themselves,

Einsriirzende Neubauten emphasizes the unfolding of description over time,

underlining Lessing's categorization of poetry as a temporal art. Yet by interweaving the

capitalized words with the passages of sound, they also highlight the question of

poetry's relationship to the other temporal art, music. Conventionally, both poetry and

music are constantly forward-moving. Gaps may exist - between stanzas or movements,

or in pauses for effect - but gaps as long as many of those between the words in

Einsriirzende Neubauten's Bildbeschreibung typically are not a part of poetry or music,

except as a statement about the nature of music and silence itself.155

155 j± reference to John Cage again suggests itself. His most famous composition, 4'33",
defines the length of its performance only, leaving that span silent—or at least devoid of
the foreground sounds of an instrument being played, for the attention to ambient
background noise is one of the inevitable results of the period of "silence". Not
coincidentally, Cage's first and still most popular book of lectures and writings is titled
Silence.

85
 The choice to space the words in this Bildbeschreibung production changes their

relationship to the rest of the sounds, rendering it not unlike the relationship between

figure and ground. Once language enters the recording, the intervals between utterances

of the capitalized words become not just intervals of sound, during which the

background sounds come to the fore, but spaces without language, defined by their

interstitial quality. The soundscape becomes that environment in which speaking takes

place, the sounds a background to the linguistic communications meted out over the

course of the 9'20". The listener is left to fill in the gap between the utterances, whether

by connecting the words to each other in a way that forms a narrative of sorts - a

characterization of a moment or of an unfolding situation - or by a free association that

allows each word to stand alone.

Einsturzende Neubauten include only two portions of the text that is not in capital

letters. At 6'14", one hears the text "Mann gegen Vogel und Frau, Frau gegen Vogel und

Mann, Vogel gegen Frau und Mann" (II118). These lines, plucked from near the end of

the play, seem to distill all possibilities of dramatic tension among the three animate

figures of the play, setting the man, woman, and bird in all their possible constellations

of antagonism. Their inclusion departs from the otherwise consistent formal connection

to the structure of the text, which would seem to indicate a moment of interpretation, a

decision to emphasize this particular aspect of the text's content.

A second departure from the formal structure of the text occurs at the very end,

with the repetition of the capitalized ICH. Starting at 7'30", the ICH is repeated not only

the four times it appears in the text, but also fifteen additional times not corresponding

86
to appearances in the text. The repetition becomes faster and more rhythmic as the piece

progresses toward the end, until the phrase "ICH der gefrorene Sturm" (II119) at 8'54",

the only one vocalized along with its accompanying non-capitalized words. The three

previous ICHs in the text each identify with the man, the woman, or the bird, while the

one that is vocalized identifies with an act of nature made static.

The repetition of the first-person pronoun highlights the question of who this voice

belongs to, and its relationship to the words uttered over the previous nine minutes.

Have these words come from the single voice of a unified consciousness, or are they

merely the impersonal articulation of random words? The interpretation offers no

definitive answer. Ralf Rattig points out that each time the ICH is spoken, it falls on the

first beat of a measure in 3/4 time, with an unstressed beat following it.156 This stress is

unusual for the word "ich", which would most often be followed by a verb, which

would be stressed in the sentence. Even when the accompanying instruments fade near

the end of the piece, the now-prominent repetition of the ICH remains within the same

meter. Rattig claims this keeping of time shows that the ICH cannot leave the rhythm set

for it by the inhuman instruments; even in the absence of the "machine," the human

voice continues on as though still trapped in its structures. Yet the coincidence of this

repeated pronoun with the accented first beat also drives the rhythm, the subjectivity

invoked again and again, propelling the composition forward even as doubt begins to

156
Ralf Rattig, "Einstiirzende Neubauten in einer Landschaft jenseits des Todes. Heiner
Miillers 'Bildbeschreibung' als theatraler Raum," Unverdaute Fragezeichen. Literaturtheorie
und textanalytische Praxis, eds. Holger Dauer, Benedikt Descourvieres and Peter W. Marx
(St. Augustin: Gardez!, 1998) 56.

87
grow that there is ultimately any destination. Neither the rhythm nor the repeated word

builds to anything, and the final line underscores the stasis of the repetition: always

moving, never progressing. A subtle oscillating noise in the sound field reinforces the

idea of circular rather than linear movement.

To the listener unfamiliar with Miiller's text - and that would likely be most radio

listeners -, the band's interpretive moment of departure is lost. The listener would not

know that the bulk of the text is missing, and the careful reflection of the text's structure,

too, is not evident. Unlike the Tscholakowa and Wilson productions, which both present

the entirety of the text in some form, here most of the Bildbeschreibung text remains

unarticulated. The role of the text in creating the performance environment also differs

between the Wilson and the Einstiirzende Neubauten interpretations. Whereas in the

Wilson production the text itself created the environment or "context" for the Alcestis

performance (either alone or in tandem with other performance elements, according to

different reviewers), in the Einstiirzende Neubauten recording, the sound seems to

create the environment for the text. This impression arises because the soundscape is

established before the first words from the text are uttered, and through the way it is

figured as background once the speech does begin. This impression is challenged near

the end of the piece, as the "ICH" begins to drive the rhythm. The extent to which the

text determines the soundscape in its development and duration, however, remains non-

apparent from the recording itself. Only a prior familiarity with the Bildbeschreibung text

reveals the extent to which Miiller's text structures the recording. Wilson's conception of

Miiller's writing as a "rock," too, takes up the materiality of the text in a way different

88
from this radio adaptation, which accentuates the unfolding of the text over time.

Audial hierarchies, narrative possibilities: DRS Radio Basel

The 1987 radio adaptation for DRS Radio Basel by Barbara Liebster and Stephan

Heilmann approaches the challenge of radio adaptation completely differently than the

Einstiirzende Neubauten version, working exclusively with text and using no sounds

except voices. The Einstiirzende Neubauten version offers a series of seemingly

unconnected words, spread throughout the recording, which do not suggest any

obvious narrative or relationship. Liebster and Heilmann's production, on the other

hand, offers myriad possibilities for narratives constructed from words and phrases in

the Bildbeschreibung text. The production uses ordering, juxtaposition, and audial

hierarchies to suggest not only narratives, but also relationships between the speakers.

The multiple layers of speech multiply the surfeit of possibilities for interpreting the

picture by an even greater factor than the serial listing of possibilities in the text as

written, making the "Explosion einer Erinnerung" (II119) an apt description.

The adaptation begins with a short introduction, in which Miiller's text is presented

as the "Baukasten" out of which the radio play was made. The announcer explains that

the adapters divided the text into pieces of varying length, and then reassembled it

using free association and according to what sounded good musically, rendering a

"Stimmenspiel, das die Bewegung der Augen, die inneren Vorgange beim Betrachten

89
eines Bildes, ins akustische umzusetzen versucht."157 The rendering of the "inneren

Vorgange" would seem to refer to a conventional externalization of an inner monologue,

in this case, that of observing and interpreting a picture: an unuttered semantic

understanding is vocalized. The attempt to translate eye movements, however, is more

unusual, with its claim to reflect physical movements in sound— and in doing so, to

translate a visual and kinesthetic sensual experience into an auditory one. While a

semantic element remains ('first my eyes rested on this, and then on that'), the act of

looking also includes the visual and kinesthetic sensual experience, translated here not

just into words, but into the dynamic qualities of sound, the play of the voices, and the

constant movement of the acoustic.

With the beginning of the play, a woman's voice (Womanl) announces the title, and

then a second woman's voice (Woman2) begins with the lines, from about an eighth of

the way through the text, "Auf einem Baumast sitzt ein Vogel [...]" She continues for

several clauses, when a man's voice enters, speaking over her, as though he is

commenting on her, the one still speaking. The volume of the woman's voice decreases

as the man's voice (Manl) enters, in a style typical of news broadcasts or documentaries

using audio material in a foreign language: the original speaker begins, and moments

later is relegated to the acoustic background, as the voice of the translator takes over.

Though the texts spoken by the woman and the man in this instance are in the same

language and express different semantic content, the audial effect is that of the man

157
Introduction, Bildbeschreibung, dir. Heilmann, DRS1987. Digital audio tape, Archiv
Akademie der Kunste, Bestand AVM 37.0520.

90
explaining, decoding, or translating the woman's words. The building blocks of the text

are figured as restatements of each other, here no longer presented serially, but rather

hierarchically. When presented serially, portions of a text can influence readings of other

portions; what has already been read shapes the reception of what follows it, and later

portions can cause reassessment of the interpretations of earlier parts. The structure of

this reading backward and forward is only partially determined, however, and largely

dependent on the relatedness of the semantic content of the various portions of the text.

Impressions formed by the first mention of a bird, for example, shape later references to

a bird, or to semantically related concepts such as sky or flight. When text portions are

presented simultaneously, however, and in a clear audial hierarchy, the listener cannot

help but relate the text portions to each other.

In addition, the two speakers, Woman2 and Manl, are brought into a relationship

with each other, in which Manl, depending on one's individual interpretation, could be

translating, clarifying, co-opting, confusing, or overriding the words of Woman2.158 As I

argue earlier in the chapter, the only 'figure' in Bildbeschreibung must be the narrator (or

multiple narrators) of the description, and the only "plot" this act of describing. The

presence of two narrator/speakers, whose texts are given varying expository values by

their audially hierarchical presentation, puts those speakers into relationship with one

158
The woman and the man could, of course, be mere Sprachrohre, deliverers of words
and nothing more, as in a Sprechstuck. The common tendency to attribute to a figure the
expressions communicated her or his speech does, however, seem to put the two figures
into a relationship. With no possibility of a visually affectless mien to convey the non-
connection of speaker to words, this psychologization must at least be considered one
interpretation.

91
another/according to the audial values granted to their words. The descriptive action of

the "plot" takes on the intrigue of epistemology, with multiple points of view and

possibly contrasting and contradicting claims to interpretation.

The hierarchy is reinforced by one of the lines in the man's first passage, "das

Gesicht der Frau wird lesbar, wenn die zweite Annahme stimmt [...]" (II113). Although

within the text the line is ostensibly about the woman in the painting, the listener does

not see this picture, while the listener does hear a woman speaking. "Die Frau" takes on

the extra meaning of "the woman speaking, upon whom I'm commenting" - a woman

who is readable, and therefore an object for interpretation. The female speaker herself

becomes the possible subject of the painting. Thus interpreted, Woman2 speaks from

within the frame of the painting, relating the experience of its landscape, and the male

speaker from without, from an observational vantage point one ontological level away.

This hierarchy becomes yet more complex, however, as the voice of a second man

(Man2) enters over the voice of Manl. The audial hierarchy establishes the same

dynamic as between Manl and Woman2, with Man2 seeming to comment on Manl. The

levels of commentary multiply, as Man2 comments on Manl's commentary on Woman2.

Here, too, the text selection reinforces the idea that Man2 is observing Manl, with lines

such as "Der Mann lachelt" and "nicht auszumachen ob er die Frau schon gesehen hat."

The number of ontological levels becomes even more indistinct. Manl and Woman2

could still be in the same hierarchical ontological relationship that was first suggested,

now with the addition of Man2, who narrates the act of a man describing a picture.

Manl then remains a describer outside of the picture, giving an account of the picture in

92
which Woman2 exists. With the presence of both a man and a woman in the

Bildbeschreibung text, however, the introduction of the third voice, Man2, suggests that

perhaps both of the first two voices belong to figures within the picture. The commentary

by Man2 on their interaction ("nicht auszumachen ob er die Frau schon gesehen hat")

reinforces this interpretation.

For the time in which these three voices speak simultaneously, in the hierarchy

described above, this reading of the ontological relationship between the three voices

holds. This relationship lasts only until the end of that segment of the radio play,

however; after a pause, a new segment begins and new audial relationships arise

between the voices. This division is made unmistakable by the tone of voice of

whichever figure starts again, which in every instance takes on the calm tone of the

beginning of a tale, the tranquil tenor of a scene-setting exposition. Each segment returns

at some point to the opening lines of Miiller's text - "Eine Landschaft zwischen Steppe

und Savanne..." - with those lines acquiring a different meaning each time, colored by

their location in that segment. The lines become a touchpoint, a place to which the play

returns ever again, each time serving as a marker for the different setting and narrative

created by the segment in progress.

The relationships between the voices—suggested by the sequence, volume, and

foregrounding of the voices and by the interplay of the audial elements with the

semantic content—change throughout the play, producing constantly shifting

ontological hierarchies. The second section, like the first section, also employs a layering

of voices to create hierarchies, but the second voice enters at an audial level under the

93
first voice, like an echo or an afterthought. In another section, the two female voices and

one of the male voices divide parts of the text that describe the landscape and the

objects, speaking now in turn, now simultaneously. The simultaneous voices speak at

the same volume, making it difficult to listen to either one, instead allowing fragmentary

descriptions to through in the natural pauses in the others' speech. The impression is

one of glimpsing an object or getting impressions of it, without being able to look upon

it as a whole. In yet another section, the two women are recorded on one stereo channel

and the man on the other. The man's voice is always clearly audible, while the women's

voices alternate in audibility, giving the impression they are alter-voices of each other.

Yet the man and one of the women also share the same text excerpts in this section,

making them, in a different way, into alter-voices of each other.

Near the end of the radio play all four voices speak, sometimes in turn and

sometimes over each other or in unison, yet at this point, they undergo alterations: they

are echoed, multiplied, and made fuzzy until at last all become indiscernible from noise.

After a pause, a recitation-like section begins, in which two voices share a section of text,

with lines in unison and in turn, before pausing. A different pair of voices then takes up

the last line of the previous part, continuing on in a similar matter. The text is neatly

divided into small sections, with the beginning and ending sentences shown to be

portable, able to be a beginning or an end, to relate differently to two different segments

of text. The section ends with the lines at the end of the written text block - "ist der

Mann mit dem Tanzschritt ICH, [....] ICH der gefrorene Sturm" - after which the radio

play returns to the lines and structure of the beginning. Woman2 begins speaking, Manl

94
enters over her voice, as in the first moments of the recording. The radio play ends with

Man2, who has entered over Manl: "das Gesicht des Mannes [...] ist weifi wie Papier."

Through this image of blank white paper, the radio production closes with a comment

on interpretation. The human is refigured as text, or rather, as the substrate upon which

a text will be written: he awaits the inscription of language, and the granting thereby of

scrutability.

In all four of the productions discussed above, the Bildbeschreibung text is taken

apart in some way as a means of interpretation. It is the performance of this disassembly

(and sometimes reassembly) of text that provides interest in the stagings of

Bildbeschreibung, rather than a visual rendering of the "content" of the text. While

Tscholokawa's staging presented multiple reassembled fragmentary renderings serially,

and only following a reading of the entire text, Wilson's sonically layered presentation

fragmented the text immediately, presenting a multivocal, multi-origined mass of

language. The radio adaptation by Einstiirzende Neubauten was both more and less

fragmented than these two earlier performances, presenting much less of the text, but

retaining its order and preserving the temporality of its spoken language. Because the

band leaves out most of the text, a tension also arises between the said and the unsaid,

with an uneasy relation between the words and their sonic background. With only one

voice declaiming the text, the relationship of the speaker to the words presents itself

more immediately than in the Tscholakowa or Wilson productions, where the

multivocal text presentation drew attention to the variety of readings, rather than to the

95
multiple subjectivities from which different readings would arise. In the Liebster and

Heilmann radio adaptation we find both aspects. The many text orderings provide a

kaleidoscope of varying tableaux, while the four voices seem to comment on each other,

placing themselves in relationship to each other and to the text, to which they are

explicitly compared in their 'readability'. Here, ultimately, the performance of

interpretation (of the text) becomes identical to the constitution of the speaking figures'

subjectivity. The description of an image - in Mitchell's broadest use of the 'image' -

turns out to be simultaneously the generation of an image; the language of

Bildbeschreibung does not represent, but rather creates.

96
Chapter Three - Die Hamletmaschine:
Text as audial track

liber die Hamletmaschine hat sichja nun die Meinung

gebildet, dafi man mit diesem Stuck aufdem Theater nur
scheiternkann:WennmanGluckhat,scheitertmanfruchtbar.
— Interviewer of Heiner Miiller, 1982159

Some of the difficulties of staging Miiller's 1977 play Die Hamletmaschine have been

introduced in the first chapter: its impossible stage directions, missing or ambiguous

attributions, extreme identity play, and extensive quotation from both high- and low-

cultural sources provide unremitting challenges to the play's would-be performers.

Nonetheless, theatermakers are drawn to the play's dream-like tableaux, its wide range

of cultural and political resonances, and its figures that flirt with the archetypical while

resisting definitive characterization. After the failure of the planned world premiere in

Cologne even before its first performance,160 the decade following the play's 1978 world

premiere in Brussels saw at least thirty-five productions of Die Hamletmaschine

throughout western Europe, as well as stagings in the United States, Brazil, and

Poland.161

The play of references and the lore of the text's creation begins with the its title. Jean

159
Heiner Miiller, Werke 10. Gesprachel. 1965-1987, (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2008) 232. The
name of the interviewer is not given.

160
Theo Girshausen, ed., Die Hamletmaschine, Heiner Mullers Endspiel (Koln: Prometh,
1978).

161
"Inszenierungen," Heiner Miiller Handbuch. Leben - Werk - Wirkung, eds. Hans-Thies
Lehmann and Patrick Primavesi (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2003) 407.

97
Jourdheuil cites its multiple allusions, including the Shakespearean Hamlet's letter to

Ophelia, with its use of the word "machine", 162 Marcel Duchamp's "bachelor machine,"

Deleuze and Guattari's theory of desire as a "desiring-machine," and Andy Warhol's

statement "I want to be a machine" (this last element explicitly cited later in the play).163

Muller relates how the title had been read autobiographically - "Das wurde dann so

interpretiert: HamletMaschine = H.M. = Heiner Muller" - and his bemusement at this

explanation: "Diese Auffassung habe ich mit Sorgfalt verbreitet."164 After the title, the

main text continues with myriad styles, voices, and references, leading one critic to joke

that it "[klingt] oft wie Bahnhof in den Ohren, oder: als wenn Joyce dem Freud berichten

wollte, wie sich Shakespeare mit Genet iiber Mao geeignigt hat."165

The first section of the play, identified as "1 / FAMILIENALBUM", begins with a

block of text that is unattributed, yet begins with the sentence "Ich war Hamlet" (IV

545). Whether the text is to be spoken by one person or by multiple people remains

open, for although events are narrated in the first person, its psychological viewpoint is

162
Polonius reads to Claudius from the letter addressed to Polonius's daughter: '"Doubt
thou the stars are fire; / Doubt that the sun doth move; / Doubt truth to be a liar; / But
never doubt I love. / 'O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers; / 1 have not art to reckon
my groans: but that / 1 love thee best, O most best, believe it. Adieu. / 'Thine evermore
most dear lady, whilst / this machine is to him, HAMLET.'" (II.ii.116-124)

163
Jean Jourdheuil, "Die Hamletmaschine," Heiner Muller Handbuch. Leben - Werk -
Wirkung, eds. Hans-Thies Lehmann and Patrick Primavesi (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2003) 222.

164
Muller, Werke 10. Gesprache 1.1965-1987, 235.

165
Armin Eichholz, "Das Abgriindige in Hamlet und Medea," rev. of Hamletmaschine dir.
Wolf Miinzer and Wolf Siegfried Wagner, Miinchener Kammerspiele, Miinchener Merkur
16 November 1984.

98
fragmented. The text narrates a state funeral in first person past tense, mentioning the

mourners, including figures who would seem to be Gertrude and Claudius ("Morder

und Witwe ein Paar"). Passages in all capital letters interlace the narration, such as

"FLEISCH UND FLEISCH GESELLT SICH GERN' or "DU KOMMST ZU SPAT MEIN

FREUND FUR DEINE GAGE / KEIN PLATZ FUR DICH IN MEINEM TRAUERSPIEL"

(IV 545,546). They offer what may be reactions from a different level of the no-longer-

Hamlet's consciousness, or perhaps the observations or ruminations of a second voice.

The end of Act 1 conjures yet more figures from the Shakespearean Hamlet - Horatio,

Polonius, and Ophelia - accompanied by discussion of role-playing and the invocation

of stage directions, including the commands "Auftritt Horatio" and "Exit Polonius"

within the dialogue.

Act 2, identified as "DAS EUROPA DER FRAU", consists of a short monologue

attributed to OPHELIA (CHOR/HAMLET). In contrast to the declaration of past being that

begins Act 1, this act begins with the present-tense proclamation "Ich bin Ophelia" (IV

547). The text stands as an assertion of autonomy and a breaking away from oppression.

The employment of repetition and lists lends a deliberateness to the text, as in the

passage, "Ich bin allein mit meinen Briisten meinen Schenkeln meinem Scho6. Ich

zertrummre die Werkzeuge meiner Gefangenschaft den Stuhl den Tisch das Bett" (IV

547). The newly declared independence is interlinked with violence, as the voice

announces its actions, using verbs such as zertrummern, zerstoren, aufreiflen, zerschlagen,

and zerreifien. The last line of Act 1 - "Dann lafi mich dein Herz essen, Ophelia, das

meine Tranen weint" (IV 547) - is answered by the last lines of Act 2: "Ich grabe die Uhr

99
aus meiner Brust die mein Herz war. Ich gehe auf die Strafie, gekleidet in mein Blut" (IV

548).

The "SCHERZO'' section in the middle provides the only semblance of traditional

dialogue in the entire play, with one line each assigned to Ophelia, Hamlet, and

"STIMME(N) aus dem Sarg" (IV 548). Although their lines follow each other, these figures

nevertheless do not seem to speak to each other. The rest of the act consists of stage

directions, which include role playing ("Ein Engel, das Gesicht im Nacken: Horatio"),

clothing exchange ("Hamlet zieht Ophelias Kleider an"), and transformations of figures into

other figures ("Claudius, jetzt Hamlet's Vater, lacht ohne Laut"). Multiple forms of dance

are called for, including "Galerie (Ballett) der toten Frauen," a striptease by Ophelia, and a

partner dance between Hamlet and Horatio.

The fourth and longest act returns to a male voice, beginning with lines of verse

attributed to HAMLET and then shifting to HAMLETDARSTELLER with the lines:

Ich bin nicht Hamlet. Ich spiele keine Rolle mehr. Meine Worte haben mir nichts

mehr zu sagen. Meine Gedanken saugen den Bildern das Blut aus. Mein Drama

findet nicht mehr start. Hinter mir wird die Dekoration augebaut. Von Leuten,

die mein Drama nicht interessiert, fur Leute, die es nichts angeht. Mich

interessiert es auch nicht mehr. Ich spiele nicht mehr mit. (IV 549)

Upon this rejection of his role and declaration of disinterest in participating any more,

the Hamlet actor begins a long passage in the present tense describing the felling of a

monument to a man "der Geschichte gemacht hat," followed by the beginnings of an

100
uprising. At the point of conflict between protesters and police, the Hamlet actor divides

himself into two, placing himself on both sides of the riot:

Mein Platz, wenn mein Drama noch stattfinden wiirde, ware auf beiden Seiten

der Front, zwischen den Fronten, daruber. Ich stehe auf Polizisten Soldaten

Panzer Panzerglas. Ich blicke durch die Flugeltur aus Panzerglas auf die

andrangende Menge und rieche meinen Angstschweifi. (IV 550)

Even if he is to take part - which remains in question - the figure still cannot play a

unified role. In its observations of the escalation of violence in the riot, the voice remains

divided, on one side and then the other, going mad in both roles, until the eruption of

the narrative into associative verse. In the end of the act, the stage directions specify that

the Hamlet actor is to put on a suit of armor, take up an ax, and split open the heads of

Marx, Lenin, and Mao, played by three naked women.

The final act returns to Ophelia, now radicalized, in a speech attributed to her but

beginning this time with the declaration "Ich bin Elektra" (IV 554). Whereas the voice of

Act 2 rejected her own subjugation, this Ophelia/Elektra rejects the maternal role in acts

of revenge against the world, evoking another Shakespearean figure, Lady Macbeth:

"Ich verwandle die Milch meiner Briiste in todliches Gift. Ich nehme die Welt zuriick,

die ich geboren habe. Ich ersticke die Welt, die ich geboren habe, zwischen meinen

Schenkeln" (IV 554). The final lines of her speech quote a female member of the Charles

Manson gang, as she proclaims "Es lebe der Hafi, die Verachtung, der Aufstand, der

Tod" - while at the same time being bound into a wheelchair with gauze bandages by

two men. The final tableau of the play is one of a silent, bound, motionless Ophelia.

101
 As an only slightly tongue-in-cheek structural analysis of critical interpretations of

Die Hamletmaschine, Giinter Krause offers a three-step process in the typical

interpretation of the play: "A. Das Stuck wird als Text gelesen" - that is, it is read as

literature, and given an textual interpretation, with no reference to the theater.

Thereafter follows step B: "Die eigentliehe Interpretation erschopft sich in philologischer

Arbeit: Wo zitiert Miiller was?"166 Krause adds that this part often reveals more about

the critic than it does about Miiller, depending on which quotations the critic pursues,

and how obscure the references. Given the multivalence of the text, it is quite possible to

build an interpretation based exclusively around passages seeming to refer to political

events, to German history, to pop culture, or to the play's Shakespearean progenitor, to

name only a handful of possible frameworks. Jonathan Kalb characterizes Miiller's texts

as "designed to serve numerous interpretive masters and seem perfectly compliant in

every case."167 Dogged adherence to a chosen interpretive rubric, however, often leads to

reductive interpretations, especially when paired with a literal understanding of the

text's evocative stage directions. One critic, for instance, has claimed that the three

televisions in Act 4168 show that the play clearly cannot take place in East Germany,

166 Werner Krause, "Das Theater gegen die Schrift: The Enormous Room," Cahiers
D'Etudes Germaniques 20 (1991): 183-4.

167
Jonathan Kalb, The Theater ofHeiner Miiller, (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998) 206.

168
Stage directions read, "Biihnenarbeiter stellen, vom Hamletdarsteller unbemerkt, einen
Kuhlschrank und drei Fernsehgerate auf. Gerausch der Hiihlanlage. Drei Programme ohne Ton

102
which had only two state television channels, but rather is set in West Germany, where

there were three state television channels.169 Even Hans-Thies Lehmann emphasizes a

single aspect of the text, insisting,

Mullers Text ist nur zu verstehen - und jede Inszenierung mufi von dieser

Tatsache Notiz nahmen - als Dialog mit Shakespeare, als Polemik, die doch

zugleich den alten Text, wie immer verderbt, zugleich am Leben erhalt, wieder

lesbar macht.170

The number of things one "must" keep in mind to understand the text multiplies with

each new critical reading.

Krause's Hara/efmascWne-interpretation checklist ends with "C. Die Conclusio der

Interpretation bildet immer die Vorstellung des kritischen linken, intellektuellen

Autors." 171 The timing of Miiller's production of the text, shortly after his first extended

visit to the United States, perhaps contributed to such ad hominem interpretations. Such

readings, reflective of the critics' interests (and too often of their preconceived notions

about Miiller), have led some to dismiss the text as so much postmodern posturing, a

(IV 549). Near the end of the act, the screens go black, as blood runs from the
refrigerator.

169
Sabine Pamperrien, Ideologische Konstanten - asthetische Variablen: zur Rezeption des
Werks von Heiner Miiller, (Frankfurt: Lang, 2003) 159. Why the play is assumed to be
"set" in any localizeable place or time is a question that Pamperrien does not address.

170
Hans-Thies Lehmann, "Muller/Hamlet/Gruber/Faust: Intertextualitat als Problem der
Inszenierung," Studien zur Asthetik des Gegenwartstheaters, ed. Christian W. Thomsen
(Heidelberg: Winter, 1985) 35.

171
Krause, "Das Theater gegen die Schrift," 185.

103
text in which anyone can find their own reflection. Its resistance to a single definitive

interpretation is read not as the indication of multi-layered complexity, but as evidence

of vacuous pastiche. Of course, exactly this complex web of interpretative possibilities is

also in part what makes the text of continued interest. After all, it is by now a cliched

observation that the inability to provide a definitive characterization of the eponymous

hero of Shakespeare's play makes the possibility of its interpretation interesting some

400 years later. The interpretive interest in Die Hamletmaschine, however, is of a different

sort, lying at least as much in the structure of the text as the characterization of its

figures. Additionally, in Miiller's constellation of figures, not Hamlet but Ophelia proves

to be the more elusive and interesting character to many critics.

Some of the greatest difficulties of staging Die Hamletmaschine arise in the question

of what to do with its didascalia — not only the stage directions, but also the other

didascalia such as the titles of the five acts and the attribution of dialogue (or lack

thereof). Conventional conceptions of didascalia often fall short when applied to Die

Hamletmaschine, for many such ideas assume that its main purpose it to illustrate the

intended meaning of the dialogue and to instruct how this meaning is to be conveyed in

performance/In contrast, the didascalia in Die Hamletmaschine often display little

apparent connection to the dialogue, and in some instances are hardly differentiated

from it. Even the attribution of lines to specific speakers, usually, the most direct and

unambiguous of instructions, is often unclear. While parts 2 and 4 of the play assign the

text to "OPHELIA [CHOR/HAMLET]" and "OPHELIA/ELEKTRA," Act 1 has no designated

speaker at all (IV 547,553, 545). Even where the attribution seems relatively clear, the

104
voice often does not seem to be the expression of a unified psyche, but instead a

collective voice, or a voice combining multiple perspectives. As Martin Buchwaldt

suggests, "Man kann nicht genau sagen, wer spricht, nur, dafi gesprochen wird."172 The

difficult didascalia only underscores this uncertainty.

The question remains whether one can even talk about 'stage directions' in the

conventional sense in the context of this play. Gestures toward traditional forms of

theater do remain: the identifiable form of the theater text has not yet been completely

abandoned, as it will be in Bildbeschreibung and in much of Wolokolamsker Chaussee.173

Characters are identified and dialogue is attributed, even if these identities and

attributions are problematized, and at times absent. Dialogue at least looks like dialogue

on the page, even if there is arguably no instance of characters talking to one another,

and if at least two of the five acts stand as monologues (the second and fifth, Ophelia's

speeches). Stage directions do remain differentiated from the rest of the text, with their

italicized printing. Their appearance at the beginnings of every act but the first is also

172
Martin Buchwaldt, "Die Sprache des Aufien. Zur Subjektproblematik in der
'Hamletmaschine' von Heiner Muller," Unverdaute Fragezeichen. Literaturtheorie und
textanalytische Praxis, eds. Holger Dauer, Benedikt Descourvieres and Peter W. Marx (St.
Augustin: Gardez!, 1998) 35.

173
Joachim Fiebach divides all of Miiller's plays into three categories: 1) texts in
"massiven Blocken, ohne markante Bruchstellen," without "die gewohnte Teilung in
Rollen-Dialogue" (including Bildbeschreibung, Verkommenes Ufer and Landschaft mit
Argonauten, most of Wolokolamsker Chaussee, and Der Horatier), 2) texts that seem to
generate themselves ("Textmaschinen"), such as the "Mann im Fahrstuhl" section of Der
Auftrag, and 3) texts that include characters, roles, figures that are semi-defined, yet
confused (Hamletmaschine, the first two sections of Wolokolamsker Chaussee). Joachim
Fiebach, "Nachwort." Heiner Muller. Stucke, (Berlin: Henschel, 1988) 593-4.

105
conventional/providing information about the setting—as extreme and abstract as those

settings might be.174

With their striking imagery, the stage directions in Die Hamletmaschine provide some

of the most memorable language of the play. These striking verbal images, however,

appear in that part of the play text that is conventionally not vocalized. Yet many of the

directions remain difficult or impossible to literally carry out on stage, seemingly

leaving the verbal images in limbo. Although the text still works with the conventions of

drama, some performances have taken the extra step toward eliminating textual

hierarchy by bringing dialogue and stage directions onto the same ontological level.

Both function as 'text', rather than as representation of something a figure says or

instructions of how the actor is to represent that figure. With the nonexistence of figures

represented on stage, the question of attribution, too, becomes less important. The 1986

Robert Wilson production (discussed below) was the first and most thorough-going

example of this treatment of Die Hamletmaschine, though many other stagings have

resorted to similar strategies for at least part of the text. At the other end of the

spectrum, some producers have treated Die Hamletmaschine as though it were an entirely

conventional drama, with clearly defined characters portraying their world on stage.

Most stagings seem to have ended up with a hybrid approach to the text, playing some

174
Muller's play Der Auftrag, published three years after Die Hamletmaschine, was
mistaken by some as a step backward by Miiller in his formal experimentation simply
because the text looks like a conventional play, with defined characters and settings and
clearly divided dialogue and stage directions. Despit these appearances, the text is
deeply riven with questions of the origins of its voices, and indeed, given the heading at
its beginning - "ERINNERUNGEN AUS EINER REVOLUTION" - the question of the
status of the text itself.

106
parts in a traditional mode, while interpreting some of the more difficult passages with

what Barnett calls the 'reading solution': reading the text aloud as a text, rather than

interpreting it in a conventionally theatrical manner. When the reading solution is

transported to other media, such as radio, the verbal images take on resultantly different

resonances, as I discuss later in the chapter. The use of Die Hamletmaschine as a libretto

for opera changes the status of its verbal images once again.

Didascalia: the status of stage directions

Didascalia - when considered at all in the study of drama, which is not a given - has

most often been regarded as explanatory or instructional in nature/the directions for

performance. The Oxford English Dictionary defines didascalic as "Of the nature of a

teacher or of instruction; didactic; pertaining to a teacher." The term didascalia is

employed by theater semiotician Anne Ubersfeld, who uses it to encompass all stage

and production directions. Dialogue and didascalia comprise the two discrete yet

interwoven parts of the dramatic text.175 As such, didascalia stands as a term for a broad

conception of what are commonly known as stage directions. The New Penguin

Dictionary of the Theater outlines the function of stage directions as "telling an actor to

move to a particular area of the stage" or telling "the stage manager to provide a

175
See Anne Ubersfeld, Reading Theatre, trans. Frank Collins (1978; Buffalo: Toronto UP,
1999).

107
particular stage effect."176 As technical devices, stage directions can speak to all those

involved in a play's production, including directors, actors, set and costume designers,

property managers, and light and sound technicians. John Searle famously compares the

play text to a recipe for baking a cake.177

Theater theorists have proposed various typologies of didascalia with varyingly

detailed categories and varying expected audiences. Michael Issacharoff, for example,

offers a four-category classification, comprised of extratextual writings, stage directions

designed only to be read, technical directions for the theater staff, and 'normal' stage

directions for the director (or reader).178 Extratextual writings include prefaces or notes

on 'how to play' the play, such as those accompanying Hebbel's Maria Magdalena,

Pirandello's Sei Personaggi in Cerca d'Autore, and Genet's Les Bonnes.179 The note at the

end of Bildbeschreibung could also be considered an example of this type of didascalia, its

uncertain textual status bespeaking the ambiguous relationship of this type of didascalia

to the play text. That Issacharoff's typology provides two categories that have only to do

176
"Stage direction," The New Penguin Dictionary of the Theater (London: Market House,
2001).

177
John Searle, "The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse," New Literary History 6 (1975):
329.

178
Mary Ann Frese Witt, "Reading Modern Drama: Voice in the Didascaliae," Studies in
the Literary Imagination 25.1 (1992): 105.

179
The Hebbel, Pirandello, and Genet texts are cited as examples of this type of
didascalia because of their explicit relationship to their Haupttexte, and because they are
usually printed together with the plays to which they refer. This type of didascalia
shares similarities with theoretical writings about drama that remain discrete from other
texts but are often read in conjunction with their authors' dramatic works, such as
Friedrich Durrenmatt's "Theaterprobleme."

108
with the reading of a dramatic text speaks to his interest in the "virtual performance" of a

read text, with the didascalia functioning as part of the dramatic fiction. For him,

didascalia can operate as the directions for performing a play or as guides to the mental

visualization of such a performance.

Marvin Carlson, on the other hand, finds this instructional view simplistic, a "false

normalizing of a complex power relationship" between the author of the text and those

who would perform it.180 Carlson divides didascalia into more precise categories than

does Issacharoff, and locates those categories more specifically in the types of

information they give about particular aspects of production. Carlson begins with the

basic categories of attribution (identification of who is speaking) and entrances/exits,

which he identifies as the most common types of didascalia.181 Indeed, of all the types of

didascalia, these two - and particularly the former - are the most closely identified with

their genre, serving to identify a text on first glance as drama. At the next level of

complexity, Carlson adds "structural" stage directions, which divide the play into acts

and scenes, and the related "locational" stage directions, often specifying where the new

i8o Marvin Carlson, "The Status of Stage Directions," Studies in the Literary Imagination
24.2 (1991): 46.

181
Carlson, "The Status of Stage Directions," 37. In some classical drama, entrances and
exits are indicated only by context and by comment within the dialogue, leaving it
ambiguous in some scenes whether major figures are to be onstage or not. See William J.
Ziobro, "Where Was Antigone? Antigone, 766-883," The American Journal of Philology 92.1
(1971): 81-5; H.D.F. Kitto, Form and Meaning in Drama (London, 1964); and Margarete
Bieber, "Entrances and Exits of Actors and Chorus in Greek Plays," American Journal of
Archaeology, 58.3 (1954), p. 277-84.

109
act or scene opens.182 The presence and function of these types of didascalia often

depend on the theatrical tradition of which the play is a part; the three unities called for

in classical French drama, for instance, determine the way in which such works are

divided, with scenes determined by entrances of characters rather than change of

location or time, as in English theater. Also closely related to locational stage directions,

"character description" provides information about characters ancillary to their dialogue

and actions.183 As with locational stage directions, the information provided by character

description can be quite detailed at times. Both types of didascalia provide templates

that often seem to function better as a suggestion of the author's imagined setting and

actor than as the strict dictation of set design and casting.184 Of the didascalia remaining,

Carlson identifies "technical" stage directions (about properties, lighting, and sound),

and the remaining directions which "concern the conduct of actors on stage."185

Locational stage directions, character description, and to a lesser extent technical

and conduct directions all raise the question of whether such didascalia function as

evocative suggestions to those who would perform the play (as argued by Pavis and

Carlson), or whether their specificity comprises an integral part of the author's work.

This question became more than an abstraction in 1984, when the play Endgame became

182
Carlson, "The Status of Stage Directions," 37-8.

183
Carlson, "The Status of Stage Directions," 38.

184
See the discussion of highly descriptive stage directions and the rise of imagistic
theater in Chapter One, p. 30.

185
Carlson, "The Status of Stage Directions," 39.

110
the locus of a high-profile dispute between a playwright and the interpreters of that

playwright's work, as Samuel Beckett and the American Repertory Theater in

Cambridge, Massachusetts squared off in an artistic and legal battle over didascalia.

Abandoning the play's specification of "bare interior... two small windows . . . a door,"

A.R.T. director JoAnne Akalitis and designer Douglas Stein conceived of a new setting

for their production of Endgame. Gerald Rabkin describes their set as "a desolate length

of subway tunnel replete with derelict cars and the detritus of modern technological

civilization, a perfect contemporary equivalent, in their view, of Hamm and Clov's

entrapment in the metaphorical Absurdist room with no escape."186 Beckett objected to

the change in setting, threatening legal action to revoke the performance rights to the

play if the A.R.T. continued with their planned interpretation. The playwright objected,

explains Rabkin, because of all of his plays, Beckett "most keenly [felt] the crystalline

achievement of Endgame, its precise distillation of language and image."187

This mention of image extends beyond what we might intuitively consider the text of

a play, to encompass its non-verbal performance instantiation as well. The implication is

that something of another modality is contained within the stage directions: the words

contain images - a visual element - that are as much a part of the play text as the

dialogue between the figures. In this case, the playwright holds that the stage directions

are quite literal: the "bare interior" is not shorthand for the evocation of starkness, nor a

186
Gerald Rabkin, "Is There a Text on This Stage? Theatre, authorship, interpretation,"
Re-.direction, eds. Rebecca Schneider and Gabrielle Cody (New York: Routledge, 2002)
322.

187
Rabkin, "Is There a Text on This Stage," 323.

Ill
metaphor for emptiness. The author claims control not only over what the actors say,

but also over where they say it. The argument holds that the onstage, physical

instantiation of an empty room is as much a part of Beckett's artistry as the entirety of

the dialogue. Such a conception of the author grants the original creator of the play text

the right of first refusal, as it were, for the roles of director and designer as well. The

conception places the play text in a position of paramount importance, allowing it to

determine the reaches of its own power, however large or small. Even if it is to play a

circumscribed role, it would be the text that determined the bounds of its own

influence.188

In the end, a compromise was reached by including statements by Beckett and

Beckett's American agent Barney Rosset in the program for Endgame, thus avoiding a

lawsuit. Their two voices objecting to the staging were given counterweight in the

program by A.R.T. Artistic Director Robert Brustein, whose statement defended the

production's interpretation of Beckett's text. Thus, Beckett's intentions for the play were

given voice, but not granted the final word in the production. Rather, the play text was

highlighted as the possible locus of multiple interpretive voices, that of the author being

only one. Yet the controversy may lead us to ask how much authority "must" be given

to didascalia in the staging of a text. It may be tempting to think of Beckett's

protestations about Endgame as a special case, given the essentially spare nature of that

188
By shifting the discussion to the importance of the text, I mean to show that this
problem is not limited to living playwrights. Given a view of stage directions as
instructions directly from the author, the playwright can be seen as dictating production
decisions from beyond the grave.

112
text, but the issues raised by the incident highlight the complex question of author

intentionality in the translation of dramatic texts from text to stage.

Not until the seventeenth and eighteenth century did expansive stage directions

become an expected element of dramatic texts in the western world. Classical drama for

the most part contained only didascalia of attribution—if that—and the occasional

entrance/exit direction, and throughout the medieval and early modern periods, stage

directions were limited mostly to these two elements.189 The general arc of the

development of didascalia was that of ever-increasing employment through the end of

the 19th century, by which point actions written into the stage directions were often

integral to the play.190 (The canonical example of such non-incidental stage directions is

the door slamming as Nora leaves in Ibsen's Et dukkehjem.) Multiple circumstances

factored into the rise in importance of stage directions. Mary Ann Frese Witt points out

that by the nineteenth century it had become standard to publish stage directions, and

knowing this, playwrights - now less directly involved with the productions of their

plays than they had been at any other point in history - began writing directions aimed

189
David Z. Saltz, "Stage directions," Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance, ed.
Dennis Kennedy, vol. 2 (London: Oxford UP, 2003) 1277.
The earliest manuscripts of Greek plays indicate speakers only with dashes, thus making
character attribution also the first kind of didascalia to be added by later editors.

190
Saltz, "Stage directions," 1277.
Exceptions to this development do exist, most notably the sparse stage directions of the
dramas of German Classicism, modeled on classical drama. Expressionist drama, too,
avoided description of settings, placing itself in contrast to the expansive scene-setting of
Realism and Naturalism. Klaus Hammer, "Regieanweisung," Lexikon Theater
International, eds. Jochanan Trilse-Finkelstein and Klaus Hammer (Berlin: Henschel,
1995) 719.

113
at the absent producers of their plays.191 David Z. Saltz adds that the growing market for

published plays rewarded texts meant not only for would-be producers, but also for

readers of drama. Saltz goes on to cite a combination of influences on stage directions,

including the decline of set performance conventions, the increasing demand for

spectacle onstage, a growing public interest in the relationship of environment and

behavior (as is explored in Naturalism), and the rise of psychology.192 As the theater

changed and as theater texts were used differently, the function of didascalia within the

texts changed, too. Christel-Lindgard Jenkner asserts that didascalia "hat also vor allem

dort seine Bedeutung, wo die Sprache des [Dialogs] entweder als der nicht unbedingt

wichtigste Bestandteil eines Schauspiels oder wo sie als unzureichend angesehen

wird."193 Yet even given this history, stage directions are often seen as transparently

instructional. The fourth edition of The Oxford Companion to the Theatre defines stage

directions simply as "notes added to the script of a play to convey information about its

performance not already explicit in the dialogue."194 Although the entry gives

background about the physical constructions of British stages that led to terms such as

upstage and downstage, the entry in this edition gives the impression that stage

directions have remained static in their status over time; indeed, the entry neither

191
Witt, "Reading Modern Drama," 104.

192
Saltz, "Stage directions," 1277.

193
Christel-Lindgard Jenkner, "Die Sprache der Regieanswisungen im modernen
franzosischen Drama," Doctoral dissertation, Universitat Hamburg, 1969,40.

194
Hartnoll, ed., The Oxford Companion to the Theatre 787.

114
mentions that they have not always been conventional, nor addresses their

development.

The conventional idea of the explanatory or instructional nature of didascalia grants

it an ontological independence from the dialogue that makes up the rest of the text.195

The spoken dialogue exists on one level, while the didascalia functions on another level,

where it influences the interpretation of the dialogue (sometimes considered the

Haupttext) while itself remaining unverbalized in performance. This split between

didascalia and dialogue mirrors the distinction drawn by Barbara Herrnstein Smith

between natural discourse and fictive discourse. Natural discourse includes "all

utterances that are performed as historical events," while fictive discourse includes

"neither historical acts or historical events, but rather representations of them."196 The

function of an utterance rather than its content determines its status as natural or fictive.

A line of dialogue uttered in performance or read in the dramatic text falls into the

category of fictive discourse, for it represents the utterance of a figure in the play. If one

were to quote that same line of dialogue in a review of the play, however, the line

delivered as a quotation would be a natural utterance. Conventionally conceived

didascalia function as natural discourse in the text, giving information about the play or

instruction about the performance. The literal following of some directions translates the

natural utterance into an act of fictive discourse. The entrance didascalia "Enter stage

195
Patricia A. Suchy, "When Worlds Collide: The Stage Direction as Utterance," Journal of
Dramatic Theory and Criticism 6.1 (1991): 69.

196
Barbara Herrnstein Smith, On the Margins of Discourse: The Relation of Literature to
Language, (Chicago: U of Chicago, 1978) 84.

115
left," for example, functions as natural discourse in the play text, but becomes a gesture

in the play's fierive discourse when the actor enters from the left in the performance.

Likewise, the direction "sadly" before a line of dialogue becomes a part of the fiction of

the play when the deliverance of the line sounds sad. Other didascalia work as natural

discourse in the text and remain so in production because they are presented without

being performed. The listing of the characters or the printing of the act titles or locations

of the action in the program, for example, both preserve these pieces of didascalia as

didascalia, giving information about the play's realm of fictive discourse without

entering into that realm.

Postdramatic theater as defined by Lehmann is resistant to analysis in terms of

natural and fictive discourse, given its flattening of textual hierarchies and its overall

non-mimetic goals. Yet, to say that postdramatic theater does not represent a world is

not necessarily to say that no representation as such occurs in postdramatic theater. Not

every act on stage is performed as a part of natural discourse, and actors do still take on

roles. In postdramatic theater, rather than a clear split between fictive and natural

discourse, the possibility of fictive discourse is complicated by the employment of

quotation or citation. Here, however, the distinction must be made between

postdramatic theater practices and postdramatic theater texts (or the "no longer

dramatic" theater texts of Poschmann's analysis). Elements such as citation, abstraction

of language and focus on its materiality, and self-conscious textuality may be built in to

some theater texts. Yet the necessary privileging of the text is itself counter to a

postdramatic theater practice.

116
 Before the rise of theater in the postdramatic mode, too, there were didascalia that

resisted treatment as natural utterances at all, being more appropriately categorized as

part of the play's fictive discourse from the start. Witt argues that even before the 20th-

century insertion of self-consciousness into drama, it had never been a "pure" genre,

free from contamination by the "epic" narrative elements of the novel and the short

story. Rather, she claims that "drama, like the novel, may be read as a 'mixed' mode

rather than a purely mimetic one," and that it has always been the case that "a voice in

the didascalia speaks to an implied reader as well as to theater professionals."197

Much of the didascalia in Die Hamletmaschine bears characteristics that make it

receptive to such categorization for similar reasons. Difficult directions about setting and

action, in particular, are more likely to be read as part of the fiction than to be executed

on stage, leaving open the distinction between physical setting and intangible "context."

The fictive quality of the didascalia is also increased when the boundary between

didascalia and dialogue becomes blurred. The challenge presented by Die

Hamletmaschine is quite often the choice between the literal following of a direction,

which can be awkward or not fully realizable, and the declamation or other verbal

communication of that direction, which can prove less vivid and more mediated. Such

mediation can also be the intent, however, producing highly self-conscious productions

that comment on their own textuality and set that textuality in opposition to the

197
Witt, "Reading Modern Drama," 104.

117
image.198 With the complete separation of the play text from stage images (as seen in

Robert Wilson's production, discussed below), the audience can be confronted with

competing verbal images (from the text) and stage images.

Context and intertexts

Each part of Die Hamletmaschine begins with a heading in capital letters: a word or

words appearing after the act number and before the dialogue and any italicized stage

directions. (The five distinct, numbered sections suggest the traditional five-act play,

although they are not explicitly identified as 'acts' in the text.) These headings might

most immediately and obviously function as titles of the five acts, but because the

headings vary in their seeming suggestion of setting, their relation to the dialogue of the

act, and their connection to stage directions, their renderings could easily differ with

each act. Some productions choose simply to print the act headings in the program as

titles, keeping them as text and preserving their function as didascalia, naming or

identifying the five sections of the play in an act of natural discourse. In other

productions the headings are announced, either by the same actor throughout, or by

different actors depending on the constellation of figures in the given act. Although

unattributed to a speaker, their all-caps type in the printed text is the same as that of

many lines throughout the 'dialogue' portions of the text, supporting the possibility that

they, like the dialogue, could be spoken in performance. The declamation of the act

headings could function as a Brechtian announcement or display before each act, similar

198
See discussion of performances on pages 131 and 137.

118
to the functioning of headings in the printed program. Likewise, when the act headings

are performed as a part of the play's fictive discourse, this naming can be seen to emerge

from within the fictive realm of the play, the act of naming being done by the figures on

stage rather than by the author directly. As with any paratext, the act headings may or

may not suggest to their audience a direction to point their interpretations or a context

in which to perceive what happens in the act. The prominence granted to their

presentation likely influences the attention paid to them by the theater audience.

Whether the act headings suggest such a context to those producing and performing

the play is another question. Nicholas Zurbrugg suggests that the headings establish the

"source" or "context" of what follows in the act.199 The idea of the heading as a source

works well for the unattributed speech of Act 1; the opening words can be interpreted as

a voice from the "FAMILIENALBUM" or as the voice of the Familienalbum itself (IV 545).

So interpreted, the heading works as natural discourse, giving information about the

fictive text which follows. "FAMILIENALBUM" suggests the origin of the dialogue,

from which choices can then be made about what actor or actors should speak the text.

While the content of the speech ("Ich war Hamlet") may suggest Hamlet as the single

speaker, the didascalia leave other interpretive options open. The meeting of this first

interpretive challenge of the play, suggests Barnett, may set the tone for the rest of the

199
Nicholas Zurbrugg, "Post-Modernism and the Multi-Media Sensibility: Heiner
Miiller's Hamletmaschine and the Art of Robert Wilson," Modern Drama 31.3 (1988): 442.

119
performance by indicating how rigorously the production intends to engage with

MuUer's dramatic provocations.200

Questions of context become more complicated when act headings are followed by

stage directions. These didascalia that occur at the beginnings of acts in Die

Hamletmaschine specify particular material settings to which it is often unclear how the

more abstract headings relate, and it would be easy to ignore one element in favor of the

other. Likewise, their relation to the dialogue that follows is often equally unclear. Here

Zurbrugg's idea of the heading as 'context' comes to the fore. He writes, "Act four, one

discovers, takes place—or depicts:

PEST IN BUDA/BATTLE FOR GREENLAND

Space 2, as destroyed by Ophelia. An empty armour, an axe stuck in the helmet."201

Zurbrugg's formulation re-encodes the very questions that these didascalia pose: Does

the act "take place in" or does it "depict" such a setting? The interpreters must decide

whether this setting is merely the context in which the dialogue and action of the act

occur or whether the portrayal of this setting is itself part of the purpose of the act—that

is, of course, if the directions are to be heeded at all. If the setting provides context, then

it must be decided for whom. It could provide the initial context for the actors

interpretations of the text, influencing their performances without the setting itself being

portrayed on stage. So interpreted, these didascalia act as didascalia of conduct (to use

200
Barnett, Literature versus Theatre, 91.

201
Zurbrugg, "Post-Modernism and the Multi-Media Sensibility," 443. Original play text
at IV549.

120
Carlson's terms). Or, such a context could be created for the audience as a background to

shape their own interpretations. Both such readings assume a primacy of dialogue over

didascalia, although this hierarchy may not be apparent from the point of view of the

audience, for whom the distinction between context and main text may not be evident. If

the setting itself is interpreted as part of the intent of the act, then dialogue and

didascalia stand on more equal ground as elements that make up the fictive discourse of

the play in performance.

The abstractness of the didascalia limits the possibility of literal portrayal and

contributes to an idea of 'context' or 'setting' that is much broader than just the physical

elements of the set. Act 5 begins

WILDHARREND / IN DER FURCHTBAREN RUSTUNG / JAHRTAUSENDE

Tiefsee. Ophelia im Rollstuhl. Fische Triimmer Leichen und Leichenteile treiben vorbei.

(IV 553)

Zurbrugg writes that this act "appears within a still stranger 'space'" than that of the

previous acts, "a mixture of time and submerged disjecta."202 Again, the assumption that

the didascalia determine the "space" within which the act occurs begs the question of

what it means for the dramatic text to appear or take place in a "space". If interpreted as

a physical space, the "deep sea" would be quite challenging to realize visually, and so

suggestion can perhaps achieve more here than incomplete illustration. For example, in

the 1993 production of Die Hamletmaschine at the Mecklenburgisches Staatstheater in

202
Zurbrugg, "Post-Modernism and the Multi-Media Sensibility," 443.

121
Schwerin, the Tiefsee was conveyed by whale sounds which accompanied Ophelia's final

monologue, the sounds growing ever louder until her voice could no longer be heard.203

The shift from the visual to the aural realm in creating the "space" of the act lends it a

symbolic nature, as Ophelia is silenced, her words effectively "drowned" out by the

audial suggestion of the setting.

The inclusion of the temporal element, however, would be difficult to portray

spatially. Perhaps the didascalia could also suggest a mental rather than physical space

in which the act occurs, setting a certain tone or mood and functioning as "a gesture that

might permeate [the] entire production concept."204 If interpreted as a mental space, the

heading of Act 5, a quotation from Friedrich Holderlin, could imply proximity to

madness. In this light, then perhaps the "zwei Manner in Artzkitteln" (IV 553) who later

wrap Ophelia in gauze are the proverbial men in the white coats. Didascalia that make

literary or historical references can indicate a pervasive mood, referring in a few words

to a wealth of associations with a particular author or work. The stage direction

"Enormous room" from Act 2, for example, is also the title of an e.e. cummings novel

about an interrogation room in France in the first World War.205 The monologue that

follows could be an interrogation, or the response to being interrogated, or the tension

and pressure could be the same as that in an interrogation room. To simply act on one of

203
Barnett, Literature versus Theatre, 111. This production was directed by Sabine
Andreas. See also pages 127 and 130.

204
Suchy, "When Worlds Collide," 77.

205
Kalb, The Theater ofHeiner Midler, 113.

122
these interpretations, however, denies the audience the richness of the reference; Act 5

might just as well call for madness and Act 2 for an atmosphere of interrogation.

Of course, just because an intertextual allusion is identified does not mean that is

must be interpreted and acted upon as such. The fourth act ends with the stage

directions "[Hamletdarsteller] tritt in die Rustung, spaltet mit dem Beil die Kopfe von Marx

Lenin Mao. Schnee. Eiszeit" (TV 553). Jonathan Kalb points out that "Eiszeit" is the name of

a Tankred Dorst play about author Knut Hamsun, a Nobel Prize laureate and

unreformed Nazi, suggesting that the reference "indicates the return of a mythic space

of permanent horror."206 Patricia Suchy, by contrast, calls this particular direction "a

tantalizing example of a Theatre of Images stage direction,"207 while Edward Scheer

believes it an example of Muller's gesturing toward the style of "Artaud's theatrical

interrogation of the de facto impossible."208 While one questions how or if Kalb's

interpretation could be conveyed to the audience, to literally portray an ice age also

seems impossible. This particular direction seems often to have fallen by the wayside,

even in productions that follow most of the didascalia quite literally, and even when the

206
Kalb, The Theater ofHeiner Muller, 119.

207
Suchy, "When Worlds Collide," 80.

208
Edward Scheer, "'Under the Sun of Torture.' A New Aesthetic of Cruelty: Artaud,
Wilson and Muller," Heiner Muller: Contexts and History, ed. Gerhard Fischer (Tubingen:
Stauffenberg, 1995) 202.

123
Hamlet actor does take up the axe and carry out the directions that immediately precede

it.209

The direction seems to be preserved almost exclusively in those productions where

part or all of the didascalia are read or declaimed. Yet in such instances, rather than the

stage direction becoming a part of the play's fictive discourse, it retains its quality as

text, exchanging the visual image for a verbal one, but also retaining its ability to act as a

literary or historical reference. The "reading solution," to use Barnett's term, perhaps

forgoes the immediate impact of the visual and lacks the "richness of the sensual image"

that Suchy associates with her "Theater of Images," but it can doubtless be more fully

executed in the imaginations of the audience than on stage. The stage direction thus

leaves the production to choose between the impossibility of a full visual representation

of an ice age and the lack of theatricality in a verbal evocation of an ice age. As Giinther

Heeg points out, "Immer wieder, gerade an den 'dramatischsten' Stellen, macht Miiller

darauf aufmerksam, dafi alles auf dem Papier passiert."210 The reading solution

capitalizes on this characteristic, retaining the full range of reference and evocativeness

that make Die Hamletmaschine so recalcitrantly textual, providing a perfect example of

Poschmann's Text im Theater in action. The presentation of text - especially reference-

laden text - exchanges the representation of a fictive world (presented onstage for

reception by the audience) for a less-fixed set of possibilities presented to the audience.

This mode of performance, in the words of Lehmann, makes possible a "Situation, einer

209
Barnett, Literature versus Theatre, 98, 111.

210
Heeg, "Theater der Auferstehung," 65.

124
der Biihne und dem Zuschauerraum gemeinsam angehorigen Reflexion."211 The

audience members, too, must become involved in the act of interpretation.

The reading solution

In employment of the reading solution, the decision to verbalize parts of the

didascalia (everything up to and sometimes including the attributions) also blurs the

line between didascalia and parts of the dialogue that contain present tense descriptions

of action. The speaker in Act 1, for instance (often presumed to be Hamlet, though not

identified as such by the text), describes his actions in the first person: "Jetzt binde ich

dir die Hande auf den Riicken [.,.] Jetze zerreiSe ich das Brautkleid. Jetzt mufi du

schreien" (IV 547). The speaker here still addresses the words to someone, retaining a

dialogic character to their description, but by Act 4 the description of the uprising is no

longer addressed to anyone specific and the parts that are not in the first person work as

descriptive narrative, pure evocation of images: "Der Aufstand beginnt als Spaziergang.

Gegen die Verkehrsordnung wahrend der Arbeitszeit. Die Strafie gehort den

Fufigangern. Hier und da wird ein Auto umgeworfen" (IV 550), Nothing need

differentiate the delivery of these lines from the verbal presentation of the didascalia.

Only when the "Hamletdarsteller" begins speaking in the first person several lines later

are the words identified specifically as his.

Other parts of the dialogue employ a highly conscious theatricality, with self-

conscious reference to the playing and casting off of roles. In Act 1, for example, the

211
Lehmann, "Zwischen Monolog und Chor," 14.

125
speaker declares, "[I]ch spiele Hamlet," and in Act 4 the Hamletdarsteller proclaims,

"Ich bin nicht Hamlet. Ich spiele keine Rolle mehr" (IV 546,549). Most such lines remain

well within the bounds of dialogue, with only the added playfulness of the actor playing

the role of a character playing a role. The first act, though, contains the lines "Auftritt

Horatio" and "Exit Polonius" (IV 546), discernable as part of the dialogue and not as

stage directions only by their appearance in normal type, rather than in the italics used

for the rest of the didascalia of entrances or exits. In a production where the didascalia

were verbalized, nothing need distinguish such lines as part of the scripted dialogue and

not as stage directions. Descriptions of action in the didascalia are separated from those

in the dialogue chiefly by the assumption that the former will be visually portrayed and

unverbalized, while the latter will spoken but not necessarily put into action. When the

choice is made not to translate the verbal images of the didascalia into stage images,

portions of the dialogue and the didascalia become undifferentiated in performance.

The possibility of verbal evocation of images versus the visual representation of

those images poses the largest single choice in the staging of the third act, which consists

almost entirely of stage directions. In many ways this act is the most straightforward

portion of the play, thus seeming to invite a literal following of the text. Its act heading,

"SCHERZO", seems content to function as a descriptive title of the act, like the title of a

musical movement. The few lines of dialogue are unambiguously attributed, and

Hamlet and Ophelia's role-playing, while complex, remains defined at all points

throughout the act, as do Claudius and Horatio's dual roles as Hamlet's father and an

126
angel. The stage directions which dominate the act prescribe a relatively clear set of

actions to be carried out.

In the density and peculiarity of these clearly proscribed actions, however, lies the

difficulty of the act, for their execution creates a succession of bizarre images difficult to

sustain on stage. While the stage directions' form may resemble that of natural

discourse, to follow them as such may not satisfyingly reproduce themood they create

on paper. The 1993 Schwerin production attempted a literal interpretation of the Scherzo

as written, with mixed results. Barnett writes, "The first part worked fairly well, but as

the images built up, the director was unable to convert them into the language of the

theater. A burdening literalism entered which destroyed the dream-like atmosphere of

the scene."212 Notably, this production, like many other relatively literal productions,

still ignored the "Madonna mit dem Brustkrebs" (IV 548) direction. Like the "Eiszeit"

direction, it seems to have been preserved primarily where a reading solution is

employed.

The 1978 world premiere in Brussels chose such a course for the Scherzo, in which

the Hamlet character delivered the complete text of Act 3, both didascalia and dialogue,

212
Barnett, Literature versus Theatre, 111.
This burdening build-up of images can also occur in literal stagings of some of Miiller's
other plays, too. Heeg laments that the "wildes Collagieren" at the beginning of the
premiere of Germania Tod in Berlin in Munich inevitably "fiihrt mit der Zeit zur blofien
Anhaufung aller moglichen Gegenstande auf der Biihne," leading to the enervate point
in the play "wenn die Hoffnungen verbraucht sind." Heeg, "Theater der Auferstehung,"
63.

127
while dancing a tango with another actor.213 Two different kinds of images were thereby

presented: the immediate visual image of the actors dancing on stage, and the described,

verbal image of the spoken text, made visual only in the imaginations of the audience.

Muller himself has claimed that the stage directions of Die Hamletmaschine were never

meant to be literally carried out on stage as written.

Die Regieanweisungen waren ja schon damals eher ein Kopftheater, also ein

getraumtes Theater. [...] Das ist absolut lacherlich, das auf der Biihne zeigen zu

wollen. Das gehort in dem Kopf des Zuschauers, und der Zuschauer kann sich

vorstellen, was er will, wenn er diesen Text hort, diese Regieanweisungen." 214

The visualization becomes the task of the audience members, now made responsible for

their own imaginings, their own individual visual interpretations of the text.

The intentions of the author, of course, need not dictate, the ultimate interpretation

of the work, and indeed, many literary interpretations of the play depend on the contrast

of this central act's imagery to the verbally driven action of the acts that surround it.

Kalb, for example, asserts that the emphasis on "visual and gestural languages over

213
Barnett, Literature versus Theatre, 97. The Heiner Muller Handbuch cites the January
1979 production of Die Hamletmaschine in Paris (dir. Jean Jourdheuil, presented together
with the French premiere of Mauser) as the play's world premiere. David Barnett,
drawing from the doctoral dissertation of Eva Brenner, points instead to this staging in
Brussels two months earlier as the actual world premiere. Because of the Belgian
theater's low profile, no large newspapers or magazines reviewed the production, and it
seems to have been largely omitted from the performance history of the play. Had the
planned production in Cologne made it to a public performance, it would have been the
world premiere of Die Hamletmaschine. Volume 4 of Miiller's collected works, published
in 2001, lists the Belgian production as the first production of the play, noting that many
sources mistake the Jourdheuil staging for the world premiere.

214
Muller, "Regie: Heiner Muller," 108.

128
spoken language" develops the tensions set up in the first two acts.215 Image is set in

opposition to action, woman in opposition to man, object in opposition to subject.

Although Kalb later insists that an understanding of Artaud's influence in Miiller's work

may lead one not to follow any of the stage directions,216 his interpretation of the Scherzo

is nevertheless dependent on the creation of stage images—even if not those images that

Miiller's text describes. This realization of the undesirability of staging Die

Hamletmaschine literally is grasped even by some critics who otherwise demonstrate a

wholesale misunderstanding of the text. Sabine Pamperrien, after disparaging Die

Hamletmaschine for its lack of "Symbolkraft" - that is, for not providing clear keys to its

meaning - concludes that the text is a joke, and "Miiller meint es ja nicht ehrlich." Of the

second act, she continues, "Anders konnte es nur sein, wenn auf der Bxihne nichts von

dem geschahe, was Ophelia mit Worten beschreibt."217 The intended criticism proves

instead to be an astute observation: the description need not determine the stage images.

Indeed, performances have shown that directly connecting the two does not necessarily

lead to successful interpretation of the act. Gordon Rogoff takes this reflection to the

next step, identifying the charge thereby placed upon would-be theatrical interpreters:

"Taken literally, the text appears to be little more than a Dada scribble. [...] Even if any

of this could be literally embodied, there would be no point. Miiller's ideal mobilizer has

215
Kalb, The Theater ofHeiner Miiller, 115.

216
Kalb, The Theater ofHeiner Miiller, 122.

217
Pamperrien, Ideologische Konstanten, 151.

129
to be more cunningly theatrical—more provocative even—than Miiller's wildest

dreams." 218

Yet one of the play's most easily incorporable directions may benefit from such

"cunningly theatrical" creativity. The call in Act 4 for "Fotografie des Autors", followed a

few lines of dialogue later by "Zerreiftung der Fotografie des Autors" (IV 552), invokes the

role of the didascalia to provide images in the play at the same time as it questions the

author's sovereignty in the determination of those images. Even if the author's text is not

to determine the performance—that is, if the text is not to be "followed" per se—the text

is still that which is to be reacted to or reacted against. The destruction of Miiller's image

functions, in the words of Edward Scheer, as "a gesture which simultaneously

reinscribes the author, torn in two, as the founding divided subjectivity of the text."219

That the text itself calls for the destruction of the image of he who wrote it seems to be

an invitation to depart from the text, while at the same time the acknowledgement that it

is the text itself that provides the opportunity for departure. In a playful treatment of the

direction in Schwerin, as related by Barnett, a "visual metonym for the author" replaced

the photograph: a bottle of whisky, which was then drunk throughout the next speech.220

218
Gordon Rogoff, "HAMLETMASCHINE. Heiner Miiller. Directed by Robert Wilson.
New York University," Performing Arts Journal 10.1 (1986): 55.

219
Scheer, "Under the Sun of Torture," 204-5.

220
Barnett, Literature versus Theatre, 111. A testament to Miiller's famous penchant for
whisky can be found in the 1989 interview montage entitled "Ich glaube an Whisky,"
where in addition to the title quotation, Miiller also proclaimed, "Zigarren und Whisky,
mehr brauche ich eigentlich nicht." Gesammelte Irrtumer 2 (Frankfurt/Main: Verlag der
Autoren, 1990): 164.

130
With recognition of the whisky as a substitution for Miiller, one sees the author not as

the weighty "founding divided subjectivity of the text," but as he who intoxicates the

speaker, driving and inflaming the speaker's words. The Schwerin interpretation both

does and does not "follow" the stage direction. It visually represents the author,

although not directly, and it shows the author as an influence over the words, although

not necessarily as he who determines them. The stage direction is treated as natural

discourse but not interpreted literally, thus yielding an entirely new stage image.

In dealing with the Scherzo, some productions have avoided translating the difficult

verbal imagery into stage images by bringing the Scherzo into the performance as a

physical text. In the 1979 production in Essen, one of two Ophelias took on the persona

of a cleaning lady for Act 3. While cleaning the stage, the woman found a copy of the

Scherzo text and read it aloud, thus highlighting the Scherzo as a written text within the

performance.221 While utterances made in performance almost always belong to the

realm of fictive discourse,222 most of them function as natural utterances within the

fiction of the play. The found text, on the other hand, functions as fictive discourse

within the play's fictional world. The audience is presented not only with the text's

described images to picture for themselves, but also with the image of the cleaning lady

221
"Was war," Theater heute 20.6 (1979): 56.

222
Specific kinds of improvised dialogue may be the exception to this statement. In the
first act of the Schwerin production, the Hamlet character delivered the monologue
while the rest of the cast improvised reactions to it. The extent to which the actors'
reactions were natural responses to the fictive utterance of the monologue canot be
clearly separated fro the extent to which their reactions represented the reactions of their
characters, thus making the distinction between natural and fictive utterance difficult, if
not impossible to draw in such a case.

131
encountering the physical text that contains them and, through her reading aloud,

mediating the transfer of those images from the page to the ears of the audience

members.

The text was also treated as a physical object in Berlin in 1995, where the first two

acts of the production at the Podewil used moveable wooden cubes with various texts

written on their faces as elements of the set. When stacked in order in Act 3 with the

correct sides facing out, the cubes made a wall of text upon which the entire Scherzo text

could be seen.223 The audience could read the description of images in the text while

looking at the stage image made out of text. The physical assembly of the Scherzo text

also echoes that of the quotation-laden play as a whole: both are put together from

building blocks that had previously served other purposes. The text is revealed as an

entity that is both constructed and deconstructed over the course of the play. Like the

reading solution, such treatment of the Scherzo as a physical object allows the

preservation of all of its described images, with the addition of being able to draw

attention to and comment on its textuality.

The independence of sight and sound: Robert Wilson's Hamletmaschine

The furthest extreme of the reading solution, as well as perhaps the best-known

staging of Die Hamletmaschine, took place under the direction of Robert Wilson in New

York, Hamburg, and London in 1986 and 1987. (The world premiere at New York

University - Tisch School of the Arts took place in May 1986, two months after the

223
Barnett, Literature versus Theatre, 97.

132
premiere of the Alcestis production in which Wilson used Bildbeschreibung.) The

production explicitly made use of Miiller's text as an "audial track" accompanying

Wilson's stage images, a production decision Andrzej Wirth sees prefigured by Miiller's

own staging of Die Hamletmaschine in Giessen in 1985, which Wirth calls "a radical

deconstruction and sonorization of the text."224

Wilson had previously spoken of the image-heavy quality of Miiller's texts in

describing Miiller's contribution to their THE CIVIL warS collaboration: "[Muller] ist

sehr visuell. Wir mochten ihm zuhoren und iiber den Inhalt der Worte und die Bilder,

die er hervorruft nachdenken."225 Showing a similar assessment of Die Hamletmaschine,

Wilson presents Miiller's text as something to hear and from which to derive mental

images. He structures the performance as the experience of multiple modes: the

audial/verbal mode, which contains both the materiality of the words (their sounds and

rhythms) and the "Inhalt der Worte und die Bilder, die er hervorruft"—that is, potential

mental images—and the visual mode, with the constellations of actors and props

onstage. Much has been made of the fact that in this production almost the entire text of

the play was retained, dialogue and didascalia alike. Although often broken up and

distorted, the texts of the first two acts and the last two acts was declaimed by the actors,

with the exceptions only of the dialogue attributions and the stage directions about the

224
Andrzej Wirth, "Heiner Muller and Robert Wilson: An Unlikely Convergence," Heiner
Muller. Contexts and History, ed. Gerhard Fischer (Tubingen: Stauffenburg, 1995) 217.

225
Qtd. in Joachim Fiebach, "Marginalie zu Robert Wilson und Heiner Muller," Heiner
Muller Material, ed. Frank Hornigk (Leipzig: Reclam, 1989) 199. Translation from the
program to accompany ther performance, American Repertory Theater, Cambridge,
1985.

133
author photograph. The delivery of the text was layered over a series of choreographed

movements, repeated in every act but the Scherzo. The order of the movements

remained the same in each act, although their durations differed, as did the groupings of

actors on stage and the orientation of set pieces.

The production begins with the click of a woodblock being struck once.226 A woman

in an office chair center stage, her back to the audience, begins to turn the chair slowly.

At the sound of a second click, she whirls around to face the audience, her white face

frozen with mouth open in horror. The sound of howling begins in the background, and

a one-line piano melody begins playing quietly. A man enters, goes to the leafless tree at

the side of the stage, and takes his place beside it. With the third click, a woman enters

and goes to stand in the same block of light that illuminates the woman in the chair,

before deliberately leaving and taking her own place on the stage, where she moves her

arms slowly up and down. The entire cast enters one by one, taking their places on the

stage to the cues of the clicks, occasionally adding movements—either slow and

mannered gestures (rotating, scratching the table), or sudden actions (the woman

whirling around to face the audience, a man dropping a package with a heavy plunk).

The background noises continue, the piano melody and the howling becoming more

distinct at times, before fading further into the background again. Other sounds of

unclear provenance are heard, including a noise somewhere between ripping and

226
This performance description is taken from a video of the production at the Thalia
Theater in Hamburg, found in the Heiner-Muller-Archiv. The Hamburg production was
the only one of Wilson's three identical stagings of the play to be performed in German.
Video, Archiv Akademie der Kunste, Berlin, Bestand AVM 33.8009.

134
chewing, and a report that sounds like a machine gun or a drum machine. When the

background noises suddenly stop, there enters a man dressed entirely in black with

black makeup covering all exposed skin, his eyes strikingly white against his black face

paint. As he steps behind an actress in a long dress and puts his hand over her face, the

stage falls into a blackout: the end of the first act.

The clicks cueing all entrances and movements give the impression of setting a

machine of precision timing into motion. When the lights come up again after a pause,

the actors move with military cadence, rotating the set pieces ninety degrees onstage,

before coming to stand in a line at the front of the stage. Following another initial click of

the woodblock, the scene begins again, the actors taking their same places one by one,

with the mise en scene now rotated a quarter turn. This time, when the man in the black

leather jacket has taken his place, he begins: "Ich war Hamlet." The text of the first act of

Miiller's Hamletmaschine is delivered as the movements from the first act continue to be

repeated; the lines are traded off among figures on stage, with at least four men sharing

the text. As the last figures of the sequence enter, the text has already run out. The man

put his hands over the face of the woman in the dress, followed by a blackout, again

ending the act. The presentation of Miiller's second act proceeded in the same manner,

the figures' positions now rotated another ninety degrees, with the lines of Ophelia's

monologue begun by one of the women, echoed grotesquely by other women, and

continued by yet another women, until all of the female figures have taken part in the

act, save for the woman in the dress who enters at the end of each act.

135
 The movements and gestures, clearly choreographed and executed within the strict

framework of the clicks, remain pre-defined and formal in this second act, rather than

seeming to arise from any relationship to the text being delivered. By presenting the first

act without words, the movements and gestures are figured as the pre-existing structure,

and the words seem to be fitted within them, or applied on top of this framework. Given

this relationship, it can be difficult not to see the arrangement of figures as the primary

element in the production. Indeed, the Theater heute critic Henning Rischbieter spends

almost half of his review of this performance describing the figures onstage—their

positions, expressions, and costumes. He speaks to their mechanical character when he

describes Wilson's "Figuren, die seine sind, nicht die des Mullerschen Textes, und die

[Wilson] auf der Biihne exerzieren lafit."227 The repetition of the same actions in each act

with only the shift of orientation and small variations in position and lighting enhance

the typically Wilsonian sense of a stage populated by automatons or puppets.

The Scherzo portion of Miiller's text was the only act to be presented differently.

With a screen lowered in front of the stage, a film of the actors in their now-familiar

positions was projected. Over the course of the film the background changed, the figures

were transformed into apes, the figures were consumed by fire, the female figures

disappeared from the tableau. All the while, Schumann's "Erlkonig" played, and the text

of the act scrolled along the bottom of the screen. Near the end of the text, the image

began to pixellate, abstracting to the point of unrecognizability before receding. The

image grew ever smaller until it disappeared, leaving a black screen as the last line of

227
Henning Rischbieter, "Deutschland, ein Wilsonmarchen," Theater heute 27.12 (1986): 5.

136
the Scherzo scrolled by: "Die Brustkrebs scheint wie eine Sonne."

The fourth and fifth acts of Miiller's text were presented much as the first two were,

with the positions again rotated ninety degrees in each act. The delivery of the text

became highly distorted, its pronunciation garbled, even syllables of the same word

divided among actors by the end of Miiller's fourth act. The call in act four for a

"Fotografie des Autors", followed a few lines of dialogue later by "Zerreifiung der Fotografie

des Autors" (IV 552) was performed as instructed (and these stage directions left

unvocalized), as the actors faithfully displayed and destroyed a photograph of Miiller.

The gesture provided arguably the only moment of contact between Miiller's text and

the stage images in Wilson's production.

The images created by the onstage movements and orientations made no attempt to

illustrate the text in any traditional way, and delivery of didascalia and dialogue was

undifferentiated, the images in both presented only verbally. Andrzej Wirth notes that

"Wilson's theatre pictures are autonomous, that is to say he is not doubling the text and

his timing is not determined by the text."228 Although the play text is itself part of the

film's visual images in the Scherzo section, the images described by the text are

unrelated to what the audience sees on the screen. The text itself is seen onstage, while

the content of the words remains in the Kopftheater. Wirth's statement applies to the

staging of the Scherzo as much as to the other four acts, for the stage images (here the

film images of stage images) and the verbal images remain separated.

Wirth, "Heiner Miiller and Robert Wilson: An Unlikely Convergence," 216.

137
 In interviews, Wilson emphasizes this non-interaction of his "theater pictures" and

the play text, claiming that "so often what we see in the theatre is merely decoration,

superfluous, unnecessary. In my theater, I try to make what we see as important as what

we hear, and it's part of the book as well as being text, the audial program." 229 He claims

here to attempt to even out the influence of the images and the influence of the words,

making each as consequential as the other. By avoiding the "doubling of the text,"

Wilson tries to prevent the visual from being dependent on the verbal, hoping that

without such dependence the imagistic elements and the textual elements will exert

equal effect.

At Wilson's far end of the spectrum, for image to avoid being mere illustration or

repetition, it must have nothing to do with the text. This extreme interpretation allows

no middle ground/no place where both image and text can reflect back upon each other

and where images are not simply caused by the text, but can illuminate it or change its

reception. A less extreme reading could acknowledge that the visual images created on

stage in performance "can make a passage in the text ambiguous, polysemic, or devoid

of meaning," as Pavis explains, or likewise, "can resolve a textual contradiction or

indeterminacy." 230 Of course, such images come about as a response to a text that existed

before they did, and so in a sense could be said to be dependent on that text. They then

help to determine the text in its theatrical, performed incarnation, however, and so need

229
Robert Wilson, interview with Aridrzej Wirth, "The Space in the Text: Notes on
Staging Heiner Miiller," Vom Wort zum Bild: Das neue Theater in Deutschland und den USA,
eds. Sigrid Bauschinger and Susan L. Cocalis, (Bern: Francke, 1992): 248.

230
Pavis, "From Text to Performance," 96.

138
not be relegated to a merely subordinate role. It must be noted that Wilson's comment

assumes that the visual elements of a performance are most likely to be derivative of the

verbal elements, and not the other way around. When the two are uncoupled, though,

the impact that each can make separately differs from when they are linked. Given the

frequent distortion and deconstruction of the text's delivery in Wilson's Hamletmaschine,

the visual images may sometimes be, if not more important, at least more immediately

understandable than the verbal elements.

Critical reactions to Wilson's production were split as to whether this uncoupling of

words and images frees the text or diminishes it; strong belief one way or the other

seems to determine a critic's positive or negative reaction to the production as a whole.

Positive reactions tend to rest on the belief that the opportunity for Wilton's

interpretation already lies in Die Hamletmaschine, encouraged by the indeterminacies of

the theater text. Negative reactions point to a lack of richness in the portrayal of the text;

such readings do not deny its indeterminacies, but rather assert that Wilson does not

take hold of them and capitalize upon them fruitfully, and that he instead exploits their

presence as an excuse for his visual extravagances. In response, Wilson sidesteps the

question of content and repeatedly emphasizes the respect he shows for the text. "I

didn't take anything. I even kept the stage directions. [...] I didn't follow them, but I

read them. So that you could imagine them and then you saw something else."231 In this

quotation, as in other passages in the same 1988 interview, Wilson does not differentiate

clearly between reading the play and having the play be read in performance. In one

231
Wilson, "The Space in the Text," 253.

139
sense, he points out that he, like all directors, related to the text first as a reader before

moving on to become director of its performance. As a reader, one creates images, a

Kopftheater, to go with the text. Wilson's reading solution is to allow the same effect,

leaving the realization of the textual images to the audience, who are "free to construct a

fiction other than that chosen by the mise en scene, and to treat the text as an entity

accessible through imagination, through 'the mind's eye,'" to speak again with Pavis.232

The audience members fall short of being able to create the same images as the reader,

however, for they do not have access to the play's textual interpretive cues, such as

dialogue attribution and differing type. Only the Scherzo portion with its scrolling text

truly allows the audience member to act as a reader. None of the rest of the play calls

attention to the original incarnation of the words as text, and in some portions the audial

distortion and broken delivery causes question whether the audience could perceive

where sentences or even individual words began and ended.

Pavis echoes Wilson's sentiments to some extent, asking that if to create a "faithful"

mise en scene is "to repeat, or believe one can repeat, the text on stage, what would be

the point of a production at all?"233 Although Pavis's question complements Wilson's

statements, Pavis then goes on to stress the importance of the encounter of visual and

textual elements, which takes the form of the "transformation and confrontation" of each

element by the other. For much of Die Hamletmaschine, Wilson's images and Miiller's text

seem merely to occur in the same time an space, interacting only by the chance of their

232
Pavis, "From Text to Performance," 95.

233
Pavis, "From Text to Performance," 88.

140
simultaneity. The extent to which these interactions realize "transformation and

confrontation" varies, not always yielding encounters in Pavis's sense of the word. In

discussing the process of adding the text to the pre-rehearsed movements, Wilson says,

"It was very curious what happened, [scratching his head] 'With my bleeding hands I

tear apart the photographs of the men I loved.' It became terrifying. People were

laughing." 234 Certainly there is interaction in the play: in Wilson's example, the contrast

between the stark destructiveness of the words and the mundane head-scratching

gesture of absent-mindedness or puzzlement. Out of this unnatural combination arises

the discomfort that expresses itself in fear and laughter. The discomfort produced,

however, seems to serve no particular purpose in the production. The interaction

highlights nothing more than a surface contrast, arising seemingly from mere chance

and contributing little to the interpretation of the words or of the stage image. There is

certainly no transformation of one by the other, and if in their contrast one finds

confrontation, it is of a momentary sort, given no weight, passed by and forgotten a few

lines later. The "encounter" spoken of by Pavis gives a much greater importance to the

specificity of the images and of the text and to the meaningful results produced by their

particular interface than do the interactions of Wilson's production.

Wilson addresses just this issue when he replies to the charge that the independence

of his images would allow any text to go with the production. He declares that there is a

"fine, careful adjustment of how the gesture works within the text," and that although it

may seem "arbitrary," the importance lies in "the way that either they align, or are

234
Wilson, "The Space in the Text," 251.

141
slightly out of phase, or are very much out of phase. And how they're shifted, the audial

and visual books, and put together."235 It appears that Wilson purposefully misinterprets

such objections, for the criticism speaks to Wilson's refusal to deal with the content of

the text, which his reply pointedly ignores while emphasizing the timing and sound of

the text's delivery. The emphasis on the "audial" book makes it apparent that the text

functions not as a conveyor of meaning, but rather as another sensory element.

Given this postdramatic perspective, the charge could be made that the criticism

willfully misinterprets Wilson, or perhaps better, that it refuses to accept the terms of

Wilson's theater. Perhaps another text could be transmitted in the same w a y , but the

fact remains that the text delivered is Die Hamletmaschine and not another text. Wilson

creates a space in which the words of the text are meant to be heard, be they conveyors

of meaning or be they audial texture. Douglas Langworthy challenges critics to accept

this creation of space as "a liberation from the interpretive imperative, rather than as an

evasion of artistic responsibility."236

Such evasion of interpretation in fact seems to have been a chief goal of Wilson's

production. His refusal to connect image to words or to deal with the content of the text

deliberately avoids creating the meaningful "encounters" that Pavis seeks. Miiller

himself praised Wilson's disavowal of interpretation:

Da ist ein Text, und der wird abgeliefert, aber nicht bewertet und nicht gefarbt

235
Wilson, "The Space in the Text," 251-2.

^ D o u g l a s Langworthy, "Listen to the Pictures - Robert Wilson and German Theater

Criticism," Theater 23.1 (1992): 38.

142
 und nicht interpretiert. Er ist da. Genauso ist ein Bild da, und das Bild wird auch

nieht interpretiert, es ist erstmal da. [...] Die Interpretation ist die Arbeit des

Zuschauers, die darf nicht auf der Biihne stattfinden. Dem Zuschauer darf diese

Arbeit nicht abgenommen werden. (X 361-2)

Muller reinforces Wilson's attempt to present words and images as separate but equal

elements, comparing the two directly without seeming to take note of the different

issues inherent to each. That question aside, Miiller's characterization of the text as

"nicht bewertet und nicht gefarbt" seems inaccurate, given the extremes to which parts

of it are deconstructed in speaking, with sentences divided up and words distorted,

while other parts are delivered more or less "normally." Even if such differences suggest

no correlative meanings, they nevertheless change the way in which the Various parts of

the text are received. To suggest that Wilson does not interpret seems naive, for the

existence of a performance at all is already an interpretation of or at the very least an

addition to what was before only a text. The repetition of movement, the occasional

seemingly chance interaction between the image and the content of the text, the

emphasis on the viewer - all of these elements together, in a single production, cannot

help but to present themselves as an interpretation, however fragmented it may be. The

very insistence on non-interpretation itself becomes an interpretation.

Die Hatnletmaschine as "audial track"

Wilson's reference to the Hamletmaschine text as the "audial track" of his production

finds its counterpart in adaptations that explicitly deal with the text on the audial level:

143
in radio play and opera adaptations. 237 Of the two genres, Wilson's production seems

most immediately comparable to opera, with their shared reliance on visual spectacle

and the stylization of the delivery of the text (its jagged and deconstructed delivery in

Wilson, and its setting to music in opera). Both opera and Wilson's theater also contend

with speculation about the secondary status of the text/libretto in comparison to other

elements of the performance. In the 1987 opera adaptation of Die Hamletmaschine by

Wolfgang Rihm, the status of the text becomes a particularly pressing question, with

Rihm's composition at times so directly responding to Miiller's words that the two seem

to compete. Radio plays have the distinction of largely avoiding the doubling of the text

that Wilson so criticizes. Lacking a visual element, the only avenues in a radio play for a

doubling of the text would lie in illustrative sound effects. With a predominantly non-

narrative text, the opportunities for illustration of Die Hamletmaschine are likely fewer in

number than for a more traditional play.238

By the time Heinrich Vormweg speculated in 1982 that the radio play might be the

best genre for exploring Miiller's language (see p. 36,) Miiller had already directed his

237
Unsurprisingly/the same texts from Miiller's oeuvre that have most often been
adapted for radio have also been the inspiration for the most musical compositions.
Verkommenes lifer, Bildbeschreibung, and parts of Der Auftrag have been particularly
popular.

238
The oportunity would still exist for illustration, of course, and that the band does not
take it up is remarked upon by one reviewer: "Every word of the play is here; another
voice recites the directions. When Ophelia laughs on the page, it's read out but no laugh
proceeds." Were the direction to be read in addition to a laugh, the radio adaptation
would be illustrating the text. Walt Mundkowsky, "Einstiirzende Neubauten's Die
Hamletmaschine," rev. of Die Hamletmaschine, by Einstiirzende Neubauten, La Folia Online
Music Review June 2004. 9 January 2009. <http://www.lafolia.com/search.html>.

144
own radio version of Die Hamletmaschine with Harun Farocki five years before, an

adaptation whose first broadcast predates the stage premiere of the play by eight

months.239 Miiller did no adaptation of the text for the radio beyond dividing it into four

parts (including the didascalia), one of which he himself took in the production. His

performance is the most remarkable element of this radio version, not only setting the

tone for the other actors in the production with his "betont unkunstliche Diktion, die auf

Rollenidentifikation und erspielte Einfuhlung verzichtet," in the words of Hans-

Burkhard Schlichting, but in so doing, also providing a model of speech for all

productions thereafter that would attempt to present the text orally as text, without

240
psychologizing, personalizing, or identifying with it. So treated/the dialogue in Die

Hamletmaschine — already problematic in that designation, given its largely monological

structure and its failure to portray figures in communication with each other — becomes

flattened, functioning in the same capacity as the non-dialogical portions of the text. This

presentation of text favors the blocks of prose or verse, often unattributed, that make up

a large portion of Miiller's theater texts following Die Hamletmaschine. So treated, the

dialogue and didascalia in Die Hamletmaschine become ever less differentiate; the text's

similarities to those subsequent non-dialogical texts are emphasized and its function as a

multi-vocal meditation is brought to the fore.

239
Die Hamletmaschine, dir. Heiner Miiller and Harun Farocki, perf. Hildegard Schmahl,
Heiher Miiller, Ulrich Pleitgen and Otto Sander, 5 March 1978.

240
Hans Burkhard Schlichting, "Horspielarbeit," Heiner Miiller Handbuch. Leben - Werk -
Wirkung., eds. Hans-Thies Lehmann and Patrick Primavesi (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2003) 348.
Recordings of Miiller's distinctive voice would later be used in many productions of his
work, including Ginka Tscholokawa's Bildbeschreibung (discussed above, p. 74).

145
The contrast of voices: Einstiirzende Neubauten adaptation

In 1990, following their work with Miiller on the score for his Hamlet/Maschine

production, the band Einstiirzende Neubauten recorded an adaptation of Die

Hamletmaschine for Rundfunk der DDR. In contrast to their earlier Bildbeschreibung

adaptation, in which the band vocalized only a small percentage of Mtiller's text, their

rendering of Hamletmaschine was unremittingly verbal, with the play text dominating the

production. As in the Miiller/Farocki adaptation, all stage directions were retained in

their verbal form, read by the actors in the course of the production. Engaging with Die

Hamletmaschine, writes Blixa Bargeld, reveals "wie komprimiert man einen Text

schreiben kann, in dem den Regieanweisungen eine eigene Bedeutung zukommt.

Regieanweisungen, die man nicht auf einer Biihne umsetzen kann. Das ist alles

Kopftheater."241 Without the stage - and its conventions of stage directions as natural

discourse - the stage directions can retain their particular textuality and their function as

verbal images, while neither undergoing transformation into stage images nor

competing with other stage images.

This Hamletmaschine highlights the varying kinds of text in Mtiller's work not only

by using multiple speakers who employ various voice styles, but also by the use of

electronic processing both of voices and of accompanying non-vocal sounds. Whereas

the band's Bildbeschreibung interpretation explored the dynamics between fragments of

241
Blixa Bargeld, Headcleaner: Text fur Einstiirzende Neubauten/Textfor Collapsing New
Buildings, trans. Matthew Partridge (Berlin: Gestalten, 1997) 254.

146
language and the sound field in which they were uttered, their Hamletmaschine plays

chiefly on the contrast between styles of the different voices that take up different

elements of the text. In the instances where these voices exist in tension with the

accompanying non-vocal sounds, this tension is also set in contrast to other voices'

interactions with the same sounds.

The radio play begins with small pieces of sound spliced together, a high-pitched

metallic-sounding din that, when split up into shards of sound, gives the audial

impression of glass breaking in slow motion. One reviewer suggests that the noise

sounds like a mistracking tape player.242 The effect is somewhat similar to the

discontinuity provided by jump cuts in film: it is clear that all of these small bits of

recording are from the same original sound, but that parts have been eliminated. From

the beginning of the play, then, the manipulation of sound introduces both temporality

and space as non-transparent elements. Time is established as a manipulable element, as

it is accelerated, with parts of the unfolding of the tone left out, rendering it

unrecognizable, while space is rendered inscrutable, without the audial cues of the

natural resonance and decay of sounds over time.243 Without the information about the

size of the space and location of the sound source in it, the radio play is de-spatialized.

The band uses such strategies throughout the production, thrusting the play text into an

abstract realm of sound in which locationality is unknowable and voices can speak as

242
Mundkowsky, "Einstiirzende Neubauten's Die Hamletmaschine."

243
See the chapter "Die Weltbild des Ohres" from Rudolf Arnheim, Rundfunk als
Horkunst (1936; Munchen: Carl Hanser, 1979).

147
pure consciousness, unconnected to space (and, therefore, to bodies).

After less than half a minute, the sound fades into multiple tracks of whispers and

murmurs, also spliced together in a similar manner to the first sounds, but more

disorienting, given the recognizability of phonemes among the jumble. At 0'43", the

noise abruptly gives way to a voice, as Muller's text makes its first entrance with a male

voice whispering, "Eins. Familienalbum." The voice is processed with a high level of

dynamic range compression, a technique that reduces the volume range of the

recording.244 In this instance, the process keeps the loud parts of the utterance loud while

making the quiet parts loud too, which also makes the incidental sibilance prominent.

The effect is that of an extremely loud foreground whisper, which, in combination with

the lack of reverb and the sudden full-volume use of both stereo channels, gives the

strong impression of the utterance taking place inside the listener's head.245 All five of

the act numbers and headings are processed in this way, each of them occurring

abruptly, with no pause between the beginning of the utterance and whatever sounds

244
For more extensive explanation of compression, see Michael Cooper, "The Big
Squeeze," Electronic Musician 17.2 (2001).

245
Michael Chion calls this kind of sound - dead, internal, without reverb - the "I-
voice." In film the use of this voice creates identification between the viewer and the
speaker; "it is likely to be at once the voice the spectator internalizes as his or her own.
This same sound quality in a purely audial medium produces an analogous
identificaiton with the speaker. Michael Chion, Audio-vision: Sound on Screen, trans.
Claudia Gorbman (1990; New York: Columbia UP, 1994) 79-80.

148
precede it—cuts one critic characterized as "schizoid."246 The movement seems to

happen not within a sonic landscape, but within the listener's head.

After a moment of the spliced whispering and murmuring tracks again, a male

voice takes up the first lines of the play - "Ich war Hamlet" - in an exaggeratedly

declamatory style. The whispering and murmuring sounds never leave, but become

louder in the pauses in between the lines, as if a crowd were listening and responding to

the voice. After the line "im Rucken die Ruinen von Europa," a low, reverberating piano

tone is sounded, a note that then repeats in the pause following each phrase or sentence,

sometimes played simultaneously with a metallic-sounding synthesizer stab. Once the

capitalized text is reached, the background noises fall conspicuously silent, and a second

male voice delivers the lines in a singsong voice. With the subsequent return to the

normally written text declaimed by the first voice, the piano note becomes more

rhythmic, each line now followed by a double striking of the note: "...das Spalier der

Bevolkerung, [dun-dun.] Werk seiner Staatskunst [dun-dun.]" Occasionally the piano

note is echoed by two percussion samples with gated reverb, a processing technique that

gives to a sound the richness it would have in a highly reverberative space, while

limiting the duration of the sound, thus losing the continued resonance and decay of the

sound. The effect yields an intense, forceful sound, while again de-spatializing the

environment in which the sound occurs.

The piano tones play on top of the very ends of the speaker's lines, a precise timing

that provides the sense that the speaker is always almost behind the rhythm. The piano

246
Mundkowsky, "Einsturzende Neubauten's Die Hamletmaschine."

149
seems to hurry the speaker, accelerating the pace of his delivery, though his speech does

not actually get faster over the course of Act One. This effect alternates with the text

passages in all capital letters, whose unhurried, conversational delivery contrasts with

the tension and stylization of the other voice. The sonic spareness of these capitalized

passages, with no background sounds, serves to highlight them, as though one were for

a-moment stepping out of the lurching, driving forward movement of the rest of the text.

Starting after the "STURZ VON EINER BIERBANK" passage and until the end of

Act 1, the background noises to the declamatory voice increase, intensifying the

hurrying effect and lending a general sense of impending chaos. The reviewer who

claims that these background elements "circulate on various tasks, but avoid interacting

with the rhythms of Hamlet's speech" fails to note the methodical addition of each new

element at turning points in the text/the opposition provided by their non-interaction

being exactly the point.247 With the beginning of the "Auftritt Horatio" text, a sine wave

with a slow attack, processed with ring modulation and reverb, provides a siren-like

tone. With the final passage, beginning with "Jetzt binde ich dir die Hande auf den

Rxicken," an unidentifiable, highly processed sound sample is added to the confusion,

manipulated such that it sounds like an otherworldly scream. With the addition of

xylophone-like percussion, bell tones, and an oscillating sound, the background grows

increasingly louder, providing ever more tension with the steady declamation of the

text, until a sudden silence at the completion of the text of Act One.

Mundkowsky, "Einstiirzende Neubauten's Die Hamletmaschine."

150
 Act Two begins with the whispered, compressed announcement of the act number

and heading. The italicized stage directions that follow it - the first in the play - are read

by Heiner Muller, with his characteristically monotone delivery. The tone of the

recording is kept flat, foregrounded and with no resonance that would suggest a

position in space. Muller reads all of the stage directions in the play, providing yet

another recognizably different voice to correspond to a differentiation of text on the

page. To this point, the voices include the male announcer of the act numbers and

headings, the male declaimer of the normal text of Act One, the male voice of the

capitalized portions within Act One, and Miiller's voice for the stage directions.248 In Act

Two, they are joined by a female voice, performing the OPHELIA (CHOR/HAMLET)

lines.

After Miiller's reading of the stage direction, a humming undertone begins, a

looped vocal sample played at different pitches, giving the impression of a chorus of

human voices. A synthesizer string sound with echo provides a pulsation on top of the

humming, providing an overall sonic environment that is clearly electronically

produced, yet reminiscent of organic sounds, such as blood in the veins or a constant

flow of water.249 This environment is not without menace, yet it is not as openly

aggressive as the synthesizer stabs of Act One. When the female voice enters with her

248
The act numbers and headings may be presented by the same male voice as the
capitalized text; it is difficult to tell from the recording. Because the level of processing
differs between the voices for the two types of text, however, I consider is as two
different voices for the purposes of this analysis.

249
The effect is not dissimiliar to that of the bassline used by Einsturzende Neubauten in
their Bildbeschreibung. See p. 82.

151
first lines - "Ich bin Ophelia" -, their delivery is calm and unrushed. She delivers the

words in rhythm with the underlying sounds, speaking with the environment rather

than against it. The single instance of capitalized text in the act — "AUF DEN LIPPEN

SCHNEE" - is not delivered by a different voice, but rather by the same female voice,

processed with a high level of echo. As the female voice continues, her words become

more emphatically in sync with the rhythm of the accompanying sounds. Snippets of the

broken glass noises from the start of the play begin to recur periodically, enmeshed in

the pulsating carpet of sound that underlies the speech. These sounds connect the

Ophelia speech to the beginning of the play: they did not come out of nowhere, but were

already present, already part of the sonic environment of the play from the beginning.

After the speech of Act Two is finished, the background builds for a few moments

to another instantaneous cut, dropping to nothing as the whispered act number

interrupts its progression. With its abundance of stage directions, Act Three showcases

Miiller's dry delivery. The words have no accompaniment, and their slow delivery

provides the highest possible contrast to the interactions of the Hamlet voice and the

Ophelia voice with their sonic environments. Their straight, affectless tone lends an air

of objectivity, like the report of a detached observer or the observations of a

disinterested god.

In Act Four, with the return of the male voices and the sounds from the first act, the

struggle of the voice against and within the structure of other sounds begins anew. With

the beginning of the text attributed to the HAMLETDARSTELLER, another, more intimate

male voice joins the declamatory one, sometimes reading along with it. With the arrival

152
of the passage in which each sentence changes perspective (beginning in each instance

with "Ich"), the two voices alternate with each line. They read together from the line

"Mein Drama hat nicht stattgefunden" (IV 551), continuing in unison. With the

beginning of the associative verse passages, the twice-struck piano tones from Act One

recur. In contrast to their first appearance, however, they now work together with the

Hamlet actor's words, underlining and emphasizing them. The double strike of the

piano accompanies the beginning of each line, and accentuates selected two-syllable

words: E-kel. Ar-mut. Having finally harnessed the driving power of the rhythm, the

Hamlet voice hurtles through the text with an increased urgency, as the narration of the

uprising takes on two perspectives and then evolves into the associative chaos and

existential musings. Whether the Hamlet actor has adjusted himself to his environment

or the sonic accompaniment has been won over to his support, the two now work

together, unified in their insistent presentation.

While the male voice struggles in the first act, only to find its rhythm in act four, the

voice of Ophelia shows no development from act two to the final act. If anything, the

background pulsation comes much more to the fore in this final act than it previously

had, in the longer pauses between the sentences of an unwavering, deliberate, clear-

voiced Ophelia. The end of the play comes suddenly, as the rich texture of Ophelia's

sonic environment gives way abruptly to the location-less, emotionless intonation of the

final stage direction.

The contrasts among these three voices provide the chief interpretive interest of the

production. In the Hamlet sections, the male voice strives for expression within a

153
structure that in turn oppresses him and reinforces him. It remains unclear whether he

adjusts himself (or his multiple selves) to his environment, finding the rhythm of his

expression, or whether the sonic accompaniment has come into sync with him. In the

Ophelia sections, the female voice speaks in harmony with the field of sound, unvarying

in her tempo and volume. Her lone, resolute voice remains unaccompanied by other

humans in the sonic landscape. Were these the only two voices, this adaptation would

seem to highlight merely the split between male and female perspectives, between

striving and resignation, between tension and harmony. The presence of Miiller's voice,

however, dominating the monolithic center of the play (the Scherzo) and providing the

anticlimactic final words, brings a counterweight to both figures with its seeming lack of

any perspective. The foregrounding of this voice, as well as of the voices reading the act

headings and the capitalized texts, creates a narrative framework outside of space, a

disembodied speaking that does not suggest the corporeal presence of a speaker. In

contrast, the Hamlet voice and the Ophelia voice are each figured as the expressions of a

psyche that is shaped by its interactions with an acoustic - and therefore physical -

environment.

Die Hamletmaschine as opera

In an opera adaptation of Die Hamletmaschine, the question of textuality takes on

additional complications. In opera, the question of how to deal with the "text" is

different than in the theater, for it is unclear what is to be considered the text. Is it the

libretto (i.e., for a Hamletmaschine opera, Miiller's words)? Or is the music, fruit of the

154
composer's work, the "text" to be analyzed and interpreted? And how do the two relate

to one another? Speaking to the difficulty of the term 'text' in opera, David Levin points

out that in addition to the libretto, the word 'text' can also refer to "the music, the stage

directions, and the preparation; presentation, and reception of the work."250 Opera

criticism tends to focus solely on the music, under the assumption that opera is chiefly a

musical—and therefore non-linguistic—form.

Much of the criticism of Wolfgang Rihm's opera Die Hamletmaschine deviates from

this norm. Unlike many operas, the libretto of Rihm's Hamletmaschine is not an

adaptation of the content of a pre-existing tale (such as Henze's Konig Hirsch) or work of

literature (such as Britten's Turn of the Screw), but rather is comprised of Miiller's

original text. The libretto brings value not in its adapted characters or plotlines, but in

the language itself. The resultantly greater focus on this language, however, intensifies

the tension that Levin indicates in his claim that rather than "opera being a site where

multiple discourses coexist happily, [...] the split between words and music presents us

with competing modes of complicated referentiality."251 Critical reception of Rihm's

work demonstrates the confusion arising from such competition. The importance

granted the words (Miiller's text) varies among opera critics, with a resulting

uncertainty whether the music interprets the libretto, or the libretto supports the music.

Any interaction between the verbal images in the libretto and the stage images created

250
David J. Levin, "Introduction," Opera Through Other Eyes, ed. David J. Levin (Stanford:
Stanford UP, 1993) 5.

251
Levin, "Introduction," 10.

155
in performance remains a question of secondary importance to the libretto-music

relationship.

Of the several musical treatments of Die Hamletmaschine, Rihm's opera is by far the

most well known, with widely-reviewed performances in Mannheim, Freiburg, and

Hamburg. Luca Lombardi set the monologues of Act 2 and Act 5 in his 1982 Ophelia-

Fragmente for soprano and piano, and Ruth Zechlin took the play as inspiration for her

Szenische Kammermusiknach Heiner Mullers "Hamletmaschine" tor five instruments in

1991. Although Greek composer Georges Aperghis received critical acclaim for the Ictus

Ensemble recording of his 1999 oratorio Die Hamletmaschine, the work has been

performed neither as often nor in such high-profile productions as Rihm's opera.252

252
Georges Aperghis, Die Hamletmaschine-Oratorio, CD, performed by Ictus and SWR
Vokalensemble Stuttgart, Festival Eclat, Theaterhaus Stuttgart, 8 Feb. 2001, Cypres, 2001.
One performance of note of the Aperghis Hamletmaschine Oratorio was a part of the
MUSICA2000 Festival in Strasbourg, which also included performances of Rihm's
Hamletmaschine opera and Pascal Dusapin's Medeamaterial, based on the middle section
of Miiller's play Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten. (A. von
Zimmerlin, "Kreatives Feuer," Neue Zurcher Zeitung 26 September 2000, sec. «Musica»
2000 in Strassburg.)
In contrast to Rihm, Aperghis speaks directly to the question of the nature of Miiller's
text: "Isn't it a tragic poem, rather than a theatrical text per se? [...] It has a capacity for
abstraction and at the same time talks about real things." This conception of the text
leads Aperghis to a comparatively restrained scoring. "No story is being told," he
explained to an interviewer, "it's like a hallucination." (Georges Aperghis, interview
with Frank Madlener, "In the beginning was the text. Tragedy Shakespeare, Miiller,"
trans. Gabrielle Leyden, booklet accompanying Die Hamletmaschine-Oratorio, CD
(Cypres, 2001) 24-5.)
Aperghis, like Rihm, divides the Hamlet role, giving it to two baritones. They, along
with Ophelia, sing in French, while a chorus sings in German. Miiller's text is at times
sung emotionlessly - one reviewer describes the "dispassionate newscaster's patter" of
the Scherzo - but obvious care is taken that the words of Miiller's text remain markedly
audible throughout the work. (Grant Chu Covell, "Georges Aperghis and Die

156
Rihm as composer

As a composer Wolfgang Rihm is known for his eclecticism. Early in his career, after

studying with Karlheirtz Stockhausen, Klaus Huber, and Wolfgang Former,253 Rihm

rebelled against the experiments of Stockhausen's generation, turning instead to

emotional styles of composition that recall Expressionism.254 While Rihm's early

compositions from the mid-1970s were categorized as neo-Romantic with Expressionist

elements, his work since then has often defied categorization, due to the breadth of its

influences and styles. Nevertheless, Rihm still claims the label of a "Romantic composer"

for himself, though in a rather idiosyncratic use of that categorization, claiming to be a

Romantic in the mode of Luigi Nono or Morton Feldman—two 20th-century composers

not particularly known for their affinity to that style.255 Critic John Rockwell explained

Rihm's self-characterization thus: "[Rihm] is a Romantic not because his music sounds

like that of Schumann or anyone else, but because of his emotional extremism and his

refusal to be bound by any compositional system."256 This "refusal to be bound" has

Hamletmaschine," rev. of Die Hamletmaschine-Oratorio, by Georges Aperghis, perf. Ictus,

La Folia Online Music Review June 2004.)

253
Severine Neff, "Wolfgan Rihm, Die Hamletmaschine and Oedipus: Musiktheater," Notes
47.1 (1990): 216.

254
"Wolfgang Rihm," die tageszeitung 20 November 1998.

255
Wolfgang Rihm, qtd. in John Rockwell, "A Composer Eludes the Pigeonhole," The
New York Times 12 December 1987, Late City Final ed.

256
Rockwell, "A Composer Eludes the Pigeonhole."

157
been praised by some critics - "thrilling, fresh, and full of striking ideas" 257 - but

dismissed as facile pastiche by others, a "willful indirection" that continually gives the

appearance of building toward something, only then to take up another, seemingly just

as meaningless direction.258 The broad sphere from which Rihm draws his influences

includes not only compositional styles, but also the textual material he takes as

inspiration for his compositions. He has written major works around texts by J.M.R.

Lenz, Georg Buchner, Sophocles, and Antonin Artaud, among others, as well as dozens

of shorter pieces setting the texts of authors ranging from ancient times to the present.259

In his use of philosophical, mystical, hermetic, and above all, highly theatrical textual

material, Rihm aspires to a like theatricality for his own compositions, especially for his

operas. In Matthias Roth's words, Rihm writes "in Bewufiter Abgrenzung zum

257
Andrew Clements, "Modern Operas Built to Last," Financial Times 18 January 1992.

258
Jeremy Eichler, "Concert With a Secret Thread, Well Kept," Review of New York
Philharmonic, New York Times 12 March 2005.

259
Information on the range of Rihm's compositions from Rihm's publisher, Universal
Edition. Universal Edition. International Musik- und Biihnenverlag, ed. Markus
Hammerschmid, Vienna, 31 March 2009 <www.universaledition.com>.
Other writers whose texts Rihm has used in his compositions include Ludwig Achim
von Arnim, Gottfried Benn, William Blake, Clemens von Brentano, Paul Celan, Nikolaus
Cusanus, Leonardo DaVanci, Meister Eckhart, Paul Fleming, Ferdinand Freiligrath,
Theodor Fontane, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Durs Grunbein, Peter Handke, Peter
Hartling, Heinrich Heine, Georg Herwegh, Georg Heym, Friedrich Holderlin, Homer,
Horace, Peter Huchel> Heinrich von Kleist, Else Lasker-Schuler, Oscar Loerke, Eduard
Morike, Erich Miihsam, Robert Musil, Friedrich Nietzsche, Novalis, Jean Paul, Pindar,
Rainer Maria Rilke, Arthur Rimbaud, Friedrich Riickert, Nelly Sachs, Friedrich Schiller,
August Stramm, Botho Straufi, Monique Thonel Georg Trakl, and Wolf Wondratschek.
The length and variety of this list, even for a very prolific composer, leads critics to claim
that Rihm externalizes his inspiration to an unusual degree. Severine Neff calls him a
"composer-machine."

158
herkommlichen Begriff der Oper" and creates a Musiktheater "dessert Ebene zwar das

Theater, dessen Ort aber die Musik ist"260 His operas often bear subtitles indicating this

fraught relationship to opera, declaring themselves rather "Musiktheater" or, as in the

case of his compositions after Artaud, "Versuch eines Theaters."

Rihm's Hamletmaschine opera

Rihm's Hamletmaschine begins with Miiller's unaccompanied text, spoken by the

first of the three Hamlets who populate the opera.261 The orchestra first enters several

lines in, along with Hamlet II, who begins the first lines anew, echoing Hamlet I.

Punctuative percussion, tremolos in the violins, and atonal, rhythmic bursts in the winds

and brass characterize much of the first act, and much of the opera as a whole. With the

text "I AM GOOD HAMLET GI'ME A CAUSE FOR GRIEF," however, the aggressive

and unpredictable scoring gives way to a slower Baroque melody, with an oboe

obbligato and triadic progressions characterized by Severine Neff as "a cheap imitation

of Bach or Handel." With this gesture, she claims, "the deconstruction is now complete:

there is no Shakespearean character, plot, or diction, no great German music."262 That is

to say, Rihm takes up musically what Miiller had begun textually. The Baroque

260
Matthias Roth, "Mein Gehirn ist eine Narbe," rev. of Die Hamletmaschine, opera by
Wolfgang Rihm, Mannheim, Das Orchester 35 (June 1987): 650.

26i Wolfgang Rihm, Die Hamletmaschine, CD, Nationaltheater Mannheim, 25 and 27

March 1987, Wergo, 1987. All of my own descriptions of the music itself refer to this
recording of the premiere in Mannheim.

262
Neff, "Review," 216.

159
connection is undoubtedly intentional on Rihm's part, given the direction "Largo,

handelhaft" in the score.263 The music, like the verbal text it accompanies, is an

assemblage of citations both direct and oblique, some of which may be apparent to the

audience, while others remain incommunicable. Matthias Roth points out a particular

instance of the latter in the direction "beklemmt." This direction - appearing in

quotation marks in the score - cites Beethoven's string quartet op. 130, which has the

same specification, and is famous for the question it presents of how to interpret the

direction musically.264 Critics have noted other moments of musical citation (or, for the

less charitable, imitation) throughout Rihm's composition, including reference to Verdi,

Schonberg, Richard Strauss, Stockhausen, Nono, Penderecki, and Donatoni.265

Over the course of the five act opera, Miiller's text is treated in varying ways,

sometimes delivered clearly, sometimes shrieked or murmured incomprehensibly,

recalling the most textually distorted portions of Wilson's staging. Words are broken up

into syllables, repeated until they lose their meaning and become percussive elements.266

Singers pass words among themselves, as one picks up the tone from another in the

263 Wolfgang Rihm, Die Hamletmaschine. Musiktheater infiinfTeilen, (Vienna: Universal

Edition, 1987) 17.

264
Roth, "Mein Gehirn ist eine Narbe," 650-1.

265
Roth, "Mein Gehirn ist eine Narbe," 650.; Rolf Fath, "Opera in Freiburg," rev. of Die
Hamletmaschine, opera by Wolfgang Rihm, Freiburg, Opera 38.10 (1987).; Imre Fabian,
"Die Flucht in publikumsferne Isolation," rev. of Die Hamletmaschine, opera by Wolfgang
Rihm, Mannheim, Opernwelt 28.5 (1987): 35.

266
Rihm quite favors this device, using it often in his text settings. It also appears
prominently in Oedipus: Musiktheater.

160
middle of a syllable; occasionally a tone is passed from the orchestra to a singer, who

then turns it into a word. The rhythmic percussion that accompanies Ophelia's striptease

in Act 3 transforms into rapid-fire snare drum sextuplets by the end of the act,

anticipating not only revolutionary violence invoked in the text of Act 4, but also the

musical climax of the act, with the sentence "Ich will eine Maschine sein." In an echo of

the earlier percussion that Neff calls a "prime example of Rihm's interchange between

vocal and instrumental writing," Hamlet III is to sing the sentence with twelve

fortissimo glottal stops on each note/word. 267 As the voice emulates the instruments that

(perhaps) emulate gunfire, the reflections multiply and the theme cannot be said to
i

belong to or originate in any one mode.

This use of language - as an entity that does not belong to a single speaker, or even

exclusively to humans - would seem to indicate a concept of language in Rihm's scoring

similar to that in Muller's Hamletmaschine, in which language is not attached to

individual psyches as personal expression, but rather is more free-floating. Rihm,

sounding much like Wilson, claims, "es ist nicht meine Sache, Miiller zu erklaren. Der

Text, sein Text, steht fur sich und ruft um sich hervor, worauf er steht. Und meine Musik

ist meine Musik."268 The two elements, text and music, are to remain separate, self-

267
Neff, "Review," 217. Neff adds that these passages are also "good examples of how to
ruin a singer's voice."

268 Wolfgang Rihm, "Gangarten, Hamletmaschine, Brief an P.O.," Explosion of a Memory.

Heiner Miiller DDR: Ein Arbeitsbuch, ed. Wolfgang Storch (Berlin: Hentrich, 1988) 78.
Rihm also recalls Wilson in his comparison of certain kinds of language to physical
objects: "I like to think of my work as comparable to the diction of speech. Right now
I'm interested in sculptural music - music that a listener can grasp, like a malleable

161
sufficient components of the opera. Again, as with Wilson's staging of Die

Hamletmaschine, to the extent that this utter separation is possible/the independence of

the two elements easily comes to be interpreted as competition. If anything, this

competition is emphasized and made more complex by Rihm's adaptation. While

Wilson claims to present simultaneously an audial/verbal track and a visual/spatial

track, the addition of music to the verbal text adds a second audial(/musical) track, while

also musicalizing the audial/verbal track.

In his adaptation of Miiller's Hamletmaschine text and in his scoring, Rihm, like

Wilson, also must inevitably make some dramaturgical decisions about the presentation

of Miiller's work— in this case, for the practical reason that he must score the sung text

for certain voices. The most evident of these interpretations is the division of the Hamlet

role into three parts. The score specifies that "Hamlet ist I. ein alter Schauspieler / II. ein

Schauspieler, wie Hamlet / III. ein Sanger (Bariton)."269 These three Hamlets work both

with and against each other, now echoing and intensifying each other's words, now

interrupting and contradicting each other. Rihm inserts his own construal of Ophelia's

speeches, identifying Act 2 as "ein Monodrama" and Act 4 as "eine Dammerung." His

interpretation of Act 3 retains the stage directions as such, leaving only the short

exchange of dialogue as sung lines and most of the act as instrumental music only.

object." (Rockwell, "A Composer Eludes the Pigeonhole.") Whereas Wilson compared
Miiller's language to a rock (cf. p. 80) - an unmoving physical object - Rihm portrays his
music to a workable, shapeable object, as well as to speech.

269
Rihm, Die Hamletmaschine. Musiktheater infiinfTeilen, unpaginated front matter.

162
 Furthermore, Rihm adds his own stage directions to the score, showing a clear

conception of the visual appearance of the stage at almost all points throughout the

opera. He supplements Muller's directions, making them explicit and reading them

literally in every instance. Actions suggested in the dialogue of the text are also made

into explicit directions, such as the appearance of the ghost of Hamlet's father in Act 1

and the entrance in Act 4 of a man in a poorly fitting suit on the balcony of a

government building, as is narrated in the account of the uprising. Rihm invents stage

events where Muller's text specifies none, such as walls rising from the floor around

Hamlet, literalizing his declaration that "Danemark ist ein Gefangnis, zwischen uns

wachst eine Wand." The lighting, too, has been conceived by Rihm and written into the

score. He envisages Act 2 as "eine Folge von Ophelia—Schlaglichtern, Hell—Dunkel—

Gitter," and includes lighting cues throughout the act, many of which call for sudden

darkness or sudden blinding light. The lighting, like much of the rest of the added

directions, functions through extremity, unpredictability, and sudden contrast; it seems

that the jagged melodic lines employed throughout the opera m a y not be solely to blame

for critics' complaints that it is "exhausting" and "angstrengend." Rihm's added

directions also reveal much identity play that he reads into the text, as the ghost of

Hamlet's father (directed to appear on stage at the line "Was willst du von mir") is

revealed to be Hamlet I, and one of the men in lab coats in Act 5 turns out to be Hamlet

III.270

270
"Das 'Gespenst' erscheint, unspektakular" - "zieht Arztkittel aus, 'entpuppt' sich als
Hamlet III." Rihm, Die Hamletmaschine. Musiktheater in fiinf Teilen, 23, 225.

163
Rihm's opera on stage: the critics in confusion

The world premiere production in Mannheim was characterized by an abundance

of stage images, which seem to have followed faithfully the dictates of Rihm's score.

Few reviews failed to mention the walls that grew from the floor and became ever more

menacing until the final moment of their closing in on Ophelia. Critics varied wildly

both in their interpretation of the stage images' relationship to Miiller's text and in their

assessment of these images' efficacy overall as a part of the staging. While Roth found

that the staging "entging der Gefahr, die Bilderflut, die von Text und Musik ausgeht, in

der szenischen Realisierung ins Sichthare zu erweitern,"271 Fath referred to the "general

rejection of the production by Friedrich Meyer-Oertel, who interpreted the associative

character of Miiller's text by a bewildering excess of visual imagery."272 A review by

Imre Fabian conveyed general puzzlement, filling his entire review with a list of various

things heard in the music and that appeared on stage over the course of the opera. The

sole evaluation offered by the review notes, "Die Auffiihrung zeugte von der hohen

Leistungsfahigkeit des Hauses." 273 This observation was typical in tone: critics were not

271
Fabian, "Die Flucht in publikumsferne Isolation," 35. Roth, "Mein Gehirn ist eine
Narbe," 651.

272
Rolf Fath, "Germany: Rihm Premiere," rev. of Die Hamletmaschine, opera by Wolfgang
Rihm, Mannheim, Opera 38.7 (1987): 803.

273
Fabian, "Die Flucht in publikumsferne Isolation," 35.

164
sure what they had seen or how to categorize it, but could say with certainty that the

performers had achieved something—whatever it was.

The second stage production of Rihm's Hamletmaschine, in Freiburg a few months

later, was widely compared to the Mannheim premiere. Critics' similarly variable

judgments in this case, however, reveal a deeper ambivalence about the role of the

libretto - the verbal text - in opera. Heinz Koch began his review by specifying that

although his fellow Opernwelt reviewer Fabian had hated the Mannheim premiere, he

had loved it, and found its images elucidating and productive. The Freiburg staging, in

contrast, suffered from a lack of clear stage images, claimed Koch, "als habe [die

Inszenierung] eine panische Angst zu zeigen, was ohnehin schon referiert wird." 274

While he admitted that Rihm's music may suffer from excesses - calling it "die

Nervenmusik der Extremsituationen" - Koch found that its performance by the

ensemble in Freiburg smoothed out this immoderation, lending a beneficial restraint to

the composition. It was "eine Interpretation, die Rihm aufdroselte," with "Musik, die

sich in den Worten einnistet, sich ins Spiel einbohrt."275 Rolf Fath, on the other hand,

found the smaller Freiburg theater "musically out of its depth," though with a curious

result:

At least [conductor Gerhard Markson's] meagre orchestra imparted the

maximum transparency and clarity to the text. Thus Heiner Muller's

274
Heinz W. Koch, "Auskunftsverweigerung," rev. of Die Hamletmaschine, opera by
Wolfgang Rihm, Freiburg, Opernwelt 28.7 (1987): 40.

275
Koch, "Auskunftsverweigerung," 40.

165
 apocalyptically arcane language, which previously had been mere sound,

became in Freiburg an integral part of this 'music theatre in five parts'. 276

Whereas Koch deemed the music well performed - a part of that success lying in the

way it worked with the verbal elements - Fath found that the failure of the musical

element of the performance contributed to its comparatively greater success at

presenting Muller's words. Only as a result of the orchestra's insufficiency do the words

move into a place of accidental prominence, indeed, to a place where it is possible to

appreciate them as words at all rather than as mere sound, according to Fath. In their

opposite assessments, the two critics reveal a fundamental disagreement about the role

that Muller's text should play in the opera. Is it an element secondary to Rihm's music,

its rich language and imagery an element of interest only as a non-integral extra? Or

does the music serve to interpret the text, which, after all, was the inspiration for the

composition? Koch specifies that while the Mannheim production followed Rihm's stage

direction, yielding "starke, dem Verstandnis aufhelfende Bilder," the Freiburg

production "verfahrt so, als habe man es mit Miillers Vorlage zu tun (und den Text

absolut prasent) und setzt zu einer Paraphrase an, die das hier nun wirklich

hilfsbediirftige Publikum in seiner Dechiffriernot allein lafit."277 Fath again holds the

polar opposite opinion, claiming that the stage images in this production "made for

good theatre, and its vivid explicitness was certainly helpful to an unprepared

276
Fath, "Opera in Freiburg," 1196.

277
Koch, "Auskunftsverweigerung," 40.

166
audience." 278 Koch's Dechiffriernot is nowhere to be seen in Fath's reading. The two critics

clearly have different ideas of what it would mean for the opera to be 'explicit' or 'clear';

they share no common conception of the functions of the stage images, Miiller's text,

and Rihm's music or of how these elements relate to each other.

The difference between these two critics' readings of the Freiburg production may

ultimately be reduced to the importance they grant narrative in opera, an issue that also

comes to the fore in the two major reviews of the Hamburg production. Under the

direction of John Dew, in Hamburg Rihm's opera was shaped into a narrative, telling the

tale of a survivor of World War II who must face in turn his fascist past, his current

situation in divided Germany, and his susceptibility to consumerism, to which he

passively succumbs in the end. The production portrayed each element of this narrative

with illustrative stage images, including appearances by Hitler and Stalin, the building

of the Berlin Wall, and a ubiquity of televisions.279 Gerhart Asche of Opernwelt praised

the pure clarity of Dew's vision, finding its simplification of Miiller's text a heroic, if

ultimately fruitless effort to save an opera doomed by its choice of text. The critic's

scathing descriptions of the "Erzahlweise" of Miiller's text make clear his disapproval of

this use of a non-narrative libretto. Peter Niklas Wilson on the other hand, writing for

Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, criticized the production for exactly that which Asche

applauded in it. Wilson argued that Miiller's meditations "miissen zu sprechenden

278
Fath, "Opera in Freiburg," 1197.

279
Gerhart Asche, rev. of Die Hamletmaschine, opera by Wolfgang Rihm, Hamburg,
Opernwelt 30.6 (1989): 45.

167
Bildern werden," rather than a story wrangled "aus dem verratselten Prosagesicht, dem

Anti-Stuck par excellence."280 With the straightforwardly intelligible tale of the post-war

German Hamlet,281 wrote Wilson, the production made the combination of Muller's text

and Rihm's composition into "die altmodische emotionale Oper, die er in ihr sehen und

horen wollte."282

The utter lack of consensus among opera critics on the subject of Rihm's

Hamletmaschine has largely to do with differing stances toward the use of Muller's text.

At one extreme lies Asche, who finds Muller's Hamletmaschine text completely

inappropriate for an opera. Critics such as Fath and Wilson, on the other hand, value the

contribution of Muller's text and look for staging and musical interpretation that would

allow the verbal text its own sphere as sound, as language, and as the progenitor of

"sprechende Bilder." It is questionable to what extent such an interpretation would even

be acceptable as "opera" to a critic such as Asche, however, given the conservatism so

evidently present in his conception of the genre. Even less conservative critics have

characterized Rihm's work not necessarily as an opera, but rather - in the words of a

very positive review - "something resembling an opera."283 Rihm acknowledges this

280
Peter Niklas Wilson, "Gnadenlos entratselt," rev. of Die Hamletmaschine, opera by
Wolfgang Rihm, Hamburg, Neue Zeitschrift fiir Musik 150 (June 1989): 27.

281
The three Hamlet figures in this production were dressed as Heiner Miiller, with
slicked back hair, dark-rimmed glasses, and the prerequisite cigar.

282
Wilson, "Gnadenlos entratselt," 28.

283
James Helme Sutcliffe, rev. of Die Hamletmaschine, opera by Wolfgang Rihm,
Hamburg, Opera 40 (August 1989): 977.

168
reality in his designation of the piece as "Musiktheater."

The dangers of musicalization

Within the general tension in opera between libretto and music, the more individual

question remains whether Miiller's text is receptive to adaptation as text set to music.284

Critic Hanno Ehrler argues that neither Die Hamletmaschine nor any of Miiller's other

texts benefit from this kind of conventional musicalization: "Sie lassen sich eben nicht

als klassisches Libretto verwenden, sondern strauben sich gegen eine Verdopplung ihrer

Faktur durch Klang, der sich in den Haken und Osen der Sprache verfangen wiirde." 285

Miiller's texts exist not only as words on a page or as content-carrying vehicles, but also

themselves as sound, with their own exceptionally strong rhythm and cadence that are

difficult to ignore or to work against in vocalizing the text. While Rihm has claimed that

his music and Miiller's text are separate things and operate in separate spheres in his

adaptation of Die Hamletmaschine, the two elements do not always remain separate, as

the sound of the verbal text is used as a sonic element to support the instrumental

scoring—to the detriment of the verbal text, as it is thereby often rendered

incomprehensible. Not only is the understanding of the words lost, but the text's own

tempo and modulation are set aside in favor of those of Rihm's composition.

284
1 leave aside here the admittedly literal and often theatrically unsophisticated and
unsubtle interpretations of Miiller's text built by Rihm into his score. My interest at this
point is more in the relationship of music and verbal text.

285
Hanno Ehrler, "Im rasend vorantriebenden Sprachflufi," Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung2]unel990.

169
 The composer Heiner Goebbels, in his multiple writings on Heiner Miiller,

emphasizes the musicality in Miiller's language, brought about by the structure of

repeated words and sounds and by its rhythm, which arises not only through the words

in the text, but also through silences and things left out. Caesuras suggest themselves in

expected as well as unexpected places, and the distilled quality of the language seems to

require a slower> non-naturalistic delivery. Goebbels notes the danger in acoustic work

of forgetting that Miiller's texts were written for Sprechtheater, warning that the

understanding of the text becomes of secondary importance, resulting in a music that

would be equally well served by texts from other authors.286 Without naming him,

Goebbels strongly implies Rihm as the object of the criticism above, and he elsewhere

explicitly rejects the music of Rihm's Hamletmaschine opera, "weil sie standig mit der

Kraft der Worte konkurriert und imponiert und nicht Platz macht fur die Reflexion."287

In contrast to the presentation of the text in Wilson's production - which Wilson, Miiller

and critics alike described as "creating a space" in which to hear Miiller's text - Rihm's

music edges out Miiller's words in favor of its own drama. The opera becomes an

homage to Miiller and to his text rather than an interpretation of it.

Like the musicality in Miiller's texts, the imagery arises from succinct language,

rather than thorough copious description, which again demands a presentation of this

language that takes into account the particular functioning of its expressiveness.

286
Heiner Goebbels, "Heiner Miiller vertonen?," Heiner Goebbels: Komposition als
Inszenierung, ed. Wolfgang Sandner (Berlin: Henschel, 2002) 57.

287
Goebbels, "Expeditionen in die Textlandschaft," 81.

170
Goebbels describes how Muller's texts "evozieren Bilder und arbeiten mit ihnen nicht

durch atmospharische Textmasse oder Uberwaltigung, sondern durch den knappen

Anstofi, der der Aufnahme des Lesers oder Horers die Richtungen weist, in der

Erfahrungen moglich sind."288 The attempt to highlight vivid words serves only to

double them unproductively. Goebbels warns that just as stage images can often

needlessly double Muller's texts, so too can acoustic work capitulate to the urge to

illustrate, for instance, "besonders martialisch »Bbllutt« und »Schwerttt« start »Blut«

und »Schwert« zu sagen."289 Such words carry their own weight in the text already, not

only in their semantic meanings, but also in the prosody of their common final

consonants, the spareness of which is lost through overemphasis.

As shown above in the discussion of didascalia in Die Hamletmaschine, this play

presents itself largely as text, rather than as a conventional theatrical combination of text

to be spoken and instructions to be carried out. With its verbal images dispersed

throughout both dialogue and stage directions, Die Hamletmaschine is receptive to a

flattenting of textual hierarchies into a single, text-based presentation of its verbal

images. When this presentation occurs audially on stage, the "audial track" (to use

Wilson's term) interacts with the stage images created in performance, with the potential

for competition between verbal images and stage images. In the Einsriirzende

288
Goebbels, "Heiner Miiller vertonen?," 57.

289
Heiner Goebbels, "Text als Landschaft: Librettoqualitat, auch wenn nicht gesungen
wird," Heiner Goebbels: Komposition als Inszenierung, ed. Wolfgang Sandner (Berlin:
Henschel, 2002) 70.

171
Neubauten radio adaptation, the opposition shifts to a contrast of voices. While the stage

directions are sonically foregrounded so as to seem objective, the voices of Hamlet and

Ophelia each speak in their own embodied, subjective spaces. All images in the play

remain verbal images, but their perceived origins differ. As an audial track for opera, the

location of tension shifts yet again, to the competition between libretto and music. With

this particular shift, the verbal images in the libretto become secondary to the material,

musical qualities of the language. In its functioning as an audial track, the verbal images

in Die Hamletmaschine interact with other elements - especially other images - in a

manner that shifts depending on the medium in which the audial track is performed.

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Chapter Four - Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten:
Text in the theater, text as theater

Die Texte Mailers interpretieren sichselbst.

— Heiner Goebbels290

In his claim that Heiner Muller's texts "interpret themselves," Heiner Goebbels

asserts an understanding of Muller's work that finds the "content" of Muller's texts

inseparable from the rhythm, sound, and form of those texts. In his radio adaptations of

Muller's work, Goebbels has often been drawn to texts that have to do with landscape

and terrain, such as the Wolokolamsker Chaussee and the "Mann im Fahrstuhl" passage

from Der Auftrag. His Horstiick adaptations of Verkommenes Ufer (1984) and Landschaft mit

Argonauten (1990), which I discuss later in this chapter, fall into that category as well. In

his approach to Muller's text as a "landscape," Goebbels's adaptaitons highlight the

process of reading - or hearing - it. In direct contrast to Rihm, who has articulated

reluctance to use "tonlose Worte" for fear that they will be expressionless,291 Goebbels

emphasizes the structure of the text, giving as much priority to syntax and form as to

semantics. The meaning of the text arises somewhere between the sonic and the

signifying elements, and only through a self-conscious encounter with these individual

elements can the listener arrive at the full expression of the text in the "audial image."

Heiner Muller's 1982 play Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit

290
Goebbels, "Expeditionen in die Textlandschaft," 80.

291
Wolfgang Rihm, "Dichterischer Text und musikalischer Kontext," Wolfgang Rihm:
Offene Enden, ed. Ulrich Mosch (Munich: Hanser, 2002) 95.

173
Argonauten, from which the texts for Goebbels's two adaptations were taken, is

composed of three separate texts, composed over a span of more than thirty years.292 The

disparate forms and themes of these texts have often led to varying, non-unified

performances of the play that shuttle between engagement with the themes of the text

and the use of its lyrical language as an audial element. The three main parts, each

bearing a portion of the title of the entire play, from the full title for part one

(VERKOMMENES UFER MEDEAMATERIAL LANDSCHAFT MIT ARGONAUTEN), a

reduced title for part two (MEDEAMATERIAL LANDSCHAFT MIT ARGONAUTEN),

and a still further reduced heading for part three (LANDSCHAFT MIT

ARGONAUTEN).293 Yet these headings may not necessarily be the titles of the three

parts, for they are referred to separately in a note at the end as "VERKOMMENES

UFER," "MEDEAMATERIAL," and "LANDSCHAFT MIT ARGONAUTEN." As we will

see, it is not readily apparent from the text how these three sections are related. Given

this breakdown of the title, both Norbert Eke and Peter Campbell suggest that the

progression through the play is one of distillation.294 Barnett proposes instead that the

structure of the text be read as a triptych,295 with "Medeamaterial" as the centerpiece and

292
Heiner Miiller, Werke 5. DieStucke3, (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2002) 322. From the
editor's bibliographical notes accompanying the play.

293
It is ambiguous in the text whether the first heading is the title of part one or the title
of the entire play, or both.

294
Eke, Heiner Miiller, 190. Peter A. Campbell, "Medea as Material: Heiner Miiller, Myth,
and Text," Modern Drama 51.1 (2008): 98.

295
Barnett, Literature versus Theatre, 223.

174
point of focus—with, one assumes, the two other sections figuratively folding in over it.

The note at the end, identified as an "Anmerkung", suggests possibilities for the setting of

each of the three parts and for the context for the third part.

The "Verkommenes Ufer" section is a short text - only 34 lines - written in free

verse with no punctuation, interspersed with lines in capital letters. No speaker is

identified and there are no stage directions. The first lines set a scene:

See bei Straufiberg Verkommenes Ufer Spur

Flachstirniger Argonauten

Schilfborsten Totes Geast

DIESER BAUM WIRD MICH NICHT UBERWACHSEN Fischleichen
Glanzen im Schlamm Keksschachteln Kothaufen FROMMS ACT CASINO
Die zerrissenen Monatsbinden Das Blut
Der Weiber von Kolchis (V 73)

Nature (the shore, reeds, tree, dead fish) mingles with the mythical (the Argonauts, the

Colchian women) as well as with consumer goods both general and specific (cookie

boxes, early brand-name condoms, East German cigarettes). This location is clearly a site

where something has happened in the past ("Spur / Flachstirniger Argonauten"), but

what and how long ago it happened remain unclear. Blank lines divide the text into

shorter, disconnected components, which together function in a collage-like manner,

rather than as a narrative.296 The impressions rendered by the text yield a dystopian

mixture of consumer goods, sex, and archetypal or mythical elements, such as in the

296
In his detailed reading of the play, Eke analyzes the varying divisions of the text over
the different published versions of "Verkommenes Ufer". Given the collagistic nature of
the text, the different divisions do not significantly change the text; it continues to
function as a collection of impressions. Eke, Heiner Mtiller, 195ff.

175
passage, "Schnaps ist billig / Die Kinder pissen in die leeren Flaschen / Traum von einem

ungeheuren / Beischlaf in Chikago / Blutbeschmierte Weiber / In den Leiehenhallen" (V

73-4). This collection of "Zivilisationsmiill," suggests Dagmar Jaeger, establishes a

connection between the present arid the mythological past, as the destruction of the

environment stands in for a wider destructiveness in human nature, and Medea

becomes a figure on which to read the oppression of colonization and the subjugation of

women.297

There is one "ich" in the entire section, occurring in one of the capitalized portions:

"JA JA JA J A / SCHLAMMFOTZE SAG ICH ZUIHR DAS IST MEIN MANN / STOSS

MICH KOMM SUSSER" (V 73). The line that directly follows references Jason - "Bis ihm

die Argo den Schadel zertrummert das nicht mehr gebrauchte / Schiff"298 - thus

suggesting the Medea as the "I" of those lines. Yet the individual units of text do not

maintain one voice throughout "Verkommenes Ufer," leaving no clear mandate for

Medea to be the speaker of this section, or indeed, for it to be a single voice at all. The

final three lines shift to a third person viewpoint on Medea: "Auf dem Grund aber

Medea den zerstiickten / Bruder im Arm Die Kennerin / Der Gifte" (V 74). These lines

look to the middle section, core of the play, which focuses on Medea and the aftermath

297
Dagmar Jaeger, Theater im Medienzeitalter. Das postdramatische Theater von Elfriede
Jelinek und Heiner Miiller, (Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2007) 145.

298
The mythical Jason was killed while sleeping below his ship, which fell on him.
Medea foretells this death in Euripides's play: "For thee, as is most fit, thou, an ill man, /
Shalt die an ill death, thy head battered in / By the ruins of thine Argo: that, to thee, /
The sharp last sequel of our wedding tie" (1385-8). Euripides, The Medea, trans. Augusta
Webster (London: MacMillan, 1868).

176
of that scene.

The "Medeamaterial" section consists entirely of dialogue, with no didascalia aside

from the attributions. Medea, Jason, arid the Nurse speak in lines of iambic pentameter,

the rhythm of which becomes particularly apparent in the long monologue by Medea

that constitutes the core of the text. Over the course of her speech, Medea narrates her

history with Jason, interweaving it with questions to him about the current status of

their relationship, before shifting to a present tense narration of the presentation of the

poisoned dress to Jason's new bride-to-be and of the murder of their sons.299 Several

themes run throughout the section. Medea questions her own identity, not recognizing

herself - "Bring einen Spiegel Das ist nicht Medea" - and asking Jason, "Was kann mein

sein deiner Sklavin / Alles an mir dein Werkzeug alles aus mir" (V 75). Relatedly, insofar

as it pertains to role-playing and control over identity, she refers to her writing of "mein

Schauspiel", and accuses her sons multiple times of being "Schauspieler", for the final

299
Medea addresses the sons during parts of this narration, up to the moment that she
kills them. While the sons do not have any lines and do not exist in the play in the same
way as Medea, Jason, and the nurse, their presence is nevertheless invoked. The
portrayal in performance of Medea's double filicide has used various objects to denote
the sons. At the world premiere in Bochum, while calling the children her 'Herzfleisch',
Medea opened two cans of dog food and squeezed the masses of meaty material
through her fingers. The gesture was not entirely random, coming shortly after Medea
refers to herself and Jason as dogs. In the GDR premiere in Berlin, a production
characterized by its use of audio technology, two portable Walkman tape players were
unplugged at the moment of the children's death. In B.K. Tragelehn's Hamburg
production the two sons were represented by medical demonstration models, whose
organs Medea calmly removed over the course of her monologue, piling them in an
orderly fashion on the floor. Michael Erdmann, "Theatralische Texttransport-Maschine,"
Theater heute 24.6 (1983): 43. Barnett, Literature versus Theatre, 236. Ingrid Meyer-Bosse,
"Geschlechterkampf," rev. oiVerkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten,
dir. B.K. Tragelehn, Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hamburg, Hamburger Anzeigen und
Nachrichten 19 September 1995.

177
time as she kills them: "...Wer seid ihr Wer hat euch / Gekleidet in die Leiber meiner

Kinder / [...] / Schauspieler seid ihr Liigner und Verrater" (V 79). The theme of exchange

recurs as well, with the language of debt ("Du bist mir einen Bruder schuldig Jason")

and transactions ("Zwei Sonne gabe ich dir fiir einen Bruder") (V 75). This language

relates to the theme of identity as well, with the question of the fungibility of individuals

and experiences.

The third part of the play, "Landschaft mit Argonauten", returns to the unattributed

free verse of "Verkommenes Ufer," beginning with a meditation on the very "I" who is

speaking: "Soil ich von mir reden Ich wer / Von wem ist die Rede wenn / Von mir die

Rede geht Ich Wer ist das" (V 80). Most secondary literature assumes Jason as the

speaker of this section — a man lost after the tragic events of "Medeamaterial" - and in

the majority of stage productions the Jason figure has performed this monologue.

Although this text, like "Verkommenes Ufer," explores various references, scenes, and

impressions, this inaugural "ich" remains present throughout the monologue. The

Anmerkung that follows "Landschaft mit Argonauten" specifies, "Wie in jeder

Landschaft ist das Ich in diesem Textteil kollektiv" (V 84). This specification is at odds,

however, with the speaker's description of death at the end of the text: "Ich spiirte MEIN

Blut aus MEINEN Adern treten / Und MEINEN Leib verwandeln in die Landschaft /

MEINES Todes" (V 83). Even if the rest of the text is a collective I, in the moment of

death the speaker is an individual.

A paragraph labeled "Anmerkung" follows the three main text sections, like the

unlabeled note at the end of Bildbeschreibung. This short text offers suggestions for the

178
setting and playing of each of the three parts, alternating demands ("Der Text Braucht

den Naturalismus der Szene") and suggestions ("Die Gleichzeitigkeit der drei Textteile

kann beliebig dargestellt werden") (V 84). The note could be read as a kind of didascalia,

or, as in Bildbeschreibung as a suggestion of the play commenting on itself. If we take

literally Medea's claims in "Medeamaterial" that she is writing ein Schauspiel, then this

could be her voice, in the role of director. Barnett, however, reads the note as

"conspicuous in its irony," citing an interview he led with Miiller in which the author

called all such notes at the ends of his plays "eher Provokationen." 300 Few productions

have taken up these provocations, with most either omitting the note entirely or, as the

world premiere production did, presenting it verbally at the end as a contrast to the

production that has just occurred.

World premiere in Bochum, and a museum of associations

The world premiere of Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten

took place in April 1983 in Bochum, under the direction of Manfred Karge and Matthias

Langhoff, with the former also playing the role of Jason. The production investigated the

process of encountering this text for the first time, integrating themes of personal

associations and collections of information: what the viewer brings to the theatrical

experience, how that can be shaped, and whether a collective preparation or common

background can be expected or achieved. In contrast, parts of the production

300
Barnett, Literature versus Theatre, 227. Similar notes can be found following the main
texts of Leben Gundlings Friedrich von Preufien Lessings SchlafTraum Schrei, Zement,
Bildbeschreibung, and Wolokolamsker Chaussee.

179
emphasized the audial value of the text (as would many productions that followed

it)—that is, how the words sound. In that sense, the encounter with the text became not

only a intellectual engagement, but also a sensual one.

The audience encountered the first element of the production in the lobby of the

theater, where an "ARGONAUTENMUSEUM" was set up. Objects in the "museum"

were labeled with quotations from the play text.301 Items displayed included, among

other things, a map of East Germany with the Straussee302 indicated ("See bei

Straufiberg"), a silver bowl with liquid inside, sitting atop a newspaper ("Sie hocken in

den Ziigen Gesichter aus Tagblatt und Speichel"), a pack of the GDR-made Casino

cigarettes ("FROMMS ACT CASINO"), a chair leg ("STUHLBEIN EIN HUND") and a

pair of opera glasses, showing a ship on the ocean when looked into ("Dunn zwischen

Ich und Nichtmehrlch die Schiffswand").303 By providing a material instantiation of

certain objects or phrases from the text, the museum created a guide to literal/material

associations for those words and phrases in the production. When the audience heard

301
Erdmann, "Theatralische Texttransport-Maschine," 39.

302
The map indicated the lake near the town of Strausberg, east of Berlin. The spelling of
the town and its nearby lake are Strausberg and Straussee. Genia Schulz suggests the use
of the fi obliquely references the SS, as the location also served as the headquarters of the
East German NationaleVolksarmee, the "verlangert[e] Arm der Besatzermacht oder
Verlangerung der alten Wehrmacht." Genia Schulz, "Heiner Miillers Theater der
Sprache(n)," Vom Wort zum Bild: Das neue Theater in Deutschland und den USA, eds. Sigrid
Bauschinger and Susan L. Cocalis (Bern: Francke, 1992) 214.

303
Helmut Schodel, "Stunde der Zombies," rev. of Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial
Landschaft mit Argonauten, dir. Matthias Langhof and Manfred Karge, Bochum, Die Zeit
29 April 1983. Barnett, Literature versus Theatre, 229. Text citations from V 73, 73, 73, 82,
80.

180
certain passages from the play, then, they would have a ready image to go with them.

For example, when the viewer, having first looked at the museum, heard the opening

lines of the play ("See bei Straufiberg"), the map pointing out Strausberg would likely

come to mind, having been viewed only a short time previously. Control over the

evocation of particular images in the audience members' minds remains partial, of

course, but there is a common, specific reference for some of the words and phrases in

the text.

In this way, the production could call forth particular images without illustrating

the text onstage. This material visual reference differs from the display of those objects

or images onstage in that it evokes not only those things themselves, still sitting in the

foyer outside, but also the audience's experience of encountering them. The items in the

Argonautenmuseum exist now in the audience members' memories, the viewing of them a

part of the audience members' experience, albeit in a superficial way. As such, the

Argonautenmuseum served to highlight the futility of the hope that an audience could

entirely share a set of meaningful references for the barrage of objects, places, and

situations cited in Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten. Any

personal experience with Strausberg or the Straussee, for instance, would fill the allusion

with more meaningful content that would the map from the museum. 304

The program for the production furthers this reading of the museum collection as

an arbitrary, unsatisfying compilation of associative objects. Acting as a seeming

304
Frank Hornigk, like Schulz, suggests the connection to the Nationale Volksarmee, as
well as adding that nearby Bukow was famed as the site of Bertolt Brecht's summer
home. Frank Hornigk, "Miiller's Memory Work," New German Critique 33.2 (2006): 2.

181
supplement to the museum, the program contained an alphabetized glossary of names,

places, and objects that arise in the play, such as "FROMMS ACT", defined for the

audience as "Praservativ der Firma Fromms". 305 At 492 pages (482 pages longer than the

play text itself, Die Zeit pointed out), the program would seem elaborate, exhaustive

even. The program takes a common aid - the glossary> with its explanation and history

of the material of the text and the performance - and pushes it to an extreme through its

length and its explanations not only of characters and mythical material, but also of

consumer goods and pop cultural references. No theater-goer would have the time to

read such a lengthy lexicon before the play began; the idea that such preparation would

be necessary puts the theater in a realm of inaccessibility. What is more, even if the

theater-goer were able to absorb the entire glossary of terms, they would not necessarily

significantly aid in interpretation of the play text or the performance. One critic

lamented that "alle Erklarungen erklaren selbstverstandlich nichts."306 Yet taken

together, the function of the museum and of the glossary provide a message deeper than

the facile irony of meaningless words in the face of personal tragedy. Their failure to

provide keys to the interpretation of Miiller's text or of its performance suggests that

verbal art is not a catalogable entity, built of definable constitutive elements and

reducible to individual elements of meaning. A collection of associations or information

remains inadequate to the endeavor of interpretation.

305
Schodel, "Stunde der Zombies."

306
Georg Hensel, "Zwischen Kolchis und Kassel," rev. of Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial
Landschaft mit Argonauten, dir. Matthias Langhoff und Manfred Karge, Bochum,
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 25 April 1983.

182
 The question remains, however, to what extent Miiller's text itself is composed of a

collection of associations, and how that constitution changes - or to what extent it even

allows - interpretation. In their own attempts at interpretation, critics of the premiere

varied in their assessment of the text and its presentation. Mathes Rehder of the

Hamburger Abendblatt found the text "ein irritierender Rest,"307 while Michael Erdmann

of Theater heute approvingly observed that there can be "kein Eins-Sein in solcher, mit

solcher Sprache," going on to praise the lyricism of the text and to criticize the Medea

actress for attempting to relate her character to its language.308 The Zeit critic Helmut

Schodel found the delivery of the text reminiscent of concrete poetry (an opinion that

would be echoed in reviews of later productions as well), especially in the first and last

section, delivered by Karge in the role ofjason. Karge wore a latex head covering for the

first portion of the play, rendering little to no facial expression possible, while most of

the text of this portion was broadcast from a recording of the actor's own voice.309 At

times the actor would speak along with his recorded voice.

This element of vocal play in the production could be interpreted in two different

ways. First, there is the gesture toward the divided self, with Jason alienated from his

own voice, unified with it only intermittently. Second, however, the recorded voice and

307
Mathes Rehder, "Abschied von morgen," rev. of Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial
Landschaft mit Argonauten, dir. Matthias Langhoff and Manfred Karge, Bochum,
Hamburger Abendblatt 26 April 1983.

308
Erdmann, "Theatralische Texttransport-Maschine," 42.

309
Giinther Hennecke, "Zerstorte Menschen in einer Welt am Rande der Mullkippe,"
rev. of Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten, dir. Matthias Langhof
and Manfred Karge, Bochum, Aachener Volkszeitung 26 April 1983.

183
the language it employs can be interpreted as something previous to the Jason figure,

who is not its original source, and whose voice imitates and aspires to the authority of

the recording. The language is something that the Jason figure can take part in, can tap

into at moments, but that does not originate with him and does not serve as an

expression of his own reactions.

The presentation of the middle section received little critical attention compared to

its bookends. The actress playing Medea delivered her monologue using multiple styles

of speech, and interacted more with the set, giving reviewers the opportunity to describe

the stage, its waste-strewn environment having already appeared in many of the review

titles ("Zerstorte Menschen in einer Welt am Rande der Miillkippe," "Medea im Mull,"

and "Menschen-Untergang im Blechmull Landschaft," for example). Commonplace

chairs and a wash basin provided the only furniture, while the extremity of the set was

provided by empty tin cans covering the entire floor. The bow of a boat rose from the

cans before a giant propeller mounted on a polished metal wall, while the wreckage of

another boat hung suspended above the audience.310 Both boat pieces suggest the Argo,

the ship sailed by Jason and the Argonauts in his quest for the golden fleece—and, of

course, the Argo is an entry in the program glossary. In the production, the propeller

stopped its movement in the middle section and was then covered with a sheet by

Medea. Barnett interprets this action as an entry into the "mythical time" of

Medeamaterial, and its return to motion at the beginning of the third section as a return to

310
Andreas RoSman, "Kolchis und Peepshow," rev. of Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial
Landschaft mit Argonauten, dir. Manfred Karge and Matthias Langhof, Bochum, Karlsruhe
Neueste Nachrichten 28 April 1983. Rehder, "Abschied von morgen."

184
Jason's "motionless dynamism/' 311 The return to oscillation brings the focus back to a

speaker of unknown identity, as in the first section.

This circular motion reflects the first lines of the "Landschaft mit Argonauten"

section, with their constant return to the concept of the self: "Soil ich von mir reden Ich

wer / Von wem 1st die Rede wenn /Von mir die Rede geht Ich Wer ist das" (V 80). Jason

ran in place throughout this third section, an "apokalyptische[r] Jogger, im

Endspieltraining." 312 The stage rocked back and forth, a motion interpreted by most

critics as suggestive of a ship's movement. One review suggested the connection of this

motion to the self-questioning of the voice in this third part, for "von einem fahrenden

Schiff kann man ebensowenig fliehen wie vor sich selbst."313 The meter of the text was

apparent, its rhythm in tension with the tempo of the jogging and of the rocking

stage/ship and the erratic motion of the propeller, but supported by punctuative musical

excerpts. The musical interruptions came with greater frequency as part three neared its

end, accompanied by projected films of an airplane and of icebergs. After Jason had

fallen silent and the films ended, the final "Anmerkung" from Miiller's text was

broadcast over the sound system, delivered in a flat tone, its suggestions highlighting

the very different production decisions employed by the staging now coming to an end.

311
Barnett, Literature versus Theatre, 231.

312
Hensel, "Zwischen Kolchis und Kassel."

313 Wolfgang Platzeck, "Die Gespenster der Toten," rev. of Verkommenes Ufer
Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten, dir. Manfred Karge and Matthias Langhof,
Bochum, Westfalische Allgemeine Zeitung 25 April 1983.

185
Materialsammluttgen and concrete poetry

Several of the performance elements first introduced in the premiere of Verkommenes

\lfer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten were revisited by later productions as well,

including the provision of extreme amounts of background material in the program

booklet. In Tubingen in 1984, not quite a year after the world premiere, the program for

director Heike Beutel's production at the Landestheater was unusually long, even by the

standards of a dramaturgy accustomed to emphasizing the importance of related

material. The program was a veritable Materialsammlung, including antique texts about

the Argonauts, maps, photographs of paintings, images from Greek vases, and

contemporary comics using mythological figures. A section entitled

"ERKENNungsdiENst" defined things mentioned in the text, including Boris Karloff,

Strausberg, Fritz Lang, zombie, Nero, Fromms Act, Casino, and Eastman Color (those

last three under the heading 'Markenartikel'). 314 As in the case of the glossary in the

program from the Bochum production, it is unclear whether the program was an

attempt to provide usable information for the understanding of the performance, or

rather a gesture toward the futility of such a denotative approach to interpretation.

Given the variety and elaborateness of the information provided, it would seem that the

program at least attempted to provide for the "erkennen" of various references arising in

Miiller's text. One critic complained of the inadequacy of such information, lamenting

314
Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten, dir. B.K. Tragelehn,
Program to accompany the performance, Deutsches Schauspielhaus, (Hamburg, 1995)
unnumbered page. Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten, dir. Heike
Beutel, Program to accompany the performance, Landestheater Wiirttemberg-
Hohenzollern (Tubingen, 1984).

186
"dafi man in schoner Regelmafiigkeit zu Heiner-Miiller-Inszenierungen ein dickes

Materialienkonvolut (sprich Programmheft) mit nach Hause tragen kann - eine feine

Zusatzleistung, aber nicht vielleicht auch ein Ausdruck mangelnden Vertrauens in die

eigene Inerpretationsleistung?" 315 The reality that no theater-goer could read and

integrate such volumes of information at the theater renders it useless for the immediate

interpretation of the performance. It could have use only after the performance, in a

second act of interpretation.

Also like the Bochum production, the staging in Tubingen played with the delivery

of portions of the text in a manner that reduced it to its phonetic elements. This play

provided for a clear contrast between the possible meanings of the text, compiled in the

program and to be examined later (if at all), and the materiality of the text, emphasized

in its sound in the immediacy of the performance. The first section was performed by a

choir, their rendering of the text described by one critic as "Schreie und Fliistern,

wunderbar rhythmisiertes, sich immer neu variierendes und widersprechenes Sprechen,

[...] eine bose, zartliche Symphonie."316 The Hamburg production directed by B.K.

Tragelehn in 1995 took this phonetic approach to an extreme.317 Critics commented on its

315
Heimo Schwilk, "Opfer blutiger Mannergeschichte," rev. of Verkommenes lifer
Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten, dir. Heike Beutel, Landestheater Wurttemberg-
Hohenzollern, Tubingen, Esslinger Zeitung 24 February 1984.

316
"Schreie und Fliistern," rev. of Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit
Argonauten, dir. Heike Beutel, Landestheater Wurttemberg-Hohenzollern, Tubingen,
Schzvabisches Tagblatt 20 February 1984.

317
This production was a reworking of Tragelehn's 1989 staging at the Schauspielhaus
Diisseldorf.

187
use of "Stimmubungen, wechselnde Sprechrhythmen> Wortgefechte"318 and its delivery

"mit scharf rhythmisierten Silben, Wort- und Satzfetzen [...] als seien sie die

Meistersinger der Konkreten Poesie/' 319 yielding "ein Duett um wenige Worte (Spur,

Ufer) wie ein Lautgedicht von Ernst Jandl."320 Words functioned both as music and as

weapons in a gender-stratified presentation.

The roles listed in the program for this production in Hamburg included

Frau/Medea, Mann/Jason, and Amme, suggesting an element of identification of these

specific mythological figures with a more universal 'battle of the sexes' motif.321 The

theme of gender division was continued in the seating arrangement in the theater, where

the audience was segregated by gender and made to sit on opposite sides of the space,

facing each other.322 The antagonism between the two sides was thematized yet again

when the Frau/Medea and Mann/Jason actors incited a screaming match between

318
Irene Bazinger, "Keksdosen contra Kothaufen," rev. of Verkommenes Ufer
Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten, dir. B.K. Tragelehn, Deutsches Schauspielhause,
Hamburg, Junge Welt 18 September 195.

319
Klare Warnecke, "Die Tribuhnen als Tribunal," rev. of Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial
Landschaft mit Argonauten, dir. B.K. Tragelehn, Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hamburg, Die
Welt 18 September 1995.

320
"Drama mit Keksschachtel," rev. of Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit
Argonauten, dir. B.K. Tragelehn, Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hamburg. Clipping from
unknown source in production documentation, Akademie der Kunste, Berlin, Heiner-
Muller-Archiv, Nr. 8044.

321
Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten, Program to accompany the
performance, unnumbered page.

322
Warnecke, "Die Tribuhnen als Tribunal."

188
women and men, "Keksschachteln" against "Kothaufen".323 In contrast to the trash-

strewn sets of many productions of this play, here the playing area between the two

sides was relatively bare, with two chairs for the two main figures and a chair at a small

table far to the edge, where the nurse sat. The gender-stratified seating arrangement

provided the most interest, encouraging not only competition between the sides, but

also a level of voyeurism in watching the other watch the performance.

The production's continual reduction to word play, however, while skillfully done

and seemingly interesting to critics, did not ultimately provide very much material for

them to interpret. Its connection to antagonism between genders was not enough to

carry the entire production, and after the novelty of the audial play wore off, the

question of the text's significance presented itself. Irene Bazinger of Junge Welt asked,

"Wie oft mufi man /See bei Strausberg' wiederholen, bis die Formulierung sinnentleert

ist? Und was dann?" 324 The paucity of stage images paired with the flood of words and

word parts proved frustrating to critics looking to make sense of the text and its

instantiation in this performance. In its focus on the materiality of the text, the staging

left little semantic content for the audience to hold on to.

Director Andreas Kriegenburg went the opposite direction in his staging of

Verkommenes Ufer Medeamterial, focusing on the creation of a narrative from Miiller's text.

Though his 2001 production at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin presented a strong

323
Bazinger, "Keksdosen contra Kothaufen."

324
Bazinger, "Keksdosen contra Kothaufen."

189
interpretation of the text, it did so by making it into a two-act play - eliminating the

entire third section - and by focusing intently on the personal and domestic elements of

Medea and Jason's relationship.325 The production began with a rumbling, pulsating

noise, compared by one critic to "das Hammern des Blutes in den Schlafen."326 In the

foreground, a long-haired woman in a leather dress and a man in casual street clothes

faced off in a dance or fight, rolling on the floor, each seemingly trying to gain

advantage over the other. The struggle and passion of their interaction clearly marked

the figures as Medea and Jason, an interpretation assumed by every reviewer of the

production. Three giant plates of rusted metal could be seen in the shadows upstage.

The light came up to reveal a man standing in the middle of the three plates, drumming

on them with thick batons, "ein Einpeitscher der Leidenschaft/'327 As the percussionist

delivered the lines of part one, the words, delivered in the pauses between percussive

bursts, themselves became elements of the rhythm, the two together becoming the

driving force of the young Medea and Jason's dance, the music accompanying their

waltz of doom. That the description of a scene of such devastation accompanied, even

325
Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten, by Heiner Miiller, dir.
Andreas Kriegenburg, Deutsches Theater, Berlin, Performance 15 March 2002. The
presentation of Miiller's text was paired with a production of Dea Loher's one-act play
Berliner Geschichte, with Miiller's text presented before the intermission and Loher's text
after. As no attempt was made to relate the two productions to each other, their presence
on the same bill seemed merely a result of both texts' brevity.

326
Frank Busch, "Geschuttelt, nicht geruhrt: Andreas Kriegenburg serviert Heiner
Miiller und Dea Loher als Cocktail im Deutschen Theater," rev. of Verkommenes Ufer
Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten, dir. Andreas Kriegenburg, Deutsches Theater,
Berlin, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 19 November 2001, sec. Feuilleton.

327
Busch, "Geschuttelt, nicht geruhrt."

190
propelled the young couple in their early coupling foreshadowed the ruin that all those

familiar with the myth knew was to come.

The second act of the production jumped over this scene of ruin to its aftermath.

The young and vigorous pair were replaced with an old man and an old woman. A

stove and couch replaced the exotic percussion instrument, and the "Einpeitscher der

Leidenschaft" was nowhere to be seen. The Amme sat at the side of the stage, mute for

most of the act. The driving, passionate rhythm was replaced by flatly delivered lines,

returning ever again to Medea yelling Jason's name irritatedly. The tragic events that

had happened to this couple lay years in the past, and the two were a long-married

couple, trapped in their stale relationship and unable to escape in the things they had

done to each other and never forgiven each other for. With the line, "Weib was fur eine

Stimme" (V 75), there was the palpable sense that Jason had heard this litany from

Medea for decades.

In this way, Miiller's text was reduced to its private, domestic elements, the story of

a marriage. Critic Ulrich Seidler complained that Kriegenburg "hat die welthistorische

Dimension des Textes in den Worten stecken lassen,"328 while Ralph Hammerthaler

commented that the director "zieht den Abend nicht aus der Mythenriite, sondern aus

der 'Lidl'-Tute eines Kleinbiirgerhaushalts." 329 However, by emphasizing the

328
Ulrich Seidler, "Privataudienz bei einem Toten," rev. of Verkommenes Ufer
Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten, dir. Andreas Kriegenburg, Deutsches Theater,
Berlin, Berliner Zeitung 19 November 2001.

329
Ralph Hammerthaler, "Ein ganz bestimmter Mord," rev. of Verkommenes Ufer
Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten, dir. Andreas Kriegenburg, Deutsches Theater,

191
interpersonal relationship between Medea and Jason rather than its world-historical

implications/the production allowed the audience a interpretive wedge into the text.

The mythical element in the material became an element of lost youth, subject of an

unhappy wife's long-held grudge. At the end of this "Medeamaterial", Jason

purposefully strode to the end of the couch where Medea was sitting and smothered her

with a couch pillow. In answer to Jason's question "Was willst du" at the beginning of

the act, Medea answers, "Sterben" (IV 75); in this production, Jason helped her achieve

that end. The unscripted action made sense in the environment that had been created, as

the only way out of the endless return to long-ago, regretted actions, the only escape for

both parties from the prison of their relationship. Yet the fact remains that the

production could only offer such clear avenues of interpretation given its disregard or

excision of parts of the text. In many productions, the final portion, with its

transformation into wild associativeness, has provided a stumbling block to clear,

narrative-based interpretations, whereas here this final portion was cut altogether. The

opening text, too, was used chiefly for its sound; the semantic content of its words

provided at most an atmosphere of foreboding to the frenzied beginning of this couple's

relationship.

GDR premiere: the polyphonic voice

In the GDR premiere of Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten,

director Peter Konwitschny - known for his work in opera - focused on the relationship

Berlin, Suddeutsche Zeitung 19 November 2001.

192
among voice, identity, and text, using recording technology to complicate their

interconnection. The first full performance of the play in East Germany did not take

place until 1987, although excerpts from the text had been performed previously in

Rostock and Berlin. For this production at the Probebuhne of the Berliner Ensemble,

Konwitschny used only one actress, a Medea dressed in worker's overalls and wearing a

red clown nose. From the lighting scaffolding above a stage occupied by sound mixers,

cables, and other electronic and mechanical equipment, the actress dispatched a life-

sized Heiner Miiller paper doll, tossing it to the floor before beginning the

'Verkommenes Ufer' portion of the play.330 After perfunctorily reciting this first section,

the actress began again, only to be interrupted by the ringing of a telephone. Upon

answering it, she found her own amplified voice coming out of the receiver, delivering

lines from the play with a gravity that challenged her heretofore impertinent reading.

The two voices - the actress present on stage and her pre-recorded self - continued the

text in thoughtful conversation with each other, until the phone went dead in the middle

of the third to last line ("Auf dem Grund aber Medea..."). Thereafter, the actress

descended to the stage to deliver the text a third time, now in a ruminative mode. An

audial background woven of music and sounds (including classical music, light pop

music, a siren, and sounds of the subway) provided a soundtrack for this third iteration

330
Klaus-Peter Gerhardt, "Drastische Bilder mit sperrigem Text," rev. of Verkommenes
Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten, dir. Peter Konwitschny, Berliner Ensemble,
Probebuhne, Berliner Zeitung 2 December 1987.

193
of the text, which ended with the actress's final lines played back to her on tape.331 Thus

the first section established the method of using recordings to create encounters between

the actress and her own voice and to invoke questions of identity and self-recognition.

This use of sound recording was employed more actively by the actress in the

"Medeamaterial" section, in which she more clearly took on the role of Medea. After

playing with an onstage microphone and the sound mixer, she established electronically

manipulated voices for the lines assigned to Jason and the Nurse, while reserving her

own unamplified and unaltered voice as Medea. For the identity-questioning opening of

the "Landschaft mit Argonauten" section, the Medea actress tried on different hats and

vocal delivery styles from line to line. Settling on the identity of "writer" about halfway

through the scene - donning glasses sitting at a typewriter - she typed while delivering

the rest of her lines, simultaneously writing and performing the text. As she typed ever

faster, recordings of her performance of the first two sections were broadcast, first

individually, then together, with a recording of the final scene ultimately joining in as

well, taking up the "Gleichzeitigkeit" of Muller's Anmerkung. At that point, Medea

abandoned her typewriter and sat in the front row - joining the audience of her own

performance, or performing the role of an audience member? - before she exited, taking

the paper doll of Miiller with her.

Critics strongly praised the performance for making constructive use of all three

parts of Muller's text. The emphasis on the actress's voice tied the sections together,

331
Barnett, Literature versus Theatre, 236. Helmut Ullrich, "Medea an einem
verkommenen Ufer," rev. of Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten,
dir. Peter Konwitschny, Berliner Ensemble, Probebiihne, Neue Zeit 2 December 1987.

194
while providing a motif that could be explored in many different ways, thus

maintaining interest in the one-woman show and making possible "einen spielerischen,

Wiederholungen einschliefienden Umgang mit dem Text, gleichsam eine Textmontage

im mehrstimmigen Satz."332 The voice was both a part of Medea as well as something

that came from without. It was bound up with identity, but in an ambiguous way, able

to be manipulated and adapted at will. In "Verkommenes Ufer", the recorded voice of

the Medea actress led the onstage Medea to reconsider and repeat the text. As in

Bochum, where the actor of this section interacted with a recording of the text, this

gesture put forward the words as something external to the Medea figure, which she

had to struggle to apprehend. Yet it was the encounter with her own voice through the

telephone which led her to a more thoughtful iteration of the text. In "Medeamaterial"

her own voice remained central, while others' voices were made distanced and strange.

Medea took ownership of the modes of voice production, controlling the technology to

her own benefit. After "Medeamaterial," the search for a voice in "Landschaft mit

Argonauten" can be read as a search not for her own voice, but rather for the voice of the

text—a text which both defines Medea, and which, it is implied, Medea herself is

writing. Again, as with the voice, the genesis both of the text and of Medea's identity

was figured as something that comes from within and from without. The voice that she

settled upon, that of the author, was shown to be only one of many possibilities. Any

suggestion that the author's voice is a privileged one, however, was undermined by the

Miiller effigy on the floor.

332
Gerhardt, "Drastische Bilder mit sperrigem Text," 268.

195
Heiner Goebbels: the encounter with the text

In 1984, Heiner Goebbels produced an audial interpretation of the first portion only

(VerkommenesUfer) for Hessischer Rundfunk, later released on CD as a part of his

"Horstiicke nach Texten von Heiner Muller" collection.333 For his interpretation,

Goebbels had Thorsten Becker ask over fifty people to read the text cold, people he

found "in verschiedenen Kneipen, Flipperhallen, auf der Strafie, im Bahnhof Zoo, auf U-

und S-Bahn" and in other public places.334 Goebbels then used these recordings of the

text as the building blocks of his production, splicing together different people's

readings of the text and electronically manipulating the recordings to make other sound

effects. No other sounds or instruments were used; the street recordings constituted the

entirety of the Hbrstiick. In this way, the production prefigures the Heilmann

Bildbeschreibung, using recordings of Miiller's text as the "Baukasten" of the entire

composition. Whereas Heilmann's recordings were of actors in a recording studio,

however, Goebbels's readers were laypeople on the street, their encounters with the text

entirely spontaneous.

The Horstuck begins with low tones, reminiscent of whale sounds or the bellows of

deep sea creatures. These are the manipulated tones from the street recordings, people's

333
Heiner Goebbels, Verkommenes Ufer, CD, "Horstiicke nach Texten von Heiner Muller,"
Original broadcast Hessischer Rundfunk, 4 October 1984, ECM, 1994.

334
From the Hessischer Rundfunk introduction to the Horstuck. Tonkassette, Archiv
Akademie der Kiinste, Berlin, Heiner-Muller-Archiv 6909. Goebbels later used the same
concept to make a Landscape with Argonauts in English, with recordings of close to 100
readers taken on the streets of Boston.

196
voices (though not yet identifiable as such) altered into the sounds of a creature from the

primordial deep. Barnett suggests the sounds perhaps function as a "synthesized

riverbank/' the rumbling to material, electronic life of the semantic content of Miiller's

text.335 A intermittent rustling in the background suggests a jumble of human voices, and

the ear strains to make out the possibility of language. The low sounds grow ever more

like cellos or violins, and a chirping begins in the background/a sound somewhere

between the unthreatening noise of crickets and the potentially threatening sound of a

flock of screeching crows.

Clearly identifiable language first enters at 1'40" of the seventeen-and-a-half-minute

piece, as the bellowing noise is suddenly brought up to speed and revealed to be a

human voice reading the title. This voice's articulation of "Landschaft mit Argonauten"

is played in a loop, as a second voice is more slowly brought from sea-creature slowness

up to its normal speed and pitch, giving the listener a chance to better understand the

transition from one to the other. At 2'00", the manipulated text gives way to a straight

recording of an older man reading the title of the play, with ambient noises of a public

street in the background. His voice is unsure as he encounters the text for the first time:

"O, was? Was? Verfcommenes Ufer. [Pause.] M e - d e - Was? Medea-matel?" The audio

mix picks up the man's one-syllable expression of puzzlement - "Was?" - and begins to

repeat it on a loop underneath the rest of the text. The loop eventually abstracts the

"was" sound and it merges with the pulse of S-Bahn wheels in the background of

• i

335
David Barnett, '"Heiner Miiller vertonen': Heiner Goebbels and the Music of
Postmodern Memory," Sound Matters: Essays on the Acoustics of Modern German Culture,
eds. Nora M. Alter and Lutz Koepnick (New York: Berghahn, 2004) 221.

197
another recording. Meanwhile, the old man's reading continues - "Mit Ar- Was? Mit

Argonauten." - and other voices, too, begin to read the title. Goebbels layers the voices

so that people read alone, staggered, and in chorus. The quality of the recordings varies,

depending on where they were taken, some including much background noise

competing with the voice and others with the voice clearly foregrounded. Goebbels

processes the samples with varying amounts of reverberation, creating a range of

perceived distance from the speakers, making some voices seem near and others far.

Some speak haltingly, while others read the text easily on the first try. The word

Medeamaterial causes many to hesitate, repeat, to try it again with different

pronunciations and accents. The word Argonauten, too, provides difficulty for some, its

mythological provenance evidently unfamiliar. The final voice to read the title is clear,

measured, and male, reminiscent of a television newscaster. His smooth pronouncement

of the title indicates this section over: explored, reported, settled.

Following the opening sequence, the Horstuck continues in similar fashion,

highlighting different readers' confrontations with Miiller's text. Patterns emerge, such

as some readers' unease with unknown names and discomfort with some lines. (In one

humorous reaction, a man reads: "Das Blut / Der Weiber von Kolchis . . . ay yi yi yi.") A

woman who sounds inebriated delivers the lines "Die Toten starren nicht ins Fenster"

set to a tune, a clip of drunken sing-song which returns in the background at many

points throughout the production, functioning almost as transition music between

segments. Many readers repeat lines that strike them as odd, as if in contemplation of

them, and then repeat them a second time with a decided-upon interpretation. Goebbels

198
includes the voice of a non-native speaker of German, who struggles with the

pronunciation, and the voice of a child who does not yet read well. Listening to both of

these voices as they struggle with words and read in halting cadences, a familiar

language becomes strange again to the listener.

The result of Goebbels's manipulation of the recordings lies somewhere between a

Horspiel and an electronic music composition. The words of MuUer's text still have

meaning, but they are also abstracted into sonic and rhythmic elements. The movement

is bidirectional, with sonic and rhythmic elements transforming into words (as when the

bellowing noises becomes the first line, for instance) as well as words abstracting into to

pure audial elements (as when the loop of the morpheme 'was' provides rhythm). The

line between the word as carrier of semantic content and the word as a material entity

becomes fluid. Goebbels repeats the pattern of manipulating a sample quickly, and then

performing the same manipulation more slowly, allowing the listener to realize what

has just happened to the sonic material of the words.

In the end, the bellowing noises return, now identifiable as slowed recordings of

readings—not because the clips sound different from the noises at the beginning, but

because of the familiarity gained from demonstrations throughout the piece of

transformations between these sounds and normal speech. With the last three lines of

text, the production returns to the recording of the old man who began the piece, who

has clearly become more accustomed to Muller's language over the course of his

reading, though still approaches the words with an air of doubt. The lines are repeated

by a woman's voice, calm and matter-of-fact in its reading of the text. Both voices read

199
above a chorus of the bellowing noises, now known to be the other readers. The

"synthesized riverbank" of the beginning has shown itself to be made entirely of voices,

a chorus of sorts; those ones that become appreciable as words are those that rise from

its morass. After the man and the woman read the last lines, the Horstiick ends with the

low tones with which it began, now identifiable as the incomprehensible stirrings of

language.

Encountering the encounter

As a listener to Goebbels's Verkommenes Ufer, one hears the readers of the text act

their encounters with the text out loud, and listening to the Horstiick becomes the

experience of encountering their encounters. The listener is confronted with two

elements—the text, and the performance of that text—that in traditional mimetic, plot-

and character-based theater remain relatively unified. Goebbels's Horstiick, in contrast,

highlights and explores the rupture between those two elements. On the use of

stumbling, imperfectly expressed language, Goebbels writes, "Indem ich korrigierend

verfolge, kann ich einen 'falsch' betonten Satz eher begreifen, als in seiner perfekten

Intonation, gerade weil es sich hier um Texte handelt, die weder redundant noch

umgangssprachlich sind."33^ The imperfect reading exposes the idea of a perfect reading,

an ideal of the text removed from its actual performance iteration. The listener then

encounters the text at one level of remove, creating a productive distance (Entfernung, to

336
Goebbels, "Expeditionen in die Textlandschaft," 80.

200
speak with Goebbels) from the material. This distance works as a more constructive,

contemporary iteration of the now-stylized, traditional Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt.

This concept of a performance that activates an encounter with a text typifies

Poschmann's Text im Theater model (cf. p. 16), with its understanding of the text as an

ever-shifting yet central material. Barnett writes that the idea of a "good" or productive

iteration of a text by Heiner Muller is one that facilitates "experience"—the quest for

experience being the quintessential postmodern - and now postdramatic - project.337 The

idea of "experience" with regards to postdramatic theater can encompass a broad range

of encounters, from the reception of sensual spectacle to the active participation on the

part of the audience member in the process of meaning-making. For Goebbels, however,

this "experience" specifically involves the awareness of listening as an active process.

Any of the techniques he uses to make the text more difficult or more strange function in

the service of that cognizance. The slowing of apprehension effected by these techniques

allows for understanding of the material as text:

Das Horen als eineri Vorgang begreifen, der etwas von der Schriftlichkeit der

Texte transparent machtund mit dem Lesen vergleichbar wird: vor- und

zuriickgehen, plotzlich sich verlesen, iiber den Irrtum begreifen, Worte in

anderen Worten auffinden - darum geht es.338

This conception of listening as an event offers a model for the reception of Poschmann's

Text im Theater by providing a theatrical, performance analog to reading. The auditory

337
Barnett, "Heiner Muller vertonen," 218.

338
Goebbels, "Text als Landschaft," 70.

201
(and not the visual) is the mode for the performance of textuality.

Echoing Goebbels's invocation of Brecht, Barnett claims that in Goebbels's

adaptation of Verkommenes lifer, "the listener is no longer a consumer, but rather an

active participant in the creation of meaning." 339 In Goebbels's own commentary,

however, he focuses not so much on making meaning as on creating a space for

"begreifen". This space emerges in the separation between the text and the speaking of

the text, between the audial output and the listening to the output. The "begreifen"

occurs in that span between the textual material and the individual's physical, sensual

process of apprehending that material. That span, too, is where the Textlandschaft - to

use Goebbels's term - unfolds, constituting itself through "akustische Bilder." Unlike

visual images, perceived (if not apperceived) relatively instantaneously, "acoustic

images" inherently unfold over time. Goebbels's work attempts to dissolve Muller's text

in a way that brings out its rhythm, the sounds of its words, and its syntax, as well as its

semantic content. He does so with the goal "daG sich der Text iiber der Summe aller

eingesetzten Mittel (Sprachteile, Sprechweisen, Musik, Gerausche, etc.) im Kopf des

Horers wieder zusammensetzen kann." 340 The mental image constructed by the listener

is a reconfiguration of the text: not language-//A:e, as Tye describes most mental images

(cf. p. 24), but rather a return to language itself, albeit with perhaps a greater

appreciation of its constituent elements. This return concerns itself not with a simple

semiotic "content," but rather with the "verschiedenen semantischen Schichten und

339
Barnett, "Heiner Muller vertonen," 225.

340
Goebbels, "Expeditionen in die Textlandschaft," 80.

202
Reflexionsebenen" of the text, yielding an "inhaltliche Genauigkeit, die nicht mit der

Semantik der Satze erledigt ist."341 Miiller's language is taken apart in the performance

for the express purpose of the audience putting it back together as language. The extent

to which our intuition of this process leads us to describe it pictorially (as "acoustic

images") speaks to the language-like properties of images, as accounted for in Tye's

descriptionalism.

Though this employment of "acoustic images" presents itself most clearly in

Goebbels's Horstiick adaptation of Verkommenes Ufer, where there are of course no visual

images, a similar relationship to language can be found in elements of almost all the

productions of Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten discussed in

this chapter, with perhaps the exception of Kriegenburg's highly psychologized

production at the Deutsches Theater. The GDR premiere directed by Konwitschny, like

Goebbels's Horstiick, emphasized Miiller's text as an independent entity, something that

is encountered by its performer(s) and worked through. Both renderings made

productive use of the unfamiliarity of the text's language and foreignness of its reference

to draw attention to both the semantic content of the words as well as their non-

naturalistic syntax and prosody. In both instances, the performers modeled a reception

of the text for the audience. The repeatable medium of the Horstiick allows its listeners to

hear the actual encounters of individuals with the text, spliced together to emphasize the

most interesting and productive of these spontaneous meetings. In the Berliner

341
Goebbels, "Expeditionen in die Textlandschaft," 81.

203
Ensemble production, parallel events were devised by the actress recreating, acting the

encounter with the text, and later her encounter with the recordings (interpretations) of

the text.

The premiere production in Bochum took a different path to the theme of

encountering the text, plucking out individual semantic elements, literalizing them, and

presenting them as material objects. The production staged audience members'

confrontation with those elements in the "Argonautenmuseum" before the play even

began. This concretization contrasted with the focus on the sound of the language that

obtained in some other parts of the staging, especially in the third section. Using

language that sounds very much like Goebbels, Bernhard Greiner characterizes the

effect of the Jason actor's non-mimetic delivery of the text as an "Einheit von

Beschreibung und Vorgang," in which "das Wort/der Text [wird] in die Wirklichkeit des

hier und jetzt agierenden Korpers zuriickgeholt."342 The interpretation in Bochum

moved the focus of its concentration on language beyond the sound of the voice to its

material substance: here, the body of the actor, not only present onstage, but physically

exerting itself (the actor jogging).

In these performances, the disparate styles, modes, and themes of the three sections

of Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten focus each performance at

some point on the language of the text and the actors' and/or audience members'

342
Bernhard Greiner, "'Einheit (Gleichzeitigkeit) von Beschreibung und Vorgang':
Versuch iiber Heiner Mullers Theater," Spiele und Spiegelungen von Schrecken und Tod,
eds. Gregor Laschen, Paul Gerhard Klussmann and Heinrich Mohr, vol. 7, Jarhbuch zur
Literatur in der DDR (Bonn: Bouvier, 1990) 80.

204
encounter with that language. With attention both to the semantic content of Miiller's

text (language as signification), and to its material, aural qualities (language as a sensual

element), the term "audial image" serves as a fitting mediational term to encompass

both of these aspects of the language in the play.

205
Postlude:
The encounter with Text im Theater

As demonstrated by the productions of Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft

mit Argonauten discussed above, the successful deployment of Heiner Miiller's language

in performance requires attention to multiple elements of language: not only its

semantics, but also its materiality. The audial images encountered by the audience

member encompass one or more sensual elements, thus justifying the label 'image.' Yet

they remain textual, with these images signifying in the same manner as does language.

Barnett's term for text-centered productions of Die Hamletmaschine, "the reading

solution," speaks to a quality of the language of that text that lends itself to presentation

in performance as language. 343 In some cases, that language has been explicitly textual,

with figures on stage reading it from a page, or with its gradual revelation as a text on

stage to be read by the audience (cf. pp. 131 and 137). In that most extreme example of

the reading solution, Robert Wilson's production in New York, London, and Hamburg,

Miiller's text was made strange, with its broken and distorted delivery. For much of the

production, in order to understand the sentences, even the words, let alone to begin to

parse their meanings, audience members had to separate the text from its presentation,

reformulating the phrases into sentences, the words into phrases, and the morphemes

343
Although I have already discussed the failure of Rihm's Hamletmaschine opera as an
interpretation of Miiller's text, it bears pointing out that this failure can be read as an
extreme lack of separation between the text and the speaking (singing) of the text. With
the addition of a dominating orchestral score and at times extreme writing for the vocal
lines, the possibility of listening to the libretto (i.e., Miiller's text) as an event unfolding
over time is precluded.

206
into words—after filtering out non-language morphemes. Granted, the chief encounter

in the production may not have been that between the audience member and Muller's

text, but rather between Wilson's images and the text. (Or perhaps better stated, the text

and stage images provided for the most conspicuous non-encounter.) Nevertheless, the

text stood as a conspicuously independent element Within the performance

environment.

In the Einstiirzende Neubauten adaptation of Die Hamletmaschine, the play of the

Hamlet and Ophelia voices finding their expression in a sonic environment would seem

to preclude the interpretation of this production as the particular kind of sound-based

Text im Theater theorized by Goebbels. Muller's readings of the stage directions,

however, do provide a contrast to the psychological interpretations, drawing out a

textual quality to the words that is only heightened by their embedding among shifting

physical acoustic environments. The main interest of the adaptation, however, still lies

in the suggestions of space and inferiority achieved by its manipulation of sound.

In the band's interpretation of Bildbeschreibung, the entirety of the production is

determined by Muller's text, both in its presence and in its absence. The listener

experiences the temporality of the text (its length, were the entire text read aloud) and

part of its physical structure (the capitalized words and phrases and their approximate

locations in the text), though without necessarily knowing what it is that determines

those elements of the production. The relationship between the Bildbeschreibung text and

the speaking of that text is in fact an expression in time of the play's form, yet that

207
relationship remains hermetic, unknowable to one not already familiar with the written

text, giving no indication of how the audial text can be "read" by the listener.

In some ways, Tscholakowa's premiere production of Bildbeschreibung provided a

theatrical experience very much related to Goebbels's ideal iteration of Text im Theater.

This text in particular lends itself to a rendering in "acoustic images," given its ultimate

lack of an external referent outside of its own language. The broadcast at the beginning

of the production ofMiiller's reading, with its deliberate tempo and strictly controlled

intonation, attempted to provide the closest encounter with pure text possible in an

audial form. The individual presentations by actors that followed modeled their own

interpretations of that text, with these repetitions, reductions, and re-orderings explicitly

identified by the performance program as the actors' individual approaches to reading

Bildbeschreibung.

It is another radio adaptation, however, that comes the closest to providing an

experience of the text in performance, "der etwas von der Schriftlichkeit der Texte

transparent macht und mit dem Lesen vergleichbar wird." In Barbara Liebster and

Stephan Heilmann's production of Bildbeschreibung, the text is reshuffled, with parts of it

read over the top of other parts. Its constant resetting, returning ever again to the first

lines of Miiller's text, highlights the provisional nature of any one constellation of

words, of the myriad relationships and intrigues that can be drawn from the voices'

relative positions in the audial hierarchy and the surprising connections between lines

far distant from each other in the printed text.

208
 The acoustic images refer ultimately only to the text, and to the relationship of its

language with itself. In this way, Muller's particular iteration of postdramatic theater-

writing is consistent with poststructuralism, for the "meaning" of any particular text can

lie only in its recipient. Muller's explanation of the Scherzo in Die Hamletmaschine, then,

also serves as a pithy answer to the question of where, between the stage and the minds

of the audience members, the theater actually takes place: "Das gehort in dem Kopf des

Zuschauers." 344

344
Miiller, "Regie: Heiner Miiller," 108.

209
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