The grave, earth, scream, anger, resistance to totalitarianism, misogyny, violence, war, sense, nonsense, despair, rebellion, revolution... are in their various appearances in the play "Hamlet Machine". Deeply disturbing, emotionally charged, difficult... These are the feelings that only the theater can so intensely and vividly create in the soul of the viewer.
This complex play, performed by the Arturo Areimos Teatras troupe from Lithuania, authored by Arturas Areima, with actor Rokas Petrauskas and actress Monika Poderita on the stage of the Cultural and Information Center (KIC) "Budo Tomović" on Thursday in Podgorica, was realized as part of the Festival of the international alternative theater FIAT.
"The Hamlet Machine" is a text by Heiner Müller, who is often characterized as the most important German-speaking playwright after Bertolt Brecht. There are numerous interpretations of this dramatic work, both because of the historical context, Miller's biography, and all the thoughts that permeate and are processed.
This play is abstract, post-modernist, fragmented, full of symbols that are open to giving multiple meanings, without a defined plot... It reforms the dramatic structure and therefore is subject to numerous descriptions. As such, it also leaves room for choosing how it will be performed on stage, which gives artistic freedom, so for example at the very beginning a deep and horrifying atmosphere was created with a furious and gradually louder emphasis on depression with penetrating techno sounds:
"Depression makes me feel pain, depression makes me feel alone, depression makes me stupid, depression makes me angry, depression makes me sad, depression makes me forget the world, depression makes me dance, depression makes me lose my self-control, depression makes me hate everything, depression makes me think again and again...".
Therefore, the play does not take place chronologically. Her characters Hamlet and Ophelia are not fixed and secure as such. There are numerous characters and allusions from literature, mythology... such as other Shakespeare characters, then Raskolnikov, Elektra, Doctor Zhivago, and others - a combination of literature and political messages.
So some interpret it as a criticism of the theater, and on the other hand, it can also be a criticism of an intellectual who does not make any real change in that point of violence, war, revolution..., because Shakespeare's Hamlet itself is very indecisive, latent, melancholic, and yet when do something impulsively and without thinking, like killing Polonius before he checked what was behind the curtain. It is also interpreted as a criticism of East Germany during the Cold War.
There are also interpretations that Hamlet wants to become a machine in order to separate himself from his subjectivity. However, his renunciation of emotions may not lie in not being able to bear his own pain and suffering, but because the impact of reality is so strong that he is disappointed and unable to do anything, and does not want to believe in it anymore?
"The theater is controlled madness" says the title of one of Miller's works, which is certainly an image of the sensibility of the "Hamlet Machine". When participating in this dramatic experience, the famous catharsis experienced by the viewer is inevitable, because "Hamlet Machine" is the impact of reality, existence, being... Because "Hamlet Machine" is anger, despair, an endless cycle of history in which everything is always repeated , in which neither man nor machine can escape. The "Hamlet Machine" is, as it appears as a statement in the play itself, "hateful" to capitalism, television, institutional racism, leaders, hypocrisy, poor education, mortgages, private property, material things, war... Hamlet is tired and from religion, private property, police, suits and asks if this is really the best we can do?
And Ophelia? In this performance, she refers to the sanctity of everything, and her character can be interpreted as a rebellion against the inability of Western civilization to prevent the recurring cycle of violence.
However, art has no end, and it is never, as Leonardo da Vinci says, finished, but only abandoned. Thus, any further comment implies only a momentary abandonment of thinking about this play, talking about it and conveying impressions about the performance, because "Hamlet Machine" is such a work that it means return, timelessness and countless meanings and possibilities.
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