Hamletmachine Update

Hamletmachine opened last night here at the University's Xperimental Theatre. The sound environment was designed by EVAC!, which consists of Me, Jeff Aldrich, and Howie Kenty, and I wanted to publish a few thoughts on my blog. For those of you unfamiliar with Hamletmachine, it is a theatre piece that was written in 1979 by an German by the name of Heiner Muller. The piece is simultaneously a deconstruction of the Hamlet story and a commentary on political events that were taking place around Muller in the late 70s. It's not by any means an audience-friendly piece. It is supposed to expose an audience to violence and it has much to do with Marxist philosophical concepts that deal with the commodification of the universe and the endless simulacra produced by abstract labor (See Capital, vol. 1). The sound environment for such a piece, then, presents several challenges to its creators and to the performers. EVAC! took the tact of producing an ambient soundscape of atonal music compositions coupled with awful sounds of bodies manipulated by machines. The sound environment really creates the world through the which the performers walk.

The beginning of this production of Hamletmachine consists of an alienating device that lets teh audience know that they are walking into a new world, possibly an unpleasant world. The audience is kept outside the theatre and the doors are closed. Through the closed doors, the audience members hear a cacophonous clang of machine noises at an incredibly loud and uncomfortable volume. This sound was titled "hellfactory," and I think that sums it up pretty well. When the doors do finally open, the audience must choose to walk into the cacophony, and once in the theatre they are accosted by extremely bright light. They have to walk around the outer perimeter of the performance space to access a stairway that conveys them into the playing space, which actually drops down like a pit. Last night, there were several people who didn't even make it into the theatre. The hellfactory scared them away.

The actors are standing in the space when the audience enters. They are stationary and neutral. Once seated, the hellfactory ceases and the audience shares time with the audience in the bright light. The lights go down, atonal piano music rises to a low volume, and then the show begins. The soundscape produces ambient effects throughout the piece that underscore the moods of the piece, which are almost all sad and dark. I received many compliments on the sound, mostly because people felt like they were transported to another world. There were, however, people who seemed unhappy being there. From the tech booth I could see many crossed arms and shifty eyes. Male and Female nudity created flutters of gesture (again, mostly unpleasant ones), and the sound we titled "terrible_pornscape1" really grated on people's nerves.

I have written an essay about the creation of the sound environment, and I will begin writing part II of that essay very soon. I'll be sending it to various scholarly journals and theatre publications, but if you have interest in reading either part I or part II, then let me know. If you want to hear some of this music/soundscape, give us a few weeks and we'll figure out a way to make it accessible.