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HAMLETMACHINE - Scenography, directing, light- & costume design by Birgitte Moos Chalcraft

THESIS - Master´s degree at The Royal Danish Academy of the Arts (KADK)

During my studies in Berlin from 1995 to 1997, I awakened to the world of postmodern theatre—drawn in by its theoretical frameworks and experimental approaches. As a result, I chose The Hamletmachine as the subject of my thesis project in scenography at the Royal Danish Academy of Arts in Copenhagen in 1998.

The Hamletmachine is an early postmodern text, written in 1977 by East German playwright Heiner Müller. At the time, both the play and its stagings were emblematic of a broader artistic shift. Müller’s fragmented, nonlinear script, loosely rooted in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, exemplified a radical break from traditional dramatic structures, prioritising image, voice, and conceptual provocation over coherent narrative or psychological character development. As such, The Hamletmachine marks a crucial moment in the evolution of theatrical form, occupying a transitional space between postmodern and postdramatic theatre.

This transition occurred well before German theatre scholar Hans-Thies Lehmann formally introduced the term postdramatic theatre in his 1999 book of the same name. Yet Hamletmachine is not only an example of postdramatic practice—it is almost a foundational text for what Lehmann would later define. Müller’s work exemplifies nearly every feature Lehmann outlines: the decentering of narrative, the dominance of performance over representation, and the collapse of the fourth wall. In this way, Hamletmachine not only challenged modernistic ideologies and aesthetic conventions but also helped shape the vocabulary of contemporary performance long before it was academically codified.

In shaping my interpretation of Hamletmachine, the theoretical frameworks of several thinkers served as valuable sources of inspiration for my staging. Their names will appear throughout this paper, as their ideas informed both the conceptual and aesthetic dimensions of the work. Artistically applying these perspectives allowed my interpretation to resist the temptation to create harmonious or visually pleasing stage images, indifferent to beauty, and charged with disruption. Instead, the piece became something more mechanical than emotional. I was building a machine — not staging a play.

• Gertrude Stein and Donna Haraway were instrumental in deepening the piece’s departure from traditional dramaturgy. Stein’s radical experimentation with language — particularly her notion of the “continuous present” — offered a model for dismantling linearity and allowed me to treat language as a system. Haraway’s cyborg gave form to Müller’s already posthuman figures. In my staging, the performers were hybrids — part data, part ghost, part humans. Through both Stein and Haraway, Hamletmachine became a system of fragments and disrupted signals.
• Postmodern theatre employs linguistic and visual fragmentation, as well as the breakup of signs and signifiers, to allow for multiple interpretations. A key theoretical tool in this context is the structuralist Charles S. Peirce’s Sign Theory, which classifies signs into three categories: symbol, index, and icon. Understanding this system is important for applying deconstructivism in postmodern theatre.
• Deconstruction, developed by Jacques Derrida, is a fundamental element of postmodern practice. At its core, deconstruction challenges what we know conventionally and define as beauty and truth. It involves dismantling recognizable content, reversing familiar structures, and destabilizing fixed meanings so that no single, predefined interpretation remains. Derrida encourages juxtaposing meanings or reinserting oppositional signs to generate new, shifting layers of significance.
• Deconstructivism, then, is not about negation but about opening up new angles of interpretation—disrupting certainty to make room for ambiguity. In this regard, theatre practitioners such as Antonin Artaud and Bertolt Brecht were early forerunners, both actively engaged in creating performances that resisted narrative stability and embraced radical theatrical experimentation.

Deconstructivism allows for open interpretation, eliminating the notion of a single, fixed meaning. Hamletmachine is emblematic of this approach, as it is characterized by the absence of a traditional plot. The text unfolds as a series of fragmented sequences—temporal dislocations and layered events—that disrupt the continuity of linear time and destabilize conventional textual signifiers. These qualities make Hamletmachine a prime subject for analysis through the core principles of postmodern theatre and deconstructivist theory. The play is constructed from complex contradictions; its meanings are entangled in a nonlinear web, lacking a singular narrative thread but offering multiple interpretive pathways depending on the vantage point of the observer.

Description of the Text

Hamletmachine is a radically condensed work—just eight pages long—that distills the trajectory of Western civilization from the glacial epoch through contemporary times and into a dystopian future marked by climate catastrophe. Laden with intertextuality and densely packed with literary and historical allusions, the text references works, events and places such as Shakespeare’s Richard III, the Third Reich, Hamlet’s place of study—Wittenberg University—as well as various revolutions and the ideas of Karl Marx. Within this intricate web of references, both characters and events are transformed into fragments of world history. Though repositioned within a loosely chronological framework, they are simultaneously dislocated and reconfigured, creating a layered, nonlinear, and often surreal historical timeline.

Hamlet, the central figure, is depicted in the throes of an identity crisis that spirals into psychosis—a psychological collapse fuelled by disillusionment and despair as he witnesses various ages of failed revolutions. These failures are paralleled by the rise of consumer culture, which not only betrays the aspirations of the past but perpetuates cycles of violence. Hamlet recognizes disturbing patterns repeating themselves across eras, yet finds no resolution.

Hamlet's inner schism intensifies as he—according to Jungian terminology—fails to acknowledge his own subconscious and neglects to integrate intellect with emotion. He begins to see that his belief in classical philosophy is insufficient to bring about social change. This realisation that human intelligence is limited undermines his sense of self and leads to doubt, both about his own identity and the survival of culture—and perhaps even about the legitimacy of his own role. He spirals into a growing frenzy, torn between the masculine and the feminine, animus and anima, memory and hallucination, all of which disrupt his learned perception of the self as a linear continuity, causing his sense of self to fall apart.

The Hamletmachineserves as a critique of society and the self-ironic counterpart confronting mankind's intellect in the Western world. Hamlet is rendered as an identity seeker, struggling to make sense of apocalyptic events, yet he ends as a tragic figure who capitulates, denying both love and the human species.

Hamlet’s split nature responds to the Western Canon’s portrayal of the intellectual confronted with failed revolutionary changes, becoming the central theme of the text. His downfall culminates in a desire for a fusion between man and machine. The text also alludes to the concept of an era of technological possibilities, where ideas such as post-humanism, cyborg bodies, virtual reality, and robots may become reality—ideas that suggest both salvation and further alienation.

The scenography

In my staging, everything took place within a site-specific 80-meter-tall gas silo in Copenhagen. The found architectural performance space and the transgression of boundaries were my focal points, fostering new ways to challenge the barrier between the audience and performers, ultimately blurring the line between ‘art and reality.’ My intention was to explore the art of theatrical scenography—challenging gravity, creating a language through non-realistic imagery, and investigating the interaction between the audience and the stage. This staging questioned how and where the viewer would experience recognition and intuitive understanding of the performance’s content, including its scenography, as it relates to the environment of the action on stage.

The play leaps between different cultural eras and time zones. And my main concept was to create a three-dimensional collage, achieved through defragmentation and the assembly of the past into the present and future.

My scenography takes place on a circular stage constructed inside the silo, inspired by the shape of an ancient amphitheater. Greek theatre, as the root of the Western world’s theatrical tradition, served as a key reference. The circular concept was developed to present a cyclical model of time, serving as a container for the text’s content.

Once I had decided that Hamletmachine would unfold within the industrial vastness of the gas silo, I studied its technical drawings and discovered, almost like a hidden offering, a large circular piston embedded in its base. This massive, dormant mechanism became the ideal foundation—both literally and conceptually—upon which to construct the round scenography. It was as if the architecture itself anticipated the performance: a stage already waiting beneath the surface.

The audience is seated in the center of the silo on an illuminated, transparent circular floor, encircled by the entire stage. The circular stage, which encircles the audience, is constructed on five different annular levels. The varied scenography spans multiple layers, creating the experience of fragmented events and time shifts. This design allowed me to construct different stages on all levels surrounding the audience, giving them a heightened sense of immersion in the various time zones, each level linked to different historical events.

Time is depicted circularly, moving from the rear and above to the front and downward toward the audience. The past is the furthest from the audience, while the present is directly in front of them. In a figurative sense, the audience sits in the future.

Behind the first annular rear ring and extending into space lies 'nothing'—a vast room of darkness representing the time before ancient philosophy and Western European self-understanding. The actual first upper rear annular stage symbolizes ancient and traditional values. The second annular ring forms the foundation for the Age of Enlightenment, a period when philosophy experienced a resurgence following antiquity. The third middle ring represents revolutionary events, such as the 1913 October Revolution and the division of Budapest. The lower fourth ring provides space for literature and significant personalities from the previous century, extending to the activities of the Baader-Meinhof group in Germany. The fifth annular ring, positioned closest to the audience, represents the present.

The scenography enables a multidimensional freedom of movement, allowing the performers to navigate fluidly through time and space—moving back and forth in time, ascending and descending between the concentric rings, and circulating around the audience. This structure creates a dynamic totality in which the audience is not merely observing but is actively drawn into the experience. They are invited to sense and comprehend the full expanse of the stage and to follow the performers as they traverse shifting layers of time and spaces of meaning.

The atmosphere and vast dimensions of the silo resonate with the core of Hamlet’s dilemma: the notion that individual, intellectual reasoning—particularly as framed within the Western European tradition—may be fundamentally inadequate when confronted with a greater, unknowable force. This elusive “something” lies beyond the grasp of rational structures, and its presence destabilises the implicit belief that surrendering to the unknown is a lapse in intellectual rigor. In this interpretation, I undertake a re-deconstruction of an already fragmented text, positioning myself—consciously and unapologetically—at odds with Heiner Müller’s academic framework. In doing so, I claim space for a sensorial and intuitive approach that challenges the dominance of cerebral authority in postmodern dramaturgy.

In this context, a gas-containing silo also alludes to 20th-century consumerism, as well as to galaxies formed light-years away in the universe. Today, natural gas powers countless industrial processes, often at unsustainable levels of consumption. Meanwhile, our own galaxy—the Milky Way—is a vast collection of stars, gas, and dust, along with a significant proportion of dark matter: Immediately after the Big Bang, the universe was completely dark. As the primordial cosmos expanded, light began to emerge in the form of cosmic microwave background radiation. Some believe this very radiation contributes to climate change. The gas silo thus becomes a symbol—something that can be decoded in multiple directions rather than anchored in a fixed viewpoint.

Stanislav Grof emerges here as a significant source of inspiration through his pioneering exploration of the outer edges of human consciousness. His ideas resonate with the psychological cosmology of Carl Gustav Jung, particularly in their shared attention to the profound architecture of the psyche, and with the deeper structures of the psyche. While Jung emphasised individuation, the collective unconscious, and the shaping power of archetypes, Grof expanded these concepts into a broader psychological horizon. In the 1970s, he developed transpersonal psychology—a field that embraces the existential and spiritual dimensions of human experience by integrating body, mind, soul, and society.

Grof’s vision of transcendence offers a radical rethinking of how Hamlet might escape his intellectual and existential prison—not through confrontation or rational clarity, but through an expanded awareness of the interconnectedness of all things. Such a shift would mark a poetic and ideological rupture with Hamletmachine's intertextual and fragmented landscape. Instead, it gestures toward a performative mode of consciousness in which opposites—body and thought, history and present, guilt and longing—dissolve into a new state of embodied awareness. Here, liberation is not an act of resistance, but one of integration; not the destruction of structure, but its transformation.

In my scenographic approach, I sought to shape precisely this state: a space in which Hamlet does not merely exist within the split between text and body, but where the scenography itself—through light, materiality, and the positioning of the audience—carries the potential for an expansion of consciousness, beyond language, conflict, and time.

I also drew on a sequence of Artaud’s ideas by placing the audience at the center of the performance space, eliminating any possibility of escape and turning them into participants in a contemporary version inspired by the Theatre of Cruelty. One of Artaud’s central concepts was to immerse the audience within what he called a spectacle— a term that carries layered meanings. In English, it evokes both the “spectacular” and the “spectator”: the striking image and the viewer. In my native Danish, however, the word spektakel also connotes a disturbing or chaotic noise. This linguistic overlap enriches Artaud’s vision, suggesting that a spectacle is not only something seen but something suffered, something that overwhelms the senses. In this interpretation, the audience, engulfed by sound and visual stimuli from all directions, becomes acutely aware of their own presence within the space. Artaud compared this immersive condition to being in a vortex — a forceful experience designed to bypass rational understanding and strike at the nervous system.

The audience’s position — metaphorically ‘in the future’ — was designed to simulate the experience of being seated on a living organism. The central transparent circular stage floor, functioning as a simulacrum of the globe or the world, served as a scenographic device to break down the psychological boundary between audience and performance. This spatial arrangement was intended to generate a heightened awareness of physical presence and sensation. By working with lighting in the audience area — using various colours and intensities projected upward through the glass circle — I aimed to affect the audience emotionally and physically, not just intellectually. Seated on swivel chairs, each spectator had an unobstructed 360-degree view throughout the performance. This multi-perspective setup reinforced a key element of postmodern theatre: the collapse of fixed viewpoints and the decentralization of meaning, inviting the audience to become active witnesses within a fragmented, immersive system.

I developed a staging concept that applied deconstruction as a scenographic design method. Much like a semiotic system that can be unraveled into its constituent signs, I began to dismantle the foundational components of the scenography — not to eliminate them, but to displace and recontextualize them within new spatial and visual arrangements. Rather than serving a text-based logic, these elements gained meaning through their relational positioning in space. Deconstruction thus became a scenographic response to a postmodern text.

I systematically cut elements from the scenographic "base layers" and redistributed them across the stage. For instance, in Act IV, "Pest in Buda / Battle for Greenland," segments of the scene’s literal foundation were excised as rectangular shapes and placed upright elsewhere on stage. This dislocation reframed the pieces, allowing them to exist in a new semantic and spatial context — inviting a hybrid interpretation. My aim was to create an experience of a coincidence principle, or structured chaos, a “principle of deformation” in which the familiar and aesthetic material is fragmented and reassembled. This approach was inspired by Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus, particularly their notion of multiplicity, and deterritorialization — where meaning emerges not through fixed structure, but through dynamic movement and rupture.

The surface of the entire scenographic foundation — composed of the five circular layers — was covered with asphalt-coated cardboard, referencing Germany’s militarized expansion during the Second World War. This material choice alludes specifically to the Nazi regime’s construction of highways (Autobahnen) as they advanced across Europe, turning infrastructure into a tool of occupation and domination. The asphalt surface thus becomes more than a texture; it evokes a traumatic history that cannot be disentangled from the political events preceding the war, nor from the psychological and cultural aftermath experienced by generations that followed. By embedding this historical resonance into the physical layers of the stage, I aimed to inscribe memory into the material world of the performance — a latent trauma beneath the action.

Philosophical Reflection on the Notion of Time

The silo — a central scenographic structure — functions as both a container and a metaphor for time itself. Its content visualizes time not as linear progression, but as a spatial, experiential phenomenon. Designed as both a physical and abstract object, the silo becomes a scenographic device that holds time within it, transforming temporality into something tangible. From the outside, it appears static and self-contained; from within, it becomes incomprehensible — dissolving the boundaries of space and chronology. For the audience, entering the silo is not simply to enter a set, but to step inside time.

Inside the container, multiple time periods are reflected simultaneously. This experience draws on Jacques Lacan’s theory of the “Mirror Stage,” where identity is formed through a process of misrecognition — of seeing oneself as a whole image while internally fragmented. Similarly, the spectator, seated at the center, is surrounded by fragmented histories, sounds, and spaces, creating a dissonance between self-perception and sensory reality. Time is no longer linear but layered, recursive, and pressurized. The result is a claustrophobic and self-referential environment — an experience where time becomes oppressive, looping, and emotionally charged. The scenography thus enacts a philosophical and sensory meditation: time is not merely passing; it is being contained, reflected, and endured.

Description of the set design

Act I. "Family Scrapbook. Funeral and rape of his mother"

For the set in Act I, I designed and installed two golden columns inspired by ancient Greek architecture, but constructed from plastic. These columns served a dual purpose: they symbolized both the interior and exterior of a castle, representing the castles of both Richard III and Hamlet. At the same time, the columns alluded to the Greek tragedy Oedipus, reflecting a deconstructed approach to scenography. The choice of materials — the plastic surface, the gold color, and the classical shape — created a tension between the ancient and the modern, signalling at least three different interpretations simultaneously. This layered approach invited the audience to engage with multiple historical, cultural, and thematic references within the performance.

Act II. "The Europe of Women." Ophelia: "I set fire to my prison"

For Act II, I designed four identical upright rectangular panels, spaced apart to represent the four walls of a marital home, parallel tensions: The Burden of Patriarchy. This formal, rigid composition mirrored the constraints of conformity and gender roles, symbolizing the traditional, suffocating structure within which Ophelia finds herself trapped. The gaps between the panels, however, serve as a visual deconstruction of Ophelia’s claustrophobic experience, dismantling the restrictive framework of her statements. These gaps echoed Ophelia's desire for freedom, suggest a potential exit from the prison of societal expectations and the repressive view of the female role within the home. Her cry, “I set fire to my prison,” is not madness, but a radical act of self-redefinition.

Act III. Scherzo. "The university of the dead. Whispering and muttering from their gravestones - The dead philosopher's Museum"

In Act III, I placed glass showcases containing seemingly lifeless, naked actors inside, their stillness evoking a sense of death and philosophical mummification. Above and around the showcases, a minimalistic, un-ornamented golden portal framed the scene. This portal suggested a classical theatrical structure, but also resembled an oversized gilded guillotine, a meta-reference to the French intellectual tradition and its academic stance on philosophy. The guillotine, which had been in use in Germany and France from the Napoleonic Wars until 1949, carried a dark historical resonance. France’s last execution by guillotine took place in 1977 — the same year Hamletmachine was published. This connection to the executioner’s blade underscored the brutality and finality of intellectual and political repression, reinforcing the theme of death and mummification.

Act IV. "Pest in Buda / Battle for Greenland." ( ... Three TV channels without sound … ) "Assigns Hamletmachine at the set is a monument"

In Act IV, the scenographic elements consisted of two monumental cement walls with cast-iron bars, creating a stark and oppressive atmosphere. An opening between these walls allowed actors to perform on the higher-lying annular discs, exemplifying the concept of time-jumping integrated within a single scene.

During Hamlet's 'descent into hell' in this act, I positioned him between the archaic monolithic pillars, arranged in pairs on each foundation circle: from top to bottom, and towards the future, Hamlet’s movement symbolized his existential struggle, navigating between the past and an uncertain future. The concept was that, in this act, where Hamlet declares, "I want to be a Machine," the audience would have been able to control his movements with a remote control or joystick.

This idea aimed to illustrate Hamlet as a figure driven involuntarily by external forces — a metaphor for the surrounding cultural system. The audience’s norms and subjectivity would impose Hamlet’s movements, creating an interactive dynamic. In this scenario, a homeless hero Hamlet’s battle against himself would end in an unresolved realization: the repetition of past stories in the present and future. Unfortunately, the technical feasibility of this idea was not achievable, and an attempt to integrate audience interaction could have resulted in senseless violence, undermining the performance’s integrity.

This concept led me to explore the works of Australian artist Stelarc, who develops what he calls ‘virtual bodies’ that interact connect with each other. Stelarc suggests that their new modes of high-tech interaction could break free from cultural memory and challenge traditional Western thinking. I viewed this scenario as a potential solution to Hamlet’s schism — a Hamlet functioning on memory, disconnected from his present reality.

With this, I do not seek to undermine humanistic traditions or values. Rather, this thought experiment was an attempt to explore new performative forms, engaging with contemporary ideas of interactivity, technology, and the disconnection between body, mind, and cultural history.

Act V. Ophelia: "I am Electra speaking. In The Heart of Darkness. Under the sun of torture. To the capitals of the world ... I take back the world you gave birth to”

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, referenced in Act V of Hamletmachine, offers a stark critique of how patriarchy wields violence to control women’s bodies and identities. While Conrad’s women remain silent, symbolic figures confined within a male-prescribed narrative, Müller’s Ophelia ruptures that frame—she speaks, resists, and ultimately reclaims her voice. In Hamletmachine, she becomes the casualty of a society that imprisons her in reductive roles: daughter, lover, madwoman—until death becomes her only release from them. As Ophelia sinks into the river, the river she disappears into is Chronos’ time—rendered here as a frozen stream of life. She drowns not only in water, but in the flow of historical and personal events. The Glass Circle is lit from below with a cold blue light, evoking the sensation of sitting on ice—a haunting image of how things can go wrong.

In the final scene of Act V, a sharp white light was projected from the jet-black void above the audience directly onto them, creating the atmosphere of a universe devoid of light. The rest of the silo remained shrouded in darkness. This final image echoed Müller’s multi-referential writing style and, accordingly, could be interpreted in several directions.

In the end, there was only the light—the whiteness cast toward the audience. One interpretation was to turn this enigmatic light into a poetic symbol, suggesting a cosmos so distant it lies beyond human perception, nearly impossible to comprehend. The beam could signify the light at the end of the tunnel; it could resemble the white light often reported in near-death or rebirth experiences—one of Stanislav Grof’s areas of research—and thus become a symbol of hope or a quantum leap in consciousness.

Alternatively, the light might suggest that humanity has entered an information age in which everything is monitored and the individual is under constant surveillance. Another possibility was that the audience found themselves staring into a vast black hole—the darkness beyond the light—engulfing all, even hope for the future of humanity.

In Hamletmachine, the final scene marks the onset of a new ice age—an ice age brought about not by nature, but as the consequence of global warming caused by civilization’s unchecked advancement. Although, this interpretation of Hamletmachine deliberately avoids presenting a definitive image of either catastrophe or catharsis. The closing image becomes a commentary on an evolutionary step, a completion of the cycle or the collapse of progress. Time, structured as concentric circles, loops endlessly—historical events repeating themselves. Understanding remains fragmented, and perhaps unresolved.

by Birgitte Moos Chalcraft

  © Birgitte Moos Chalcraft 2025