Heiner Müller the function of the theatre

31 juillet 1989
09m 27s
Ref. 00164

Information

Summary :

In the context of the Avignon festival, an interview with German theatre playwright Heiner Müller, who explains himself at length on his interpretation of theatre, on writing and on the artist's role.

Media type :
Broadcast date :
31 juillet 1989
Source :
France 3 (Collection: Avignon )
Personnalité(s) :
Themes :

Context

Heiner Müller was born in Eppendorf in 1929, and died in Berlin in 1995. A playwright, theatre director and poet, he was a symbolic figure of the contemporary theatre scene, establishing his work in the ruins of a Germany beaten during the war.

He spent his childhood in the German Democratic Republic; in 1951, his parents left for West Germany, while he remained in East Germany. He lived in Berlin, worked in journalism, and kept company with writing circles. In 1956, his first play appeared, Le Briseur de Salaires, which was a protest against East Germany's social reality and political system. In 1961, his wife committed suicide; Heiner Müller then turned to the classics - Shakespeare, Homer, Sophocles, Laclos - which he revisited. As a result, he created Sophocles: Oedipus the King (1965-66), Philoctetes (1958-1964), Macbeth (1971), Hamlet-Machine, Quartett.

In his plays, Müller depicted man when faced with old age and death through metaphors borrowed from war, eroticism and sickness. Several of his plays were staged in Paris, by Jean Jourdheuil and Patrice Chéreau. In the 1970s, Heiner Müller was the Berliner Ensemble's artistic consultant, then became president of the Academy of Arts of the GDR, followed by a position of director of the Berliner Ensemble in 1993, replacing Bertolt Brecht.

Aurélia Caton

Transcription

(Silence)
Heiner Müller
Is there for Mr. M. Müller a particular importance to write plays in Eastern Germany rather than here? [German]
Michel Bataillon
For the time being, it is much more important to me to write in the GDR.
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
Because it is a society in crisis.
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
And is conscious of this crisis.
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
And there, the theatre has a much more immediate function that here specifically.
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
And also for a negative reason, which is that there there is no public opinion. There is no press. And that in a certain way, the theatre is a lot more open, and it is a theatre that finds opinion.
Interviewer
Is theatre there an instrument for communicating information?
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
Information is not a problem, but the information comes from the television.
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
There can be eight to ten television programs.
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
And everything that is said at the theatre, everything that is said on stage, is a thing that cannot be retransmitted.
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
Theatre can push away borders, and can cross borders. To do theatre is a sort of border transgression.
(Silence)
Interviewer
If we speak of the society of the east and of the west, is there today, in relation to the things that have been previously said, any hope in the capitalist west, or has there ever been any? Is there another hope of some kind that survives or is reborn in the societies of the east? And is this an object of theatre?
Michel Bataillon
[German]
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
The only hope here, in the western society, is that it remains as it is.
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
The hope of people who live well.
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
His personal hope is that things do not remain in our society as they are.
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
The hopes their society, their hopes are filled with anxieties.
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
But there is never any hope without danger.
Interviewer
What gives you the strength and the desire to write?
Michel Bataillon
[German]
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
That is a noble question.
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
Writing is an aspect of his existence. For example. In a primitive way, he cannot sleep without having written.
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
He needs his writing like a sleeping pill.
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
When he is staging, for example, when staging, sleeping is a problem. Because the things of repetition are not taken to the end, the head continues to work.
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
And when he writes, when he has written a page, this page is written, it is done. And when he reads it, he immediately falls asleep. It is a medical reality.
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
You simply sleep better when something is finished, or when one has finished a page.
Interviewer
Which means that it is not only to sleep that he writes?
Michel Bataillon
[German]
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
One can begins for example with the idea that to commit a crime, commit murder, is work. When the murderer has accomplished his task, he can go to sleep.
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
And in writing plays there is a criminal energy.
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
And really, when he declared that it was to reduce things to their skeleton, he was thinking of this criminal energy that exists in dramatic writing.
Interviewer
And not in seeking a deadly truth?
Michel Bataillon
[German]
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
He wants to destroy illusions for example, when people start to feel comfortable, he wants them to feel badly.
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
He starts to feel good when the people stop feeling good.
Interviewer
Is this by pure perversity, or by a complete pessimism concerning universal stupidity?
Michel Bataillon
[German]
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
Neither perverse, nor cynical.
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
He finds that there is something boring when at the end of a theatre production, people are happy. And it is something that he willingly underlines, that he has often underlines, that he wishes that the people at the end of a production should feel isolated, alone, feel solitude. That they do not feel connected within a community.
Interviewer
So, he must be very sad at Avignon? Everyone goes to see their own play, and everyone comes out feeling more intelligent.
Michel Bataillon
[German]
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
[German]
Heiner Müller
[German]
Michel Bataillon
It is the reality of a festival. It is a bit like vacation. He thinks that if we were in repertory theatre, a theatre that played every night, things would be completely different.