The Segal Center Presents Heiner Muller's Discovery of America All Day Symposium

Playwright, poet, and author, Heiner Müller (Jan. 9, 1929 - Dec. 30, 1995) is considered the most significant German dramatist of the 20th century after Bertolt Brecht. Müller's Hamletmachine represents an iconic and enigmatic text in post-dramatic theatre that has been highly influential on a global scale for writers, directors, and dramaturgs. During the 1970s, Müller received permission to temporarily leave East Germany to visit America. Müller's journeys in the U.S. included cross?country trips and visits to Austin, Milwaukee, Madison, San Francisco, and New York City; a second journey brought him also to Mexico and Puerto Rico - altogether an experience that ultimately changed the aesthetics of his work.

The Segal Center's all-day symposium will trace Müller's artistic and political thinking and artistic practice during his American journeys, where he witnessed the decline of Socialism at home and the rise of Neo?Capitalism in the U.S.. International theatre artists, scholars, friends, and former student will revisit the dramatist's journey through America with screenings, documentary materials, excerpted readings of selected works, short lectures, and panel discussions.

Screenings will include rehearsals of Heiner Müller's play Mauser in Austin, Texas and Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1975; Heiner Müller's readings of parts of Life of Gundling Lessing's Sleep Dream Cry, as well as Hamletmachine, and video excerpts of The man in the Elevator - part of Heiner Müller's play The Mission - directed by Heiner Goebbels, partly spoken by Heiner Müller.

Participants: Terry Galloway, Frank Hentschker, Andreas Huyssen, Jonathan Kalb, Bonnie Marranca, Klaudia Ruschkowski, Wolfgang Storch, David Bathrick and others (TBC).

Findings from the Segal Center Heiner Müller in America Symposium will be presented in a follow-up event in Berlin, followed by a book publication. Curated by Wolfgang Storch and Klaudia Ruschkowski, in collaboration with Frank Hentschker.

PAJ Publications is Heiner Müller's American publisher.

The event is dedicated to Betty Nance Weber, who first invited Heiner Müller to the US as a Writer-in-Residence to the University of Austin, Texas, in 1975.

Heiner Müller's Discovery of America

Monday, December 19
All day Symposium 10:00am|3:00pm|6:30pm
The Segal Theatre | The Graduate Center, CUNY 365 Fifth Ave at 34th St

FREE + Open to public. First come, first served.

Not able to attend? Watch our livestream at www.theSegalCenter.org/home

Click here for full schedule