HAMLETMACHINE By Heiner Müller Opens At Castillo June 12 - 28

Hamletmachine explores late 20th century Western culture, in a richly poetic and layered text. Heiner Müller's masterpiece borrows from Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot and Jean-Luc Godard, among others. (He was "sampling" before there was such a thing!). Müller was a protégé of Bertold Brecht. Castillo has become one of the foremost producers of his work here in the U.S.

Hamletmachine: Friday, June 12 and runs through Sunday, June 28, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2:00 p.m. (except at 5.00 P.M on June 28), at the Castillo Theatre, 543 West 42nd Street, admission $35 adults; $10 students and senior citizens.

The innovative production of Hamletmachine featuring a multi-racial, multi-generational cast of amateur and professional actors from communities throughout the New York City is under the direction of Viennese theatre director, Müller scholar, and Castillo founder, Eva Brenner.

Brenner, who works with immigrant communities in Vienna, helped to found the Castillo Theatre 26 years ago and is returning to the New York stage for the first time in 20 years. If you like your theatre teasing the imagination and pushing the envelope, don't miss this one-of-a-kind international collaboration. The show will take place from June 12 - June 28, 2009 at Castillo Theatre.

Eva Brenner (director) studied theater and philosophy at the University of Vienna and set and costume design at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. From 1980 to 1993 she lived and worked in New York City working off- and off-off-Broadway as a director and set designer (Public Theatre, Theatre for the New City, The Labor Theater, Castillo Theatre). She received an M.A. and Ph.D. cum laude at New York University, and in 1994 returned to her native Austria where she founded her own experimental theater. She has directed plays by such contemporary writers as Elfriede Jelinek, Marguerite Duras, Ingeborg Bachmann, Marlene Streeruwitz, Hanna Krall, Else Lasker-Schüler, Samuel Beckett and Heiner Müller (for Wiener Festwochen, dietheater Künstlerhaus, klagenfurter ensemble, Stadttheater Klagenfurt and her own company).

In 1998 Eva opened Projekt Theater Studio as an experimental laboratory for interdisciplinary performance work, and in 2004 she founded Fleischerei (Butcherie), an intercultural theater center with community outreach located in an old storefront space with a basement theater. Fleischerei brings together multicultural artists from Austria and abroad to create "socio-theatrical" experiments in its own space as well as in the streets, shops or restaurants. Using literary and original texts addressing political themes and integrating community audiences and anti-globalization activists, these have included intercultural wedding/parties, cooking shows with artists and migrants, and recent collaborations between artists, refugees and small businesses.

To purchase tickets and for more information, please visit: www.castillo.org or call 212-356-8449. TDF accepted, group rates available.