A Learning Piece by Heiner Müller, Directed by Noah Zeldin in cooperation with the performers
Tuesday, 5/29 - 6:30 pm -
Lincoln Park Cultural Center - 2045 N. Lincoln Park West
Monday, 6/04 - 6:30 pm - Sherman Park Public Library - 5440 S. Racine Avenue
Tuesday, 6/12 - 6:30 pm - Richard M. Daley Public Library (West Humboldt Park) - 733 N. Kedzie Avenue
Saturday, 6/30, 8 pm - The Floods Studios (Pilsen) - SW corner of W. 19th St. and S. Paulina St.
Vitebsk, 1918 - Chicago, 2018: Backwards into the Present
East German dramatist Heiner Müller (1929-1995) wrote the learning-piece Mauser (1970) after the fallout from the Prague Spring of 1968.
Set in the city of Vitebsk during the Russian Civil War, Mauser confronts the role of violence in revolutionary change and coldly displays its logic in all its contradictions.
Banned by the East German government for promoting “counterrevolutionary” ideas and criticized by Western liberals for vindicating “Stalinism,” Mauser is perhaps Müller’s most controversial work.
Glock is an adaptation of the piece for contemporary Chicago, a city whose crime rate and violence have become emblematic of larger problems facing American society. In this production, a cast of Chicagoans from all walks of life and with no professional theater experience grapples with a variant theme: the role of violence in preserving the status quo.
Translated by Helen Fehervary and Marc Silberman, ad. Noah Zeldin
© Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-1989-1104-047
Heiner Müller, pseudonym Max Messer, is one of the most important German-speaking playwrights of the second half of the 20th century and is counted amongst the most important writers of the GDR. He also gained importance as a poet, prose writer and essayist, interview partner, director, dramaturg, director and president of the Akademie der Künste Berlin (East).
© Noah Zeldin
Noah Zeldin is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago. His dissertation is titled “Towards a Political Art Form: The Learning-Piece in Music and Theater” and focuses on the work of Bertolt Brecht, Hanns Eisler, Heiner Müller and Cornelius Cardew.
He previously studied music composition at Northwestern University and continues to create music in a variety of contexts.
Back
