Book, Civil Wars: Islands of Disorder by Heiner Müller[LS]

Language: Brazilian Portuguese. Seven different themes in seven interconnected chapters crossed by the disruptive dramaturgy of Heiner Müller, one of the biggest names in contemporary theater. Civil Wars: Islands of Disorder by Heiner Müller exposes the challenge that the printed word poses to modern theater, at the same time as it demonstrates the pedagogical and liberating capacity that the ways of facing this challenge assume. The book brings the translation into Portuguese of a short play by the German playwright, and then addresses the aesthetic relationship between the avant-garde Müller and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, an 18th century German thinker, to a certain extent, an anticipator of romanticism. And it also details the author's own experience in a montage with her acting students FOURTH COVER In Civil Wars: Islands of Disorder by Heiner Müller, Ingrid D. Koudela reveals to us the challenging, and sometimes chaotic, journey of transformation of the written word that unfolds in scenic time and space in lively and gestural orality, at the same time that it introduces us to the work of the great German playwright Heiner Müller (1929-1995), and to theatrical pedagogy. Departing from the Life of Gundling Frederick of Prussia. Lessing's Sleep Dream Scream. A Horror Tale, by Müller, translated in full for this edition, Ingrid Dormien Koudela exposes the performative character of her writing, in which intertextuality and deconstruction constitute a research and pedagogical method, giving wide freedom to actors and directors. This “radically democratic” aspect of theater has the collective Ói Nóis Aqui Traveiz, from Porto Alegre, also discussed here, one of its exponents. The author points to similar aesthetic principles in Müller and Oswald de Andrade, both conceptually, in intellectual anthropophagy and parodic representation, and in the aesthetic schools to which they affiliated. In the seven chapters of this book, the reader will witness in a prismatic view the value of staging as a pedagogical practice and the value of theater as a libertarian art. FROM THE COLLECTION The Perspectivas em Cena collection brings together texts and research linked to pedagogy and theatrical practice in all its manifestations, and may involve any area that crosses or brings technical support to a theatrical production. FROM THE COVER Cover image: drawing inspired by a scene from the play Sono Sonho Grito by Lessing present in this edition. A car cemetery and a bust of Lessing trying to free himself from a pile of sand where he is trapped. EXTRACTS Heiner Müller FROM THE LIFE OF GUNDLING FREDERICO OF PRUSSIA FREDERICO GUILHERME (laughs): Take for example how to treat scholars. You must learn the art of reigning when I consent, as the court preacher says, with my God, or with nothing. Shorten the legs of the people, the toothless beast. Make the intelligence of an idiot so that the people don't get ideas. Remember this when you walk around carrying your tragedies. I want you to become a man. Are you biting your nails again? I will show you. SLEEP DREAM LESSING'S SCREAM My name is Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. I am forty-seven years old. I filled one or two dozen dolls with sawdust that was my blood, I dreamed a dream of theater in Germany and I reflected publicly on things that didn't interest me. This is now over. Yesterday I saw a red spot on my skin, a piece of desert: death begins. Or rather, it becomes faster. I must say I agree with her. One life is enough. I saw one era after another emerge, from every pore, blood, shit, sweat in each one of them. History rides on dead horses to its destiny. I have seen the hell of women. The woman on the gallows. The woman with her wrists slit. The woman overdosed ON SNOW LIPS. The woman with her head on the gas stove. For thirty years I tried to stay away from the abyss through words, sick with the cancer of the dust of the archives and the ash that flies from the books, muzzling my growing disgust for literature, fired by my growing longing for silence. I envied deaf-mutes for their quietness when speaking in gyms. And in the beds of the many women I didn't love, because of their silent coitus. I start to forget my text. I'm a sieve. More and more words pass through her. Soon I will hear no other voice but mine, searching for forgotten words. Author THE ACTUATORS OF PASSION In a society in which theater itself has become an industry and literature its raw material, the Brechtian proposal for a model of political-aesthetic education and theatrical experimentation that seeks to generate new means of production remains. Transforming society through theater means changing the structures of theater, which are a reflection of the structures of society. As Brecht announces, the appropriation of artistic means of production is necessary and important for the process of emancipation of theater and the public. THE TEXT AS AN ACTION MODEL IN THE THEATER GAME The concept of handlungsmuster (action model) is related to learning processes as a space in work: • model as a collective artistic exercise that focuses on investigating the relationships of men between men through language gestural, as a system of representation of meanings; • model as text that is an object of imitation. Texts based on historical or current problems or situations would be inconvenient. Based on their objective, which is to promote a process of knowledge, teaching pieces cannot examine a specific reality in its entirety or represent it. If we understand them as a model of action, as didactic research, in which masters and apprentices are involved, they need to have a certain degree of abstraction that allows the experience of knowing how to do when making knowledge. Although the action model rests on the poetic form of the dramaturgy of the didactic play, the form is updated through collective investigation. The combination between the fixed part (poetic text) and the mobile part (theatrical game) proposes that control over learning does not occur in a closed or predictable way. Although the questions raised by the text constitute a framework, the action model is thematized by the moving part, thus providing autonomy in learning. SUMMARY Introduction 1. Life of Gundling Frederick of Prussia. Lessing's Sleep Dream Scream. A Tale of Horror [Heiner Müller] 2. “Lessing's Torso” 3. On the Poetics of the Fragment in Müller 4. The Actuators of Passion 5. Heiner Müller's Journey to Brazil 6. The Text as a Model of Action in the Theatrical Game 7. The Theatrical Game With Brecht and Müller: Experience of a Reflection Bibliography