Heiner Müller – Fragmented drama

East Berlin, 1961. The auditorium of the Volksbühne theatre is packed to the rafters on a damp autumn night. A new play called Die Umsiedlerin (“The Resettler Woman”) is making its debut, and whispers have spread that this piece might be controversial. Behind the curtain, the playwright Heiner Müller paces, a slender 32-year-old with a mop of dark hair, chain-smoking even as he steels himself for what’s to come. On stage, the final scene is reaching its peak: actors portray peasants forced to relocate under a government program, their bitterness and confusion palpable. A stern Party official character in the play extols the glorious future of collective farms—but his speech is undercut by the silent stare of a tired old woman cradling a suitcase, representing those left disillusioned. When the curtain falls, there’s a beat of heavy silence. Then, scattered applause. Some in the audience are moved; they recognize the truth in the play’s portrayal of upheaval in their lives. Others remain quiet. In the second row, a cultural functionary in a gray suit leans over to his comrade and mutters, “This will never see another performance.” Müller peeks out from the wings and senses the unease. His jaw tightens. By the next morning, the verdict from the authorities comes swiftly: Die Umsiedlerin is banned, shut down after that single performance. The young playwright has been branded a troublemaker. Heiner Müller exhales a stream of cigarette smoke and understands that an official shadow has fallen over him—one that will follow him for decades.

Robert Wilson – Slow time, visual theatre

Avignon, 1976. Late on a July evening in the cobbled courtyard of the Théâtre Municipal, hundreds of festival-goers sit on wooden benches beneath a darkening sky. On stage, a strange and hypnotic tableau unfolds. A line of figures in unison slow-motion crosses from left to right, their movements deliberate and dreamlike. A young woman in a white dress steps forward, raises her arm at an impossibly languid pace, and points toward a bright halo of light. From the orchestra pit, an electric organ sustains a pulsating chord that seems to suspend time itself. In the front row, a man wipes sweat from his brow; it’s been four hours, and yet the performance of Einstein on the Beach is still in full flow, no intermission in sight. Some audience members quietly slip out for a break, then wander back in—a courtesy the director has encouraged. Up in the lighting booth stands Robert Wilson, tall and still at age thirty-four, his eyes taking in every detail. He wears all black, silver hair pulled into a tight ponytail, the very picture of calm control. As a gentle chorus of “do-re-mi” syllables echoes onstage in an endless loop, Wilson allows a rare, slight smile. This is his world: a theatre where time stretches, images speak louder than words, and the spectators’ sense of reality is slowly, inexorably being transformed.

THE RADICALS & AVANT-GARDE 1920–1970

Federico García Lorca’s theatre unfolds like a folk song that turns into a scream. He was a Spanish poet-playwright who infused the real stories of rural Spain with surreal imagery and lyrical symbolism, creating a style often called poetic realism. In Lorca’s plays, the setting might be a humble village or a family home bound by tradition, but the language and emotion soar to passionate heights, and fate itself feels like a character hovering just offstage.

Lorca grew up in Andalusia, in southern Spain – a land of flamenco music, gypsy lore, intense religious fervor, and codified honor codes. He loved the traditional forms (folk ballads, flamenco “deep song”), and he once said he tried to “resurrect and revitalize the most basic strains of Spanish poetry and theatre” . His major plays certainly do that. Often grouped as the “rural trilogy,” Blood Wedding (1933), Yerma (1934), and The House of Bernarda Alba (1936) dig into the soil of Spanish society – examining passion, oppression, and the collision between individual desire and societal mores – with a mix of earthy realism and flights of poetry.