Heiner Müller’s Macbeth, directed by Ivica Buljan, to make U.S. Premiere in New York

Since its world premiere in Ljubljana nearly three years ago, the Mini Teater
Ljubljana (Slovenia) / Novo Kazaliste Zagreb (Croatia) co-production of Heiner
Müller's controversial Macbeth after Shakespeare has garnered critical praise and awards all over the world, including such far-flung locales as Seoul and Havana. The work, directed by Mini Teater co-founder Ivica Buljan—director of Zagreb Youth Theatre's equally physical The Garage, at La MaMa last year—will make its North American premiere December 8—11 at La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre (66 East 4th Street, 2nd floor).

Performances of Macbeth after Shakespeare will take place at 8:00 P.M. Tickets are $30 ($25 for seniors and students) and can be purchased by visiting www.lamama.org, calling 212.475.7710, or visiting the La MaMa box office at 74A East 4th Street.

Critics are welcome as of the first performance, which will mark the show's
official opening. In Macbeth after Shakespeare, Buljan directs a company of nine performers, led by the virtuosic Marko Mandić, and including Milena Zupančič, Polona Vetrih, Jurij Drevenšek, Jure Henigman, Jose, Stipe Kostanić, Domen Valič, Anže Zevnik.
This adaptation of the Muller text was translated from the German by Milan Štefe.

Of Heiner Müller's several variations on Shakespeare texts, his Macbeth after
Shakespeare was perhaps the most divisive. Soon after the 1971 publication of the script, the philosopher Wolfgang Harich, among others, attacked Müller for the pessimism and vulgarity of his interpretation, which brought to the text a preoccupation, then common in West German culture, with violence and pornography. By 1972, Müller had published a commentary explaining his approach: From the first scene, he felt the need for modification; he wanted to remove the idea of predestination. So, no witches or supernatural forces appear in Müller's text.
Instead, the action of the play fits into a history of violence with no beginning
and no end. Each murder leads to others, and the cycle of violence becomes more and more horrible at each turn. Müller has condensed the work; crimes follow one another with increasing speed. The monologues are radically shortened; there are no more moments of reflection and scruples. The playwright shows no hesitation in making his heroes even darker. He presents no one in a positive light. In the instructions at the beginning of the third scene, even King Duncan is sitting on a heap of corpses arranged in the shape of a throne. Macbeth is a bloody tyrant merely continuing the work of some other bloody tyrant.
Müller gives Macbeth a sociological dimension. He focuses on peasants and soldiers instead of the aristocratic elite. Numerous stage instructions indicate the suffering that people have to endure under the pressure of nobility. The piece offers no utopian belief in a revolution that might change the world. In the ninth scene, Macduff nails the doorman to the door with a stroke of a sword for having not opened the door soon enough; later he cuts a servant's tongue out because he doesn't like something the servant says.
Buljan is an apt interpreter of Muller's visceral, violent Macbeth. He has
successfully staged Mülller's Quartet and was last in New York as the director of Zagreb Youth Theatre's The Garage, about an underground fighting club, which a four-star review in Time Out NY described as a "theatrical punch to the gut."
Backstage praised Buljan's fight choreography as "frantic, imprecise, and absolutely gripping."

About Ivica Buljan (Director)
Ivica Buljan was born 1965 in Sinj, Croatia. He studied Political Sciences, French and Literature as well as Comparative literature at the University of Zagreb. As a journalist he worked with the magazines Polet and Start. He served as theater critic for the daily paper Slobodna Dalmacija and is a member of the editorial council of the theatre magazine Prolog. At first, he worked as dramaturg—in Slovenia, France, and Croatia— ollaborating with directors such as Vito Taufer, Christian Colin, Jean Michel Bruyere, Krizstof Warlikowski, Ivan Popovski and Robert Waltl. His productions have been seen in international festivals in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Venezuela, Austria, Greece, Macedonia, Belgium, Switzerland, Russia, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iran, Poland, Albania and, of course, Slovenia. From 1998 to 2002, he was the Manager of the Croatian National Drama Theatre in Split. He is also the co-founder of the theatre Mini teater in Ljubljana, where he often works as
a director or dramaturg. He has received a number of prestigious awards, including the Dubravko Djušin Award (1997, for Phaedra), the Petar Brečić Award (1999, for his theatre essays), the Peristil Award (2001, for Oedipus), the Borštnik Diploma and a Special Award from the Jury (2004, for Schneewittchen After Party), the Medal of the City of Havana (2005, for Medea Material), the Borštnik Diploma for best direction and best
performance (2007, for Oedipus in Corinth).
About Mini teater Robert Waltl and Ivica Buljan founded Mini teater in 1999 to enhance creativity in post-drama theatre and the theatre for the young. The company has a paradoxical dual mission: to be an elite theatre yet also populist, eccentric and attractive to a wide audience.
The company has taken on a variety of texts, including works by Bernard-Marie Koltès, Heiner Müller, Robert Walser, Elfriede Jelinek, Jean Genet, Hervé Guibert, Arthur Rimbaud, A. S. Pushkin and Hans Christian Andersen, among others. Mini teater's productions have been directed by I. Buljan, A. Anurov, P. Calvario, S. Nordey, R. Waltl and J. Ivanc, and have featured exceptional actors such as M. Zupančič, M. Mandić, V. Drolc, A. Karić, S. Bulić, P. Vetrih, J. Souček. Notable visual artists (V. Fiškin, S. Tolj, B. Cain, T. Gverović, SON:da, T. Gotovac, M. Jakše, etc.) and prominent musicians and composers (Mitja Vrhovnik Smrekar, The Beat Fleet, Jose, Ditka Haberl, Dunja Vejzović, Tamara Obrovac) have collaborated with
them. Mini teater gives approximately five hundred performances each year in Ljubljana, across Slovenia and abroad, as well as festivals in Moscow, Naples, Havana, Warsaw, Vienna, Brussels, Sarajevo, Belgrade, Cairo and Tehran. The company has collaborated with numerous Croatian institutions like Novo Kazalište Zagreb, ARL Dubrovnik, Zadar Snova, Teatar ITD and HNK Rijeka.
Mini teater has won a number of awards and recognitions for its theatrical
achievements in Slovenia and abroad.