Müller & Müller (world premiere)

About the production

Heiner Müller was one of the most famous writers of the GDR. His influential work was and is revered far beyond its borders. Inge Müller, who wrote important poetry, has largely been forgotten as a writer today. The two had been married since 1955 and spent a short but intense creative period in Lusatia at the end of the 1950s.

On the occasion of the repair of a damaged overburden conveyor bridge in the Klettwitz open-cast mine not far from Senftenberg, they both researched and wrote the radio play »Klettwitzer Bericht«, which was published in 1958 and premiered as a play at the Senftenberg theatre in the same year. Other so-called production plays, i.e. dramas set in socialist industrial production, were developed, written and awarded prizes together. Heiner and Inge Müller are regarded as co-inventors of this new and unique drama of the young GDR. At the same time, both wrote numerous poems that were closely related to each other and expressed their concerns, attitudes and feelings for each other eloquently and very personally.

At the original location of »Klettwitzer Bericht«, two young actors, now around the same age as the Müllers at the time, immerse themselves with the audience in the love and working relationship of Inge and Heiner Müller and bring their partnership to life against the backdrop of the construction of a socialist society at the time and the industrial culture of Lusatia. They develop a site-specific and immersive station theatre that confronts the poetic intimacy of the poet's fragile love with the overwhelming rawness of the open-cast mining landscape. The theatre evening combines texts by the couple, brings them to life in dialogue and thus unfolds the drama of a passionate and eventful relationship that ended with Inge Müller's suicide on 1 June 1966. »Müller & Müller« focusses in particular on the utopian project of an artistic and partnership-based symbiosis, in which the social utopia of solidarity and togetherness was also to be suspended, and traces the success and failure of this enormous experiment.

The year 2025 marks the 100th birthday of the (re)discovered author Inge Müller, the 30th anniversary of the death of the former star writer Heiner Müller and the 70th wedding anniversary of the two poets. In the play »Müller & Müller«, the ghosts of the writing couple now encounter the gigantic successor to the overburden conveyor bridge they once covered in the former Klettwitz open-cast mine: the F60. And it, too, is lying idle - inaugurated in 1991, it stopped working after just one year of service as part of the structural change in the region and was eventually turned into an open-air museum. And yet the revenants find no peace...

»Müller & Müller« combines a live radio play with a scenic homage and a chamber theatre relationship drama with a night tour on the F60. An extraordinary Lusatian original against a magnificent backdrop.

imersiwny źiwadłowy wjacor wó basnikaŕskem póriku w łužyskej industrijowej krajinje

Immersive theatre evening about a pair of poets in the industrial landscape of Lusatia

Version and Direction: Michael Höppner

Cooperation between Lausitz Festival and neue Bühne Senftenberg

In co-operation with the Förderverein Besucherbergwerk F60 e.V. and F60 Concept GmbH

Bus shuttle: to and from neue Bühne Senftenberg