“My Obsession with Hamletmachine” is an evening-length dance theater performance that is the result of choreographer Amy Lewis’ long fascination with Heiner Müller’s play Hamletmachine, a work that Müller described as “the description of a petrified hope, an effort to articulate a despair so it can be left behind.” “My Obsession with Hamletmachine” wears the history of recurring violence and the human experience of grief on its sleeves. The piece features appearances from a number of historic figures featured in Hamletmachine, such as Stalin, Walter Benjamin, and Dostoevsky, and others that are familiarly linked. Accompanying the figures in Hamletmachine are Lewis’ own experiences of familial loss. The stories in “My Obsession” are accompanied by dance, an abstract and silent media, and one, Lewis claims, with the power to reshape the past and recontextualize the present.

Concept/Choreography/Text: Amy Lewis
Direction: Dylan Russell
Lighting: Harry Rubeck
Set: Michael Fitzgerald
Costumes: Krystal Harfert