Christoph Schlingensief’s Hamlet in Switzerland: a theatrical resocialization

This essay engages with a controversial 2001 production of Hamlet by German artist Christoph Schlingensief in Zürich, Switzerland. The play’s moral and ethical ambiguity was set against the broader context of the rise in support for the populist Swiss People’s Party (SVP), who were capitalizing on the tensions connected with the increase in movement across European borders by running a xenophobic political campaign. Schlingensief’s decision to cast six ‘former’ German neo-Nazis as ‘the players’ elicited attempts by the SVP to have the production banned and created intense public discussion. I argue that Schlingensief’s deliberate manipulation of the extra-theatrical events surrounding his transnational and socially interventionary production demonstrates his handling of both Zürich’s municipal politics and the Swiss mainstream news media as elements in a theatrical performance that he was directing. Drawing on Marvin Carlson’s discussion of ‘ghosting’, I will examine how Schlingensief’s use of political spectres functioned as a mnemonical device that sought to re-infuse Hamlet with political content and critiqued traditional productions of the classics for being removed from contemporary social concerns.