THEATER : This Time, UCI Decides Not to Play It Safe : Drama Department, Which Wants to Offer Alternative Productions, Will Stage Muller Works

Heiner Muller has been called one of the seminal figures in European postmodern drama, the most important German playwright since Brecht. So how come he’s not better known in the United States?

Setting national provincialism aside, there’s the question ofMuller’s demands. His cultural visions, often filtered through equally political and poetic prisms, can be very difficult for an audience to absorb.

Although he’s been staged a few times in the United States (most notably in New York, but Los Angeles has also taken the plunge, most recently at Taper, Too last May with “The Task”), Muller, isn’t usually at the top of a playhouse’s list of sure-fire hits, even though the 62-year-old playwright remains active in German theater.

Stephen Barker, the chairman of UC Irvine’s drama program and one of the directors of a Muller double bill that opens Thursday, put it this way: “He’s unfamiliar, especially on the West Coast, for a simple reason: His style, his method of presentation and his ideas, are forbidding and dense. American notions of entertainment don’t always apply.

“It’s too bad, because he has had such an impact (on European theater) for 45 years. He’s assumed the mantle of Brecht. Because of his importance and his provocative and challenging style, it’s appropriate and about time for UCI to be doing something by Muller.”

Barker, with the help of co-director Michael David Fox, a graduate student, has mounted Muller’s play “Despoiled Shore / Medeamaterial / Landscape With Argonauts” alongside “Hamletmachine” (1977), directed by Keith Fowler, another UCI drama professor. “Despoiled Shore . . .,” first produced in 1983 and described by Barker as a compendium of three “poem plays,” will be staged outdoors in the campus’ Fine Arts Village plaza. After an intermission, “Hamletmachine” will be offered in the Fine Arts Concert Hall.

The decision to stage Muller has been brewing for a while, said Barker, who added that UCI’s drama department is starting to take a few more risks. The program, already known for the overall quality of its curriculum and student productions, wants to offer an alternative to more mainstream theater while giving students--and audiences--the opportunity to expand their experiences.

“Because we’re a university, we can do some things that commercial theater can’t. This, I think, is the opening gambit in what should be a wider range of what we offer in the future,” he said.

“I don’t want to be too hyperbolic, but I don’t think UCI’s had a production take these kinds of chances before. It may be an affront to some people, but we hope that others will be interested.”

Among the gambles in both Muller plays are nudity and explicit language. That’s just on the surface, though; Barker feels the real provocation comes from the ideas at work.

“Both plays are densely constructed and highly poetical,” Barker said. “The texts are saturated with allusions to his own writing, dreams and memories, texts of history (including) Shakespeare, Greek drama, German Romanticism and Idealism, popular literature and the (daily) news.

“Common to both are themes of history, exploitation, victimization, personal and cultural sacrifice. Within each are the universal statements of how people relate to each other and their world.”

If that sounds intimidating, consider that “Despoiled Shore . . . ,” according to a press release announcing the plays, “centers on the Medea/Jason myth of betrayal and power, evokes a blighted landscape (of historical and contemporary civilization) moving toward a depiction of the themes of pollution, technology, art, war and self.”

“Hamletmachine,” described as “Muller’s marriage of Shakespeare and the politics of terrorism and culture,” is equally formidable. Muller’s revisionist meditation on Shakespeare’s classic is considered his masterpiece, along with “Germania Death in Berlin” (1971) and “The Battle” (1974), his explorations of German history including the Hitler years.

At UCI, the more ambitious (or at least earthy) staging is reserved for “Despoiled Shore . . . .” To create the right “Zen garden-like” ambience, about five tons of soil was poured over the plaza and surrounding its several olive trees. “We wanted a very natural presentation,” Barker said. “We just hope it doesn’t rain like it has been.”

For further insight into Muller, UCI will offer a free panel discussion, “Muller Material and Postmodern Drama,” Wednesday at 3 p.m. in the Concert Hall. Along with Barker, Fowler and Fox, the panel will include Robert Weimann, a UCI professor of comparative literature and friend of Muller’s, and UC Riverside literature professors Sue-Ellen Case and Martin Schwab.

* Heiner Muller’s “Despoiled Shore/Medeamaterial/Landscape With Argonauts” and “Hamletmachine” will open Thursday at 7 p.m. in UC Irvine’s Fine Arts Village plaza and continue nightly through Jan. 25. Tickets: $9 to $14. Information: (714) 856-6616.