In this Dramaturgical performance and for our final performance we have chosen to make the audience see the world through the eyes of Woyzeck, in order to create this we needed to block accordingly and to have the right “feel” or atmosphere for the piece. In the music we found a means, for instance we had a heavy influence from the playwright Antonin Artaud. The reason for this was that since Woyzeck is going mad internally we wanted to show the audience a slice of his life in a way that makes them empathise with him, the best way to do this would be to show the world as the ever changing chaotic force and not the character himself. Artaud believed that he should bring his audience to a state of shock to his audience to promote catharsis as he believed that his audience needs to be cleansed. How he used to achieve this was through performances and music, the music was used as an extension to the storytelling and that’s what we hoped to achieve.

The music used in this piece was all instrumental and used alternative instruments, for instance in the doctor scene where Woyzeck is being examined we used the song “Radiator” by Aphex twin because it used unfamiliar electronic and metal instruments that would make the audience be put into a state of emotional bombardment. The introductory music was/is an old music box which again wouldn’t be familiar to most especially since there was creepy carnival music emerging from it. This mixed with the lighting setup should have created a sense of unfamiliar and disturbing events that draw the audience to feel not only pity but fear of or for Woyzeck. The unfamiliar tones and strange music made the audience focus more on how the play “feels” as well as tell a narrative.

Due to our production being a promenade performance there were certain obstacles that needed to be dealt with, for starters since the action took place around a building in differing sections we had to use multiple speakers on differing formats just to get sound and music to all scenes. Other problems emerged from this too, for instance we were without a compact disk player. We got around this by using an iPod dock but needed to use the same iPod even during performance. This was tricky since that mean hiding a mp3 player during the performance as well as operating it.

“This type of performance presents special problems for the sound designer, and considerable planning must be undertaken to ensure that the action can be followed by the whole audience. This may involve the use of multiple speaker set-ups, wireless microphones, portable mixing desks and duplicate sets of equipment to allow the operator to move quickly from one location to the next.” (Leonard p14)

 

Leonard,John.A/(2001)/ Theatre of sound/London/ A & C Black

When considering the sound for the final piece I think I will again have to up the feel of the piece and use the soundscape as a way of forcing the audience to almost feel a part of the play, this will hopefully leave a lasting impression and maybe even lead to a few lessons in humanity.

 

Aaron