Martyn Horner-Glister

Au revoir!

Martyn Horner-Glister

Greetings, Bloggers.

Well, seeing as I opened our blog with a ‘general hello’ in Hello World, I think I perhaps ought to be the person to say Au revoir! Not goodbye, because it is certainly not the end for Woyzeck. We have great plans for this play.

Before we go, I hope it’s clear on this blog that collectively we’ve all worked hard. Not just on our characterisations, but we’ve done some serious digging into the role of dramaturgs. We’ve also learned that promenade is an effective staging point for creating an atmosphere within our piece. If we should choose to continue with this method, we certainly have our work cut out, but we could also present one hell of a chilling play!

The German military in the 1800’s was an interesting place. I suppose that’s putting it mildly for poor old Woyzeck! If we can stage the play in Lincoln Castle it would be great to give that military feel.

I think there is still more to do on the subliminal stuff with the poem If, but I know, depending on our final staging that we can get it right.

Woyzeck will return…

Captain Martyn

🙂

No Pictures!

Martyn Horner-Glister

Hey guys,

Does anyone know who the dude with the camera was taking pictures all the way through our performance? I wish I’d remembered sooner because, if they’re any good, we could stick them up here!

I think the pictures would have shown us off the effects of how we created an atmosphere pretty well. They’d also be great for marketing our show for Theatre Company.

Any thoughts? 

Martyn

Carry On Captain.

Martyn Horner-Glister

So, I’m playing the Captain in the shaving scene, which is a fun scene to play. As our opener for our fifteen minute Dramaturgy assessment, it is therefore important to get the characters right and set the tone for Woyzeck’s world. Victor Price tells us in the appendix to his translation of Woyzeck that in what many regard as the final manuscript:

The order of the scenes is puzzling. Woyzeck shaving the Captain, which many editors place at the beginning, comes fourth (2008, p.134.).

 This makes characterisation choices significantly varied. Depending on what scenes Buchner had placed before this one, you could play the Captain in many ways because the tone and feel of the piece would have been set already. As we have placed this scene first, however, this will be our ‘tone setter’.

It would be easy to over play the subtle humour in this scene and turn the Captain into a Captain Mainwaring (from BBC Comedy Dad’s Army) stereotype. This would not set the right overall tone for the play. Yes, there are funny moments in the play, but I think that the majority of these moments are based on relief theory. Michael Billig tells us in his book Laughter and Ridicule that;

Freud uses his relief theory to explain this type of laughter. If the theory attributes any motive to the adult audience, it is one of empathy (2005, p.170).

To me, the Captain is a man who is prone to distraction and rambling on about whatever seems to be in his head (It is this that put me in mind of the poem If by Rudyard Kipling, which I have discussed elsewhere on this blog). He is a man of some social standing; the clues are there in the text. For example, where he and Woyzeck discuss self control amongst the classes of their society. Therefore, I’ve given him an accent which I feel would suit him, and may be quite obvious and stereotypical anyway. Due to the distracted and self important nature of the character, I’ve allowed my delivery of lines to drift off, almost as if he’s going into a daydream, particularly when he talks about girls stockings!

Martyn

Works cited:

Billig, Michael. (2005) Laughter and Ridicule. Towards a Social Critique of Humour. London: Sage.

Buchner, George (2008). Danton’s Death, Leonce and Lena, and Woyzeck. Translated and introduced by Victor Price. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

What If…

Martyn Horner-Glister

Further to the comments left on my earlier post on the great poem If, I’ve been doing some thinking.

 As our piece is to be performed in a promenade style I think it would be a great idea to have certain words and phrases from the poem stuck up around the building as we perform. If we couple this with the idea of weaving in certain words and lines of the poem into the play text, I think this would work on a level that would affect the audience on a subconscious level – they may not even notice the words on the walls.

 Prime example, at least for Dramaturgy and selfishly for me, would be in the shaving scene where we talk about time being wasted. The Captain could utter ‘Fill the unforgiving minute’.

 Any thoughts?

 Martyn.

If… By Rudyard Kipling

Martyn Horner-Glister

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!