Woyzeck Character Development

On this part of the blog I will be describing the process that I have gone through to get my version of the character Woyzeck. Starting from my first initial ideas about how I could play the character, how those have developed and how I aim to develop them further.

At first when the play Woyzeck was described to me (before reading it), I had the idea that the character Woyzeck would have the characteristics of a twitchy nervous mental patient (similar to the kind Brad Pitt plays in Twelve Monkeys film) and having such character traits as fast head twitches and jolts, big wide eyes and lots of fidgeting. I had this first initial idea because the description of the character that was given to me described him as mentally unstable and somewhat scary.

After the first read through I understood more what Woyzeck had to go through, for instance; his wife cheats on him and doctors doing experiments on him. This gave me a much clearer idea of what Woyzeck would be like. I think he would be less likely to twitch and fidget, as this would show a sort of deranged person, but more likely to stand and stare off into space on a regular basis and loose all concentration.

 

Woyzeck (shaving scene)

I found this recording of a contemporised performance of Woyzeck. I think this is a great example of how NOT to do it. (Despite the terrible acting) I think that the Woyzeck tries to jump from being funny to being scared and jumpy, which does not work at all. It’s clear from this performance that the script is a very delicate thing. Also it’s clear that the audience perception is delicate if the actor’s intentions are not clear. Jumping from trying to be funny to trying to gain sympathy from the audience is not going to work. It plays too much with the audience and leaves them unaware of whether they should be laughing at or feeling sorry for Woyzeck.

I noticed after watching this Youtube video of how that theatre company tried to perform Woyzeck, that the character Woyzeck is fragile. Fragile in the sense of the audience interpretations of him, if it’s not made clear Woyzeck’s emotion then it will mess the whole performance up. I from this point made it my mission to ensure that the audience’s interpretation of Woyzeck is that he is being destroyed from the outside in. as hard as it is for me to not make things funny or to might light out of situations, I didn’t want to make Woyzeck funny. I’ve grown to truly understand the torture that Woyzeck is feeling and the only laughing the audience would be doing towards Woyzeck would be awkward laughing, because are not sure about how else to act.

Reviews of other Woyzeck productions

When I’m directing a piece I like to have look around at reviews of various productions. There appears to have been rather a lot of productions of Woyzeck done over the years, these have provided me with a few ideas of what ought to be avoided. The following are notes made from reviews of two very different productions of Woyzeck:

Counting Squares production 2008, directed by Joshua Chase Gold. Review by Jason Fitzgerald 6/10/08

This production set Woyzeck as something like an American War Story buit with the play being somewhat anti-hero this concept really doesn’t suit it.

The characters insanity undermined the whole production.

Woyzecks state of mind is perhaps conveniently passed off as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which he suffers as a result of military action. However Buchner’s script doesn’t give any specific symptoms related to PTSD.

The Doctor character was used more as a comic interlude rather than providing ” Critical signposts on the road to Woyzeck’s self destruction” (Fitzgerald, 2008)

Woyzecks visions of the godless world he lives in a partly due to the ill treatment he receives from the upper classes or the Bourgeoisie as they were known as. This theme of everyday man being abused by supeiors is a theme still relevent today and will still probably be relevent for many years to come.

Cindy Pierre also reviewed the same production but wasn’t quite as brutal. She did provide some interesting points that are useful for our groups production and will give some things to consider even if they are only in terms of what to avoid doing!

The production used a chorus to represent Woyzecks maddness but they only really succeeded in distracting from the real issues.

Humour was inserted into what should have been very serious circumstances making it inappropriate.

Scenes where Woyzeck is performing menial tasks lost their ability to get the audience to understand Woyzeck’s plight.

The theme of the poor having no morals got lost amongst all the song and dance numbers.

The murder scene a damp squid due to bad staging.

review from http://www.newtheatrecorps.blogspot.com

Icelandic company Vesturport put a circus act spin on their production which was described by Jason Best as ” hectic, often thrilling, sometimes even dazzling but as a whole curiously unsatisfying” (14/10/05)

In this production Woyzeck is not a soldier but a lowly factory worker who is frquently subjected to abuse and humiliation by his superiors. The Doctor takes a very sinister form and treats him as little more than a lab rat and throughout the course of the play conducts cruel and pointless experiments on him.

The physical feats used in the production though breathtaking were very distracting. In fact the physical aspects shoved Buchner’s original words into the background making the production far more impressive as a visual spectacle than effective as a serious drama.

Jason Best 14/10/05
http://www.thestage.co.uk

These reviews have made it clear that there are many things that could potentially make for a production that doesn’t get across the seriousness of what is happening to Woyzeck. It would be very easy to get distracted from the drama aspect by trying to create something spectacular. Yes we want to do something that has the wow factor but we don’t want to over cook it so to speak. But this has provided the group plenty to think about.

Dramaturgy Performances and Promenade Theatre

In a recent rehearsal for Woyzeck our group decided on the scenes we would show for our dramaturgy performance. Whilst the selection of the scenes themselves was not set in stone we spent time discussing how we could present them to the audience. We wanted to try and perform our scenes as promenade theatre; this was inspired by a recent study of spatiality in millennial dramaturgies.
Woyzeck is a play that is open to dramaturgical study. Having being uncompleted by the author, Georg Buchner, before he died the play has no set scene order other than what previous writers have put together in an attempt to finish the play. Our group, wanted to make a more contemporary performance and so applied millennial dramaturgical theories to the play regarding spatiality, “we see a number of works in which spatial, rather than chronological principals are fundamental to the dramaturgy” (Behrndt & Turner, 2008, pp.195). With this in mind we could move away from just relying on chronological aspects but more on the spatial, allowing us to perform our chosen scenes as promenade theatre.
The group then selected the scenes that we were going to perform. We needed to make sure that each performing member of the group had a respectable amount of input to ensure their practical participation was noticed. With this in mind we set about choosing the right scenes to perform. We put a selection of four scenes together; making sure each performer had a decent amount to perform. However, Martyn did not have a character to perform on the few scenes we chose, so we decided that his character could lead the audience where we wanted them to go, thus making sure that we keep tight hold over what the audience see, rather than allowing them to wonder through each scene freely; this also allowed us to remain the dramaturges of the piece. “It is possible to follow the story of the performances, by following an actor through the various scenes.” (Behrndt & Turner, 2008, pp. 195). The scenes may not be able to tell the audience completely about the play it will give them some idea into how the character of Woyzeck is feeling, allowing them to draw their own conclusion about why we chose the scenes we performed, and why we chose to perform them the way we did.

Works Cited.
Behrndt, Synne K. & Cathy Turner (2008) Dramaturgy and Performance, Palgrave Macmillan: Hampshire