Attis Theatre | New Space | 2013-14
The wounded body | extract from the Director’s Note
Woyzeck: “(…) Just because there is a dash between yes and again yes again – and no, yes and no, yes and no. Blame no for yes or yes for no? I have to think.”
Woyzeck: a play – trauma, scenes written in the form of a delirium in progress, without any logical sequence. Fragments of words, people and places, lead us directly to the fragmented universe of a deeply wounded being.
Woyzeck: a body – trauma, a plaything which marches burning and totters amid total silence, where “death has covered the earth”.
An explosion of despair or a scream of agony?
The world of the military camp where Woyzeck lives has all the features of a hellhole, of a barren landscape of violence, not much different from modern societies…
Translated by: Ioanna Meitani
Directed by: Savvas Stroumpos
Adaptation: Zero Point Theatre Group
Scenic Installation & Costumes: Giorgos Kolios
Scenic Construction: Xaralambos Terzopoulos
Music by: David Maltese
Lightning Design: Christina Thanasoula
Scientific Advisor : Elena Tsiolka
Video & Trailer: Chrysanthi Badeka
Photographer: Christos Kiriakogonas
Poster Design: Soul Design
Miltiadis Fiorentzis | Woyzeck
Eleana Georgouli | Marie
David Maltese | Captain & Drum Major
Despina Xatzipaulidou | Doctor, Andres & Narrator
The wounded body | Director’s Note
Woyzeck: “(…) Just because there is a dash between yes and again yes again – and no, yes and no, yes and no. Blame no for yes or yes for no? I have to think.”[1]
Woyzeck: a play – trauma, scenes written in the form of a delirium in progress, without any logical sequence. Fragments of words, people and places, lead us directly to the fragmented universe of a deeply wounded being.
Woyzeck: a body – trauma, a plaything which marches burning and totters amid total silence, where “death has covered the earth”.
An explosion of despair or a scream of agony?
The world of the military camp where Woyzeck lives has all the features of a hellhole, of a barren landscape of violence, not much different from modern societies:
– Poverty till the point of misery,
– Exploitation of man by man,
– Lethal experiments on human beings,
– Incarceration until death.
Such are the materials that form the splintered identity of “subject Woyzeck”.
Why Woyzeck does not revolt? Why does not react against his tormentors? The society of surveillance, the religious and military law, have removed from Woyzeck’s mind any potential of uprising even as a thought.
However, the deadlock day- to – day grows. Woyzeck demands desperately the warmth of a human presence, struggles to meet the other in front of him – his wife Maria and his friend Andres – struggles to heal from the trauma of the fragmented existence. In vain. At the height of his delirium, Woyzeck murders his wife for adultery, turns against himself rather than against his tormentors.
The existential impasse of a society’s outcast gradually turns into the tragedy of the human being and brings forth, in all its intensity, the agonizing and excruciating question:”What is the human being?”. This restless ontological question, which leads us to deny the existing order of things and motivates us to put in the most emphatic manner the demand for universal emancipation of the people.
Savvas Stroumpos
Translated by the author
