Woyzeck

ABOUT THE PLAY
by Clara Topic-Matutin

On 2 June 1821, Johann Christian Woyzeck stabbed his lover, the widow Woost, to death. Woyzeck was arrested and sentenced to death by sword. “The deed itself arose from a constellation of unemployment, hunger, every kind of humiliation, hatred, and jealousy,” noted literary scholar Hans Mayer. The case was widely debated in society, raising questions about Woyzeck’s disposition and the individual and societal conditions that may have influenced his accountability at the time of the act. This real-life case inspired Georg Büchner to write the fragments of his Woyzeck. Beyond the social inequalities of his time (Büchner wrote the first fragment of the play in 1836 in Strasbourg), he was particularly interested in telling a love story under conditions of poverty—circumstances both societal, physical, and psychological that ultimately drive Woyzeck to murder Marie.
Director Ersan Mondtag tells Woyzeck with an all-male cast, portrayed as a small community living deep in the forest. Withdrawn into nature, they celebrate their masculinity (and construct a reality of their own). The violence inherent in patriarchal social structures soon prevails in the confinement of this isolated group and the solitude of the woods—Woyzeck becomes the victim of dull, toxic patterns.

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‍THE REDEMPTIVE MOMENT OF RECONCILIATION

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THREE QUESTIONS FOR DIRECTOR ERSAN MONDTAG

Why Woyzeck? What was your first thought when you were offered this play?

When Oliver Reese, the artistic director of the Berliner Ensemble, asked whether I could imagine staging Büchner, I immediately had a visual image in mind, though I couldn’t place it right away. But my engagement with that image became so intense that I had to pursue it. I ended up translating that very first idea, unchanged, into a (stage) space. Visually, it differed significantly from my previous works, but in essence, it featured a motif I had often worked with: a dark forest, in which a community—hermetically sealed from the outside world and yet interdependent—fades away within a subtle hierarchy.
In working on Woyzeck, I was most moved by the longing for a redemptive moment of reconciliation. At present, however, that moment feels more distant than ever. I find myself increasingly losing the hope and the ability to envision a path toward healing reconciliation. We are forgetting how to forgive one another, to understand each other, to act on each other’s behalf. It seems to me as though the center around which everything accelerates is being devoured by that very acceleration—and I do not dare to imagine where a hollow whole might ultimately be hurled. The very impossibility of reconciliation is appalling; it awakens primal fears in me and confirms my pessimism. It is nothing short of terrifying and paralyzing. I have tried to place that feeling at the heart of my work.

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What is your specific interest in the character and the narrative of Woyzeck?

I’ve always been interested in the relationship between individual guilt and collective responsibility. The question of overarching dynamics that lead individuals to act—whether an act conceals repressed violence, and to what extent that may exonerate the perpetrator. I explored these themes in Antigone, Oedipus, and The Oresteia. I’ve long felt connected to the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre, which is vividly expressed in the drama No Exit. It all comes down to the question of responsibility—for yourself, for me, for all of us. I think Büchner posed an almost unbearable demand very early on: to understand the act of an individual as a tragic necessity emerging from the dynamics of society.
Especially today, I find that demand invaluable. We are inclined to judge acts of violence in oversimplified ways, overlooking their possible complexity. Outrage at an individual’s deed can block the analysis of broader, more brutal structures of violence. And yet, at the end of the play, a single human being dies—a woman. I am deeply engaged with the resistance to seeing Marie as merely the central victim. That resistance challenges me profoundly, even stirs fears in me—fears of staging something wrong. And those fears interest me. I don’t have an answer to them. Any answer would be wrong anyway.

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Why the all-male cast?

To me, it’s an attempt to make the societal dimension of violence more visible by refusing a binary perspective on violence. Whether that works, I don’t know. Whether it even risks relativizing, I can’t rule out either.

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FOUR QUESTIONS FOR MUSICIAN TRISTAN BRUSCH

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How did your collaboration with Ersan Mondtag begin?

About a year and a half ago, Ersan Mondtag messaged me on Instagram. At the time, there was a new feature that sorted messages into a spam folder, and of course, his message ended up there. I didn’t reply for weeks. Eventually, I spotted it. When you’re sort of a public figure, you occasionally get messages like, “Hey, let’s grab coffee”—and you usually ignore them. But Ersan’s message was so confident that I clicked on his profile. That’s when I realized something interesting might be happening here.
I had wanted to compose music for theatre for years, but didn’t know how to go about it or whom to ask. So this came at just the right time—it kind of landed at my feet. When we met and he asked me straight away, he was preaching to the choir.

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How did you approach the play and the character of Woyzeck?

When Ersan approached me, I happened to be working on an album called Am Wahn (“On Delusion”). It explored more or less the same themes as Woyzeck—essentially a love story, but also about someone gradually descending into madness, and how external circumstances contribute to that. The album raised similar questions.
It also strongly dealt with jealousy, featured hallucinations, and even included a knife murder. So I was already deeply immersed in this territory. To compose the music for Woyzeck, I really only needed to take a few steps further. In a way, it was easier because I felt that in the theatre, I could create something that didn’t have to please anyone—unlike when producing for the mainstream pop market. That made composing for Woyzeck incredibly enjoyable and liberating.

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How did you put the band for Woyzeck together?

Since the play takes place in a military context, I originally wanted to use only a brass band and write exclusively for wind instruments—to push myself out of my comfort zone. But I hardly knew any brass players—only Damian Dalla Torre, who also plays bass clarinet in my band and whom I could rely on completely.
After talking with fellow musicians, I realized I would be limiting myself too much if I stuck to brass alone, especially as it became clear that the music wouldn’t be purely instrumental. Unexpectedly, it turned out to be a lot of songs—something difficult to realize with just brass.
So I decided to include a classic rhythm section and assembled a group of musicians I’ve worked with for years—people who also play on my albums, like double bassist Felix Weigt, who has plenty of experience in theatre music, or drummer Paul Jacob. It was important to me that the musicians had the right sensitivity. The requirement to work exclusively with men was also limiting. Where I didn’t know anyone—like for trombone—I was fortunate to be able to rely on Damian Dalla Torre’s expertise.

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If you had to assign one key to the story of Woyzeck, what would it be?
C minor.

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The text “About the Play” and the interviews with Ersan Mondtag and Tristan Brusch, conducted by Clara Topic-Matutin (1.9.2023), are original contributions for this programme booklet.