Woyzeck - a Show for Percussion, Voice, Double Bass and Actors

This title probably gives you some idea of what was going on in a nightclub venue in Warwick's Student Union a few years back.

The original script by Georg Buchner is very fragmented, and any director has to make decisions about which arrangement to choose, which scenes to present how, etc. We decided to create a theatrical symphony, and to explore the musicality of text, voice and space. We composed a soundtrack and produced the show in the original German. Many spectators didn't understand one word, but were carried along by the rhythms and visuality of the production.

Woyzeck, the main character, is alienated, un-free and unhappy. Caught in a strict and immobile status system, he is an outsider, an underdog, who has to give up his wife to his superior army officer. Language becomes a wonder to him, as does scientific exploration and social convention. In the play, an ass performs mathematical 'feats' - it is this kind of up-side-down, incomprehensible but rule-driven world that we tried to convey using atonal music and a foreign language.

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