WHO IS? WOYZECK explores the politics of power where human dignity is fighting a battle with numerous forms of abuse, and the way the politics of power echo in intimacy of a person. Through the rhythmical alternation of scenes of social oppression and private agony, we question a world in which clearly defined relations among individuals are lacking and in which the individual is isolated and alone.
We regard Woyzeck as a phenomenon; an individual caught up in a particular story of abuse, love, betrayal, jealousy and murder - a story that he can neither master nor avoid. Woyzeck is the hero whose voice society doesn't want to listen to, whose behavior is intolerable, who ought to be suppressed. Woyzeck is stripped off humanity, transformed into and treated as an animal. Woyzeck is the open wound. For generations he has learned that the wounds do not heal but remain open.
WHO IS WOYZECK? is conceived around a cluster of associations generated from Büchner's text (1836). The performance does not develop a story but it is rather constructed like a hypertext in which the words of Büchner's manuscripts are treated and practiced as 'samples-quotes'. Further on, the performance samples and transforms fragments from Alban Berg's opera 'Wozzeck' (1925), Werner Herzog's movie 'Woyzeck' (1979) starring Klaus Kinski, and Ivan Stanev's performance of 'Woyzeck - Wound Woyzeck - Description of a picture' (1989) with Bulgarian actors.
WHO IS? WOYZECK is performed by 2 men and a woman that speak and perform 'simple samples' - one at the time. Words are samples. Actions are samples. In such a triangle, the performers are not playing particular characters; they are merely uttering the text, mainly in English and German. Within the framework of concert-event, spoken words are elements of musical score that is powered by frantic remixes of trance & techno tapes, while our physical language draws on traditions of theatre, dance and 'real' action to create unique synthesis of these forms.
The final result is a pleasurable form of soberness - a hard-hitting interdisciplinary work, both dead serious and feather light - a work that is sensory, associative, contemplative and unresolved.