Influential German playwright and director Bertolt Brecht considered the theatre a laboratory for dramatic experiments. And now University of Victoria German studies instructor Elena Pnevmonidou is conducting an experiment of her own by staging an 174-year-old German play by Georg Bźchner.
Woyzeck: The Choreography of a Murder is a collaboration between UVic theatre students and German students, and is co-directed by four of the theatre students.
“We’ve had a couple times where the directors get split and we don’t know what we’re gonna do,” says co-director Dan Scowcroft.
“And then I step in,” interjects Pnevmonidou. “I am by nature very anti-authoritarian, so I had to discover my inner autocrat,” she says with a laugh, “because in the beginning it was all, ‘Okay, let’s all just work together,’ and of course people went in their own directions.”
It took a few weeks to figure out the kinks of the production. Each director has a different area of expertise and they take turns at the helm.
“We have a rotating schedule for who’s actually driving the ship,” says Scowcroft.
The play is based on the true story of the first German to plead insanity as a defence in court. Woyzeck is subjected to an unending string of dehumanizing humiliations which culminate in him murdering his unfaithful lover.
Scowcroft appreciates having the safety net of fellow directors to consult when problems arise. One of the biggest problems encountered during the preparation of Woyzeck: The Choreography of a Murder was, well, choreographing the murder.
Each director in turn took a stab, so to speak, at blocking the scene. Scowcroft wanted Woyzeck to embrace his ex-lover as he slipped a knife in her. Another co-director taught the actors safe stage combat. Then they had to decide where to put the body down.
“By the end, we still hadn’t figured it out,” says Scowcroft. “We got it to a point where we liked how it looked and everything, and then a fellow student leaned over and said, ‘Actually, he’s supposed to stab her seven times.’ It didn’t say that in the English version.”
Pnevmonidou says part of the problem was that the actors were still reading from scripts at that point.
“They also were trying to stab each other holding books. And a knife. And each other,” laughs Scowcroft.
Scowcroft says Pnevmonidou wasn’t actually there that day, and admits “that’s probably why there was a lot of experimentation.”
Woyzeck: The Choreography of a Murder
8pm Wednesday, November 30 and Thursday, December 1
Phoenix Theatre, $5
finearts.uvic.ca/theatre