WOYZECK by Georg Büchner, translated by Johanna Schall and Ted Witzel, directed by Witzel. Presented by the red light district at the Lower Ossington Theatre (100A Ossington). Opens tonight (Thursday, June 3) and runs to June 19, Wednesday-Saturday 8 pm, matinee Sunday 2 pm. $25, stu $15. theredlightdistrict.ca. See Listing.
This summer, hundreds of thousands of theatregoers will check out classical theatre – in the park or at one of the big out-of-town regional rep companies. But they won’t find anything there that’s remotely like what Ted Witzel is doing this month.[rssbreak]
Witzel and the red light district company have spent the last few years putting edgy, high-concept spins on classics both known (The Misanthrope) and unknown (Ivona Princess Of Burgundia). Now they’re tackling Woyzeck, the 19th century unfinished Georg Büchner play about a cuckolded soldier who grapples with madness.
“Büchner was a political revolutionary who was exiled from home at 17 for a pamphlet he wrote and who was a doctor by training,” says Witzel, who’s directing the show.
“He made brilliant connections between different fields. He never saw any of his plays produced in his lifetime, and wrote for fun when not dissecting fish for his thesis.”
Witzel, who spent much of 2009 working in Germany with Misanthrope director Johanna Schall, has been obsessed with the text for years. But he couldn’t find a translation he liked, so he and Schall decided to pen their own.
“Each character has a unique syntax, with a different word order and grammatical structure,” he says. “I kept reading these translations that were too simple. In our version, we don’t take any easy routes.”
Witzel has set the piece at a dirty, decadent circus, with Woyzeck a carny about to be executed and flashing back to try to make sense of the events that led him to this point.
“The circus illustrates how crazy the world has become,” he says. “Is this a mad man or a mad world? There are times when Woyzeck seems like the sanest man in the midst of overwhelming stupidity.”
Interview Clips
On what Witzel’s learned working in Germany:
On director-based vs. playwright-based productions:
On theatre and epileptic crack whores in Timmins:
On his penchant for shows about people on the fringes of society:
glenns@nowtoronto.com
