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Woyzeck 91—A World Without Intimacy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2009
Extract
Woyzeck 91, was staged by the Itim Ensemble and the Cameri Theatre, Tel Aviv, in 1991. The production was adapted from Büchner's Woyzeck and directed by Rina Yerushalmi. The adaptation expands Büchner's play text mainly through the addition of scientific lectures, mostly about human physiology, which present the human being as a biological organism: heart, sex organs, reproducing cells, nervous system as the source of feelings. These additional scenes focus attention on Woyzeck's body as an experimental model, along with other performative devices (slides of body parts, and a skeleton). The juxtaposition of the human body (human subject) with its scientific and technological fragmentation reflects the performance's central theme: it objectifies the human subjects in our modern world of genetic experiments, technological innovations and socio-political reactions, which threaten the destruction of humanity.
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References
Notes
1. Directed by Rina Yerushalmi, Woyzeck 91 was performed by the Itim Ensemble. Shuli Rand played Woyzeck; Dina Blei—the Doctor; Orna Khatz—Marie; Avshalom Levi–the Drum-Major. The production was designed by Moshe Shternfeld, and Israel Bright composed the music.
For this analysis I also used the performance video recording, produced for television by Channel Eight, Israel, 1993. The illustrations are taken from this video.
2. In the 1993 version, the scenes were performed in the following order (compare this order with the 1991 version discussed in the preceding article by Rozik, Eli, ‘Appendix: mapping of scenes in the performance text’, pp. 27–8):Google Scholar
1. Soldiers in military training.
2. Lecture is on peas: Woyzeck in the lab with (female) Doctor and students.
3. Lecture on the human heart: students examine Woyzeck under the Doctor's supervision.
4. Andres helps Woyzeck to dress.
5. Parade of the military orchestra. Marie is watching; Woyzeck brings her money.
6. Lecture on female and male reproductive organs, while Woyzeck is setting up the shaving scene.
7. Woyzeck shaves the Captain.
8. The Showman and the astronomical horse; Woyzeck calls for Marie and embraces her.
9. Showman's performance of sexual pleasure: he directs the group of performers on how to activate various sexual dispositions in order to fulfil sexual pleasure.
10. Doctor improves Woyzeck's urinating on a wall.
11. Soldiers' drill, while the Drum-Major gives Marie earrings.
12. Marie with earrings and the baby.
13. Woyzeck and Marie: he confronts her because of the earrings.
14. Lecture on sperm: Doctor masturbates Woyzeck to collect his semen.
15. Soldiers' drill, while Marie and the Drum-Major dance.
16. Captain and Doctor; Captain and Woyzeck.
17. Lecture on smiling, anger and fear; Woyzeck confronts Marie.
18. Lecture about bone structure: Woyzeck and a skeleton used as demonstration material.
Interval and interlude
19. The confrontation between Woyzeck and the Drum-Major.
20. A lecture about pain and the nervous system is given.
21. Military drilling; Woyzeck bequeaths his belongings.
22. The banquet while the students give a lecture about the digestive system.
23. Marie's prayer.
24. Woyzeck murders Marie.
25. Woyzeck with Doctor and Captain.
26. Woyzeck looking for the knife.
27. Woyzeck's death.
3. Rina Yerushalmi: ‘In our production, as in Büchner's text, Woyzeck is turned from human being into an object… we try to expose this process, which brings about his death.’ (Production programme.)
4. See Perlman, Daniel and Feher, Beverly, ‘The Development of Intimate Relationships’, in Perlman, Daniel & Duck, Steve, eds., Intimate Relationships: Development, Dynamics and Deterioration (California: Sage, 1987), p. 16.Google Scholar Perlman and Fehr identify today's intimacy research as being at the stage of conceptual clarification, which usually precedes formal theorization.
5. See Acitelli, Linda K. & Duck, Steven, ‘Intimacy as the Proverbial Elephant’, in Intimate Relationships, pp. 297–308Google Scholar; Innes, Julie C., Privacy, Intimacy and Isolation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), especially pp. 74–8.Google Scholar
6. Neither the verbal text nor the audiovisual signs in Woyzeck 91 indicated a specific time or place, but the production generally placed the events in the context of ‘modern Western culture’. Accordingly, Western culture will be my interpretative reference throughout this article.
7. Giddens, Anthony, The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997), p. 130.Google Scholar
8. Quoted in Perlman, & Feher, , ‘The Development of Intimate Relationships’, p. 15.Google Scholar
9. See Nisbet, Robert, ‘Intimacy’, in Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982).Google Scholar
10. Although most social research regards intimacy either as interactional or as personality attributes, I take Acitelli and Duck's standpoint, which views it as both, since ‘these two possibilities [are] either exhaustive or exclusive’; therefore intimacy can be seen ‘as a particular blend of individual and social influences’. See Acitelli, & Duck, , ‘Intimacy as the Proverbial Elephant’, pp. 298–9.Google Scholar
11. Innes, Julie C., Privacy, Intimacy and Isolation, especially pp. 41–53.Google Scholar Innes, taking a legal and philosophical view of the distinction between private and public spheres, argues for the control-based, rather than the separation-based, understanding of privacy. Although the argumentation is convincing regarding privacy law, I still believe that the control issue can be regarded as a prime—but not exclusive—function, since these boundaries also have significant functions in regulating social order. See, for example, Sommer, Robert, Personal Space (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1969)Google Scholar and his examination of how these boundaries function to affirm and sustain social order.
12. Giddens writes: ‘in the arena of personal life, autonomy means the successful realisation of the reflexive project of self—the condition of relating to others in an egalitarian way’. (The Transformation of Intimacy, p. 189). I use the phrase ‘autonomous individual’ in this ‘egalitarian’ way, together with Innes's understanding of privacy, namely that individuals have control over their intimate life.
13. Obviously this is strongly connected to the sociopolitical order. Both Giddens and Innes, through separate ways, emphasize the notion of intimacy as an operation of individuality in relation to the social and political order; see particularly Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy, pp. 184–203 and Innes, Privacy, Intimacy and Isolation, pp. 74–92.
14. See Morris, Desmond, Intimate behavior (London: Jonathan Cape, 1971)Google Scholar; and Manwahching (London: Triat Grafton Books, 1988/1977), pp. 140–153; 392–401; and Hall, E. T., The Hidden Dimension (New York: Anchor Books, 1969).Google Scholar
15. Morris, , Intimate Behavior, p. 9.Google Scholar
16. Obviously this is just an operational and simplified presentation of a much more complex process. On the issue of subject construction in relation to a theatrical text, see Fischer-Licthe, Erika, The Semiotics of Theatre (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), p. 182 ff.Google Scholar
17. Yerushalmi: ‘We considered “militariness” as a fundamental state of human society. We know that today many of the scientific experiments take place under military government. … In theatrical terms we might say that if for Shakespeare all the world's a stage, then today all the world's a laboratory.’ (Production programme)
18. Rokem, Freddie, ‘Acting and Psychoanalysis: Street scenes, Private Scenes, and Transference’. Theatre Journal, Vol. 39, No. 2, 05 1987, p. 179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19. To the question ‘what is the difference between Büchner's Woyzeck and Woyzeck 91?’ Yerushalmi replied: ‘150 years of scientific and social developments, which extremely realized all that was implied in Büchner's. … It seems that at the end of the twentieth century man has turned into an object even more radically then Büchner could have imagined, and the danger is that we cannot foresee the end of this process.’ (Production programme)
20. On sexuality and modern culture, see Giddens, , The Transformation of Intimacy, especially his argument with Foucault, pp. 18–34Google Scholar; and the discussion of sexuality and individuality, pp. 168–78.
21. Ibid., p. 174.
22. The Doctor makes no attempt at lessening Woyzeck's pain. Therefore the fundamental gap between experiencing pain and ‘talking pain’ is taken here to the extreme, thus the ‘discursive pain’ is stripped of its principal function, as noted by Scarry, Elaine in The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).Google Scholar
23. On the relation between theatre and performance art see, for example, Fisher-Lichte, Erika, ‘Performance Art and Performative Culture: Theatre as Cultural Model’. Theatre Research International, Vol. 22, No. 1, Spring 1997, pp. 22–37.Google Scholar
24. Production programme.