The Sequence of Scenes in "Woyzeck": An Approach to Directing the PlayAuthor(s): Roger PierceSource: Educational Theatre Journal, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Dec., 1968), pp. 569-577Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3205000 .Accessed: 18/09/2011 23:45

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ROGER PIERCE

The Sequence of Scenes in Woyzeck: An Approach to Directing the Play

ONE OF THE FASCINATIONS FOR A DIRECTOR PLANNING A PRODUCTION OF WOYZECK

is the necessity for choosing the sequence of scenes. Buchner died leaving twenty- seven brief scenes. No external evidence bears on their order,1 and the peculiar quality of the scenes-brief, intense, and structured so that they come to a full

stop rather than leading the action toward some inevitable next step-leaves open the possibility for countless different arrangements. Furthermore the play is incomplete; even if Biichner's intentions could be established they would not

necessarily dictate the best sequence since he must have planned scenes not yet written and the rewriting or suppression of some extant scenes. The director has to work with the materials on hand, and his best approach, it seems to me, is to find first the line of action which most clearly emerges from the given materials and which can most successfully focus them into a single work, and then to arrange the scenes not only to permit that central action to exert its control but to bring out in each scene the particular qualities for which it was written.

To begin with the obvious, the core action of the play is Woyzeck's murder of Marie. The movement of the play toward that culmination is, no matter how one arranges the material, a growing intensification of Woyzeck's jealousy over Marie's affair with the drum-major. Most of the scenes fall into one of three

groups: those dealing with Marie's affair with the drum-major, those which show some stage of Woyzeck's jealousy, and those centered around Marie's murder and

Woyzeck's death. Of the scenes which do not clearly fit into any of these groups, three clearly take place after Woyzeck's death.

Several of the "free" scenes which do not clearly belong in the central plot-line prove useful in the traditional function of the protasis-establishing mood and environment and exploring character before the pressure of the play's events

begins to distort it. For reasons that will be presented later, I have used the three

groups that constitute the main plot sequentially: Woyzeck's jealousy is aroused, then Marie's affair and her reaction to it are developed, then the murder and the circumstances immediately around it are presented, followed by a brief final

framing scene.

Mr. Pierce is on the staff of the Department of Drama at the University of California at Riverside.

1 The history of the text is sketched by A. H. J. Knight in Georg Biichner (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1951), pp. 112-118.

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In determining the particular order of the scenes within the groups, I have found useful Eisenstein's principle of montage,2 which encourages one to think of the shot-in this case the scene-as a unit full of potentialities, some of which will be brought into focus and some of which will be left inchoate, depending on the way other scenes are grouped around it. Where two scenes contain the same

phrase, for example, the second or echoing occurrence will have a much more

potent effect, and the director must decide which scene is best suited to such an accent. A scene can acquire special force by paralleling the action of one placed next to it, or by contrasting sharply with it. Some scenes suffer if the characters in them have not been previously developed; some depend for their best effect on being part of a compelling forward movement.

The order of the scenes has an important effect not only on the way the

portrayal of character is unfolded to the audience, but on the nature of character. I have, for example, placed the awakening and intensification of Woyzeck's jealousy early in the play and followed it by scenes in which he seems to be

living something like his normal life; the effect is to accent the vacillation and

incoherency in Woyzeck's behavior, his helplessness not only before his environ- ment but before his own emotions. Marie tends to become something of a tragic heroine if her scene of Biblical remorse takes place after all her sins have been committed-she is murdered in a state of repentance. But if her remorse precedes the hot dancing scene at the tavern, as in the sequence presented here, she is seen as much more lightheaded and self-indulgent, and the remorse itself is a kind of self-gratification.

Perhaps the most important question facing the director will be that of momentum. I have chosen, out of countless possibilities, an overall rhythm which includes (I) a prologue that is more like an analogue of the play than a

part of its action, and a brief protasis in which the mentality of Woyzeck is

presented before it is attacked by jealousy; (II, beginning of the action) a rather rapidly-moving series of scenes in which Woyzeck is humiliated, dreams of the knife, is further humiliated and assured of Marie's infidelity, and finally buys the knife; (III, middle of the action) a slower-moving section in which Marie's affair is carried forward and Woyzeck subsides into his regular routine; (IV, end of the action) a very fast-moving section in which the thought and then the sight of Marie dancing with the drum-major upsets Woyzeck's precarious equilibrium and leads him to murder and death; (V epilogue) a final scene which matches the framing function of the prologue.

In the discussion which follows, numbers refer to the order of scenes presented in this paper unless they are preceded by "H," in which case they refer to Theodore Hoffman's English version, the edition which is probably most readily available in this country.3

2 Sergei Eisenstein, Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, ed. and trans. Jay Leyda (Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company, 1957). Cf. especially "The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram," pp. 28-44 and "Methods of Montage," pp. 72-83.

3 Eric Bentley, ed., The Modern Theatre: Volume One (Garden City: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1955), PP. 1-32. Quotations, in German because they deal mainly with verbal niceties that are awkward to discuss in translation, are from Georg Bfichner, Werke und Briefe, ed. Fritz Bergemann (Leipzig: Inselverlag, n.d.). Hoffman's version follows the order of this edition. This paper does not concern itself with the scholarship of variant texts.

The Sequence of Scenes in VWo)zeck

I. PROTASIS

1. (H-21) Some little girls sing, and ask Marie to sing to them; she refuses. Grandmother tells a story of a child in a world where everyone and everything are dead. Woyzeck fetches Marie.

Most editors have used this scene to introduce the murder scene (22), no doubt because Woyzeck's fetching M/arie and his mysterious "weiss ich's?" in answer to her question where they are going are appropriate there. If Grand- mother's story is placed there, however, it breaks in at a point where I have tried to maintain a steady acceleration of the action. Either the two parts of the scene can be broken apart and the story used here and Woyzeck's fetching of Marie as prelude to the murder, or better, both parts may be used here to open the play and the second part again just before the murder. The whole scene is a superb introduction to the play, and needs for itself no introduction. Woyzeck is just such a lonely child, wandering through a dead world-so too, in a sense different for each, are all the other characters. The words "alles tot," repeated in the story, will reverberate in many following scenes. Woyzeck's final "weiss ich's?" is picked up again with great force in scene 8 (H-10).

2. (H-2) Woyzeck sees a vision while cutting wood with Andres.

Woyzeck's vision comes second in all the editions I have examined. There is one rather mechanical ieason for its being located so early: scene 4, which serves well as the first encounter between Marie and the drum-major and hence must come early in the play, contains a reference to the vision as having already occurred. This connection can without serious disruption of the scene be expunged either by suppressing Woyzeck's description of the vision or by simply assuming that Woyzeck is referring to a different vision from the one represented in scene 2, since he himself indicates that he has had more than one such experience. But despite the fact that this important scene would be enhanced by prior ex-

ploration of Woyzeck's character and by some buildup to its intensity, there is a compelling reason for using it so early: it serves to illustrate the state of

Woyzeck's psyche before his problem with Marie has arisen, and in fact is a kind of prelude to several dreams and hallucinations that bear more directly on the murder.

The contiguity of scene 1 helps to accent the eerie emptiness of the vision and to stress Woyzeck's final line, "still, alles still, als war die Welt tot."

3. (H-7) The doctor scolds Woyzeck for pissing in the street. TWoyzeck de- scribes his vision.

The sense which develops from scenes one and two of the lonely child wandering in a dead world which may, as in the vision, erupt into a kind of mysterious hos- tility is here embodied in character relationship. The doctor, with his professional identity as a healer, toys with Woyzeck as a trapped specimen. The play acquires a certain concreteness by having Woyzeck's psychiatric problem stated in clinical terms at the very beginning; however mad the doctor himself might seem, his analysis of Woyzeck as suffering from "die sch6nste Aberratio mentalis partialis" makes its mark.

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II. BEGINNING OF THE ACTION

4. (H-3) Marie flirts with the passing drum-major; she sings to the child;

Woyzeck tells her of his vision; they agree to meet later at the fairgrounds.

The scene initiates a relationship between Marie and the drum-major which will last considerably longer in this arrangement of the play than in any other I have seen-one in which she flirts but is not overtly treacherous to Woyzeck. This vivid introduction of Marie with her loose easy sensuousness and her frightened reaction to Woyzeck's strangeness makes an obvious opening for the main action, and is especially pointed up by the brittle inhumanity of the doctor in the preceding scene.

5. (H-4) At the fair an old man and a child sing about death.4 Woyzeck and Marie watch a barker and his monkey and go into the booth; the drum-major and a sergeant admire Marie and follow. (H-5) Inside the booth the barker shows off his horse; the drum-major continues to admire Marie.

Although the patter about the monkey bears on Woyzeck's conversation with the doctor in scene 3, neither it nor the scene with the horse seem interesting enough to serve a very useful purpose (nor to justify the problems involved in bringing a monkey and a talking horse on stage). I would suggest cutting H-5 completely, as well as the Barker's speech and Woyzeck's and Marie's response in scene 4. This leaves the song followed by the drum-major's admiration of Marie. The scene now provides the opportunity for bringing on a direct en- counter between the drum-major, Marie and Woyzeck (if, say, Marie and the drum-major eye one another while Woyzeck is jostled and humiliated by the sergeant), foreshadowing the wrestling match and giving Woyzeck's jealousy a

very early start in the play.

6. (H-16) Andres reports the drum-major's enthusiastic admiration of Marie; Woyzeck mentions dreaming of a knife.

Following the development begun in the preceding scene, Woyzeck is now angry and sullen, dreaming already of his weapon and speaking of Marie in an ominous past tense. If scene 5 has prepared the ground properly, this scene can follow without any jolt. The drum major's barracks-room braggadocio does not, after all, have to implicate Marie, and if Woyzeck's sequitur between Andres' report of what the drum-major has said and his dream of the knife is made innocently, as if he were genuinely trying to bring up to consciousness what he has dreamed rather than making a threat, the scene will carry the sense that he has only begun in a fumbling and mostly unconscious way to come to terms with the situation. It also makes him from the start a more dangerous and unstable man.

7. (H-17) The drum-major defeats Woyzeck in a wrestling match.

8. (H-10) Woyzeck accuses Marie of being a whore and starts to attack her; she stops him by the force of her words.

The two scenes, both of which show Woyzeck's attempts at retaliation being thwarted, work well in parallel. It should be noted that as the scenes are ar-

4 This song is in Hoffman's version and not in the Inselverlag edition.

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The Sequence of Scenes in Woyzeck

ranged here, we know clearly only that the drum-major wants Marie and that he humiliates Woyzeck by the directness of his approach. We still have seen Marie only flirting. She has treacherous inclinations, but they are rather lazy and drifting and it is actually Woyzeck, responding partly to his intuition about her but even more to his anger at the drum-major's handling of him, who causes the

open break between himself and Marie. Technically, at least, he is unjust to her. Scenes 7 and 8 are then a kind of foreshadowing of the murder: unable to find any adequate means for adjusting himself to a situation he only partly grasps (like Hamlet he suffers from an undernourished objective correlative), he simply lashes out.

Note how Marie's line, "ich hatt lieber ein Messer in den Leib," is accented by the dream of the knife in scene 6 and retrospectively by the contiguity of scene 9.

9. (H-18) Woyzeck buys a knife. This is the climax of the series of scenes which establishes Woyzeck's situation

and his initial response to it. The danger of placing this scene here, or anywhere for that matter, is that it may suggest too much premeditation in Woyzeck's behavior. I have tried to suggest by putting the dream of the knife much earlier than the murder that the purchase is made with only half a mind, out of a deep compulsion rather than as a result of a decision and a plan.

III. MIDDLE OF THE ACTION

Whereas in the "beginning" Marie was relatively innocent and Woyzeck ready to attack her, in this section she fulfills his suspicions but he is quiescent. In order to bring out this contrast between the actions of the two I have alternated scenes in which Woyzeck goes on about his business with those in which Marie vacillates between gaiety and remorse. The section culminates in a confrontation between Woyzeck and Marie in which her guilt is obvious but he is unvindictive. His murderous impulses have retired back to the realm of dreams and visions. One might say that the focus of interest shifts from Woyzeck's anguish (though that is never out of sight) to MIarie's indecisive infidelity, until the two lines are fused again at the end of this section.

10. (H-9) The doctor frightens the captain by suggesting that he is on the verge of a stroke; while the doctor takes Woyzeck's pulse the captain taunts him by hinting at Marie's infidelity.

This is the first introduction of the captain, in a scene reminiscent of Commedia dell'Arte-the cowardly Capitano being subjected to the macaroni-Latin of the Dottore. There are decided advantages to seeing the captain in this scene before the shaving scene (14): his most characteristic line in both is "ein guter Mensch," a phrase which always moves him. Here we see why: he associates it with his own funeral, and, more generally, with his horror of death. The doctor's diagnosis- and here again his cruelty is based on a shrewd insight into his victim's malady- brings the captain into sharp focus, so that if the shaving scene follows, his chatter there about eternity is much more poignant.

Woyzeck's expression of disbelief in Marie's treachery is an inconsistency in his character, not in the plot; although he has been angry and distressed over

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her already, he has had no clear evidence of infidelity, nor does he want it; he pushes away from himself what, if he questioned the captain, might turn from innuendo into information.

For the counterpoint of character interaction this mad moment when Woyzeck is needled by the captain while the doctor takes his pulse is perhaps the best in the play; its intensity is directly proportional to the dismay prepared for Woyzeck through preceding scenes.

11. (H-8) Marie and the drum-major admire one another; he embraces her; she is moody.

Here is the audience's first concrete evidence of Marie's infidelity (though one could give the scene almost the opposite effect if Marie's first speech were de- livered ironically). The drum-major's empty-headed self-esteem contrasts well with Woyzeck's anguish in the preceding scene and his quiet depression in the following.

12. (H-20) Woyzeck looks over his possessions, gives a coat to Andres. In this scene Woyzeck should not-at least in this arrangement of the play-

be represented as deliberately disposing of his worldly goods in preparation for the murder, but rather as running his hands through them with the awareness that they amount to practically nothing. His action does, of course, suggest an im- pending crisis-a death, in fact-but Woyzeck is not altogether aware of that. He never quite decides anything, but drifts and acts out of compulsion.

13. (H-19) Marie turns over the pages of the Bible and finds passages that torment her.

As was mentioned above, Marie's remorse is ironically undercut by the fact that she leaves it for more sins.

14. (H-l) Woyzeck shaves the captain, who speculates about time and eternity; they talk about morality and virtue.

In all the editions I have consulted this scene is placed at the beginning of the play, where the discussion of virtue and nature serves as a-kind of introduction to thematic concerns of the play; and the scene also characterizes Woyzeck enough to give body to scene 2. Placing the scene as I have here has two par- ticular advantages aside from its contributing to a group in which Woyzeck is relatively peaceful: the phrase "ein guter Mensch," as mentioned above, echoes its use in scene 14, where it has acquired the overtones of mourning for the dead. This accent has a doleful appropriateness; the captain applies it to Woyzeck as well as to himself, as if he sensed not only his own dissolution but the precarious- ness of Woyzeck's mortality. Furthermore, the captain's speculation about time and eternity picks up overtones from Woyzeck's calculation in scene 12 of his exact age. Both speak of 30 years and the weeks and days that make it up; but whereas the captain is (for a moment) horrified at the prospect of so much empty time stretching out before him, Woyzeck is implicitly morose over the blankness of the time behind.

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The Sequence of Scenes in Woyzeck

15. (H-6) Marie admires herself and some earrings; she frightens the child.

Woyzeck enters and she tries to hide the earrings; he sees them, but gives her his

pay and leaves. Here the two lines running through this section of the play are knitted to-

gether. This scene is generally taken as Woyzeck's first intimation of Marie's

infidelity, a use which has serious disadvantages for this interpretation of the

play and of his character. Woyzeck seems to understand perfectly well that the

earrings are a sign of culpability, but makes nothing of it, a reaction which in- timates a slower awakening of his jealousy. Placed at the end of a quiet spell and

just before his excitement over the dancing, it emphasizes Woyzeck's vacillation and uncertainty. His tenderness toward the child, one of the few expressions of affection in the play, is particularly poignant at this stage of the action. Marie's final line, "ich bin doch ein schlecht Mensch! Ich konnt mich erstechen.-Ach! was Welt! Geht doch alles zum Teufel, Mann und Weib!" can be taken as a decision to sin again, and therefore makes a pivot between her remorse in scene 13 and her dancing in scene 17.

IV. END OF THE ACTION

Here begins the sequence that culminates in Woyzeck's murder of Marie and

drowning of himself. With one exception, scene 19, I have excluded from it any scenes that slow the pace or interrupt the direct drive to the murder.

16. (H-11) In the guard room Woyzeck imagines "them" dancing and says he must go.

17. (H-12) At the inn, drunk apprentices sing; Woyzeck raves when he sees Marie and the drum-major dancing.

"Immer zu, immer zu-" Woyzeck picks up the line from Marie and repeats it to himself through the subsequent scenes as he works himself into a frenzy. I have taken it as the principle stage direction for this whole section of the play.

18. (H-13) Woyzeck hears a voice telling him to stab Marie.

19. (H-15) The doctor lectures from a window; Woyzeck appeals to him for help and the doctor shows Woyzeck as an exhibit.

By inserting this scene here, the suggestion is made that Woyzeck has come to the doctor in a last desperate appeal for help. Properly supported, the scene is a wild ship of fools. Woyzeck is running now. His lines are a cry of horror: "sie beisst . . . es wird mir dunkel," as he tries to wiggle his ears.

20. (H-14) Woyzeck wakes Andres and tells him he sees a knife and hears voices.

The scene seems the best one to lead directly into the murder; it has a feverish, obsessed quality and it ties together several important lines of development: the dream and purchase of the knife, the visions and voices, the dancing and the phrase "immer zu."

21. (end of H-21) Woyzeck fetches Marie.

22. (H-22) Woyzeck kills Marie.

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23. (H-23) Woyzeck dances; blood is discovered on him and he runs away.

24. (H-24) Woyzeck returns to Marie, finds the knife, throws it in the water, and wades in after it; passers-by hear someone drowning.

The sequence of these three scenes is inevitable.

V. EPILOGUE

25. (H-25) Children run off to see Marie's body; one of them calls out to her child that its mother is dead.

This scene obviously fits only at the end, and provides a suitably brutal final note. It echoes directly the first scene with its group of raucous children and its

image of the child alone in a dead world. I have omitted two scenes. In one, also omitted by Hoffman,5 which can fit

only after the murder of Marie, Woyzeck tries to pet the child, who shrinks away from him. Its effect anywhere at the end of the play would be rhythmically un- fortunate. In the other (H-26), generally used as the final scene, a policeman exults, "ein guter Mord." It duplicates, much less effectively in this arrangement, the work of scene 25.

Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck can serve to illustrate briefly how different and how effective another arrangement can be. Cutting vigorously, Berg arranged the material into three acts of five scenes each, as follows (numbers following the colons referring to the sequence in this paper).6

Act I Act II Act III

1.: 14 .: 15 .: 13 2.: 2 2.: 10 2.: 22

3.: 4 3.: 8 3-: 23

4.: 3 4.: 17 4-: 24 5.: 5.: 2o and 7 5: 25

Berg's first act is rather like my "middle" section: Woyzeck shaves the captain, sees the vision and visits the doctor in scenes which alternate with Marie's seduc- tion by the drum major. At the beginning of the second act Woyzeck discovers the ear-rings, is teased by the captain, tries to attack Marie, and is trounced by the drum-major. Hence with a different ordering of the material, this second act is rather like my "beginning" section with the important difference that even before the end of the act Woyzeck has seen Marie dancing and is beginning to be wild for blood. The third act is introduced by Marie's scene of remorse, and then follows the same pattern of three scenes for the murder of Marie and drowning of Woyzeck, followed by the final scene with the children.

The material lends itself well to this arrangement. Each act marks a distinct

stage in the action: in the first Marie is seduced, in the second Woyzeck becomes

jealous, in the third he commits murder and dies. The development of the action

5 Recorded as a "nicht verwertete Szene," Inselverlag edition, p. 414. 6 Alban Berg, Georg Buechners Wozzeck: Oper in 3 Akten (I5 Szenen), Op. 7: Partitur

(Vienna: Universal Edition A.G., 1955). The simplest method for examining variant sequences and for making up one's own is to jot down a brief description of each scene on a file card.

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The Sequence of Scenes in Woyzeck

is as straightforward as it can be. The characterization of both Woyzeck and Marie is simpler.

There is, of course, no necessity for maintaining a chronological sequence. The simplicity of the plot and structural independence of the scenes lend themselves to a kind of flashback development-one might try, for example, putting the murder scene first. An extremely interesting production could be made in which the order of the scenes were established at the beginning or during the course of each performance by chance methods. The actors would then be forced to feel out and improvise the resultant montage effects within the scenes as well as the overall rhythm.

My own arrangement of scenes makes no claim, I hope it is by now clear, to being the correct one. It chooses certain dramatic values and a line of character development at the sacrifice of other possibilities. Aside from those qualities brought out within particular scenes by juxtaposition, separation and sequential relationships, I think the chief advantages of this particular scheme are (1) the uninterrupted build and hurried, obsessive quality of the "end" section, giving that part of the play a rhythm which reflects accurately and feelingly the quality of Woyzeck's mind; (2) the frame provided by the two scenes with children; (3) the distinct change of pace between sections; (4) the opportunity provided to explore Woyzeck's mentality after he has already been humiliated and estranged from Marie. Some directors may find the plot development, with its suggestion that Marie is partially pushed into her affair with the drum-major by Woyzeck's jealous reaction, more ingenious than the materials really warrant, and destructive of one of the beauties of the play, its directness and simplicity. My intention was to pay that price for character complexity.

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