“Theatre is an extremely unique phenomenon. […] It endures and comments upon changing societal relations,” writes Andreas Kotte in one of his theatre history works.¹ This process—the play of reception and creativity, tradition and innovation—is laid bare by contemporary directions of the classics. From this standpoint, in Hungarian theatre history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, there are two dramas of unquestionable significance: Chekhov’s The Seagull and Büchner’s Woyzeck. If we acknowledge the spread of interactive performance formats as one of the main characteristics of contemporary Hungarian theatre,² then it is worth focusing on the 1836 text. After all, this classic of German Romanticism is the first example of the so-called open drama form (Volker Klotz). In this manner, it represents sui generis “the end of the Scheherazade paradigm of storytelling”.³ The plot “disintegrates into a kaleidoscope of aspects,” and it is not the structure, but only “the visual element […] that completes the narrative arch on a textural level”.⁴ As a result, it provides just as much opportunity for the reconstruction of the central plot thread (built upon motivations and consequences of infidelity) as the deconstruction of the story. That is, it is a directorial decision how to manifest the profoundly metaphorical language of the drama’s text, as a theoretical montage of events or in the form of an organic work of art.

Living in a theatre culture that takes pleasure in the politics of involvement, it is not surprising that, in the 2017/2018 theatre season, three young directors simultaneously undertook the presentation of the best-known fragment in European drama history.⁵ In terms of influence, though, it is interesting how these ‘Z-generation’ productions reflect upon two legends of the drama’s performance in our nation: Stúdió K’s direction in 1978 and that of Krétakör (Chalk Circle) in 2001. These are two works that, in their own time, could have immediately received the Péter Halász Prize for being:

“uncomfortable, unpleasant, challenging, controversial […] striving to broaden the potential themes and performance language of contemporary theatre; shifting the conventional rubric of performance; from time to time self-critically rethinking creative methods; making structural demands and societal expectations that influence both creations and institutions subjects for examination—all in order to shake up our thoughts, to question the conventions and boundaries that we take for granted, and to show what today’s theatre can possibly be!”⁶

In Tamás Fodor’s direction for Stúdió K, we may seek the murder’s motivation not in the drama’s metaphysical-philosophical dimension but in its sociological reading, best indicated by its spatial concept, which breaks with the traditional voyeur format. The site-specific production plays out among us in the strictest sense, half a metre away. In scenes that transpire in the public space, the roles of tavern-goers or those loitering in front of the Barker’s soapbox are given to us. We dance together with the stage figures; in the intermission, we can fill up on lard-smeared bread and Quarry-brand (Kőbányai) beer with them. As a result of the viewer’s position, which is freely chosen, it is, in principle, up to us which scene we observe and how we react to the two or three explicitly aggressive (sexual) acts, which unveil the motif of murder and intimacy.⁷ Literally and symbolically, the story is performed in the amoral institution of the Barker’s soapbox; and yet, although they become aware of this, the viewers (who may soon recognise themselves not only in the figures of the drunken lads and loose lasses, but as one among them) cannot interfere in the events for two reasons. First, it is because, at the start of the show, the Barker performs the tragic love-triangle story with puppets dressed in clothes identical to the stage figures, as a result of which the scenes become not only a theatrical illustration of events we already know, but also the causally linked sequence of a closed, consistent plot. Second, the production begins outside with the Barker’s words: “Step right up! It will be great. The show will soon begin.” We step from quasi-reality into the performance space (the ‘puppet show’). Consequently, the theatrical representation—though not in the accustomed manner, frontally and far from us, but right up next to us and among us—is ultimately inescapable.

W – Worker’s Circus by Árpád Schilling was quite the opposite. Through the actors’ bodies—blended with language, text, and images—it expressed not only the fragmentary nature of Büchner’s text and the variability of its stories but Woyzeck’s vision as well.⁸ In Chalk Circle’s physical theatre performance, the body is a (main) character, and not only because the actors’ work constitutes the show in the spirit of the new circus and movement theatre aesthetic. On the basis of scenes, the action (mostly visualised as acrobatic acts) was developed through the company’s improvisations; exercises in concentration, status, and balance.⁹ It is also because the production was able to make the energy field palpable, which is necessary if one is to comprehend the gestures, body positions, and stage pictures devoted to presenting and interpreting the given micro-situation or psychological condition. Everything that we see and hear indicate a given figure’s state or the dramaturgical function of the situation or theme, stereotypically, metaphorically, or as an archetype. However, the theatrical reflex of identification imbues this with atmospheric power. For example, we identify the weights tied to Woyzeck’s feet as he runs in circles – first as an open Bible, then as two crumbling bricks crashing into each other. The sexual poses become acrobatic spectacles; the exposed secondary sexual traits and genitalia become kilos of meat. The shapes of the actors’ bodies acquire the significance of figures, their physical flesh and muscle, and their energy of presence. Consequently, not only the manifest forms, themes, thoughts and ideas come to the centre of the audience’s attention, but also the embodiment, which is commensurate with abstraction.

Overall, both legendary shows counted on viewers who went to the theatre “[…] to see what they were not allowed to see.”¹⁰ Just as 99.6%, HOOMELAAND, KŐ-KŐ-KŐ, the 2019 series of actions by the students who occupied the University of Theatre and Film Arts, as well as Game Changer, Closer, and Living the Dream with Grandma—it is true of them, too, that they expose the authoritarian might of the type of dramaturgy that fears offending the boundaries entrusted to ‘the’ theatre. Instead of endeavouring to “standardise and normalise the feelings evoked by the work, interrupting processes that endanger house operations,”¹¹ they strive to be unpredictable and unfinished. This, in turn, prompts the spectators to reconsider their habitual mode of reception, the basis of which is theatrical representation’s “transparent ideal” (Aristotle).

Do these three latest directions offer the opportunity of involvement, which is the same as criticism of the dispositive?¹² Do they initiate a dialogue with each other regarding viewing strategies—be they passive-oppressive, passive-conservative, post-passive and active witnessing, or immersive?¹³ In the crossfire of audience viewpoints, at odds with themselves and each other, do they expose the viewpoint of the first person plural (white, cis-, healthy, and educated), which Carrie Sandahl called the “tyranny of the neutral?”¹⁴ We receive answers to these questions if we examine how the directions Attila Vidnyánszky, Jr (Stalker Group), Mátyás Péter Szabó (Közért Company), and Máté Hegymegi approach Büchner’s unfinished piece. Can one locate in them an integration point that structures the dissemination of theatrical symbols (both verbal and nonverbal) into a ’transparent order’?¹⁵

In the themed sixth edition of the journal Ellenfény from 2018 entitled Woyzeck Then and Now, Zoltán Kondorosi stated as fact, “the new productions deal with the base material more freely.”¹⁶ Our thesis is that all three productions play a dual-natured game: Stalker Group at the National Theatre (being “post-Meiningen”), Közért Company at MU Theatre “New Theatrical,” and Hegymegi at Szkéné physical theatre. For one thing, we truly feel (mainly thanks to the formal language employed) that “they often stage unique variations.”¹⁷ Moreover, mostly through visual means, a distinct frame of reference for the Woyzeck narrative is quite emphatically presented. By multiplying, concealing, and replaying certain connective points at varying speeds and rhythms, these directors unsettle the viewers who wish to know the story’s beginning, middle, and end. Consequently, all three productions approach the fragmentation of Büchner’s work from its ‘unfinished’ state. Yet, it is not fragmentation itself, but the fragments that comprise the shows’ dramaturgical starting points,¹⁸ becoming points of orientation in three very different productions of Woyzeck, which nonetheless all exist in collective loneliness.

Attila Vidnyánszky, Jr.’s production, still on the National Theatre’s repertoire in 2024, is “based on a true panel story.”¹⁹ The title character (portrayed by Márk Nagy as a multicultural performance of Stanislavsky’s concept of Public Solitude) not only embodies solitude in the strictest sense of the word but also construes it as a virtue. The dual-framed piece makes the young man both the nucleus and counterpoint of this two-hour trip. He never curses, speaking the lines (which, only in his case, derive from Büchner) in Hungarian with no foreign words, while the rest of the cast (the Stalker Group at that time) improvise in Serbian, Croatian, Romanian, and ‘Hunglish.’ Leaning on the wall and clutching his child, he watches as the others’ maimed bodies literally overflow the intimate space, while the atmosphere is established by the clip-like, dynamic choreography made up of acrobatic elements, intensified gesture and speech, and action sped up with stroboscope and UV light.²⁰ The figure’s reflexivity is demonstrated in one of the show’s key scenes. The man, preparing buttered bread for his hungover wife (who protractedly repeats, “I work in a tobacco shop, but now I’m on maternity leave.”) presents to the Doctor, who relishes aberration, a model of his South-American home. While he precisely describes the place where he and the people closest to him live, the coked-up community of the panel house illustrates what is said, as elements in a Google Maps program come to life, entering and exiting through the openings in the walls of the Attila Kaszás Hall.²¹ Later, they mount the stage through the walls or the refrigerator, traversing what constitutes, for themselves and Marie, the real world, be it soap operas, prime-time shows, home renovation programs, porn, or nature films. As figures like Dumbledore and Gandalf, but most of all Señor ‘Ciao-Ciao’ Drum Major, they create a pseudo life sphere where only a few, relatively slow, and therefore intimate moments lend it a sense of reality. By virtue of these sequences, they are the moments from Woyzeck and Marie’s coexistence when the viewers’ gaze, accustomed to the multimedia chaos, simply rests on the two actors observing each other and performing everyday acts, such as spreading butter on bread and then on each other. Thus, the infidelity is experienced close up, as is the murder, which is staged as an embrace.²²

This montage technique, defining Büchner’s fragments as episodes repeated over and over, undoubtedly brings the nerves of viewers used to ‘classical’ theatre spectacle and sound to the breaking point. What is more, the rhythm is very akin to the speed with which surfers on Instagram register and change images. This most likely accounts for the show’s large number of young fans. With these tableaux, which are unbelievably energetic and utterly theatrical (or ‘South American’ insofar as it conjures a state of soap opera addiction), it differs from Mátyás Péter Szabó’s and Máté Hegymegi’s directions, albeit not in the same way.

In the case of Mátyás Péter Szabó at MU Theatre, spectators are surrounded by a snow-white lawn. The production, which takes place among black boxes that can be moved and played with, is an “intellectual game [staging] the illogical visionary world of a soul tormented by madness.”.²³ The static play of the abstract spatial design provides a layered snapshot of the drama’s fragments. For example, the Drum Major, stepping on boxes, enchants Marie, who gazes up from the ground, but is later elevated from her inferiority with shoes (instead of earrings) and spatial elements carried to her feet. The constant noise of packing boxes (the shoving, pulling, and sliding of spatial elements, as well as the slamming of lids open and closed) provides an aural tapestry, intensifying the production’s consistently spooky sound. The symbolism defines Woyzeck and Andres, dressed alike in white, as mutual alter egos in contrast with the Captain and Doctor, wearing black costumes; in addition to Marie, who wears purple and climaxes to the accompaniment of a confetti cannon. The caring Fool, who cradles the small child, has no place in this world. The Doctor, as a mental hygienist, becomes an increasing burden. The parable of the essentially metaphoric nature of language and the unfathomability of reality is not spoken by the Grandma but by Andres, played by ‘Palkó,’ whose name refers both to the actor (Pál Kárpáti) and the smallest, poorest hero of folk tales. That is, this Nietzschean anti-fairy tale that illustrates Woyzek’s alienation (practically a pre-figuration of Christ) becomes, in this case, the origin of a very topical twenty-first-century identity narrative. The key to this is how Közért Company worked with Péter Kárpáti’s improvisation method during rehearsals.²⁴ The characters’ behavioural analysis, nourished by the given actor’s life experience, not only influenced the text but also ‘locked’ Woyzeck’s identity performance emphatically in the first person singular personality. In addition, the singularity of the story is emphasised by the epilogue. In a canon, the actors read out murders that actually happened in their lifetimes, to which the following could apply without exception:

“A young man in his late 20s, already estranged from his family, is, however, incapable of fulfilling the expected male role in his own family. He is compelled to do work where there is no chance of promotion and no chance to resign, experiencing daily humiliations from his superiors. In exchange for survival, the young man is utterly at the mercy of the system.”²⁵

Similar to Mátyás Péter Szabó, Máté Hegymegi also constructs his production by concentrating on the title character’s identity narrative. The wisest and most placid (practically omnipotent) figure in this world—standing grey in a sea of black, woven of dimly and intermittently lit images—is the Barker/Fool. Woyzeck is the only character who hears what he says. He prompts Franz Woyzeck where to hide the knife, and, in the final stage picture, he changes places with the man, whose age only he knows. His position, reporting on this world without God or free will (testifying to the knowledge of Büchner, who was versed in Nietzsche) is occupied by the tree situated in the centre of the stage picture and rising from a circular-shaped pit with its roots of braided ropes. This stark set element not only lends the Biblical motifs of Woyzeck’s vision a logical unity, but it also arranges the show’s vectorial movements into concentric circles. Although the Szkéné’s circular stage is incapable of rotating, the actors’ movement of scenery creates a kinetic rotating stage, thanks to which everyone without exception is locked in their personal spheres, revolving around a “devastated Paradise.”²⁶ The homes of the Captain, the Doctor, Marie, and the two soldiers (Woyzeck and Andres) are represented by one piece of furniture each (twin chairs from a hospital waiting room, a lampshade attached to an IV stand, a window frame, and a tub, respectively) while the often slow-motion circular movement constantly pulls the ground out from underneath them. What is also palpable in the Hegymegi direction is the killing in the prologue, staged as a sexual act beside the tree trunk and repeated three times with increasing carnality and vehemence, signalling that this is Woyzeck’s only possible decision: murder. Also, this murderous embrace, which liberates this (abstract) world from sin and mankind from its (actual) mortal coils, will last until the body of the man (bearing the burden of a backpack full of rubble) and the woman (nursing a rope baby while unable to pray under a window frame held by the Drum Major) occupy their bloody resting place in the cavity under the tree’s roots.

In this case, too, staging the title character’s alienation comprises the production’s point of integration. Just as Márk Nagy’s Woyzeck’s “billboard-loneliness”²⁷ places the focus on him in contrast to the multimedia chaos, and Zoltán Szabó is singled out by his character’s lily-white self (which, like a protective shield, resists cloning), Erik Major’s acting becomes the focal point, as it ceaselessly differs from the acting technique that surrounds him. He has nothing to do with the self-centred psychological realism of the Captain (who delivers his monologues as a reclining patient undergoing therapy) or the female Doctor (who is often reminiscent of the cold, confining Refrigerator Mother archetype). The older actors’ psychological role interpretation acquires weight because both the raw, energetic gestures and Erik Major’s abstract series of movements (for example, during the shaving, when he slowly climbs into every possible part of the chair provided) place palpable quotation marks in the manifestation of physical acts. Yet, this showcased artificiality endows it with the enclosed air of a puppet show, typifying the Ringmaster’s scenes and the Drum Major’s testosterone-filled vitality. Their aggressive roughness provides an exquisite counterpoint both to the obedient meekness in the young man’s expression and the choreography built upon contact dance. Woyzeck, while lying on the Fool, exercises his prize-worthy aberration; or, when leaning and draped on Andres’ body in the tub or above the pit, Woyzeck strives to move as much and however the empirical situation and gravity allow.

It is symptomatic how these directions spotlight or neglect the dual-layered reading of Büchner’s text: as a drama or an allegory of mankind. For example, at MU Theatre, the lines of Woyzeck referring to Christ’s age reduced to legendary numbers (“Hence, today I am 30 years, 7 months, and 12 days old.”) remain untouched. At Szkéné, the spoken information (“I am 25 years, 7 months, and 12 days old.”) corresponds to that of Daniel Schmolling, the military barber executed in Leipzig on 27 August 1824. In Vidnyánszky Jr.’s direction, Márk Nagy gives his own date of birth as Woyzeck’s. That is, the directions of the Z Generation preserve their Woyzecks from the variety of life that surrounds them, thus endowing them with a central function.²⁸ The first is removed from the unbridled orgy of ‘true-story’ applied scene improvisation, conceived during rehearsals at the National Theatre. The second is isolated from the MU Theatre’s boxes, which are presumed to be real and (according to the rewritten fairy tale) “are used only one day of the year when the time comes for them to be decorated with flowers, passed from hand to hand amidst great celebration, only to be thrown away and stomped in the mud the next day.” The third is delivered from the petrified world of Franz Woyzeck, who runs around the uprooted Tree of Eden in Szkéné Theatre but is also running from himself.

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