What do we say to the children of Wozzeck?

Wozzeck: a simple soldier and barber, toyed with by a captain and a doctor, unmarried and living with Marie, father of an illegitimate child. Wozzeck: the least in every way, the lowest paid, the least heard, the least loved. Wozzeck: an incomprehensible being, a sharp thinker, a caged animal, a hypersensitive nature that forces us to ask ourselves: what is this thing in us that drives us to lie, murder and steal?

In his unfinished drama Woyzeck, the German author, scientist and political activist Georg Büchner created the prototype of the modern antihero. Wozzeck hears voices and shows symptoms of schizophrenia. A fanatical doctor abuses him for the sake of questionable experiments. He gives his meagre wages to Marie, the mother of his child. She longs for a different, better, happier life and cheats on Wozzeck with the drum major. In an outburst of destructive energy, Wozzeck murders Marie with a knife on the shore of the lake. In Alban Berg's opera adaptation of Woyzeck, written almost a century later, the title character then takes his own life – he drowns himself in the same lake. With his suicide, Wozzeck defuses the bomb that he has become.

But does the death of the murderer also remove the question of guilt? Is Franz Wozzeck the only one committing violence, or is he the product of a violent society? Alban Berg also leaves this question unanswered in his opera, adding a third perspective in the final scene: we see a group of children playing, among them the child of Wozzeck and Marie. He is riding a hobby horse. When his friends tell him about the discovery of Marie's dead body, his only reaction is: ‘Hopp, hopp’. When they decide to go and look at the scene of the crime, he hesitates at first, and then – last of all – leaves the stage. His final words form the end of the opera: ‘hopp, hopp’.

Why does Wozzeck kill Marie? This is a question that must be answered with every new performance of this dramatic work. In our production, we try to delay the answer for as long as possible in order to get closer to Wozzeck as a human being. We try to see the world through his eyes, to experience Wozzeck’s sensitivity, to understand his process from creative to destructive energy. Hence the choice of scenographer Sammy Van den Heuvel to design the stage as if all the characters are inside Wozzeck's head. Hence also Johan Simons’ choice to keep Wozzeck as good as permanently on stage, even in scenes where he is not present according to the narrative. This allows us to see Wozzeck in a dual capacity. As an actor and as an observer of that action. It is as if he is walking around in his own dream, with all the distortions, shifts and incongruities that are inherent to a dream.

In that dream, we perhaps learn a little more about Wozzeck’s unique perception of reality. For Wozzeck, everything is information. Everything is equally important, everything is taken seriously, everything is animated: the mushrooms and how they grow, the branches he cuts, the teeming life beneath the earth’s surface, the impossible difference between what is and what is not. Wozzeck experiences the natural elements very differently from others around him. It’s not life itself that he finds unbearable, but rather how the people around him deal with this life: deceitful, egocentric, violent. He sees through the illusions in which humans cloak themselves and understands that morality is a luxury reserved for those who are materially well off. He sees how humans try to pump themselves up and fight their way to the most favourable social position.

This maelstrom of thoughts makes Wozzeck vulnerable, but also dangerous, to others and to himself. He knows and sees things that others would rather not know or see. ‘He runs through the world like a razor,’ says the captain, ‘you cut yourself on him.’ So Wozzeck is dismissed as a ‘case’, his insights are laughed at, his creativity is stifled, his imagination is declared madness. Wozzeck is left alone with his brooding thoughts. He is like an artist who has no means of expression. A growing negative energy builds up and puts pressure on his body and mind. From the very first scene of this drama, the possibility of suicide hangs in the air. The decision not to kill himself leads to the possibility of killing another person.

The tragic core of this story: in a cold world, Wozzeck kills the only person who still gave him human warmth. In fifteen hallucinatory scenes, this opera shows the process of poisoning that takes place in Wozzeck. His interaction with a cold society causes him to seek physical warmth. The only person who still possesses that warmth is Marie. Marie’s murder is not an impulse, not a crime of passion, but stems from a clear thought: I will reflect the coldness of a loveless and miserable existence back onto the world. I make cold what has denied me warmth. Because he perceives reality so differently, Woz@zeck experiences his actions as meaningless activity.

But the thought that life has no meaning is unbearable to him. And in his attempts to conceive of a different world, he stands alone. His desire to change the world transforms into a desire to hurt the world. In the words of the captain, he has turned into a ‘Hundsfott’ (scoundrel, wretch). As a ‘Hundsfott’, Wozzeck has nothing left to gain, but also nothing left to lose. ‘Nur ein Hundsfott hat Courage’ (Only a scoundrel has courage), says the captain. Only a scoundrel has the courage to kill. All that remains for Wozzeck is his destructive energy, the courage to kill. This is the social critique of this drama: a society that produces structural inequality will always create an underclass of ‘Hundsfotts’ who will violently claim their right to a different, more humane life.

Wozzeck, that scoundrel, experiences reality as hostile, unpredictable, unreliable and extremely frightening. In addition, the boundary between himself and the outside world is increasingly dissolving. If the earth has become hell, he feels it in his own body and mind. Voices coming from the walls are out to get him. This alienates him from those around him, who increasingly see him as a freak beyond redemption. The alienation culminates in the fourth and fifth scenes of the second act. While his fellow soldiers numb themselves with wine and song in the tavern, Wozzeck becomes increasingly sober. ‘Are you drunk?’ Andres asks him. Wozzeck replies: ‘No, unfortunately I can't seem to get drunk.’ His mind becomes increasingly alert. He doesn’t dare go to bed and imagines his own death as an improvement on his situation. While the others whoop and party and form a kind of community, Woyzzeck becomes aware of his isolation. At that moment, Alban Berg brings on the jester, who is in fact Wozzeck’s own voice showing him the way to death.

Wozzeck: Fool, what do you want?
Fool: I smell blood.
Wozzeck: Blood? ... Blood, blood!

Everything points to Wozzeck’s having embarked on the path of (self-)destruction: the path of blood. The negative energy that has built up scene after scene must be released in some way – the distinction between himself and another person is no longer clear. Everything breathes death and destruction, even the moon has become ‘a bloody blade’.

What about the motive of jealousy? Of course, Marie’s adultery plays an important role, but it cannot be viewed separately from Wozzeck’s distorted perception. His imagination distorts reality until it becomes unbearable. Marie’s affair with the drum major is painful, but it is not enough to drive him to murder. Moreover, it is clear how much Marie longs for a life with Wozzeck. She is a healthy, vivacious woman who sincerely loves Wozzeck, but does not want to share his dark, depressive, violent view of the world. Although she lives in appalling conditions, she chooses life. She plays with her child, she loves the military parade, she dances, she enjoys music and sex. Wozzeck’s problem is not that Marie flirts with other men, his problem is that he himself is unable to overcome the darkness within himself. He is not jealous over Marie, he is jealous of the fact that she can see light where he sees only darkness.

Ultimately, the balance between light and darkness, between the will to live and the desire for death, is upset. Marie is unable to pull him into her circle of light. So he drags her into his abyss. First, she must witness his downfall. We, the real spectators of this drama, are in exactly the same situation as Marie. Fifteen scenes long, we watch with our eyes wide open as someone goes under. And no one intervenes. Marie’s tragedy touches on a feeling about life that is once again relevant and that threatens to paralyse us, the privileged of this world: the (social, ideological, military) violence of human against human has never been so directly accessible to us, in unfiltered images and words. Paralysed and speechless, we sit in front of our screens, not knowing what to do with the feeling that we too are implicated in something we seem to have no control over.

And so we are back at the end of Wozzeck, the children's scene. It is clear that Alban Berg wanted to end with an appeal to the audience. But what kind of appeal? While creating this performance, we too were confronted with daily images of young war victims, dead children, sometimes even babies. We were particularly struck by the images of children who survived the massacres: orphaned, lost, their small bodies covered in the dust of a war they did not want, their souls scarred by experiences, thoughts and feelings that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.