Photo © Reijo Haukia

Friday, September 29
New Riga Theatre, the Big Stage
Lacplesa Str. 25
7:00 PM
In Finnish (Latvian translation)
Duration: 2 h
Tickets: 3, 5, 7 Ls

VIDEO WINDOW

Georg Büchner (1813-1837)
Woyzeck
Rock-performance - wild, sensitive and confusing

Kajaaninteatteri, Finland

 

With support of Finnish Embassy in Latvia and Baltic Circle

Dramaturgy and directed by Kristian Smeds
Cast: Katriina Hänninen, Johannes Korpijaakko, Eeva Soivio, Kari Suhonen, Heikki Törmi, Teija Töyry, Teuvo Viljakainen
Set and costumes: Riitta Raunio
Sound: Ilari Miikkulainen
Lightning: Niko Kurola

Premiere: February 5, 2003

Performance

Woyzeck, orderly of a German army captain is considered to be stupid and immoral. Woyzeck is poor; he earns his living by allowing a doctor to experiment on him. In order to establish an obscure scientific truth Woyzeck is forced to eat only peas days on end. Woyzeck finds out that his girlfriend and mother of his son Marie is cheating on him with an army drummer. Overcome by jealousy he kills Marie and himself.

Photo © Reijo Haukia

"Woyzeck" is German playwright George Büchner's unfinished play, it is considered to be one of the most peculiar, terrifying and poetic samples of classic expressionism drama.
"Woyzeck" is the most recent staging by Kristian Smeds, internationally best known Finnish young director and the leader of Kajaaninteatteri, oversaturated with various means of expression it creates a new way of retelling the story.

The performance is a synthesis of a rock concert, radio play, media art and electrifying light effects that sometimes breaks down completely the border between theatre and reality. The performance deals with the present. The stage is filled with jealousy, violence, pathological lack of sex - black poetry, reflecting the dark side of Finnish everyday life.

"Welcome to my kingdom! Ladies and gentlemen, man has to mock his own reason to say that life is nice and joyful!" that is the way the poor soldier addresses the audience and draws them into evil, feverish, misleading, poetic, comic and sad world.

Photo © Reijo Haukia

Director

Kristian Smeds (1970) studied Direction and Dramaturgy in the early 1990s at the Theatre Academy in Helsinki. Since the spring of 2001 he serves as director of the State Theatre of Kajaani. He moved to this small theatre, in North Finland, from Helsinki, where he had headed the Takomo Theatre (The Blacksmith), the theatre he also founded in 1996.

At the Kajaaninteatteri he has staged many of his own pieces - Jääkuvia (Ice Pictures, 1996),Rautavaara - bulunkylän Tähti (Rautavaara - The Star from Oulunkylän, 1997), and Jumala On Kauneus (God Is A Beauty, 2000), as well as Henrik Ibsen's Brand (1996) and Anton Chekov's Uncle Vanya (1998). Smeds has written and directed several plays for radio, such as Jääkuvia (Ice Pictures), which won The Best European Radio-play Prize 1998. In 2000, not only did his adaptation of Paavo Rintala's novel Jumala On Kauneus (God Is A Beauty) receive an award for Best Adaptation on a professional stage, it also won the Olavi Veistää Prize 2001. Two of his theatrical works have been nominated for the Nordic Drama Prize: Meän tyär (Our Daughter, 1994) and Yhä Pimenevä Valo (Forever Darkening Light, 2002).

The theatre of dramatist and director Kristian Smeds represents a world to itself, a world constantly surpassing and questioning its own boundaries. Its 'world picture' is thoroughly Finnish, but, at the same time, has access to its own cosmopolitan vocabulary, a vocabulary the international theatre tradition is very aware of.

Each performance suggests a living creature with its own fierce physicality and presence, original visual-and-symbolic language, and live music; and each combines with a text whose individual borrowing of substances allow it to reach from proclamations to moments of delicate poetry. What rants and raves in the background is a craving for life and warmth.

 

Links
Kajaaninteatteri homepage www.kajaaninteatteri.fi


Press reviews

" Woyzeck is a play that it is difficult to digest if seen only once, because the sub-conscious constantly raises new questions that the play appears to leave unanswered. The play is painful, clear and, surprisingly enough, also funny. It combines the holy and the evil."

" I would not take a child or person in his early teens to see the play. Young people, however, I would rather encourage to go and see it. To adults not fancying tightly woven, wild, jumping, and irregular drama, the play's loud sounds, light effects, violence and open, exposed sexuality may be too much."

Sinikka Viirret, Kainuun Sanomat, 7th February 2003

 

"There are no sets, only lights on the back wall that blind and disturb the audience, creating a sense of an ever-accelerating pulse. All this is combined with a rock band made of the actors. The band plays punk, funk and soul to generate a background to the text that has been adapted into songs. Alban Berg once composed the opera Wozzeck. The Kajaani people have done it on their own."

"Loaded with constant energy, the two-hour play makes the audience confused, strikes terror and finally leaves them silent."

Kirsikka Moring, Helsingin Sanomat, 8th February 2003

 

"Büchner's play may not have been a piece of cake, not even to Kristian Smeds, head of "Kajaaninteatteri", who now after Woyzeck will be furnished and treated as a theatre genius. It must have taken time, and probably also many cigarettes. Yet the Woyzeck we see in Kajaani is so astonishingly topical. Matti Nykänen, a former ski-jumping hero regularly featured in afternoon papers and the main news on Channel 4, is not the only man in Finland who has stabbed his wife."

"One should not be afraid though, because the Woyzeck staged in "Kajaaninteatteri" is not a sermon but a brilliant, excellent theatre performance. It is intelligent, clever, in places very funny, surprising, furious and touching. Or perhaps touching is too mild a word here. The play appears to grip the male audience with both hands and squeeze so hard that their heads almost crack."

Matti Saarela, Etelä-Saimaa, 15th February 2003

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