Woyzeck
Kupalaŭcy, Belarus
Sunday 29. 5. 2022
20:30
Goose on a String Theatre
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Genre: International
Running time: 50 minutes, no intermission
Subtitles in Czech language
Who’s Woyzek? Franz Woyzeck is a soldier with a gentle soul. He serves with loyalty and agrees to anything: to take part in questionable medical experiments of the quack doctor,or to hear the reproaches of the captain, his insults and ridicule. All so that he could bring some extra money to his beloved Marie and spend a free minute over his son’s crib.
However, the events are getting out of his poor control. Raman Padaliaka, the director of the play: «For me, it is a story about an ordinary humble person who was not born to kill, he grew up as a nice sweet kid. But the system gradually lays its hands upon him and destroys everything good that he has inside. As a result Woyzeck kills the closest person he has. And he kills his own humanity».
The Kupalaŭcy Independent Theatre Group are the former company of the National Yanka Kupała Theatre, the oldest drama institution of Belarus. In 2020 they were preparing a celebratory season to mark its 100th anniversary, but things turned out differently. On August 26 2020 they quit the theatre in solidarity with the Belarusians who peacefully protested the atrocities in the country. “We have always been standing alongside our people and can proudly call ourselves a national theatre. But we are also a free theatre now. We have left «our home» but keep paving our way back with art.” says the director Raman Padaliaka.
The Theatre World Brno 2022 festival follows events in Belarus, where people are constantly fighting for fair elections, freedom and democracy, despite widespread arrests, imprisonment, harsh repression and intimidation. By inviting the productions Woyzeck and Sarmatia, as well as the preparation of another accompanying program, the festival joins the initiative of the Center for Experimental Theater, which on November 17, 2020 established the Embassy of Independent Belarusian Culture in Brno, which is currently suppressed in Belarus.
“We have agreed that most of all, the general public needs to be continuously and consistently informed about what is happening in Belarus in the longer term. Unfortunately, people in Central and Western Europe know very little about this country – we believe that Belarus’s independent culture and the overall context of current events in Belarus now need to be made much clearer in public. We are not politicians, we are artists. However, we believe in the power of culture and its ability to get people for a good cause. After all, it was theaters, artists and students who eventually became the driving force behind democratic changes in our country, ”says Miroslav Oščatka, director of the Center for Experimental Theater.
Author: Georg Büchner
Director: Raman Padaliaka
Set design: Kaciaryna Šymanovič
Music: Eryk Arłoŭ-Šymkus
Lighting design: Mikałaj Surkoŭ
Sound design: Juraś Bačkaroŭ
Illustrator: Naścia Kaminskaja
Starring: Aliaksandar Kazeła, Kaciaryna Javorskaja, Kristina Drobyš, Maria Hołubeva, Taćciana Dzianisava, Aliaksandar Zelianko, Aliaksandar Paŭłaŭ, Paveł Astravuch, Źmicer Tumas, Andrej Drobyš, Paveł Paŭluć