Woyzeck

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Storyworld

This Woyzeck project is an art experiment that uses a fusion of techniques and technologies, old and new, to create an interactive storyworld performance experience. Telling Woyzeck in the form of a storyworld brings audience members into the material in a way that is different from traditional theater or cinema. George Landow gives a useful definition of storyworlds in his book, Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization. Landow writes, "Storyworlds, which contain multiple narratives, demand active readers because they only disclose their stories in response to a reader's actions" (245). In a traditional theater or cinema version of Woyzeck, the story unfolds dramatically for even the most passive of audience members. While environmental theater requires an active audience, there are still limitations for the audience member in this form that Woyzeck is able to reduce by using AR.

In his book Performance Theory, Richard Schechner describes the role of the audience in The Performance Group's 1969 environmental production of Makbeth, "The audience became the soldier, the guests, the witnesses, the crowds--the powerless but present and compliant public" (64). Similar to what Schechner describes, the audience member in Woyzeck is allowed to shift with fluidity between multiple roles in the narrative. As in Makbeth, this is accomplished in Woyzeck without much difficulty by simply removing the physical barriers between audience and performer. While the Woyzeck audience member is costumed in a white lab coat, this costume piece does not restrict the audience member to the role of the doctor. On a practical note, the lab coat provides pockets for necessary elements of the audience member's AR hardware. Conceptually, the use of a costume for the audience member helps to delineate the installation experience as separate from their everyday life by covering their everyday clothes. The lab coat on the audience member also suggests connections between ideas of spectatorship and themes of medicalization in the play.

Woyzeck differs from Makbeth and other environmental theater productions in that the audience member in Woyzeck is neither powerless nor necessarily compliant. Through the use of AR technology, the audience is given both power and the opportunity to be noncompliant. Each audience member experiences the installation alone, removing elements of social coercion present in environmental theater. This Woyzeck project contains multiple paths through the narrative and demands an active and powerful audience member. In order to experience the events in the story, the audience member must move through the AR landscape and touch or interact with the AR objects. Otherwise, there will be no story.