Woyzeck - Electropop Opera von UMS’nJIP

In the organizer's words:

Woyzeck, based on Georg Büchner's drama fragment of the same name, is a musical theater piece by and with UMS'nJIP (Ulrike Mayer-Spohn and Javier Hagen), staged by Wolfgang Beuschel. The text for UMS'nJIP's Woyzeck is based on Büchner's abridged and dramaturgically condensed original. Following the premiere in September 2025 and guest performances in Zurich, Bern, Basel and at the MEbU (Münster Earport) in Switzerland, the play can also be seen in Germany for the first time.

Woyzeck cannot support his lover Marie and their child on his wages, so he also works as a medical test subject. The consequences of the experiments weaken Woyzeck, who is already marked by life, to such an extent that he loses himself more and more in a world of delusions. And so Woyzeck ends up on the precipice of a society that gives him no support in life. Woyzeck becomes a victim of toxic patriarchal patterns.

In UMS'nJIP, electropop and experimental classical music provide the rubbing surfaces on which the differences in status dramatically drawn in Woyzeck are sharpened. In UMS'nJIP's reading, the character of Woyzeck has too many antennas and is overwhelmed by his inability to filter. To allow the audience to relive this state, UMS'nJIP create a sound space in which the listeners are surrounded by loudspeakers and the players (as live sound carriers): The audience is immersed in a hybrid between tableau vivant, installation, performance and music theater. The performers mingle with the sound textures and disappear into the sound space. Musically, UMS'nJIP play with the aesthetics of 1980s synth-pop and delicate sonic transient and dissolution processes established by composers such as Furrer and Sciarrino. Circular motifs and serial compositional techniques reflect the hopelessness of Woyzeck's existence.

The treatment of the singing voice is special: each role is assigned a single voice color by JIP. The only role that undergoes a vocal change is Woyzeck: he is also the only one who - and only at the beginning of the play - has a normal speaking voice. In the course of the play, he goes through all the voice colors until he ends up in the crazy voice color assigned to the captain. A woman and a man can be seen on stage at two desks, although it is left open whether they are Marie and Woyzeck. Instead, the impression is of a home workshop. Their task is very simple: to create order in the chaos.

UMS'nJIP's Woyzeck is an offer to pause and listen, to listen in and to meander intermedially in the calm mechanics of a musical-scenic process based on a well-known classical subject: a study of a milieu whose realism is still capable of gripping us emotionally today.

With their electropop operas ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, FIVE, EINER, SANCHO, A CHRISTMAS CAROL, numerous semi-staged and performative commissioned works and the musical theaters in collaboration with the CETC at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, UMS'nJIP can look back on years of experience with the genre since 2007. With virtuosity and irony, they play with a wide variety of aesthetics and use an unconventional and light pocket format that is also a high-tech artistic laboratory and guarantees maximum agility.

Original text: Georg Büchner
Libretto: JIP
Music: UMS'nJIP
Oeil extérieur: Wolfgang Beuschel
Stage & lighting: UMS'nJIP
Performers: Ulrike Mayer-Spohn, Javier Hagen

https://umsnjip.ch/