Woyzeck

The play we know today as Woyzeck began as a drawerful of fragments left by a brilliant 22-year-old playwright who died of typhus in 1836. A handful of hallucinatory scenes sketch the tale of a man, conditionally programmed by medical science, who commits a terrible crime. The real-life source had been the O.J. Simpson case of the 1820s: a sensational jealously-murder that sparked debate about the treatment of the insane. Büchner’s unfinished script lay dormant until it was published in 1879 and finally produced in 1913 (Alban Berg composed the well-known operatic version—Wozzeck—in 1925). Today Woyzeck is recognized as a modernist classic, posing an intriguing challenge for every director who approaches it. Each production must interpret and arrange the pieces according to its own vision. Using a new translation by Gideon Lester, director Marcus Stern is assembling an emotional and moving jigsaw puzzle, at once goofy and tragic, sexy and heartbreaking.

SYNOPSIS

Franz Woyzeck is an impoverished soldier in a small town. Bullied by his Captain and subjected to bizarre medical experimentation by an army doctor, Woyzeck’s nerves are already strained when he begins to suspect that his common-law wife, Marie, is having an affair with a Drum-Major. Through a series of vignettes, the play charts his increasing distrust and anger until, overcome with jealousy and despair, Woyzeck is driven to destroy the only thing he has ever loved.