Dramaturgy
Woyzeck was written in 1835-36 by 23-year-old German playwright, medical student, and social revolutionary, Georg Büchner. Only weeks after he began writing, Büchner died of typhus, leaving behind the fragmented, unordered text that has become the classic Woyzeck. It is remarkable to note that nearly two centuries after its creation, Büchner's story has not lost its edge. Based on a true-life controversial murder trial, Woyzeck continues to be recreated by avant-garde artists throughout the years.
Büchner based his play on the true and widely publicized story of Johann Christian Woyzeck, an impoverished soldier and jack-of-all trades drifter who murdered his female companion in a fit of jealousy in Leipzig in 1821. The real-life Woyzeck was the subject of controversial medical evaluations that unfairly pronounced him sane enough for execution. Woyzeck was publicly beheaded in a Leipzig square in 1824, sparking heated debates about capital punishment. Robert Scanlon, Literary Director of the American Repertory Theater, has connected the Woyzeck trial to controversial and highly publicized cases of our time, describing the Woyzeck trial as "the O.J. Simpson case of the 1820s, a sensational jealousy-murder case that opened [...] a serious debate about public and institutional treatment of the insane" ("Coiled", 2).
Stimulated by the then-liberal Enlightenment conception of individual rights and freedoms, Büchner started an underground revolutionary group called the Society for the Rights of Man. Through his work with this group, he wrote an inflammatory pamphlet, "The Hessian Courier," which has been called a precursor to the Communist Manifesto (3). At the time Büchner was writing Woyzeck, he was under constant threat of arrest for his revolutionary activities. One of his closest friends and fellow revolutionaries was arrested and tortured to death in prison (2). Scanlon notes that during this period of time, "Büchner confessed in his letters that he feared he was losing his sanity" (2). It is important to remember the mental state of paranoia in which Büchner was writing Woyzeck for the discussion of form later in this project paper.
Although Büchner's primary training was in zoology and comparative anatomy, he is remembered for writing Woyzeck, a piece which never seems to lose its edge and resonance (Patterson vii). Scanlon writes, "There is a curious irony in calling Woyzeck a perennially avant-garde play, for the term is an obvious oxymoron, but this single short play has fed generation after generation of avant-garde, cutting edge, and next wave movements in the theater" ("Woyzeck" 3). In 1921 the composer Alban Berg recreated the play as the atonal opera, Wozzeck, and in 1979 Woyzeck was produced in a realist style as a film by director Werner Herzog. Woyzeck continues to endure revival after revival on stage as well and was seen on major London and New York stages as recently as 2006.
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