SCENES FROM THE DEATH OF WOYZECK
Created by faculty members from the theater department of Illinois State University–the department that produced many members of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company–Scenes would be better named Images, for it breaks Woyzeck down into a series of stark, compact, and mostly silent images. Almost all the dialogue has been stripped away, and what remains is delivered in snippets of three languages–French, German, and English. One of Buchner’s innovations in Woyzeck was using dialogue primarily to reveal the emotions of his characters, not to promote a narrative, and the foreign sounds in this adaptation highlight that technique. Anger in German sounds like anger even if you don’t understand the language. But this deemphasis of the verbal also intensifies the visual impact of the piece.
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And the mood Buchner was aiming for was distinctly modern. He not only created a protagonist with no stature or significance–an audacious act in itself–but also presented Woyzeck as the ultimate victim, a man for whom life is nothing but one damn thing after another.
