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John Reddick, a translator/scholar of Büchner’s play says, “the first thing to be said about this most famous and influential of Büchner’s plays is that, strictly speaking, it does not exist.
When Georg Büchner died he had not yet finished Woyzeck. He left four “bundles of papers concerned with Woyzeck. Three contained jottings and drafts of individual scenes, the fourth a copy of the play as we have it….” (Kenneth McLeish) Together the “jottings” amount to little more than a loose collection of fragments. Scholars generally assume that the last draft, incomplete as it is, reflects most closely Büchner’s intentions for a final version. Even so, translators and adapters often choose segments from each of the preceding drafts to flesh out the last draft, and routinely re-arrange scenes in various ways to make a more coherent, intelligible version of the play.
Shortly after I was assigned Woyzeck, I read numerous translations in search of one that “felt right” to me, and one that would best suit the circumstances of our production. Also as I researched the play, I learned that Büchner used language in Woyzeck that was simple, direct and often crude. Yet the translations I read did not, for the most part, conform to this description. The majority of the translations I read were by British translators, so the word choices were colored by British sensibilities, and often the translators added large tracts of text to bridge the gaps between the fragments of the text. None of these translations, admirable as they were, felt quite right to me. I wanted a text that sounded more how I imagined Büchner’s original text in German sounded, and I also wanted a text that incorporated an American language idiom rather than a British one.
That is precisely what Professor Stefanie Ohnesorg and doctoral candidate Noah Soltau have provided. The translation they have prepared is spare--no text has been added--and the language is simple and direct, and fits very well in the mouths of American actors.
“Woyzeck” is a troubled man who inhabits a dark, tortured world. His life is comprised of an unrelenting series of hardships; daily he is the victim of various kinds of emotional and physical abuse. When the play begins “Woyzeck” is already on the edge, tettering between sanity and insanity. His world is an unstable, twilight world somewhere between normal and abnormal, between real and unreal. I felt the set should reflect these qualities.
In my early discussions with the design team I suggested that we view the play through the eyes of “Woyzeck” and realize our set, costumes, lighting and sound in a style that would manifest “Woyzeck’s” ever-shifting perception of reality.
I also felt that our scenic world required a considerable degree of theatricality in order to support the “non-realistic” choices necessary to portray the events of the play from Woyzeck’s perspective. I suggested two basic ideas—a huge platform that would cut the Carousel theatre in half, placing the audience on each side, and a series of traps from which objects and characters could appear. Scenic designer Chris Pickart took it from there, and fashioned a set that is stark, minimal and perfectly suited for the harsh, haunted conditions of Woyzeck’s internal and external landscapes. Chris has created an incredibly theatrical, atmospheric and flexible space that allows for interior scenes, exterior scenes, and scenes that take place somewhere in the “nowhereland” of “Woyzeck’s” tortured mind.
The University of Tennessee | College of Arts & Sciences | UTK Theatre Department | Knoxville, Tennessee 37996 | 865-974-5161
