Woyzeck

Buchner did not succeed in completing Woyzeck before the onset of his fatal illness. Four drafts of the play have survived, containing groups of scenes and scene fragments, some apparently written in such haste that numerous passages are nearly illegible. The final draft is clearly a revision of earlier attempts, and it therefore must take precedence over them when one attemptd to reconstruct the play without seriously violating the author's intentions....The third draft consists of two scenes, and we do not know where Buchner intended to place them in his final version. Instead of incorporating them arbitrarily into the reconstruction, as numerous editors have done, I offer them as "Additional Scenes'" because they are simply too good to leave out entirely....The well-known "Early Draft of Scene 9" (Draft 2, Scene 7)has also been included for dramatic value....Buchner's orthography has been modernized, but the colloquial tone of Woyzeck's modified Hessian dialect is preserved. I have omitted several passages that seem hopelessly unclear. --- from book's "A Note on the Text" Booklet includes: Woyseck, Buchner on Society and Politics, Excepts from Buchner's Letters, Excerpts from Der Hessische Landbote Buchner on Aesthetics, Except for Buchner's Lenz plus a Vocabulary section.

(I always wanted to say that.)Woyzeck is a designer's nightmare but an actor's dream: a tragedy of immediate imagery, almost written for the MTV generation. Scenes that last at most two pages flicker around archetypes like the overbearing Major and the menacing Doctor, while the play's more human characters find themselves caught in between. There are searingly tragic moments (as befits the genre). There are also darkly funny ones: Woyzeck's conspiracy theories, Andres's childish songs, the Scholar's politically incorrect comments.Buchner left the world young, and if this play is any indication, that's a tragedy too. As a reader, an actor or a (shudder) designer, you'll enjoy being swept along by his work.