Disturbing Woyzeck on stage at FGCU

COURTESY PHOTO Playwright Georg Büchner The history of theatre is marked with a few dramatic works that simply stand above the rest in clear relief as the greatest of the great.

One such work that rests secure in this illustrious canon is Woyzeck, a disturbing and fragmented play written by Georg Büchner. The twenty-six year old playwright died of typhus in 1837 before Woyzeck was finalized so the world did not have an opportunity to marvel at its radical departure from the work of its contemporaries until much later when Berg introduced the story in his operatic interpretation of Büchner's play.

New scholarship has now rendered a performance text that seems faithful to the original and this version promises to provide all the power, emotion, and beauty that Büchner first penned.

Woyzeck is the timely story of the human animal demeaned into committing animalistic acts of violence in response to abject poverty, oppressive regimes, and a perpetual state of war.

Florida Gulf Coast University students perform Woyzeck on stage at the Theater Lab on campus beginning at 8 pm on Wednesday, April 11. It runs through April 22 with performances on Wednesday through Saturday at 8 pm. A Sunday matinee is at 2 pm.

Theater director Berry Calvin said he chose the play partly because Büchner was only 24 when he wrote it.

"It's interesting to do a play when the actors are about the same age as the playwright when he wrote it," Calvin said. n