Published almost half a century after the author’s demise and premiered on stage only in 1913, it became a source of inspiration for future generations – for nineteenth-century naturalists, for early twentieth-century expressionists, and for Bertolt Brecht. Woyzeck has passed the test of time, proving in each consecutive epoch an indispensable and contemporary text.

What is Woyzeck about? About humiliation, love, and jealousy? About an attempt to flee the claustrophobic small-town (small-world) atmosphere? About the violence of hierarchy in the guise of morality and the subjugating force of science? About social conditioning imprinted on the human flesh? About sensitivity verging on madness? About the fluid borderlines between humanity and beastliness, between freedom and predetermination? About “how an individual matures and reaches freedom”? About the inevitable social revolution? About the auguries of the shapes of fungi on the ground?

Who is Woyzeck? A victim of betrayal and humiliation? An oversensitive visionary, attuned to the sounds of nature and to the hum of the impending apocalypse? An ignorant harbinger of a people’s uprising that will put paid to social injustice? Or a small-time fool forced – through belittlement and jealousy – to commit a heinous crime? Or – simultaneously – is he perhaps the alter ego of Büchner?