Woyzeck

In the organizer's words:

based on the play by Georg Büchner
Songs and lyrics by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan
Concept by Robert Wilson
Text version by Ann-Christin Rommen and Wolfgang Wiens

A human being as an experimental set-up. Woyzeck rushes from one job to the next to keep his family afloat. He cuts the officers' beards, toils as a soldier and makes his body available for dubious medical experiments. Poverty weighs him down, his uniform constricts him and the doctor regards him as a research subject. Woyzeck's world collapses when Marie - his only support - turns to someone else. The drum major promises her a carefree life and social advancement. What remains is a man torn between dependence and humiliation, who loses touch with reality. Tormented, humiliated and driven by inner voices, he is left with nothing but violence.
Georg Büchner's socially critical text meets Tom Waits' songs - sometimes raw and aggressive, sometimes fragile and melancholy. Together with Kathleen Brennan and director Robert Wilson, he transformed Büchner's fragmentary drama into a fatalistic and beautiful musical, which premiered in Copenhagen in 2000. In Mille Maria Dalsgaard's production, the focus is on man as an experiment and shows how objectification through the army, poverty, medicine and fear leads to destructive patterns. The music is the throbbing heartbeat of the evening: a place of refuge, a final expression of longing and the freedom that is still possible in an emotional outburst.