Woyzeck on the Highveld

Woyzeck on the Highveld is a collaborative theatre production by William Kentridge () and the Handspring Puppet Company.

The original text

This is a major adaptation of Georg Büchner's unfinished play Woyzeck and was undertaken as the first collaborative theatre project by artist William Kentridge and the Handspring Puppet Company.

The play comments on South Africa at the start of the 1990s through a multi-layered structure taking place on three levels: the rear-projected animation of filmed charcoal drawings and ink-drawn shadow puppets, the roughly carved wooden rod puppets in front of the screen, each manipulated by four puppeteers, and a live actor. The distance between the inner world as projected on the screen and the action on stage forms the thin line between Woyzeck's twisted dream and reality.

It opened at the Grahamstown Festival in 1992, with Adrian Kohler, Basil Jones, Louis Seboko, Busie Zokufa and Tale Motsepe as puppeteers, played at the Market Theatre and then toured the world. The production was presented during the Israel Festival, Jerusalem at the Rebecca Crown Auditorium, May 31 - June 2 1996. Later the puppets were sold to the Munich City Museum’s puppet collection. In 2008, they were loaned for a revival for the UNIMA Festival in Perth, Australia, with Mncedisi Shabangu taking Motsepe’s place. This also played in South Africa at the Baxter Theatre.A 1992 translation and adaptation by William Kentridge and the Handspring Puppet Company of Woyzeck [1], an unfinished play by German writer Georg Büchner (1813-1837) [2].

See Woyzeck in Plays II.

See also the Handspring Puppet Company website[3]

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