Woyzeck: Tragedy and the Ordinary Person

Three-part seminar series with Dhananjay Jagannathan, Tara Isabella Burton, and Sam Booth

In 1837, when Georg Büchner died at age 23, he left unfinished the manuscript of Woyzeck, a play exploring the classic theme of romantic jealousy but set amidst the traumas of peasant life in Germany. Only discovered several decades later, the manuscript began a series of transformations, first as a completed stage production, then as a 1925 Alban Berg opera, a 1979 Werner Herzog film, and finally, the 2010s immersive theater production The Drowned Man. Each creation tells its own version of the Woyzeck story from the materials Büchner left, reflecting also the concerns of its own creators and cultural context. In this seminar, participants will explore, through these versions of a single story, the idea that tragedy can belong not just to a world of heroes but to our own worlds. In the three sessions, we will move between philosophical, literary, and theatrical perspectives.

schedule

• Tuesday, February 2 at 8 PM ET: What do we mean by tragedy? Can there be tragedy with ordinary characters?

  Seminar led by Dr. Dhananjay Jagannathan

• Tuesday, February 9 at 8 PM ET: The ordinary tragedy of Franz Woyzeck

  Seminar led by Dr. Dhananjay Jagannathan and Dr. Tara Isabella Burton

• Tuesday, February 16 at 8 PM ET: Tragedy, God, and fate in the modern theatre

  Conversation between Dr. Tara Isabella Burton and Sam Booth, actor in The Drowned Man