WILLIAM C. REEVE

This article examines the various English-Canadian productions and adaptations of Georg Büchner's incomplete drama Woyzeck, beginning with George Luscombe's North-American premiere in 1963 and ending with Will H. Rockett's recent version (April 1987). In addition an attempt is made to put these stagings into the broader context of the European theatre.

Cet article examine les diverses productions et adaptations canadiennes-anglaises du drame incomplet Woyzeck de George Büchner. L'étude commence avec la première création nord-américaine de George Luscombe en 1963 et se termine avec la version récente de Will H. Rockett (avril 1987). De plus, cet article essaie de situer ces représentations dans le contexte plus général du théâtre européen.

What could be described as English-Canada's love affair with Woyzeck began on 27 March 1963 in a converted factory basement where Toronto Workshop Productions, the city's 'most dedicated experimental theatre group,' ¹ under the direction of George Luscombe offered the North-American premiere of Büchner's last play. In TWP's early years of struggle for recognition and survival, Luscombe staged an experimental but popular brand of drama that strove for group adaptation through improvisation, part of his Brechtian heritage.² Describing the 'Workshop's Technique,' Luscombe maintains:

Everyone involved in the production of plays can be involved in the creation of a play. No, this does not mean that the actor creates dialogue ... Language is the province of the writer, and the actor no more creates language than the writer creates movement or the technician creates music. But the actor can, and should, build characterization. The actor who merely interprets a fixed character is doing half his job.³

Giving his interpretation a carnival-like atmosphere but also attempting to adhere to the original, Luscombe saw Woyzeck, among other things, as an excellent vehicle to train his young actors in group performance, as for example, in the drowning scene where they portrayed even the water. The production earned high critical and popular acclaim - Nathan Cohen called it a 'dynamically executed venture in the resources of total theatre' ⁴ - and enjoyed one of the longest runs in TWP's history (27 March - 30 May 1963).

The success of this venture no doubt encouraged Luscombe to attempt a second version entitled 'The Death of Woyzeck' (premiered January 9, 1965), a very free adaptation by the company's dramaturge Jack Winter. Indeed, as Nathan Cohen observed, 'The relationship to what Büchner wrote is now exceedingly tenuous.' ⁵ '... a carnival, filled with freaks and dancing girls ... ' provided the central image: 'Private Woyzeck and his sidekick, Andres', noted Ronald Evans, 'are both specimens and spectators in the bizarre carnival, called Lechery Fair.' ⁶ The juxtaposing of time in simultaneous scenes tended to leave the audience at a loss. Although critics such as Evans expressed praise for' ... outstanding individual virtuosity and occasional, fleeting collective effect,'the production received negative reviews and underwent another transformation in which non-essentials were eliminated and a stronger emphasis was given to the story line and delineation of character. This third interpretation played 'extremely well, with an ominously mounted pace that [was] not interrupted or deflected too often with stagey curiosities.' ⁷

Büchner's fragment also made a strong impression on Canadian playwright John Herbert who worked on an adaptation in 1963 at about the same time that he wrote the first version of his most celebrated drama Fortune and Men's Eyes. Seeing in Woyzeck 'probably the most beautiful and stunning anti-war play ever conceived,' ⁸ he decided to develop it into a full-length production, but one preserving the author's intent. 'Herbert came to see Büchner as a prophet,' anticipating the mentality behind the Nazi movement. In order to flesh out his adaptation into a two-hour, two-act work called 'World of Woyzeck,' he studied Büchner's life and writings and borrowed, for instance, from his scientific essays to expand the Doctor's role. When George Luscombe rejected the script, Herbert shelved the project until 1969 when he staged and directed it himself in his Toronto Garret Theatre. In 'World of Woyzeck,' an impressive military march-past of soldiers in full uniform immediately catches the audience's attention and sets the general mood which Herbert has described as one of 'war, violence, glory and mass hysteria.' The costumes, a combination of mid-nineteenth-century and Nazi-era German dress, further underscored the socio-political message. 'World of Woyzeck,' playing for seventeen weeks, proved to be one of the Garret Theatre's most successful ventures and Herbert himself has recently described it as his 'most impressive work on a Toronto stage.'

In November 1972, Die Brücke, a theatre ensemble from West Germany, making a five-month tour of fifty-one cities in southeastern Asia, Australia and North America, offered two performances of Woyzeck in the University of Toronto's Macmillan Theatre. Although the actors spoke German, program notes and a synopsis were provided in English. The stage was divided into three austere permanent settings, one of which was always being illuminated while the players themselves carried the necessary props into the next blacked-out set. This arrangement suggested a sense of rapid, inexorable movement complementing the excellent acting of the cast. Strictly adhering to the original text, Die Brücke convincingly demonstrated how Woyzeck can stand on its own as an everyman drama, or as one critic put it, 'We may be removed in time from Wichner's kaleidoscope of vintage drama, but its inherent meanings seem timeless, occasionally moving and, as a whole, strangely disturbing.' ⁹

In the 'September' scene from Dantons Tod, Danton exclaims, 'We are puppets, drawn on a string by unknown forces; we ourselves are nothing, nothing!' ¹⁰ a cry which could be regarded as symptomatic of the human condition in Büchner's world. In the most novel and most widely acclaimed Canadian production of Woyzeck, Jean Herbiet and Felix Mirbt chose to dramatize Büchner's metaphor. When asked 'why use puppets?' Herbiet, artistic director of the French Theatre, National Arts Centre, Ottawa, replied: 'Woyzeck seemed the ideal play since it deals fundamentally with "manipulation" on all levels. Puppets illustrate directly and strongly the manipulation of people by the two sovereign forces: authority and money.' ¹¹ In this staging of twenty-five scenes premiered in April 1974, the audience first observes a barren stage illuminated by low-hanging lights, surrounded by photographs of a high stone wall and dominated by a royal box rising at the rear. Five Prussian soldiers march in, followed by their sergeant who begins to drill the troops until their responses are perfectly automatic. Once they are brought to attention, three officers, two accompanied by ladies, enter the royal box and take their seats. The soldiers then proceed to large trunks at either side of the stage, remove their bunraku-style puppets, take off their military caps, and assume the role of manipulators. The play-within-a-play begins with the aristocratic occupants of the balcony reciting the dramatic text. Since this interpretation could be divided into three levels, it redounds to the skill of the production that despite the human domination of two levels - balcony narrators and on-stage manipulators - the grotesque puppets in whose 'sculptured features the entire character' ¹² was symbolically portrayed remained the focal point with their wires, levers and handles visible to the audience and suggestive of their pathetic nakedness. The five puppeteers, in their expert handling and mime performance, came to reflect their charge's emotions.¹³ At one point, a manipulator appears so caught up in the action that, shedding his own identity, he falls to the floor, jerking about in sympathetic harmony with his marionette. This threat to the imposed dramatic order so terrifies the narrators, the embodiment of social authority and its domination, that they rise in obvious horror, but the puppeteer soon regains control of himself, picks up his puppet and returns to the accepted routine.

Critics unanimously singled out Woyzeck's murder of Marie as the climax of the evening. Since the puppet could not wield a knife, the problem was solved by performing the murder behind a screen with shadow puppets enacting the violence. Woyzeck reclines to one side of the screen on top of his puppeteer, while on the other side Marie lies beneath her handler. Staring at the audience, the narrators mechanically deliver their lines as the stage becomes increasingly drowned in red light. According to Daniel Watermeier, this scene sought to '[crystallize] the essential ambiguity of the victim-tormentor relationship.' ¹⁴

The production won such critical acclaim - 'It's a dazzling show,' Radio Canada announced. ... '[We] have an original construction, done with genius' ¹⁵ - it went to Montreal's Festival Centaur-du Maurier where it was heralded as 'a highly original, multi-faceted and totally spellbinding theatrical experience.' ¹⁶ As a result of this success, the N.A.C. remounted Woyzeck as part of its regular subscription series in October 1976 and then, as if in response to the advice of The Ottawa Journal: 'this production should be sent around the world. It is a brilliant experiment and deserves an international audience,' ¹⁷ it went on a five-week tour under the auspices of the Department of External Affairs to France and Belgium in 1978 (January 6-February 11), the first N.A.C. production performed outside Canada. Whereas this cultural exchange was enthusiastically received, in contrast Herbiet's English staging as part of Canada's contribution to the Edinburgh Festival in August 1980 garnered mixed reviews ranging from 'devastatingly novel and totally convincing' ¹⁸ through 'Woyzeck was much too Germanic for the Scots' ¹⁹ to 'I so loathed the Ottawa version of Woyzeck that I decided not to risk the company's second production (Strindberg's Dream Play),' ²⁰ a regrettable conclusion for Canada's most innovative Woyzeck.

In January 1975 at the University of British Columbia, Gordon McCall presented his M.F.A. production of Woyzeck quite literally in the midst of the audience. The spectators sat on the floor about a scaffolding 'a multi-platformed acting gymnasium with metal pylon plumbing,' ²¹ while a large cast, functioning primarily as a chorus, either provided off-stage voices or appeared as white-masked faces popping through holes in the curtain around the perimeter of the theatre. McCall's innovation also included assigning the grandmother's role to the idiot, the signaling of Marie's death by a red ribbon unravelling from inside her mouth and the total isolation of Woyzeck in a frozen stupor to conclude the evening. 'As [the characters] leave in their sneakers and blue jeans, the cast gives Woyzeck a patronizing pat on the back, "A really wonderful murder, Woyzeck - you did an excellent job!"' A pervasive carnival atmosphere sustained the performance.

The novelty of the U.B.C. set finds a successor in a 1977 Toronto version: the stage designed like a doughnut tilted on its side faced the audience with three large screens arranged in the background upon which were projected slides depicting various Toronto locations such as a warehouse apartment on Queen Street or an employment office. This arrangement furnished 'a near-perfect backdrop for the downbeat story.' ²² Alan Richardson, co-founder of the Theatre Compact, wrote and directed a loose adaptation of Woyzeck, transferring it from nineteenth-century Germany to the streets and bars of 1970 Toronto and transforming the main protagonist into an unemployed German immigrant. In the Paddock Tavern scene people stream into the doughnut, constantly moving from rim to centre. Then Woyzeck appears, is teased by his fellow-workers and humiliated by a loud-mouthed hardhat. Darkness descends, but the buzz of conversation continues so that when the lights go up again and a new slide flashes on the screen, the spectator now observes Marie in a crowded market square surrounded, taunted and propositioned by the same people who have just harassed Woyzeck. Reviewer Bryan Johnson applauded the sense of great speed, the inventiveness of the staging, and the ' ... swift, imaginative deployment of a cast of fifteen,' ²³ but Gina Mallet faulted the production for inappropriate casting, the lack of 'a coherent and contemporary rendering of Büchner's language' and the failure to provide 'a consistent context in which the play could be presented clearly.' ²⁴

The year 1977 turned out to be of particular significance for Woyzeck in Canada since less than a month after the Theatre Compact's opening night, Toronto witnessed another important Canadian premiere.

It took fifty-two years for an opera company in this country to get around to producing what may be the century's operatic masterpiece, but it finally happened last night [October 21, 1977] at the O'Keefe Centre and the Canadian Opera Company wins the better-than-never award for doing the job and doing it brilliantly. The 'job' is Wozzeck Alban Berg's musical setting of George Büchner's drama about a man crushed by the brutal pressures of a mechanized society. ²⁵

So concerned were the organizers and critics at the possibility that musically conservative Toronto might fail to appreciate Berg's work that they made a conscious effort to prepare the audience for what it was about to hear. A perceptive column, appearing in the Globe and Mail three days before the first performance, contained a plot summary and the following solid advice and astute observations:

The best way to approach the opera is not to listen to the music, but watch what happens on the stage and allow the music to do what it will. Some of the sounds don't fall so pleasantly on the ears, and they're not meant to. But the constantly changing colors and the shifting texture of the music - its swirling, swimming sounds - take Wozzeck further into his vortex. Musically, Berg's opera is a compassionate salute to the common, ordinary man without any trace of sentiment or condescension. ²⁶

This spade work would seem to have paid off as no one left the theatre once the curtain rose and the critics outvied one another in lauding the staging as ' ... unquestionably the opera to attend in this season.' ²⁷ 'Brilliant!' exclaimed William Littler, 'Canadian Opera is wonderful in Wozzeck.' ²⁸ The drab costumes and sets, the orchestra and the singers as actors combined to create a musical drama which Littler called 'a landmark in Canadian operatic history.'

In keeping with his advocacy of employing a literary adviser in the European tradition, drama professor Richard Hornby directed a University of Calgary production in February 1978 with the assistance of a student dramaturge. The latter prepared a detailed analysis of Woyzeck which 'generated rehearsal and performance strategies' and adhered to a structuralist approach to playscript interpretation, i.e. 'the essence of a play is seen in the relationship between its parts rather than in the parts themselves.' ²⁹ Despite the care, thought and time - more than six months -spent in preparation and Homby's avowed intent to respect the original text, the '[e]ssence of Woyzeck' to quote the title of Eric Dawson's review, remained 'buried in the past.' 'George Büchner died before he could finish his greatest play, Woyzeck The University of Calgary drama department production of Woyzeck ... died long before the actors could speak their final lines.' ³⁰ While praising ' ... this astonishing story written by a twenty-three-year-old German dramatist ... ' Dawson found fault with almost every aspect of the staging: inappropriate posing, incidental music which'... waffle[d] uncomfortably between wartime Stravinsky and Copacabana chic ... 'an unrealistic use of the entire auditorium as a stage' ... requiring the viewer to have a neck that turns 360 degrees ... ' and uninspiring acting - the players had no real understanding of their parts. Woyzeck, notwithstanding its simple story line and the relatively small cast required, represents one of the most difficult plays to stage successfully as no less a dramatist-director than Friedrich Dürrenmatt discovered in his badly-received rendition for the Züurich Schauspielhaus in 1972. ³¹

Whereas the Theatre Compact turned Woyzeck into a German immigrant lost in the streets of Toronto, Richard Rose, in an adaptation entitled 'Boom,' written for the Necessary Angel Theatre Company, converted Büchner's anti-hero into Joe Speck, a Métis barber caught up in the inexorable and devastating upheaval occasioned by the discovery and mining of uranium in a small Northern Saskatchewan town. 'Boom' is a documentary work based on extensive research, including the Warman Refinery Hearings and the Cluff Lake Uranium Mine Inquiry, and at this level it refuses to take a clear 'for' or 'against' stance: 'The results,' noted Northern Lifestyle, 'are not an anti-nuclear protest play so much as an examination of the effects of rapid change on modern man.' ³² But it is also the story of Joe Speck whose fate gives the adaptation its forrnal structure. The focal point of his life has always been his common-law wife, Maria, and their numerous children. To support them, he performs menial tasks until circumstances force him to work for the uranium mine as a toilet cleaner. He also suffers from an unspecified illness which may have been caused by radiation poisoning but which arouses no sympathy, only scientific glee, in the company doctor. When Maria proves unfaithful with a southern truck driver - sexual allusions are couched in trucking jargon - Speck's world collapses.

Most critics, left with the impression of having witnessed not one but two plays, objected to a general 'scattergun approach' that weakened the production's overall impact. "'Boom" is not a bust, but it falls far short of what it could be.' ³³ However, all commended the enthusiasm, energy and versatility of the cast of six obliged to play sixteen roles. A first version, premiered 5 May 1980 in La Ronge, Saskatchewan, went to Saskatoon and then did a tour of several Saskatchewan towns before moving to Toronto (June 10) and Montreal (June 24). ³⁴ This experimental company made a concerted effort to bring its staging to small communities denied the opportunity to enjoy professional theatre, and hence many of its one-night bookings took place in community halls or school gymnasiums. Because of a very favourable reception, Necessary Angel Theatre, based in Toronto but essentially homeless, also took 'Boom' to Northern Ontario where again it was warmly applauded.

The most recent Canadian production of Woyzeck I have been able to discover opened 22 March 1983 at the National Theatre School, Montreal, and after a five-day run was brought to Toronto's Adelaide Court Theatre (31 March-3 April). Director Henry Tarvainen exploited Büchner ³⁵ as a vehicle to demonstrate ' ... what a distilled, non-stop 105 minutes of pure theatre can look like when the actors are young, talented and have had three years of the most rigorous ensemble training.' ³⁶ Each scene strove for a stylized, pictorial effect with the players carefully positioned on the stage in this strictly choreographed show-piece: clapping in unison, the actors approach a dying soldier and, one after another, steal something from their helpless victim; when Woyzeck fatally stabs Marie, she does not fall but remains standing with her arms outstretched, twitching, as one reviewer put it, ' ... like a monarch butterfly setting off in flight.' As in the case of other adaptations, I begin to wonder whether or not Büchner's Woyzeck has been lost in all this technical excellence and find myself agreeing with the Globe and Mail critic's conclusion: 'One doesn't go to Woyzeck to see a play; one goes to see what the graduating class of the National Theatre School can do.'

To complete my survey of English-Canadian Woyzeck productions, I should point out that Will H. Rockett directed a staging of his own translation and arrangement of Woyzeck for the Robert Gill Theatre, Toronto (The Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama) from 7-11 April 1987. This version, using one of the briefest fragments to provide a suitable framing device which turns the play back into itself, was first produced at Seton Hall University in South Orange, NJ., in April 1985.

Woyzeck's considerable Canadian popularity - indeed since its 1963 North-American premiere in Toronto, there have been at least fourteen new or remounted stagings - attests to its inexhaustible appeal and its equally amazing adaptability. This quality may be more intrinsic to Woyzeck than to other nineteenth-century works because of its status as 'literary criticism's child of sorrow.' ³⁷ Büchner failed to conclude his play, a 'productive hindrance' in the view of Giorgio Zampa, ³⁸ while the scenes, lacking a well organized, successive or climactic development, present dramatic projections thematically complete in themselves. Since each segment does not necessarily relate to the following or its predecessor, the onus of interpretation has fallen largely upon the director who must create a unified production. '[In] the whole of German stage literature,' observed a German reviewer, 'there is no work which permits of so many and so different interpretations,' ³⁹ and, one might add, which would seem to justify the experimentation that Woyzeck inevitably inspires. As Carl Zuckmayer once confessed, 'I really didn't have any models unless one wants to name that great model of all modem theatre ... Georg Büchner.' ⁴⁰

A glance at Woyzeck's stage history outside English Canada provides a surprising demonstration of the extent to which our contribution fits readily into the international picture. One influence that cannot be ignored after 1960 and that should come as no surprise is Brecht's Epic Theatre, a presence that manifested itself in the Toronto stagings of the sixties and in several European interpretations such as that offered by the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London, in 1964. ⁴¹ Gesture and mime, first turned to account by Max Reinhardt in his famous version for the Deutsche Theater, Berlin, in 1921, were fully exploited in the N.A.C. puppet production as well as in the choreographed display of the National Theatre School. A tendency to view Woyzeck as a social proletarian tragedy surfaced as early as 1920 under Viktor Barnowsky's direction in the Berlin Lessingtheater, while this political bias has made its presence felt in many subsequent German and in most English-Canadian productions. The inclusion of scenes from earlier manuscripts or interpolations of one's own invention, techniques used by almost all English-Canadian adaptors or directors, has become a common practice in Germany beginning with Oscar Schuh's montage approach for the Cologne Schauspielhaus of 1962 and culminating in Willi Schmidt's simultaneous mounting of Leonce and Lena and Woyzeck in 1969. One of the goals of Luscombe's experimental theatre was to encourage greater audience participation partly by the arena style of auditorium and greater reliance upon the spectator's imagination. In a celebrated staging of 1969 in the Stockholm Royal Dramatic Theatre, Ingmar Bergman also resorted to an arena stage and decided, for instance, to forego the realistic detail of blood as this would reduce audience creativity. Bergman opted to produce the tragedy in a Swedish fin-de-siècle setting with Swedish uniforms, local dialects and a horse which defecated cotton-wool balls in the Swedish national colours. This tendency to interpret Woyzeck in terms of one's own national or regional context can be seen in the Polish Stary Theatre's transformation of the drama into a ballad in the nineteenth-century folk-song tradition of Polish Galicia (1967), in Alan Richardon's down-town Toronto setting for the Theatre Compact, or in Richard Rose's Northern Saskatchewan locale for his Métis Woyzeck The structuring of human groupings to convey special visual meaning, the introduction of a pseudo-chorus to represent society, the assumption of multiple roles by each actor, or the play-within-a-play concept, devices effectively utilized on both sides of the Atlantic, bear witness to what must be regarded as fortuitous correspondences triggered by Woyzeck's earned status as one of the archetypal, everyman dramas of our times. And finally, the decision by the Department of German, Carleton University, to sponsor a conference entitled 'Büchner: Image and Influence' to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Büchner death ⁴² looks back to the world-wide premiere of Woyzeck on 8 November 1913 by a Germanist, Dr. Eugen Kilian, at the Residenztheater Munich, to celebrate the dramatist's one hundredth birthday, a literary production that heralded both Biichner's acceptance on the twentieth-century stage and a new understanding for a nineteenth-century masterpiece.

Notes

BÜCHNER'S WOYZECK ON THE ENGLISH-CANADIAN STAGE

William C. Reeve

1 From an anonymous theatre review kindly supplied by Dr George Luscombe. I should also like to thank the Queen's University Advisory Research Committee, whose generous financial support enabled me to collect much of the material used in this paper
Return to article

2 George Luscombe was a member of Joan Littlewood's Workshop, responsible for the first English production of Brecht's Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder. As well, Ralph Cunningham in a letter to Luscombe described the first TWP Woyzeck as having a superb '"Dreigroschen" acerbity and understatement that was powerfully Brechtian.'
Return to article

3 From 'Workshop's Techniques: Building a Play,' made available by Dr George Luscombe.
Return to article

4 NATHAN COHEN Toronto Daily Star (date not known)
Return to article

5 NATHAN COHEN Toronto Daily Star 13 Jan 1965 p 38. This staging opened 9 Jan 1965
Return to article

6 RONALD EVANS The Telegram 13 Jan 1965 p 56
Return to article

7 RONALD EVANS The Telegram (date not known). A review of back-to-back performances of Woyzeck and Before Compiègne
Return to article

8 From JOHN HERBERT'S 'Fortune and Men's Eyes and Other Plays,' a short unpublished outline in manuscript form of his own writing career in the theatre till 1986, graciously provided to me by John Herbert. I have drawn all subsequent quotations referring to 'World of Woyzeck' from this manuscript.
Return to article

9 From a review of the same production during a fourteen-day guest performance at the Barbizon Plaza Theater, New York, by A.H. WEILER, New York Times 6 Dec 1972 p 42
Return to article

10 Translated from GEORG BÜCHNER Sämtliche Werke und Briefe ed Werner R. Lehmann Hamburg: Christian Wegner 1968, vol 1 p 41. All translations from the German are my own.
Return to article

11 Jean Herbiet, quoted from the program notes to Woyzeck from the Centaur-du Maurier Festival of Plays, 12 March-5 April 1975. I should like to thank Gillian Barany of the National Arts Centre for the time and effort she has expended in collecting and providing information on this staging.
Return to article

12 MYRON GALLOWAY Montreal Star 13 March 1975 p B10
Return to article

13 Cf 'What made [the] staging haunting were those few moments when the emotion of the marionette spread to the manipulator holding its strings and those when the puppeteer tried to comfort his creature,' WOLF WETKENS The Financial Times London May 1974
Return to article

14 Daniel J. Watermeier, from a review of the staging for the Centaur Theatre, Montreal, dated 22 March 1975
Return to article

15 Charles Haines, from the text of a Radio Canada broadcast in Ottawa 16 April 1974
Return to article

16 MYRON GALLOWAY Montreal Star 13 March 1975 p B10
Return to article

17 ROBIN DORRELL The Ottawa Journal 16 April 1974
Return to article

18 'F.H.' Daily Telegraph 27 Aug 1980
Return to article

19 JULIE STEWART Die Welt 30 Aug 1980
Return to article

20 JAMES FENTON, The Sunday Times (date not known)
Return to article

21 ERIC IVAN BERG The Ubyssey 31 Jan 1975. Next quotation is also taken from this review
Return to article

22 BRYAN JOHNSON Globe and Mail 27 Sept 1977 p 18. GINA MALLET, however, disagreed with this assessment, calling the sets 'a masterpiece of cliché,' Toronto Star 27 Sept 1977 p F1
Return to article

23 JOHNSON
Return to article

24 GINA MALLET. In her view James Edmond was too 'cerebral' an actor for the role of Woyzeck. He also failed to speak with a German accent. The title of Mallet's review, 'Theatre Compact undone by perilous play,' conveys the generally negative tone of her critique. JAMES NELSON, writing for the Winnipeg Free Press 29 Sept 1977 p 35 had only faint praise: 'the production is by no means gripping drama.'
Return to article

25 WILLIAM LITTLER Toronto Star 22 Oct 1977 p D5
Return to article

26 LAURENCE O'TOOLE Globe and Mail 18 Oct 1977 p 16
Return to article

27 JOHN KRAGLUND Globe and Mail 22 October 1977 p 35
Return to article

28 WILLIAM LITTLER
Return to article

29 From an interview entitled 'A dramaturge is lurking behind U of C's Woyzeck by BRIAN BRENNAN Calgary Herald 11 Feb 1978 p FA
Return to article

30 ERIC DAWSON Calgary Herald 16 Feb 1978 p A24
Return to article

31 For information about this staging see WILLIAM C. REEVE Georg Büchner New York: Ungar 1979, pp 153--54
Return to article

32 JANICE STEIN Northern Lifestyle 1 Oct 1980 p 2
Return to article

33 BOB CREW Toronto Star 12 June 1980 p D9
Return to article

34 Richard Rose's second version was premiered on 4 Oct 1980 in Petrolia, Ontario
Return to article

35 Cf Tarvainen used as the basis of his staging an adaptation by Joel Miller
Return to article

36 RAY CONLOGUE Globe and Mail 1 April 1983 p E6. Next two quotations also drawn from this review.
Return to article

37 HORST OPPEL Die tragische Dichtung Georg Büchners Stuttgart: Hempe 1951, p 42
Return to article

38 Quoted in a review by KLAUS VÖLKER FrankfurterRundschau 6 March 1971
Return to article

39 WOLFGANG WERTH Deutsche Zeitung 12 Sept 1962
Return to article

40 Quoted in HORST BIENEK Werkstattgespräche mit Schriftstellern Munich: Hanser 1962, p 174
Return to article

41 The Times points to a Brechtian influence in its review of this production, 8 May 1964 p 20
Return to article

42 This conference took place on the weekend of 13 and 14 Feb 1987 and is but one of several planned to commemorate Büchner's death. For example, a symposium will be held 23-25 Sept 1987 at the Goethe-Institut London England with the theme 'Georg Büchner: Tradition and Innovation.'
Return to article