A young medical student in exile, Georg Büchner, begins a play about a nobody — a common soldier named Franz Woyzeck.
CAPTAINWoyzeck, you have no morals!
WOYZECKWe poor people… if we ever got to heaven, we'd have to help with the thunder.
Layer I
The Graphic Novel
Four chapters, two playwrights, one question: what happens when the stage stops lying?
To earn a few coins for Marie and their child, Woyzeck lets the Doctor feed him nothing but peas. Science treats him as a specimen.
DOCTORHave you eaten your peas, Woyzeck?
NARRATORBüchner dies of typhus in 1837, aged 23. The play is left in fragments.
Forty years later, Henrik Ibsen puts a respectable living room on stage — and has a wife walk out of it.
TORVALDBefore all else, you are a wife and mother.
NORAI believe that before all else I am a human being.
In An Enemy of the People, a doctor discovers the town's spa water is poisoned. The town decides the truth is the problem.
DR. STOCKMANNThe strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.
NARRATORReality had arrived on stage — and audiences did not thank it.