Handspring Puppet Company / William Kentridge

Staged by the artist, sculptor and cartoon designer William Kentridge, Woyzeck on the Highveld is an adaptation of the unfinished text by Georg Büchner, Woyzeck. A masterpiece of puppet theatre, this play, which was created in 1992, signals the beginning of an intense and loyal artistic collaboration between the famous south-African artist and the contemporary puppet theatre company Handspring Puppet Company. In this version, the German soldier, at the beginning of the 19th century, is a migrant worker who wanders the streets of 1950s Johannesburg which is in the grip of frenzied industrialisation. It is a spectacle which, by uniting rod puppets with film animation, intends to visually illustrate the tortured mind of Woyzeck in his quest for meaning. To transform the artificiality of the puppets' movements into the very expression of autonomous body movements, and to lend the imaginary tormented wooden creatures a human dimension are the endeavours of this moving spectacle.