An adaptation of German writer Georg Buchner's famous play of jealousy, murder and the struggle of an individual against an uncaring society which eventually destroys him. Buchner's Woyzek was a German soldier in the 1800s. In this version, Woyzek is a migrant worker in 1956 Johannesburg, a landscape of barren industrialisation. The production - the first collaboration between Handspring and renowned artist and film maker William Kentridge - brings together rod-manipulated puppets and animated film to graphically illustrate Woyzek's tortured mind as he tries to make sense of his external circumstances.

Directed by Kentridge, the production premiered at the Standard Bank National Arts Festival in Grahamstown in 1992, followed by a season at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg in the same year. Subsequently it toured to Germany, Spain, Belguim, Scotland, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong. Australia, New Zealand, France and the United States - where it opened the Henson Foundation's Second New York Festival of Puppet Theatre at the Joseph Papp Public Theatre in 1994.