A teaching folder created specifically for the new Edexcel 2016 specification.

This folder will enable you to practically and theoretically explore the play in the light of your chosen practitioner and will provide you with a comprehensive set of resources to help students to develop their own production concept of Woyzeck. The folder covers the play scene by scene with teaching suggestions (and accompanying handouts) provided for all scenes so that your students will develop an integral understanding of the text as a whole in order to interpret it for a contemporary audience.

All ideas and handouts focus upon the play from the role of a director (creating a production for a 21st century audience) and will provide students with detailed resources to help in their research of the play's original context, and the social, historical and cultural factors that are central to the context of the original text as well as the original aims and intentions of the playwright.

It will encourage students to develop their own production concepts and have a firm idea of their intended audience and an appropriate theatrical venue/space, as well as considering how the use of design elements to communicate ideas to an audience. Within the student handouts and teaching ideas, the folder covers such a variety of teaching topics such as:

-the real-life story that influenced the play,
-the changing character of Woyzeck and his descent into madness,
-previous directors' interpretations for certain scenes, settings or characters,
-the function of Marie and directing this role, the significance of animals in this play and how a director might work with these,
-using expressionist ideas to form visual staging ideas,
-Woyzeck's power in relation to other characters,
-the presentation of morality within the play,
-understanding the playwright's influence on the movement of naturalism and considering his messages about determinism,
-the theme of religion in this play and differing directorial perspectives of this theme,
-performing Marie and the Drum Major's interactions,
-the significance of circles and how this could influence staging designs,
-directing the relationship between Woyzeck and Andres,
-considering how Woyzeck's treatment at the hands of the Captain and the Doctor, reflects attitudes in the playwright's society,
-how a director tackles the playwright's fatalistic messages.