Picture a performer hauling a 20-piece one-man band he built from scratch through sweaty Munich beer halls. Now picture that same beer hall clown accidentally helping birth one of the 20th century's most important theatrical movements, all by telling a blunt joke about scared soldiers.

This deep dive explores Karl Valentin, the Bavarian comedian once called the Charlie Chaplin of Germany, whose obsessive, architectural brand of gallows humor shaped Bertolt Brecht, Samuel Beckett, and generations of comedians. We trace how a carpenter's apprentice became a linguistic anarchist who used the silliest misunderstandings to expose society's deepest fragilities.

• How his carpentry background became the blueprint for precision-engineered slapstick and self-built sets
• The booming, padded stage partnership with Liesel Karlstadt that ...