Premiere: Prozess

»What kind of people were they? What were they talking about? Which office did they belong to? After all, K. was living in a free country, everywhere was at peace, all the laws were decent and upheld, who dared accost him in his own home?«

On the morning of his 30th birthday, Josef K. is arrested by the agents of a court unknown to him. Without finding out what he had allegedly done, he faces a complex and sinister bureaucracy, until he is picked up by two executioners in suits and is executed on a riverbank.

Kafka, who was part of the bureaucracy himself as an employee of an insurance company, focuses less on the smooth operation of the bureaucratic machine and more about the infinite intertwining, entanglements and confusions which arise from endless labyrinthine office corridors. The opacity of procedures and official channels increases to the point of nightmarishness.

Following the rousing success of Ein Bericht für eine Akademie (A Report for an Academy) – the production has been an indispensable part of the Gorki repertoire since February 2019 – Oliver Frljić is adapting a text by Kafka for the Gorki once again. All people have never been equal before the law. But today, aren’t we in the process of giving up, along with the illusion of this equality, the hope of establishing it someday as well? The 75th anniversary of the Basic Law means the Kafka Year is coming at just the right time.

On the same weekend as the production’s premiere, Oliver Frljić invites various experts to debate the K-question – What does the character of Josef K. stand for? Who or what could be »K.« in our present day?

WATCH THE TRAILER

Premiere 21/September 2024

Photo: Esra Rotthoff
Stage Photos: Ute Langkafel