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About the show

A TALMUDIC VAUDEVILLE SHOW INSPIRED BY KAFKA'S TRIAL BASED ON FRANZ KAFKA WITH MUSIC FROM BACH AND SCHUMANN TO YIDDISH VAUDEVILLE All his life, Franz Kafka wrestled with the question of what his Jewishness meant to him. Having grown up in an assimilated family, he associated their sporadic visits to the synagogue more with obligation. The religious rules, their interpretation and stories alienated him at least as much as they fascinated him. Hardly surprising then that it was much rather Jewish culture, art, or more precisely: theatre in Yiddish that first motivated Kafka to explore Judaism. In the autumn of 1911, Kafka regularly attended performances by an Eastern Jewish theatre group. Their tragicomic way of telling stories, their mixture of song, dance, drama and their bold use of Yiddish demonstrably influenced his writing. With this in mind, opera director Barrie Kosky will stage Kafka’s most famous novel "The Trial" and other texts, exploring Kafka’s Jewishness in German, Yiddish and Hebrew, all with German surtitles , and – of course – with lots of music! For the gravely ill Kafka himself, this exploration, despite being overshadowed by guilt and shame, led if not to redemption then at least to some kind of consolation through his encounter with Dora Diamant in the final year before his death. Barrie Kosky’s artistic work is marked by a continuous interest in giving the audience access to lesser-known areas of Jewish culture. Once again pursuing this aim, the former artistic director of the Komische Oper Berlin will continue his collaboration with the Berliner Ensemble after his successful production of "The Threepenny Opera".