drama of worKs presents Puppet Kafka is a speculation on the work, life and peculiar perspective of Franz Kafka as imagined for performance by puppets. Using the complete text of The Metamorphosis as the main framework, the play considers Kafka on terms specific to a piece of puppet theatre: in the closed black box space of Gregor Samsa’s bedroom three puppet versions of Kafka are manipulated by forces from the outside: the Gregor-Bug, a creature losing sense of the human being he went to bed as the night before as he learns how to use all his many new legs; Franz Kafka himself, a sickly creature and the cynical, suspicious center of his own works; and the small letter ‘k’, a permanently young and reticent character haunted by the imposing Humungo K, the authoritarian father figure like the one Kafka imagined stretched out flat on a map of his son’s own life, obscuring every territory.  |
playwright
marionettes assistant direction lighting design john ardolino
puppet KafKa was generously supported by the henson foundation and the nea/chashama rehearsal development grant |
players
