Franz Kafka

Amerika

Hungarian translation: István Vörös

Studio Performance in the Main Hall
RO
EN
2h 40' with intermission

Karl Rossmann
Balázs Bodolai
 
Uncle, Servant at the Pollunders
Miklós Bács
 
Klara, Tereza
Enikő Györgyjakab / Anikó Pethő
 
First officer, Fyodor, Brunelda
Áron Dimény
 
Headwaiter, Schubal
Csilla Albert
 
Green, Head cook
Kati Panek
 
Robinson
Gábor Viola
 
Delamarche
Lóránd Váta
 
Toll-keeper, Captain, Pollunder
Attila Orbán
 
Stoker, Student
Ferenc Sinkó

and Péter Árus, Alpár Fogarasi, Csaba Marosán, Rudolf Molnár, Blanka Bakó, Emese Erdei, Linda Szabó, Réka Zongor, Elemér Bacsik, József Gábor Csiszér, József Csiszér, Attila Deák, Endre Erdős, Péter Hermann, Róbert Molnár, János Nagy, János Platz, Szilárd Szőcs, Csaba Veress


directed by
Michal Dočekal
 
dramaturg
András Visky
 
set design
Martin Chocholoušek
 
costume design
Zuzana Bambušek
 
music composed by
Ivan Acher
 
video images
Zsolt Kerekes
 
director's assistant
László Szabó G.
 
director's assistant
Gábor Viola
 
director's and dramaturg's assistant
Katalin Deák
 
stage manager
Zsolt Györffy
Date of the opening: november 02, 2015

I recommend the performance to playwright, poet and director Jan Antonin Pitínský , who has recently celebrated his 60th birthday, and whose production of Amerika in the middle of the eighties was a defining experience for me.

Jan Grossmann, the famous Czech literary historian and theatre director quotes from The Trial in his essay Kafka and the Theatre:

“‘That's the law. ... ’ ‘I don't know this law,’ said K.  ... ‘Look at this, Willem, he admits he doesn't know the law and at the same time insists he's innocent.’”  Grossmann adds: “Kafka is the first poet of the modern automatized world. Automatism prioritises the form rather than the content.”

We are Karl Rossmann. Twenty five years ago we, like Karl, were enthusiastic to leave behind the communist system and step into the free world. However, we soon recognized the borders, labyrinths and dangers of the so much desired “America”. We need to answer the inevitable question: aren't we responsible for the failures and disappointments that we have experienced during the past quarter of a century? If this is how we read Kafka, we might get closer to the spirit of the novel’s stage adaptation.

We witness Karl Rossmann’s encounter with national hatred, social injustice, the world of money and power, and the world of the unemployed and homeless. At the end he himself becomes a slave of the new world, because the mechanism of money and sex represented by Brunelda, the singer, captures him too. He is confronted with the cold rejection of our society, expressed by the Student: “Give up all hope!” The way indicated to Karl by his Uncle, that is both punishment and experience, ends at the Natural Theatre of Oklahoma, and this world theatre is, in a sense, a metaphor for eternity.

The ending of the novel is open: we can consider America to be a world of automatized and instrumentalized human relationships (as Chaplin stated in Modern Times with brilliant wit), but also as a dream-world, a world where human freedom needs to rise above the horizon like an unconquerable Indian warrior who overcomes a (maybe lost) battle.

Michal Dočekal