Ein Bericht für eine Akademie

Kafka's masterpiece about the ape who integrates himself in the midst of society and thereby questions humanity itself. The new production by Oliver Frljić, skillfully picks up this current theme and holds a mirror up to the audience.

In the organizer's words:

The report for an academy tells about a becoming human. The ape Rotpeter has integrated himself seamlessly into the k.-u.-k. high society. Once abducted and imprisoned, he has worked his way from the zoo to vaudeville to the center of human society in an insane learning process. Assimilation comes at a high price: the abandonment of origin, the denial of identity, the realization that the human world is more "ape-like" than the ape world. Where is the place for the Rotpeters, the unstandardized, the unhoused, the unadapted? What is the price of standardization, integration, conformity? In his stories, Kafka repeatedly sought out subjects in which animals get caught up in people's social systems. Animals as the relatives who hold up to humans as a mirror their history repressed behind the mask of civilization, animals as a disruptive factor, but also as the hunted, the endangered, and the outcast. Behind this is also the question of civilizational adaptation, which is necessary in order to become fully human, even if this means that their "becoming human" is connected with the subjugation of their own origins. Oliver Frljić, known for his provocations critical of civilization, therefore not without reason takes Kafka's narrative A Report for an Academy as the basis for his second production for the Gorky. Using the narrative material, he develops a story of becoming a human being by force and questions this act of rape of self and others of one who once knew freedom and ends up in the prison of the privileged, the conformed, the normed.Premiere on 8/February 2019 TEASER VIEW Baboon: Jeany (Filmtierschule Harsch)Animal trainer: René Harsch Photo: Esra RotthoffStage photos: Ute Langkafel Performance rights: henschel SCHAUSPIEL Theaterverlag Berlin This content has been machine translated.