Kafka's Ape | THEATER DER WELT

In the organizer's words:

Franz Kafka in stage format: a solo about adaptation as a survival strategy. Progress as dressage. A game about power and loss.

The monkey takes the floor. To explain why freedom was no longer an option. In Franz Kafka's "Report for an Academy", Rotpeter, the monkey reporting to the Academy, is concerned with adaptation as a survival strategy. He describes learning as a compulsion, becoming human as a loss. South African director Phala Ookeditse Phala and actor Tony Bonani Miyambo take this text at its word and, in their adaptation of Kafka's Ape, write it into a body, into a present, into a story that obviously cannot find peace.
Their dramaturgically captivating stage study does not show an animal that becomes a human, but a human who reveals the emotional violence of this transformation. Language, posture and movements are extracted from his body under pressure. The body becomes legible like a strip of data. You can see how he learns what to accept. And what not. What is sold as progress is thus revealed as dressage. The report becomes an indictment.
Quietly but irreversibly, this stage dramaturgy shifts Kafka's text. Questions of assimilation and foreign attribution now emerge from it without having to be named. Who is speaking to whom here? Who is allowed to narrate? And at what price? The body on stage not only carries Kafka's character, but also a story of attributions, forced assimilation and structural violence.
In South Africa, a country that not only has to deal with the consequences of European colonialism, but also those of apartheid politics, the treatment of this material has a very special explosive power. Mechanisms of subjugation are a literary experiment for Kafka and a question of survival for the self-confidence of the multinational, young South African nation.
In his solo performance, Tony Bonani Miyambo brilliantly combines acting techniques from a variety of cultural backgrounds. His highly concentrated performance shows how close civilization and brutality are to each other. And how thin the line is between survival and adaptation.

Venue: Spinnbau - East Wing
Introduction: 30 minutes before the start of each performance
Duration: 55 min
Information: In English with German surtitles

All further information at: https://www.theaterderwelt.de/programm/

A festival of the German Centre of the International Theatre Institute e.V.
Organized by Chemnitz Theatres, the Festival Academy Brussels and the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025 GmbH.

Price information:

Tickets at: theaterderwelt.de/kafkas-ape/ | 35% discount with festival pass. More information at: theaterderwelt.de/service/tickets