Franz Kafka Tribute – Events for the 100 years since the writing of “Metamorphosis”

Franz Kafka Tribute
Events for the 100 years since the writing of “Metamorphosis”

On the occasion of the 100 years since the novella “Metamorphosis” was written by Franz Kafka and in the line of the homonymous performance with the dramatization of the short-story, which is presented at the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation, the theatre-company Ground Zero organizes a series of events (more performances and a symposium) devoted to the writer and his work, at the MCF from Wednesday 23rd to Sunday 27th of May 2012.

The Program in brief:

Wednesday 23/5:
21:00 F. Kafka, A Report to an Academy, directed by Danae Spilioti, performs: Antigoni Riga.

A monkey who achieved to become human, stands before us and narrates his hard effort “which hardly ever happened before on earth alike”. It is the story of a violent, willful integration into the human culture. Captive in his narrow cage on a steamship, he seeks avidly for a remedy and finds it to the sad sight of human beings. “I didn’t desire freedom. Just a remedy”, repeats clarifying his position. If I desired freedom I would have chosen to dive into the ocean taking the risks of drowning. Well, he decides to become human in order to escape from the cage. Forced by our norms, the lash of taming hits against his skin and erases the memory of his previous nature. Before our eyes the nature he used to be fights against the nature he obtained. Two fields emerge: one of them is the dark universe of the monkey, the wild gorilla, the illogical, the ocean, the freedom, and the other, the human, the bright, the logical, the explainable, the remedy. Within a logical, specified, explainable, safe world, what really survives as suppressed fragments of a formerly, illogical, non verbal nature? Within the text, a logical quotation of non commented facts, the illogical component emerges, the one that “cannot be told with human words”, addressing along the course a second text as challenge. The thing that cannot be told. The thing that has been lost along the course of the monkey. The thing that is missing. Our monkey in the end has been trained to be calm, harmless, to have small demands, to be modest. He has been taught the behavior within the limits. He has settled now on in his position. Lying on his swing looks outside the window. The image of many co-centric cages appears tremendously. He is satisfied. He stares on us as we are looking on him.

Thursday 24/5:
19:00 F. Kafka, A Report to an Academy, directed by Danae Spilioti, performs: Antigoni Riga.
21:30 F. Kafka, The Metamorphosis, Ground Zero Theatre Company, directed by Savvas Stroumbos

Friday 25/5:
19:00 F. Kafka, A Report to an Academy, directed by Danae Spilioti, performs: Antigoni Riga.
21:30 F. Kafka, The Metamorphosis, Ground Zero Theatre Company, directed by Savvas Stroumbos

Saturday 26/5:
19:00 F. Kafka, A Report to an Academy, directed by Danae Spilioti, performs: Antigoni Riga.
21:30 F. Kafka, The Metamorphosis, Ground Zero Theatre Company, directed by Savvas Stroumbos

Sunday 27/5:
18:00 – 21:00 The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka at the threshold of the 21st century [Symposium for the short-story “The Metamorphosis” as well as Franz Kafka]