The Trial – Holland Festival

‘Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.’ These are the legendary opening lines of Franz Kafka’s The Trial (1925). Polish director Krystian Lupa – Krzysztof Warlikowski’s mentor, among others – makes a cinematic performance based on this oppressive novel and Kafka’s letters and diaries. He does so at a time when Poland’s ultra-conservative government is causing kafkaesque situations in the country. On what grounds was Josef K. arrested? Is he guilty? At a certain point he no longer knows himself. With video, a large cast and his characteristic eye for humankind’s hypocrisy, Lupa shows the relevance of Kafka’s work.

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The acclaimed Polish director Krystian Lupa will be appearing at Holland Festival with The Trial. This film-like, five-hour long theatre experience is a stinging critique of the rise of extreme nationalism

in Poland. The play itself is based on The Trial (1925), Franz Kafka’s iconic novel, and is complemented by extracts from Kafka’s letters and diaries. The Trial depicts a paranoid world where one morning the main character, the naive bank clerk Josef K., is arrested for an unknown crime. K. believes in the power of the law, but he ends up in a surreal spiral of impenetrable court cases, icy bureaucracy and absurd rules. Everything that K. employs to prove his innocence is used against him in some bizarre way and he gets tangled in a net of ridiculous allegations. A worn-down K. is eventually taken away and executed, his ‘crime’ remaining a mystery. The important influence of Kafka’s work saw the coining of a new adjective after his death: Kafkaesque, ‘oppressive and alienating, such as the tone of the novels of writer Franz Kafka’.

For a long time Lupa kept his distance from Kafka, as by his own admission he was scared of him. ‘I was scared of his negativity, his power, his depression, his nihilism. I don’t produce plays to describe how everything is wrong in the world. I create plays that convey the possibility of positive thought. Kafka however is one of the few writers, perhaps the only one, whose work is perniciously narrative yet at the same time extremely radical. A mystery worth exploring.’ Lupa is responsible for the production’s direction, adaptation, staging and lighting. Typical of Lupa’s style is the transparency with which actor and role converge almost entirely, making even the slightest psychological nuances and contradictions visible.

Lupa began rehearsals for The Trial in 2016 with another theatre company, Teatr Polski in Wrocław, but this abruptly came to an end after a new artistic director was appointed who was more in line with the ultra-conservative government. With support from various theatres both in Poland and abroad Lupa was nonetheless able to put on his production, all while the rise of radical nationalism and extreme right-wing politics in Poland sees the country follow an increasingly Kafkaesque path, an ongoing trend the result of which is The Trial. With video projections, a seventeen-strong cast and his keen eye for hypocrisy, Lupa highlights the contemporary relevance of Kafka's work, posing the question ‘what if Kafka’s work did become reality?’.

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by Franz Kafka translation (Polish) Jakub Ekier direction, adaptation, scenography, light Krystian Lupa costumes Piotr Skiba music Bogumił Misala video, light Bartosz Nalazek animations Kamil Polak make-up, hair Joanna Tomaszycka, Monika Kaleta glosses Krystian Lupa, Marta Zięba, Marcin Pempuś, Adam Szczyszczaj, Małgorzata Gorol, Radosław Stępień, Andrzej Kłak dramaturgy collaboration, assistant director Konrad Hetel, Radosław Stępień video assistant, camera operator Natan Berkowicz costume assistant Aleksandra Harasimowicz porn book illustration, portrait of the attorney Andrzej Kłak Titorelli’s desolate landscape Ninel Kameraz-Kos cast Bożena Baranowska, Maciej Charyton, Małgorzata Gorol, Anna Ilczuk, Mikołaj Jodliński, Andrzej Kłak, Dariusz Maj, Michał Opaliński, Marcin Pempuś, Halina Rasiakówna, Piotr Skiba, Ewa Skibińska, Adam Szczyszczaj, Wojciech Ziemiański, Andrzej Szeremeta, Marta Zięba, Ewelina Żak stage manager, camera operator Łukasz Jóźków head of production Anna Czerniawska coordinator, production assistant Sylwia Merk translation (English) Dominika Gajewska, Artur Zapałowski subtitles Adrianna Książek lighting technician Tadeusz Perkowski sound technicians Radosław Symon, Piotr Żyła video technician Andrzej Lawdański props Mateusz Andracki dressers Iryna Kacharava stage services Robert Tomala, Jakub Płoński chief producer Nowy Teatr producers STUDIO teatrgaleria, TR Warszawa, Le Quai Centre Dramatique National Angers Pays de la Loire, Teatr Powszechny co-producers Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe, Festival d’Automne à Paris, La Filature, Onassis Stegi partner Teatr Polski w Podziemiu co-financed by Miasto Stołeczne Warszawa

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