It could have been so good.
That was the biggest disappointment – not how bad it was, but the discrepancy between its actual and potential levels of quality. I’m speaking (writing) of The Ballad of Josef K, a puppeted interpretation of Franz Kafka’s The Trial, on stage now at the Illusion Theater.
When reviewing (or just viewing) a movie or play that’s been adapted from a novel I’ve read, I do the best I can to separate the text from the performance (Bard notwithstanding). It’s important to judge works of art on their independent merit, but when you’re talking about an iteration of The Trial, at least for me the comparisons between subject and spin-off are inevitable. What a theater troupe is able to do with a novel as elusive as this one is almost more interesting than the liberties they’ll take with it.
And puppets, it seems to me, could actually have been the perfect medium for this specific book.
As I understand it, The Trial (the novel) is largely about power. We meet Josef K on his thirtieth birthday, when he is apprehended for no particular reason. "Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K.," it begins. "He knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested." (K, the protagonist of The Trial, The Castle, and a couple shorter pieces, is Kafka’s fictionalized personality- the writer’s middle name was Josef; later on in The Trial one of the arresting officers is revealed to have the name Franz…take it as thou wilt.) For the rest of the story, Josef tries to figure out what charges are being leveled against him, and by whom. His investigation takes him up through a government hierarchy – servants, secretaries, lawyers, judges, priests – and he’s never quite able to get to the top tier.
Or, in other words, he’s never quite able to find out who’s pulling the strings. (What an awful pun, I know, I know.) In all seriousness, though, what better way than puppets to act this drama out? Puppets – with or without strings – are bodies controlled by forces that, by the very nature of puppetry, are meant to be both anonymous and omnipotent.
The notion of fate, and the extent to which we manage it, is the main theme of Kafka’s work (The Trial and otherwise), and there’s a fairly obvious correlation to a puppet and its master.
Which the Milwaukee Mask and Puppet Theatre left untouched. While their dummies were impressively rendered (fans of puppet theater might be impressed), and at times expertly controlled, they let alone any issues dealing with pre-determined fate. The relationship between the actors and their puppets was not mysterious – it was simply incidental.
Even when he was writing the book, it seems the author felt the tug of some supernatural power he was unable to control. An entry from his journal:
August 30. Cold and empty. I feel only too strongly the limits of my abilities, narrow limits, doubtless, unless I am completely inspired. And I believe that even in the grip of inspiration I am swept along only within these narrow limits, which, however, I then no longer feel because I am being swept along.
There is implicit reference to some force that ‘limits’ his abilities, and the apparent opposite of that force, inspiration, is just another god whose whim Kafka has to endure. (Explicitly, Kafka could, then, be considered a puppet, controlled by Inspiration and its opposite, which I think he would have named ‘Doubt.’) Not to acknowledge this in a performance, if not irresponsible, is at the very least passing up a terrific chance to further Kafka’s explorations.
Rather than sticking to Josef’s story – that of K’s relation to the governing forces of his soul – the production literalized Kafka’s novel, in order to show the dangers of our current political climate. From the playbill: "Today the news reveals hidden worlds of torture, terror, and mistaken identity…The Trial [bears] an amazingly contemporary resonance [with this]." (Sadly, when the plot did follow K’s investigations, it was at its most compelling.)
I would argue that, on the scale of human experience, politics are at least one hierarchical step below religion (see Spinoza’s Ethics); therefore, I would argue that this troupe was attacking Kafka’s story at a level lower than it’s meant to be understood. (Though maybe this doesn’t apply anymore; we’re living in a world where it’s difficult to say the word ‘soul’ and be taken seriously, whereas politics have become ubiquitous and all-important and seemingly infinite…kind of like God’s supposed to be. Maybe it’s actually impossible to relate Kafka’s novel to the modern world and stay true to his intentions.)
The physical torture depicted in the novel – scenes of rape and electrocution – were the most vivid aspects of the performance. On stage there was more puppet intercourse than Team America: World Police (and less funny); an apt title could very well have been The Hyper-Sexualizaton of Josef K. But I really believe Kafka intended these aspects to be metaphor. To grossly oversimplify: in the book, I think, the sexual perversity was a sort of rape of the soul; in the play, though, it signified the corruption of government. To go a step further: In the book, the corruption of government stood for the corruption of the soul; in the play, the corruption of government stood for the corruption of government.
So I suppose the question comes down to intent. Maybe director Rob Goodman loved the novel for the same reasons I did, but also saw potential to make The Trial into a modern parable for Abu Ghraib. That’s fine. But I would still call it dangerously un-ambitious. Why lessen the novel’s meaning for the purposes of manifesto? Why make it so mundane? So earthly? Whatever its merits (which I’ll leave to the theater blogger), there was a roughness to this performance akin to an unfinished jigsaw puzzle – all the pieces may have been there, but there was minimal effort to assemble them correctly.
Leave a Reply