K.

Franz Kafka spent his entire life struggling with the question of what being Jewish meant to him. Growing up in an assimilated family, he combined sporadic synagogue visits with coercion. The religious rules, their interpretations and stories alienated him at least as much as they fascinated him. It is hardly surprising that it was rather Jewish culture, art, or more precisely: theatre in the Yiddish language, which gave Kafka the first impetus to approach Judaism.

In autumn 1911, Kafka regularly attended the performances of an Eastern Jewish theatre group. Her tragicomic narrative, the mixing of song, dance, drama and the natural use of Yiddish demonstrably influenced his writing.

Against this background, opera director Barrie Kosky stages Kafka's most famous novel “The Trial” and other texts as an exploration of Kafka's Judaism in German, Yiddish, Hebrew, each with German subtitles, and — of course — with lots of music! For the seriously ill Kafka himself, this confrontation, which was always fraught with guilt and shame, only resulted in the encounter with Dora Diamant the last year before his death, if not in redemption, then at least in a kind of comfort.

Kosky's artistic work is permeated by an ongoing interest in giving audiences access to more unknown areas of Jewish culture. In this spirit, the former director of the Komische Oper Berlin continues his collaboration with the Berliner Ensemble following his successful production of the “Threepenny Opera.”