Kafka’s Irresistible Puppet Master
Physical
theatre company Sinking Ship Productions has won widespread praise for their
stage version of Kafka’s A Hunger Artist, which they are bringing to the
Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
In
the title role, Lecoq-trained performer and puppeteer Jonathan Levin is giving
“possibly the best solo performance of the year” (New York Irish Arts).
What
was the inspiration for this performance?
It
was equal parts frustration with the direction of live performance in the US
and a soft spot for Kafka. I miss the old vaudeville presentational stuff, with
red curtains, footlights, and over-the-top theatrical gestures, so I thought
why not use Kafka’s story about the death and decline of Hunger Artists to also
talk about the death and decline of that kind of theatricality.
And
at the same time use things like miniature “toy theatre” (which were big in the
1800s), travelling vaudeville trunks, and red curtains to tell the story.
Is
performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas?
It’s
certainly better than a comment board.
The
main limitation, I think, on the relevance of performance is that it reaches a
finite and relatively small number of people. But when done well, it is still
one of the most visceral, empathetic art forms. Maybe “empathy” is a strange
way to answer a question about ideas, but it’s essential to understanding.
The
audience is required to participate in the act of imagination, or you don’t
have a show. So it’s never passive. And you are in a group, almost always. You
can’t sit at home and watch alone, and there’s no screen mediating between you
and the performer.
In a world that feels increasingly lacking in empathy,
performance feels absolutely necessary.
How
did you become interested in making performance?
There
were a couple of shows I saw that really blew my mind at various points in my
life, and I think I’m still trying to process/recreate those experiences: Mabou
Mines’ Peter and Wendy, Pig Iron’s Chekhov Lizardbrain, and a
puppet company called Wakka Wakka.
Each one had this incredible sense of magic,
imagination and theatricality that I’ve been striving to find my own flavour
of… Maybe we’re all just chasing the theatrical dragon so to speak.
Is
there any particular approach to the making of the show?
We
went into this project with some major storytelling limitations, namely: how
can we adapt this story about an ascetic performance artist who spends most of
his time inside a cage in a theatrically dynamic, constantly surprising way
using only one performer?
And the more we began to translate the piece into a
series of contained character bits/clowning set pieces the more we found
ourselves navigating even more self-imposed limitations and conventions.
But
these sort of artistic boundaries, while restricting, encourage a tremendous
sense of play and problem solving in a room that was basically working through
absurdist trial and error.
The
piece was built collaboratively, with the three core company members being
performer Jonathan Levin, writer Josh Luxenberg, and director Joshua William
Gelb. We worked together from the start to pull apart Kafka’s story, find the
theatrical translation, and create the staging. Playing off each other allowed
us to create an intricate, interconnected work.
Does
the show fit with your usual productions?
In a
way, it’s a distillation of Sinking Ship’s work. All our other shows have been
large casts - and too big to travel with. We built this one with Edinburgh in
mind.
Of course - and maybe this is a hallmark of our shows - we find it hard
to think small. So we packed a ton of stuff into this (not so little) trunk
show. The content of the plays we’ve made has been wildly different. What
connects it all is a love of surprise, delight, and inventiveness (especially
as an avenue to discussing big or hard ideas and feelings), an emphasis on
physical, visual theatre (often with a dose of puppetry), and total integration
of every element of performance.
We believe that anything the audience sees is
part of the show, which means we give as much consideration to a scene change
as a scene.
What
do you hope that the audience will experience?
A
Hunger Artist is at its core about the relationship between the
performer and the audience. So while this is technically a solo show, the
audience plays an integral part. You might even call some moments
“participatory” (though if that word gives you pause, don’t worry, it’s not
like you’ve seen it before).
As the trajectory of the Hunger Artist’s career
shifts from prestige to anonymity, so to does the audience’s experience shift
from the comfort of clown to the inevitably Kafkaesque. The performance, and in
particular our central prop, a large theatrical touring trunk, is filled with
surprises that will delight, astonish, and perhaps even disturb.
What
strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?
Without
giving too much away, a portion of the show, as mentioned above, relies on some
cleverly guided audience participation. So we’ve spent whole workshops devoted
to figuring out what works, what doesn’t, what’s fun, and what’s not, when
involving the unpredictable element of the audience on stage.
We’ve come away
with something that seems a little magical, to the point that everyone seems to
think the audience participants are plants. They’re not!
In common
with Kafka’s celebrated Metamorphosis, the story draws people into a
world somehow familiar and yet extraordinarily strange.
The
story opens with an account of how cheering, laughing crowds once flocked to
see the hunger artist who starved in a cage for 40 days and 40 nights at a time
for their entertainment.
What then unfolds is a powerful piece of physical
theatre mixed with elements of puppetry. The seemingly whimsical nostalgia for
a lost art form rapidly transforms into a troubling trip into the nature of
memory, art and spectatorship.
Although
never explicitly addressed, there is a disquieting sense that the forces, frailties
and fascinations Kafka exposed in 1922 were linked to the rise of fascism back
then and of far right populism today.
Levin
says: “It’s a dark tale, but there is lots
of humour which is something we really bring out in the production. We’ve tried
to make it very fresh and physical, so there’s always lots going on. New York
has been great and now we are looking forward to the biggest challenge of them
all – the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.”
Created
collaboratively by Levin, writer Josh Luxenberg, and director Joshua William Gelb, A Hunger Artist is crossing the Atlantic to Edinburgh following
its successful run at the historic Connelly Theater in New York’s East Village.
It is packed with transformations and there are so many people on the stage
that it never has the sense of being a solo show.
A
Hunger Artist has further cemented the
reputation of the Brooklyn-based Sinking Ship,
garnering considerable critical acclaim: "Boisterously funny and chokingly sad,” Blogcritics; “An
unflagging sense of theatrical invention, Lighting & Sound America; “Beautifully imagined… full of heart,” Culturebot.
Listings details
• Theatre
• Venue: Zoo (Venue 124) 140, Pleasance, EH8 9RR
• Dates: 4 to 28 August
• Time: 17:45
• Duration: 70 minutes
• Guidance: None
• Tickets: £9 to £11
• Box office: 0131 662 6892
• Group: Sinking ShipProductions
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