Kafka

The last two seasons at the Gogol Centre have included the greatest authors of the twentieth century. In the production MACHINE MÜLLER the author’s world, his destiny and creative work are intertwined in a single space of expression. In KAFKA, not only the writer’s oeuvre but his figure – in flesh and blood – becomes the subject of investigation. The modern age in which we live and which we experience as Kafkaesque allows Serebrennikov to create an intense associative field with neon signs and headlines glowing at the entrance to the hell. The play’s slogan Kafka is Me makes each of us not so much a witness, as a subject of hell. The performance-biopic with a silent and suffering hero and a cynical garrulous commentator, who can in no way describe this lonely life, no matter how much he says, becomes the frame to this collective hell. «Burn all!» says the glowing neon-letter prophecy, and Kafka’s voice (which has actually never been recorded) makes its way from non-existence into this Kafkaesque world.