A tale of anguish
DIWAN SINGH BAJELI
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The NSD Repertory presents "Kafka - Ek Adhyay" based on the life of the great German novelist.
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The students are given challenging roles, and To portray Kafka's characters is a highly challenging creative journey.
Suresh Sharma.
`Franz Kafka's life, his philosophy and his time inspired me to know more about him. The focus of my interest is not much on his rich body of writing but his relationship with his friends, beloved, especially with his father whom he considered responsible for his mental and physical torments,' says Suresh Sharma, chief of the Repertory Company of the National School of Drama who is directing "Kafka - Ek Adhyay" for the repertory company which opens on June 17.
"The central thematic idea is drawn from Kafka's letter to his father, expressing views which he cannot dare to express before him face-to-face. In fact, this letter was sent to his friend with the instruction that it be destroyed after going through it. However, the friend got it published posthumously."
After obtaining a diploma in acting from Bhartendu Natya Akademi, Lucknow, Sharma graduated from the National School of Drama and for the last six years he has been functioning as the head of the NSD Repertory Company.
Relevance to India
"Kafka's future and his life were ruined by his overbearing father, and in the Indian families there are fathers whose authoritarian attitude is responsible for making the life of their sons miserable. I myself come from a small town and from a middle class family and I have also gone through a traumatic experience. It is very difficult to liberate oneself from the middle class suffocating atmosphere. This is the relevance of Kafka's letter to his father."
The letter has been dramatised by Asif Ali Haider, a graduate of NSD and a theatre artiste of many parts. The sets are designed by Bansi Kaul with music by Kajal Ghosh. Both are eminent theatre practitioners.
Born in Prague in 1883, Kafka was a German language novelist and short story writer who is among the great writers of the 20th Century.
His masterpieces include "The Metamorphosis", "The Penal Colony" and his unpublished novel "The Trial". Apart from keen interest shown by writers across the world, his works continue to fascinate cinema and stage directors. NSD has itself produced his two fictional works earlier.
Suffering from many chronic diseases like depression, migraines, insomnia, he died of tuberculosis in 1924. Longing desperately to be away from the influence of his family, he wrote out of anguish about alienation, persecution with a sense of pain at the inhumanity of the world. The complexity and philosophical depth of his novels bear the stamp of a true genius, which are interpreted differently by great creative minds of the 20th Century. These interpretations vary from modernism to magical realism, from expressionism and surrealism to anarchism.
Thomas Mann considers Kafka's fiction as allegories of a metaphysical quest for God. What is certain is that his characters are trapped in a futile and absurd world with no hope of redemption. These are the kind of characters we meet in the play `Kafka - Ek Adhyay'."
Commenting on the complicated nature of Kafka's characters, Sharma says the repertory has selected the work precisely because of these aspects.
"This production is created by our apprentice fellows. This is a one-year course and the candidates are selected from amongst NSD pass-outs. It is a kind of acting laboratory. The students are given challenging roles. To portray Kafka's characters is a highly challenging creative journey."
In the play there are many moving scenes, especially the one where the ailing Kafka meets his beloved Felice Bauer to whom he had been engaged to be married twice.
In the most pathetic voice Kafka says, "My condition is like that of a pet who cannot express himself. I am not capable of making a relationship pleasant. I am very weak and utterly incapable of leading a happy married life. I am sorry."
This is how the deep and intense relationship finally ends. Through his interaction with is lifelong friend Max Broad, we know Kafka's views on cinema and on German theatre of his time, and his admiration for Charlie Chaplin. These scenes are rewarding.
The show opens in New Delhi on June 17.
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